Buckingham Palace Gardens tp-25

by Anne Perry

  “Yer want me ter tell ’im as yer lookin’ for it, an’ mebbe ask ’im for it again?” she said.

  “Yes, please. Tell him I’m going to get help in if I need it, because I’ve realized it’s crucial to the case.”

  “Is it?”

  “I don’t know. Minnie Sorokine seemed to think so. And if it isn’t, why hide it?” He looked at her small, curious face and realized she felt like a betrayer, tricking a man who had risked his own safety and comfort to befriend her. “I’m sorry,” he added gently. “I have to be sure Sorokine is guilty. I think they’ll arrest him formally tomorrow, and after that there’ll be no one to speak for him. There’ll be no trial.”

  She was very pale. “I know. They’ll just put ’im in Bedlam in the filth an’ the screamin’.” She took a deep breath and let it out a little shakily. “I’ll go an’ tell ’im.” She looked close to tears. She turned quickly and went out of the door, small and very stiff, in a dress that had been altered but was still too big for her. He knew he had torn her loyalties as he had his own.

  He found it far from easy to watch Tyndale after Gracie had spoken to him, without it being obvious that he was doing so. Several times he had to hang back and leave Gracie to appear busy with a tray in her hands, or a mop and a bundle of laundry.

  It was nearly two hours after he had asked her help before she came to him with a parcel of broken china concealed in a cardboard box, and passed it to him wordlessly. She looked white and miserable.

  The fact that she said nothing, expressed no recrimination at all, made it worse.

  Together they walked back up the stairs to his room and put it down on the table. She stood in front of it, not even allowing him to question whether she was going to remain or not.

  Very carefully he unwrapped the newspaper around the pieces and looked at the debris. It was exactly as Walton had said: small pieces of broken china, some of it not more than chips and dust, other pieces as large as an inch across. There was blue and gold paint on them in an exquisitely delicate pattern: tiny little lattice in gold, leaves and the edge of what looked like a woman’s dress. The largest piece was curved as if from the side of a pedestal.

  Gracie picked up a lump that was mostly white, and turned it over in her fingers. “Looks like it were the bottom, or summink,” she said thoughtfully. “But why make all that fuss over a broke dish? Why

  ’ide it instead o’ just throwin’ it out like anythin’ else wot’s bust. D’

  yer think it’s summink special? Royal, like?”

  “I don’t know,” Pitt said honestly, picking up another piece, which was quite large and of irregular shape. “The painting on it is beautiful, but I don’t know what it could be.” He turned it over. “It seems to have a painted inside as well as outside. And that bit looks too flat for a bowl. I wonder if it’s a lid? How could anyone break something this badly? It’s completely smashed.”

  “Throw it at the wall,” Gracie said, screwing her face up. “Yer don’t bust summink like this by just droppin’ it, even on a stone floor.

  An’ it come from upstairs. Wood floor’d just break it ter pieces, but this is like someone trod on it, on purpose, like.” She stared at it in dismay. “ ’Oo’d do summink rotten like that, just break a dish wot’s beautiful inter little bits, on purpose?”

  “I don’t know, but I think perhaps we need to.” Pitt pushed his fingers around the broken shards carefully, searching for anything large enough to identify. “There’s not much, is there. Have you ever broken a large dish, Gracie?”

  She blushed unhappily. “Yeah.” She did not add any details.

  “Was this how much of it was left?”

  “No. Were a lot more. But I broke cups before, an’ they weren’t this much in bits, not the good porcelain ones. D’yer reckon as this weren’t a reg’lar plate, Mr. Pitt?”

  “Yes, I do, Gracie. I just can’t work out what it was.” He pulled out a small, round piece, three-quarters of an inch at its widest. He turned it over, looking at it carefully. It was mostly plain white, but there was a little bit of writing on one side-the letters IMO and what looked like an E, incomplete.

  It was part of a word, and suddenly he knew what the word was:

  “Limoges.” He had seen it before written on exquisite porcelain: can-dlesticks, chargers, vases, bowls, and figurines. Long ago in the police he had dealt with theft of such works of art.

