Royal Blood

by Rhys Bowen

  “Very well. As you wish.” Dragomir escorted me across a couple of courtyards, through a door in a wall and up some steps and we were back in the castle proper.

  “How did you happen to fall into this oubliette, Highness?” he asked.

  “I was following Princess Maria Theresa,” I said. “She went ahead of me and . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say to him that she had taken me that way deliberately so that I would step on the wrong slab and fall. I was now quite sure that she and Vlad had planned the murder of Prince Nicholas together. I didn’t know which of them administered the poison, but one of them did. The problem was that we were all assembled for her wedding—two royal families, plenty of important personages and plenty of opportunities for a diplomatic incident. If only I could locate Darcy, he’d know what to do. But my first task was to rescue Queenie.

  “I’ll show you the oubliette,” I said and led Dragomir through the halls until we reached the right spot. I was just searching for the door in the paneled wall when I heard the sound of feet behind me. I turned to see two of Patrascue’s men bearing down on me.

  “Please to come with us,” one said in atrocious French. He grabbed my arm.

  “Wait,” I said trying to shake myself free. “Where are you taking me? We must save my friend first.”

  But another man grabbed my other arm and I was swept along the corridor at a great pace.

  “Wait a minute. Slow down and listen to me,” I shouted but to no avail. The third man went ahead and flung open a door. I was borne inside and came upon a tableau. The king of Romania and Siegfried were sitting in high-backed chairs on one side of the fireplace. The king of Bulgaria, Nicholas and Anton sat on the other. In front of them stood Darcy, his arms being held by two policemen. And beside him stood Patrascue.

  Chapter 31

  Bran Castle

  Saturday, November 19

  As I was thrust into the room, the tableau moved and they all turned to stare at me in horror.

  “What is the meaning of this?” the king demanded, rising to his feet. “My dear, what has happened to you?”

  “She was obviously attempting to flee and she was caught by my men,” Patrascue said before I could answer. “Now we have apprehended both the suspects. The case is complete. You can proceed with your wedding with confidence and serenity.”

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded.

  Darcy gave me a long look that warned me not to say too much. “This idiot has told Their Majesties that Pirin was poisoned, and what’s more, he has got it into his head that you and I were paid to come and carry out the murder.”

  “It is too obvious for someone of my experience and talent,” Patrascue said. “Mr. O’Mara thought he would cleverly pretend to drive away with the body before I had a chance to examine it. I expect he has tried to hide the evidence. And Lady Georgiana denies that she hid the vial of poison in the trunk in her room. But they cannot fool Patrascue. I ask myself, why are they really here? Why should she come to this wedding instead of a member of the British royal family?”

  “I am a member,” I said. “The king is my cousin.”

  “But why send a mere cousin to represent the English people, when the king could send one of his own children?”

  “Because I asked my daughter to invite her,” the king said in a voice taut with annoyance. “My son let it be known that he had selected her as his future bride and we wanted her to have a chance to know us better. So you will please treat her with the same respect you accord to us. Is that clear?”

  Patrascue gave the merest hint of a bow. “Of course, Majesty. But if she is involved in the cold-blooded murder of an important man, surely your son would wish to know the truth about this before he entered into marriage with such a woman.”

  “Of course I’m not involved,” I said.

  Siegfried came over to me. “Georgiana, did these men hurt you? You look terrible. You are bleeding.”

  “Not these men,” I said. “I fell into a dungeon. Count Dragomir did not believe me but there really is an oubliette in this castle. My maid is still down there.”

  “An oubliette in this castle? Surely it is just a legend.”

  “I assure you it’s very real,” I said.

  “How did you come to stumble upon this oubliette?” the king asked.

  I hesitated. I was in a foreign country about to implicate its princess. What if nobody believed me? It would be easy enough for the king to agree with Patrascue that Darcy and I were the guilty ones. But if I were her father, I’d want to know the truth, wouldn’t I? Maybe I could make her confess somehow.

