Buckingham Palace Gardens - Anne Perry [141]
He wrote a short letter on a page from his notebook and handed it to the footman. All it said was, “I realize what Dunkeld has done to help. But now more help than that is needed. Pitt.”
He was conducted into the Prince’s presence five minutes later, and the footman withdrew, leaving them alone. The Prince was white-faced, sweat shining on his brow.
“What do you mean by this, sir?” he demanded, holding up the scrap of paper. “It looks like an attempt at…at blackmail!”
“No, sir,” Pitt said with as much respect as he could pretend. “It is an attempt to avoid blackmail. I believe Mr. Dunkeld went to considerable trouble, and ingenuity, to make you seem acutely vulnerable, sir, and I intend to see that he does not profit from it.”
“I don’t know what you mean. You are on dangerous ground, Inspector. Cahoon Dunkeld is a friend of mine, a gentleman of skill and honor, and very great loyalty. Far more than you, I may say, who are paid to be a servant to the Crown!” he accused him.
“Yes, sir.” Pitt breathed in slowly, knowing the risk he was taking. If he was wrong, he would be ruined. He would not even walk a beat as a common policeman after this. “You entertained a prostitute of particular intelligence and skill, who insisted she would give her favors only if she could do it in the Queen’s own bed.”
“How…how dare you, sir?” the Prince sputtered.
“You saw no harm in it,” Pitt continued. “You took her there, and after she kept her word, you fell asleep, probably assisted by a little laudanum in your drink. When you awoke there was a dead woman beside you, or possibly only a great deal of blood.” He stopped, afraid the Prince was going to have a heart attack or apoplexy. He seemed to be choking, grasping at his collar, and he had gone ashen gray. Pitt had no idea how to help. He had not foreseen this.
He turned and strode to the door to call for assistance.
“Wait!” the Prince cried out. “Wait!”
Pitt stopped.
“I didn’t kill her!” the Prince said desperately. “I swear on the Crown of England, I never hurt her at all!”
“I know that, sir,” Pitt said quietly, turning back to face him. “She was dead before she was ever brought into the Palace.”
“She can’t…what are you saying? I lay with a dead woman? I assure you she was very much alive!”
“Sadie was, yes. But the corpse beside you, and later in the linen cupboard, was not Sadie,” Pitt explained. “That is why her clothes had to be removed. The difference would have given it away. And there was probably no time. Dunkeld took care of it all for you, didn’t he? Ran a bath, told you to wash away all the blood, and he himself removed the body and the bloody sheets. Later, he had trusted servants clean up the mess, the blood on the floor, and replaced the broken Limoges dish, which you thought you had smashed in your rage with the poor woman.”
The Prince simply nodded. He was still gray-faced, his eyes almost glazed. He was mortified with embarrassment at being exposed as such an incompetent libertine in front of Pitt, of all people.
“He told you to say nothing, and it would all be all right. He would get in Special Branch, and they would keep the matter discreet,” Pitt continued.
“What about Sorokine?” the Prince floundered. “If he wasn’t guilty, why did he kill his wife, poor woman?”
“He didn’t,” Pitt said simply. “She worked out the truth, and must have faced Dunkeld with it. I don’t imagine he intended to kill her, he probably only tried to silence her, and they both lost their tempers. They were very alike. When he realized he had struck her too hard he had to make it look as if it were the same as the other crime, and the one in Africa too, of which he could not have been guilty. It must have been one of the hardest things in his life to have cut her like that, even