Buckingham Palace Gardens - Anne Perry [54]
Vespasia was watching him, waiting for his attention to return.
“And Marquand?” he prompted.
“It is possible,” she conceded. “He is Julius’s half-brother, elder by a year or two, and driven by a certain jealousy. Of course Julius married Cahoon Dunkeld’s daughter, Wilhelmina. I believe she calls herself Minnie. A girl with a great talent to attract masculine admiration, which she exercises freely. What the unkind may call a troublemaker.”
“And what would you call her, Lady Vespasia?” He concealed a very slight smile.
“An unhappy young woman who is having a prolonged tantrum,” she replied without hesitation. “Too much like her father.”
“And what would you say of him?”
“You did not include him,” she pointed out.
“Only because his whereabouts are accounted for.”
“Perfectly capable of killing anyone,” she said without hesitation.
“But far too intelligent to do so. If he is guilty, I would say he lost his temper, which is considerable, and did so more by accident than design.”
“You do not cut a woman’s throat in the linen cupboard by accident.”
Her eyes widened only very slightly. “No, that is true. Then I doubt it was Dunkeld. If you had told me he beat his wife, I should have believed you.”
“Why?”
“Because he is a man who takes his possessions very seriously.”
“I see. That leaves Hamilton Quase.”
“A very civilized man,” she observed.
“Too civilized for violence?”
“Certainly not! The most outwardly civilized are the most capable of appearing to be something different from reality. I am quite sure you know that as well as I do.” There was a slight reproof in her voice.
“I apologize,” he said sincerely.
“Thank you. If Mr. Quase were to have done such a thing, I believe he would have had a reason for it that seemed to him to be adequate. But he is a man who takes risks and will pay highly for what he wants.”
“Really!” He had put Quase down as a man who dreamed rather than acted, finding most of his reality at the bottom of a bottle. “And what does he want?” he asked.
“A few years ago I should have said it was Liliane Forbes,” she said. “Now, of course, I do not know. Perhaps it has not changed.”
“He is married to her,” he observed.
“There is more to possessing a woman than the legality of marriage, Victor,” she corrected him. “Quase was very much in love with her, or else he would not have behaved as he did over her brother’s death. A very messy affair. If Eden Forbes had lived, Liliane would very probably have married Julius Sorokine, and a great many things would be different.”
Now he was genuinely interested. “Watson Forbes’s son?”
“His only son.”
“What happened to him?”
She frowned, her voice dropping even lower as they stood in front of a large, very ugly portrait of a woman. “The details are very unclear,” she answered. “He died in Africa, boat overturned in a river. Hippopotami, crocodiles, or something of the sort. Watson Forbes was shattered, as was Liliane. It was Hamilton Quase who dealt with the whole, very miserable matter. Kept it as discreet as possible, saw to the funeral and so on. Liliane had been in love with Julius, but after a decent period of mourning, she married Quase instead.”
“Gratitude?” Narraway inquired. “And if Quase rose to the occasion, and Sorokine did not, perhaps she chose the better man?”
“Possibly.”
“You don’t think so?”
She smiled at him. “I think she paid a debt of gratitude, but that is only a supposition. I don’t know.”
“How do you know so much about it? Were you there?”
“In Africa? Good gracious, no. It holds no enchantment for me,” she replied. “But I have an excellent friend, Zenobia Gunne, who has explored in all manner of places, including long stretches of the Congo and Zambezi rivers, certainly in much of Southern Africa. It was she who told me.”
“Nobby Gunne,” Narraway said with a smile, remembering a remarkable woman who was unafraid of lions, elephants, tsetse flies, or malaria, but still able to be cut to the quick by disloyalty and wounded by the suffering of others. “If she says that is what happened, then I will