  “Would you ask your daughter to join us, Your Majesty?” I said. “I believe she can help prove my innocence.”

  “Of course. Please tell the princess her presence is required in my private sitting room.” One of Patrascue’s men bowed and departed.

  “Perhaps you are innocent, Lady Georgiana,” Patrascue said. “Perhaps it is this Mr. O’Mara who hid the poison in your room to implicate you while he fled with the body. We have heard rumors about Mr. O’Mara. He is a ruthless man and very interested in making money, is this not correct? A certain scandal at a casino?”

  Darcy actually laughed. “The scandal was that I was chucked out because I kept winning. They thought I was cheating. Actually I was just damned lucky. The luck of the Irish, don’t you know? But let me assure you that I’m the son of a respected Irish lord. Killing people for money is not something I’d do. Killing people because they annoy me, on the other hand . . .” He stared hard at Patrascue. If the matter hadn’t been so serious I would have laughed. Darcy didn’t seem to be particularly worried.

  “Then why are you here, Mr. O’Mara? I understand from interviewing the other young men that you are not a particular friend of Prince Nicholas.”

  “We were good friends at school,” Nicholas said angrily. “The rest doesn’t concern you.”

  Suddenly it struck me that Nicholas might have anticipated some kind of trouble at this wedding and Darcy had been invited to protect him.

  “But understand that he is here at my invitation and I have absolute confidence that he has nothing to do with the death of Field Marshal Pirin. The whole suggestion is ludicrous. You should be looking for—”

  He broke off as Matty came in, looking puzzled and concerned. When she saw me, a relieved smile crossed her face.

  “There you are, Georgie,” she said. “I wondered where you had disappeared to. We were all looking for you.”

  I smiled back. “Oh, I think you know very well where I went to, since you sent me there.”

  “What do you mean? One minute you were following me up the stairs, but when I reached the top, I turned around and you weren’t there.”

  “Maybe that was because I was in the process of falling down the oubliette,” I said.

  She gave a tight, nervous laugh. “Oubliette? There’s no such thing. Believe me, we hunted for it when we were children, didn’t we, Siegfried?”

  “Then allow me to show you,” I said. “My maid is still trapped in the dungeon below and it’s about time someone rescued her.”

  I marched them back through the halls until I recognized the place where the door had to be.

  “Would you please show us the door in the paneling, Your Highness?” I asked Matty.

  She shrugged, stepped forward and pushed open a section of the wall.

  “You’ll see a staircase leads up from here,” I said, “and one of these flagstones tips an unsuspecting victim down into a dungeon. I’m not sure which.”

  “But I go up and down this way all the time,” Matty said. “It is a shortcut from my room to the main floor.”

  “Then, Your Highness, would you like to try them out for us?” I asked.

  “Of course.” She walked confidently to the staircase and ascended the first couple of steps.

  “You see?” She turned and smiled. “There is nothing here but an ordinary passageway.”

  �
�There must be a knob or a lever or something that triggers the mechanism,” I said. “Look on the walls. Princess Maria was ahead of me, and—”

  Matty looked up sharply. “One minute. You don’t think that I sent you into this dungeon? That I brought you here to trick you?”

  “I’m afraid that’s exactly what I think,” I said. “I’m sorry, Matty, but you didn’t really want to introduce me to Vlad, did you? You wanted him to stay hidden.”

  “What?” Matty’s father roared. “Vladimir? That boy is here, in the castle? When I forbade you to see him again?”

  “No, Father. Of course not,” Matty said. “Here’s not here. I don’t know what Georgiana is talking about.”

  “Come down here, young woman,” the king commanded. “Come out into the light where I can see your face. I always know if you are lying to me.”

  “Father, please, not in front of these people.” Matty came back down the stairs. Patrascue’s men, who had crammed themselves into the narrow hallway, stepped aside for her. There was a lot of jostling and moving and as she stepped down from the bottom step the floor suddenly tilted beneath her. Matty screamed as she started to fall. Hands reached out to grab her and she was dragged back to safety. We stood staring at the black cavity below us.

