Buckingham Palace Gardens - Anne Perry [121]
“So are you!” she shot back. “And perhaps if you’d resisted your appetites instead of indulging them, Minnie would be too. Have you ever considered that? If Julius killed her, perhaps you drove him to it?” She had nearly said perhaps Olga did it. The words had almost slipped out.
He was white-faced, blotches of color on his cheeks. “Are you saying that if your wife prefers someone else it is just cause for you to murder her?”
“You had better hope not, or Olga may feel justified in killing you,” she answered him. “I would not blame her.” That was a lie. Rage against Simnel for accusing Julius, and the disloyalty of it, twisted inside her. And the bitter fear that he could be right was there, tiny, thin as a wire in the gut, but undeniable. She hated herself for it even more, but it was there.
Did she love Julius? Was love an unshakable loyalty, no matter what the evidence? A denial of your own values, your intelligence? Was it something that refuses to believe the ugly and shallow, that sees only the clean in a person, the desire to be brave, kind, funny, and gentle? Or does it also see the fears and the failures, the dreams broken, and still love the person? Is it tender to the bruised hope? Would she still care if Julius were nothing like her vision of him?
Was that love, or obsession, because his face had a beauty that haunted her mind, his smile and his hands, the pitch of his voice? Was it really her own dreams she clung to, and loved? How easy, and how unreal.
The door opened and Liliane came in, followed the moment after by Olga. Elsa made polite remarks. Simnel muttered something meaningless and turned away. No one knew what to say that was honest or anything more than platitudes to break the silence.
Elsa looked at the other women and wondered how many compromises they had made. Were they, in facing reality, in loving men in spite of their weaknesses or failures, more honest than she?
Doesn’t all love have a little blindness? How else does it survive? Isn’t believing in the possibilities of the good and the beautiful what inspires it into being?
Cahoon came in, and Hamilton Quase. They both looked haggard, skin blotched and hollow, Cahoon especially because he was also scratched by his razor. There was a curious lifelessness about him, as though he were physically smaller. Hamilton had obviously already drunk more than was good for him. An air of miserable belligerence suggested he intended to continue. He deliberately avoided Liliane’s anxious gaze.
Dinner was ghastly. The places were set for six, and the absence of Julius and Minnie was glaring. The women did not wear black because they had not brought anything black with them, and the previous night they had dined in their rooms. Instead, they had chosen the darkest shades they had and a complete absence of jewelry. Conversation was halting and desperately artificial until Cahoon shattered the pretense.
“Has anybody seen that fool of a policeman since this morning?” he asked.
No one answered him. Eventually Simnel shook his head, his mouth full.
“It should be over by tomorrow,” Cahoon went on. “I don’t know why he couldn’t have settled it today.”
“Will we all leave?” Olga asked, looking from one to another of them.
Hamilton leaned back in his chair and regarded Cahoon over-earnestly.
“No,” Cahoon was terse. “The course of history does not stop for individual deaths, even of kings and queens, certainly not simply of those we love. I shall complete the negotiations with His Royal Highness, which will take only a little longer. After that we may all leave. Of course we shall have to find a suitable diplomat to take Julius’s place.”
“In fact, business as usual,” Elsa said coldly. “Why should we let mere death or damnation get in the way of a railway?”
“Don’t drink any more wine, Elsa. It isn’t good for you,” Cahoon said, without turning to look at her.
“Did Julius admit to killing Minnie?” Hamilton asked, suddenly sitting up straight again. “I assume he didn’t, and that was why the policeman