Buckingham Palace Gardens - Anne Perry [118]
“Yes…ma’am.” He obeyed, walking quickly around her to reach the door before she did and open it for her. He did not know whether he was exultant that she had told him where the dish belonged, or if it terrified him even more. If it was the Queen’s dish, how had it come to be smashed? Had the Prince taken it? Why, for heaven’s sake? Was he completely mad? If the Princess of Wales realized what it meant, what would she do? Had Pitt, in his blindness, fallen into the middle of a Palace plot? Was the Prince of Wales insane? Did the Princess know it and intend to use Pitt somehow to expose it?
No. That was all delirious thinking. There was a perfectly rational explanation. Probably it was some thieving servant after all. That made infinitely more sense.
He followed a pace behind her along the wide corridors into another wing altogether. She spoke briefly to a servant and then to another. Finally he followed her, with two liveried footmen and a lady-in-waiting, into Queen Victoria’s rooms.
They were oddly as Pitt had expected: too much furniture, all large and beautifully carved, pictures, ornaments, and photographs everywhere. The sunlight slanted in through high heavily curtained windows and made colored patterns on the carpets.
“There,” the Princess said, pointing to an ornate mantel. On it stood a beautiful Limoges pedestal dish, with gold leaf around the edges, trellises woven of gold, and in the center a painting of a romantic couple on a garden seat. It was not the sky that was deep blue, but his coat, and a robe around her shoulders and down to the ground at the back.
The Princess turned and looked at Pitt, her eyes wide, questioning.
“Was there a matching pair?” he asked, feeling foolish.
“No,” the lady-in-waiting answered for the Princess, perhaps fearing she had not heard.
Pitt walked around, making a pretense of looking for a space from which another dish could have been taken, but not expecting to find it. He was puzzled, beaten a second time. He looked at the bed. Did it have the beautifully monogrammed sheets on, like the stained and crumpled ones Gracie had found in the laundry? He dared not look. There was no possible excuse for it, and what did it matter?
He bent and touched the heavy tapestry curtains, feeling the texture of the cloth. It moved very slightly, and he saw a darker patch on the carpet below. It looked like a stain. He bent and put his finger to it. It was dry. He licked his finger and touched it again. His finger came away smeared with brownish-red.
A charge rippled through him like electricity. It was blood. He looked at the skirt to the bed, exploring it with his fingers. He found a seam where there appeared to be no reason for one. He straightened up and moved quickly to the same place on the other side. Here the skirt was even, and there was no seam. A piece had been removed and its absence disguised. More blood? An accident? An illness?
But it was not yet completely caked in. It could not be more than a few days old—in other words, it occurred since the Queen had left and been at Osborne on the Isle of Wight.
He walked back to the Limoges plate again and bent down to the floor below the mantel. It was old, beautiful, weathered by time and years of polishing. But in between the boards there was a fine white dust, as of broken porcelain. Something had been smashed here.
He turned very slowly and stared around the room. They were all watching him, the Princess, the lady-in-waiting, and both footmen. With the horror of certainty, he knew what had happened: For whatever reason, whoever had done it, this was where Sadie had been murdered.
She had been moved from here to the linen cupboard for the most obvious of reasons. But why the extra blood in the port bottles? To make it look as if she had been killed in the cupboard, so no one would look any further? Was it animal blood from the kitchen? Had someone used the port bottles simply to carry it upstairs?
Three bottles seemed excessive. There had not been that much blood in the