  “Now do you believe me?” I asked. “Queenie?” I shouted. “Can you hear me?”

  “Is that you, miss?” a voice echoed up, sounding distant and hollow. “I’m still here.”

  “We’ll have you out in a jiffy,” I shouted back.

  “Your Majesty, what is happening?” Count Dragomir appeared behind us. “Is there really an oubliette? After all these years! I thought it was just a legend.”

  “My maid is still down there,” I said.

  “I apologize, Lady Georgiana. We will have her brought out instantly.”

  The king turned to him. “And I ask you, Dragomir—did you know that Vlad was in the castle?”

  “I did not, Majesty,” Dragomir said angrily. “I made it clear to him that he should stay away.”

  “I want the castle searched in case he is hiding out,” the king said. “You will set every available man to this task, is that clear?”

  “Yes, Majesty,” Dragomir said in a flat voice, “but Vlad gave me his word and—”

  “He’s not here, Father,” Matty shouted.

  “Every available man!” the king thundered. “And as for you, madam”—he turned to glare at his daughter—“I want to know the truth from you. Return to my study this instant. We can’t have matters like this shouted up and down the halls for everyone to hear.”

  He marched his daughter back to the study. The rest of us followed. When the door was shut behind us the king spoke coldly.

  “The truth, Maria. Is that boy in the castle? Have you dared to see him again?”

  “No, Father,” Matty said. “Georgiana misunderstood.”

  “I saw him,” I said. “I’m sorry, Matty, if it weren’t a question of murder I wouldn’t have betrayed your secret, but it is. And your bridegroom has a right to know that you tried to kill him.”

  “What?” Matty shrieked. “No, that’s quite wrong. I told you Vlad is sweet. He’d never kill anyone.”

  “And what about you?” I said. “You dropped enough hints that you didn’t want to marry Nicholas, that you were being forced into it when you loved someone else.”

  “You think that I put poison in Nicholas’s glass?”

  “One moment, if you please.” Patrascue stepped between us. “I do not understand. It was a Bulgarian field marshal who was poisoned. This I was told. Is it not true?”

  “The poison was intended for me,” Nicholas said. He was staring at Matty with horror and disbelief on his face. “Pirin was a peasant. He had no table manners. He grabbed the nearest full glass and it was mine.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe this of you, Maria. If the idea of marrying me was so abhorrent to you, why didn’t you tell me? I would never have expected you to subject yourself to a life of unhappiness.”

  “No, Nicholas.” She went over to him and put her hand gently on his arm. “You are not abhorrent to me. You are a kind, decent person and I should not object to spending my life with you. I just happened to fall in love with someone else. Someone beneath me whom I could not marry. But I swear that I didn’t try to kill you. Neither did Vlad.”

  “Then you admit he was here?” Patrascue threw himself into the fray. It was almost like watching a play.

  “All right. I admit it. But he just came to say good-bye to me, that’s all.”

  “Where is he now?” Patrascue asked.

  “Gone. Long gone.”

  “How could he leave the castle when we are snowed in?”

  “He had skis with him,” Matty said. “He left before that man was poisoned.”

  I didn’t believe her for a minute and neither did Patrascue.

  “You say that you saw him, Lady Georgiana?” he asked, spinning sharply to address me. “When was this?”

  “On my first night here he came into my room by mistake. He thought that it was Princess Maria’s room. And someone else spotted him, observing the banquet—Miss Deer-Harte, the English lady who is now also dead, whom we can conclude was pushed from a staircase as she was snooping at night.”

  “So, it is a question of two murders, not just one?” Patrascue asked.

  “The English lady could have fallen,” Siegfried pointed out.

  “She would not have been going down those stairs if she had not been following somebody,” I said. “She was determined to catch the man she had seen.”

