Buckingham Palace Gardens - Anne Perry [43]
“It would appear so,” Quase agreed. “I stayed up until they retired, which was around midnight. What happened after that I have no idea. As far as I am concerned the women earned their fee by being extremely entertaining company and making a somewhat plodding evening pass with pleasure.”
“A plodding evening?” Pitt raised his eyebrows.
“His Royal Highness, when sober, can be heavy going,” Quase told him with a flicker of a smile. “And when drunk, even heavier. A bit like plowing a field after a week’s rain. Dunkeld is a bully, as you may have observed. Marquand is good enough, I suppose, although I find his rivalry with Sorokine rather a bore. They are half-brothers—I assume you knew that. Sorokine himself can be rather a bore because he is absorbed in his own problems, which he wears heavily. And before you ask me, I don’t know, but I assume they are largely to do with his wife, whose behavior with Marquand is outrageous.”
“And would not tell me if you did,” Pitt added.
“Precisely,” Quase agreed.
“So it was an enjoyable evening? No quarrels? No tension as to who should have which woman?”
Quase laughed outright. “Between whom, for God’s sake? His Royal Highness took what he wished, Dunkeld would choose between the other two, and Marquand would have what was left. If you really need me to tell you that, then you haven’t the wits to find out what the menu was, let alone who killed that poor creature!”
“It is not only what I learn, Mr. Quase, it is who tells me, and how,” Pitt retorted, then immediately wished he had not. He had defended himself, and thus betrayed his need to do so. Too late to pull it back. “Thank you. Would you ask Mr. Marquand to come, please?”
Five minutes later Simnel Marquand came in and closed the door behind him. “I really can’t help you,” he said before he had even crossed the floor. He sat down, less gracefully and less comfortably than Hamilton Quase. He was a good-looking man with an intelligent and sensual face. He dressed well, but without that effortless elegance of a man who, once having understood fashion, can follow it or ignore it as he pleases.
“I did not see the poor woman after I went to bed,” he explained. “And I have no idea what happened to her. I didn’t see anyone around in the corridor, and I understand you have already accounted for the servants. It seems inexplicable to me.” He spoke as if that were the end of the matter.
“It seems so,” Pitt agreed. “And yet it must be simply that we have not found the explanation. The facts are inescapable. Three women came for the evening, two left, and the third was found dead in the linen cupboard. The servants are accounted for and the only other person to come beyond the kitchen and be alone even for a few moments was the carter who helped the footman carry Mr. Dunkeld’s box up the stairs. He was alone for only a matter of minutes, and was not upstairs in the bedroom corridor. Also, he had not a spot of blood on him when he left. If you had seen the poor woman’s body, you would know that could not be the case with whoever killed her.”
Marquand was pale, his body unnaturally still. It obviously disturbed him that Pitt was so graphic. He had strong hands, slender but with square tips to the fingers. Just now they were clenched with an effort to stop them trembling.
“I did not kill her, and I have no idea who did,” he repeated.
Pitt smiled. “I had not been hopeful that you could tell me, Mr. Marquand. But you could describe the party of that evening.”
“It was just a…” Marquand began, then stopped. “Yes, I imagine you have never attended such a…an evening?”
“No,” Pitt agreed soberly. The sarcastic observation was on his tongue, and he refrained from making it only because he had to. “Presumably the ladies retired to bed early, and then the…women were conducted in?”
Marquand’s lips tightened and a very slight color stained his cheeks. “You make it sound vulgar,” he said critically.
Pitt leaned back. He could not get Olga Marquand’s dark, sad face out of his mind. And yet that was foolish. She was probably quite