Buckingham Palace Gardens - Anne Perry [144]
Julius smiled, but there were tears in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said huskily. “I’ll admit, luncheon wasn’t much. I’d like that…before I…join the others.”
She went to make it herself, choosing the tea cake with the most currants and sultanas, and being generous with the butter. When she took it up to him, he was delighted and ate the tea cake as if it was the first food he had tasted with any pleasure for days.
She glanced over to the bedside table and saw Oscar Wilde’s book open on it.
He saw her look. “Would you like it?” he offered.
“I couldn’t!” she said intently, blushing that he had caught her looking at it.
“Yes, you could,” he replied. “I can get another one. I would like you to have it. I have something to celebrate. Let me make a gift of it to you.” He reached out his hand, then saw the butter on his fingers and smiled ruefully. “Just take it. Please?”
She picked it up, holding it tight. “Thank you, sir.”
He was still smiling.
PITT AND NARRAWAY found Cahoon Dunkeld with the Prince of Wales. They were obliged to wait until he had finished his discussion and was walking back alone along the corridor toward his own room. They caught up with him at the door and followed him in, to his intense annoyance.
“What the devil’s the matter with you?” he demanded, spinning round to face them, his face twisted with fury.
Narraway closed the door behind him. “Naturally, as Special Branch, we do not have the authority to arrest anyone, but in these unusual circumstances, I am obliged to make an exception.”
“Good,” Cahoon snapped. “You do not need my permission. Get on with it!”
“I know I do not need your permission,” Narraway replied tartly. “Cahoon Dunkeld, I am arresting you for the murder of Wilhelmina Sorokine. You will be—”
Cahoon’s face turned scarlet. “Her husband killed her,” he said between clenched teeth. “If you seek to avoid your duty and blame this on me, I shall speak to the Prince and have you dismissed. And don’t doubt he can do it.”
“Probably,” Narraway conceded with a tight smile. “But he won’t, not since he knows that you had a dead prostitute brought in and disemboweled in the Queen’s bed, in order to blackmail him for the rest of his life. He will resent that—I can assure you.”
“Rubbish! You’re hysterical,” Cahoon said with disgust, but his voice was slurred and his hands were clenched till the knuckles shone.
“No, Mr. Dunkeld, Minnie was hysterical when she put all the pieces together. She saw the Limoges dish in your luggage; she knew the one in the Queen’s room had been broken; but you must have known in advance that it would be, or why bring one identical? She knew the box came in and went out with the same weight in it, and there were very few new books on Africa, if any at all. And she knew you: your nature, your courage, and your arrogance. And you knew that she would want a price for her silence, possibly the clearing of her husband from blame. Profoundly as you loved her, you could not afford to let her ruin you—and she would have.”
Cahoon stared at him. “You can’t prove that,” he said at last. “None of it.”
“Yes,” Narraway said, glancing only for a second at Pitt, knowing he could not afford to take his eyes from Cahoon for any longer than that. “I can. A court might not compel your wife to testify, or believe her if she did. They might think your valet merely a distinguished servant, if a frightened one. But they will believe Tyndale, a Palace butler who owes you nothing. He saw the shards of the broken dish, and he saw the new one that replaced it.”
“Sorokine brought it!” Cahoon’s lips curved in the tiniest smile.
“How did he know about it?” Narraway asked. “He had never been to the Palace before, still less to the Queen’s bedroom. You did. He did not arrange the prostitutes to come that evening, nor did he send for the box of books that don’t exist. Small pieces of evidence, Cahoon, but many of them, and the Limoges dish was a touch of reality too far. The blood was necessary, but that