  “I can prove to you that Vlad had nothing to do with this second death,” Matty said. “All right, he is not long gone. He was with me all night. He didn’t leave my side once.” And she tossed her head defiantly.

  “Maria!” The king opened his mouth in horror. “You do not announce this shameful conduct to the world. Do you think your bridegroom would want you now that you have told the world you are no longer a virgin?”

  Matty looked across at Nicholas. “I’m sorry, Nicholas. I never wanted to embarrass you or put you in this awkward position, but I can’t let the man I love be accused of a crime I know he didn’t commit.”

  Nicholas nodded. “I applaud your bravery, Maria,” he said.

  “Then how do we know that the man this English lady saw was not Mr. O’Mara?” Patrascue asked. “I am still not satisfied that we have not all been barking up the wrong tree, since Lady Georgiana made these accusations against the princess. I think she was trying to throw us off the scent.”

  “As to that, I’m afraid I have the same alibi as Princess Maria,” Darcy said. “At the time the poor woman was being pushed down the stairs, I was in bed with Lady Georgiana.”

  Of course I turned scarlet as I felt all those eyes on me.

  “Then this is true?” Siegfried asked me. “You do not deny it?”

  “I’m afraid it is true,” I said. “Darcy was with me when we heard the screams from down below.”

  “But if these people have an alibi for the second murder, what then?” Patrascue said. “I would like to discount one of these alibis but I see from the guilty looks on the faces of these young highnesses that their stories are true. Is the murderer someone quite different? Someone we haven’t considered until now?”

  Someone behind me cleared his throat and Dragomir stepped forward. I hadn’t noticed him in the room until that moment. His cloak swirled rather impressively around him. “Your Majesty, this has gone on long enough. I do not wish to put your daughter through any more pain. I should like to plead guilty to the murders.”

  The king stepped toward him. “You, old friend? You tried to kill Prince Nicholas? But why? Why would you do this?”

  “I have my reasons,” Dragomir replied. “Let us just say that this is my ancestral home and I am avenging the ghosts of my ancestors for the wrongs done to them.”

  The door behind us was thrown open, letting in a great gust of cold w
ind. “Don’t be ridiculous, Father,” said a voice and the elusive Vlad stepped into the room. By daylight he was even more handsome than his portrait, but there was something wild about his eyes and in his right hand he held a gun.

  “Father? He called you Father?” the king stammered.

  “That’s right,” Dragomir said. “He is my son. I couldn’t marry his mother because of her lowly rank but I have done my duty by him. I paid for his schooling and sent him off to study in Paris. And I love him as any father loves his only child.”

  “And now he’s trying to show his nobility and take the blame for something he didn’t do,” Vlad said. “I attempted to poison Prince Nicholas. I put a gelatin capsule containing cyanide into his red wine at the start of the meal. I planned to be well away by the time it acted. I was not about to let him have the woman I love. I am just angry that I failed. I shall not fail a second time.”

  “Vlad!” Matty ran toward him. “How could you? I trusted you. I loved you. I never thought for an instant . . .”

  “For you, Maria,” Vlad said. “I did it for you. I didn’t want you to be condemned to marrying someone you didn’t love, when you loved me.”

  “We went through that before,” Matty said. “I told you that my duty to my family came first and always will come first. Now put that gun down. You’re not going to shoot anyone.”

  “Stand aside, Maria.” Vlad prodded her with the barrel of the pistol.

  “You’ll have to shoot me first,” she said, eyeing him calmly and defiantly.

  “Of course I don’t want to shoot you.” His voice had risen dangerously.

  “I’m not going to let you shoot Nicholas,” Matty said, “or anybody else.”

  “Why do you always have to be so bloody noble?” Vlad demanded.

  “Because I was born to it,” Matty said.

  “Damn you,” Vlad shouted. “Damn all of you to hell.”

  Without warning he grabbed Matty around the throat and pulled her in front of him. “She’s coming with me,” he said. “Did you think I was going to give you up that easily?”