The Serpent on the Crown - Elizabeth Peters [93]
“One of the servants will sit outside your door tonight, in case you want anything,” Katherine added.
“It is very good of you. So kind…”
“I’ll leave these with you, Katherine,” Nefret said, after we had bade him good night. “These for pain, these to help him sleep if he needs them. One cannot trust a patient who is somewhat confused to take them himself.”
“Quite right,” I said approvingly. “What is your assessment, Nefret?”
“The injuries are genuine,” Nefret said. “And they are consistent with a hard fall and being swept about by the current.”
“Could he have throttled Mrs. Petherick?” I asked.
Katherine started. “Amelia, for heaven’s sake! Why would he?”
“I can’t think of a motive, Katherine, but as we criminal investigators know, motive is a secondary consideration. I am only endeavoring to ascertain whether he was physically capable of doing the job.”
“You know I can’t answer that, Mother,” Nefret said indignantly. “Offhand I would say no, but people are capable of extraordinary effort if the need is strong enough. What makes you suspect the man?”
“I suspect everyone of everything,” I said.
I was comfortably tucked up in bed reading when Emerson entered.
“An early night, eh?” he said pleasantly. “Excellent, my dear. You have been a busy little bee of late.”
“Mmmm,” I said, and turned a page.
“What are you reading that you find so absorbing?” Emerson demanded. He began to undress, tossing his clothes in various directions.
“Hang your trousers over the chair, Emerson. This is one of Countess Magda’s novels—The Vampire’s Daughter. I borrowed it from Marjorie Fisher.”
“Why are you wasting your time on that rubbish?” Emerson asked. I got the notion he had some other time-wasting activity in mind.
“I was curious. It really is a dreadful piece of trash, but this is interesting.” I held up a piece of paper. “It is Magda’s biography. Marjorie must have clipped it from a newspaper.”
“Oh?”
“‘Our beloved authoress was born in her ancestral home, Castle Ormondstein, the only child of her adoring parents, who, recognizing her genius when she was but a tot, spared neither time nor expense in cultivating it, supplying her with tutors in various subjects and nurturing—’”
“Does that sentence ever end?” Emerson inquired.
“Not for another paragraph. It is typical of journalistic adulation, my dear.” I cleared my throat and continued. “‘Her idyllic existence came to a cruel end when the Great War brought tragedy and…’ Oh, very well, Emerson, I will synopsize. Her father, Count von Ormond, enlisted in the Austrian army—”
“I thought she was Hungarian,” Emerson said, throwing the covers back and getting into bed.
“Austro-Hungarian. He was an officer of the emperor, of course, a cavalryman. When he died valiantly at the Battle of Leningrad—”
“That can’t be right,” said Emerson.
“Newspapers always get facts wrong. If you continue interrupting me I will never get through this, Emerson.”
“Hurry it up, then.”
“Her mother died of grief,” I continued. “Alone in the world, with the hordes of the bestial Germans advancing…Yes, Emerson, I know, that can’t be right either. Anyhow, the valiant young girl, whose brilliant novels had already won her worldwide acclaim, fled with two of her faithful servants, and after horrors that cannot be described for fear of rending the hearts of her readers, she made her way to England with only the clothes on her back.”
“No papers, no servants, no cherished cross that had belonged to her mother, now an angel in heaven?” inquired Emerson, flat on his back with his hands under his head.
“Very good, Emerson,” I said, laughing. “She had lost everything, including the servants, one of whom perished after saving her from a ravisher.”
“Not both of them?”
“The other died of a fever, after nursing Magda, giving her beloved young mistress all her food and water.”
“Good Gad.”
“That’s about