Buckingham Palace Gardens - Anne Perry [59]
Narraway was baffled. Pitt was stating the obvious. Was he overwhelmed by where he was? “Where else would you expect to find them?” he asked. “I imagine most of the sheets from the linen cupboard are there. At least all they think they can save.”
“They had the Queen’s monogram on them.” Pitt looked at him with a frown, his eyes puzzled. “Not the Palace, the Queen personally. And they had been slept on. They were crumpled and the blood was smeared.”
“God Almighty, Pitt!” Narraway exclaimed. “What are you saying? The Queen’s at Osborne.”
“I know that,” Pitt replied steadily. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since Gracie showed them to me, and I don’t know what it is I’m saying. Somebody used the Queen’s sheets on a bed that was slept in, or at any rate used, if you prefer a more exact term, and somebody bled on them, very heavily.”
Narraway’s mind raced. “Then she can’t have been stabbed in the linen cupboard! She was killed somewhere else, and put there afterward. That makes some sense. Why would she have gone willingly to the cupboard anyway? Whoever killed her put her in a place he thought would not incriminate him. We should have realized that before.”
“Bodies don’t bleed a lot after they’re dead,” Pitt pointed out. “Heart stops.”
“But it doesn’t stop instantly. There could still be blood,” Narraway argued.
“Nothing like as much as we found in the cupboard. She must have been alive when she was put in there.” Pitt’s face was twisted with pity and an anger Narraway had rarely seen in him, and was the more moving for that.
“Ripped her belly open in the bed, then carried her naked along the corridor and slashed her across the throat, then left her to bleed to death in the cupboard,” Narraway said very quietly. “By the way, have we found her clothes yet?”
“No,” Pitt replied.
Narraway shivered. “What in God’s name are we dealing with, Pitt?”
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in!” Narraway said savagely.
The door opened and Gracie’s diminutive figure stood on the threshold. She looked different and even smaller in Palace uniform.
“Come in,” Narraway repeated, more civilly this time. “Can you get me a supper like Pitt’s, roast beef sandwich and a glass of cider?”
“I’ll ask Cook, sir,” Gracie said, closing the door behind her. “But I come because one o’ the maids found the missing knife.” She spoke to Pitt, not Narraway. “An’ it’s got blood on it, sir. Even a couple of ’airs, little ones.” She colored faintly. She could not bring herself to be more exact than that.
“Where?” Pitt stared at her. “Where did they find it? Who did?”
“Ada found it. In the linen cupboard, sir.”
“But we searched it!” Pitt protested. “There was no knife there!”
“I know that, sir,” she agreed. “Someone gone an’ put it there, jus’ terday. We got someone ’ere in this palace ’oo’s very wicked. Mr. Tyndale’s got the knife, sir. I’ll go an’ get yer some sandwiches, an’ a glass o’ cider.” She turned round and went out, whisking her skirt, which was at least two inches too long for her, leaving Pitt and Narraway staring at each other.
CHAPTER
SIX
ELSA SAT IN front of her bedroom mirror, stiff and unhappy. Everyone was afraid. On the day the body was discovered they had been so shocked they had taken a little while to absorb the horror of what had happened, but with the second day the reality of it was far more powerful. The gangling policeman with his overstuffed pockets was asking questions. They were always courteous; questions that only afterward did you realize how intrusive they had been.
It seemed absurd, like something senseless out of a nightmare where none of the pieces fit, but at last they were realizing that it had to have been one of them who had killed the woman. No one dared say it. They had talked about all kinds of things, making remarks no one listened to, and gossip in which, for once, no one was interested.
She stared at her reflection in the glass. It was pale and familiar, horribly ordinary.
It was impossible to sleep properly, but even the little