  “It was an ornament,” he said quietly. He turned over the piece in his hand again. “I think this was part of the base. The name was on it.

  The gold was probably the rim. The blue would be part of a picture.”

  “Is it very precious?” she asked, her face tight in sympathy with whoever had broken it. “Somebody’s gonna lose their place ’ere ’cos they smashed it?”

  “Do you think that is enough to explain Mr. Tyndale hiding it?”

  Pitt said instead of answering her.

  She shook her head, a stiff, tiny gesture.

  “It seems to have been broken the night Sadie was murdered,” he went on, thinking ahead. “It has to have had something to do with it.

  That’s the only thing that would explain why he would go to so much trouble to conceal it.”

  “ ’Ooever it belongs ter is goin’ ter be pretty angry,” she said seriously.

  “He’s not hiding it from them; they’ll find out anyway,” he said.

  “He’s hiding it from us.”

  “D’yer think so?” She frowned.

  “Yes, otherwise he could have told us in confidence, and we would have thought no more of it. Domestic breakage is hardly Special Branch business. I wonder where it came from, whose room it was in?”

  “D’yer reckon as that poor cow stole it?” Gracie looked doubtful.

  “ ’Ow would she ’a got it out? Dishes in’t easy ter carry without someone seein’ ’em.”

  “Exactly,” he agreed. “And why would Mr. Tyndale wish to protect a prostitute who was also a thief? I think the fact that it is broken is what matters.”

  “Yer gonna ask Mr. Tyndale?” She was looking at him now in intense concentration.

  “Yes, I am.”

  Pitt spent a little more time searching for other pieces large enough to give a better idea of the shape and diameter of the plate, and formed the opinion that it was possibly a pedestal dish rather than a flat one. Some of the pieces were too thick to be part of an ordinary plate.

  He put them in the box again and carried them down to the butler’s pantry, where he found Tyndale with ledgers open and a pen in his hand. Apparently he was working on the cellar records. He looked up. Pitt came in and closed the door.

  “What may I do for you, Mr. Pitt?” Tyndale said coolly.

  Pitt leaned against the wall. “Tell me where the Limoges pedestal dish was, and how it came to be broken,” he replied.

  The color bleached from Tyndale’s face and his voice came only with an effort. “I’m sorry, sir, but I have no idea what you are talking about. Her Majesty has literally thousands of pieces of porcelain. If one has been broken, I know nothing of it. I don’t believe it was in this wing. If it were, one of the maids would have told me.”

  “Mrs. Sorokine knew where it came from,” Pitt told him.

  Tyndale looked even whiter. Pitt was afraid he was on the verge of some kind of attack, possibly his heart. “I’m sorry.” He meant it, but he could not afford the mercy he would have liked. “Julius Sorokine faces a lifetime in an asylum, without trial. Before I let that happen to anyone, I am going to be certain beyond any sane or reasonable doubt that he is responsible for the deaths of these women. I am going to find out who smashed a Limoges plate the night Sadie was killed. I can do it quietly, with your help, Mr. Tyndale, or I can question every manservant in the place, and find out whatever it was Mrs. Sorokine found out, and which very likely cost her her life!”

  “Her husband killed her,” Tyndale told him, his voice catching in his throat. “This. . this breakage had not
hing to do with it. It’s another matter altogether, and private.”

  “There is no privacy where there is murder, Mr. Tyndale. What was the ornament, and where was it? How did it get broken, and why did you hide it?”

  Tyndale was wretched. He loathed lying and it was naked in his face.

  “It was broken by accident. I didn’t hide it, I simply disposed of the pieces. There is no point in keeping them. No one could mend it.

  For heaven’s sake, Inspector, it’s shattered! It’s dust!”

  “I can see that. I can also see that it was Limoges, and probably very beautiful. Where was it and who broke it?”

  “One of the maids, but no one is taking responsibility. I can’t punish anyone for clumsiness when I don’t know who it is.” Tyndale looked eminently reasonable, his voice was steadying again.

  Pitt had not the slightest doubt that he was lying. Minnie Sorokine had pursued this, and learned what it was. How? What questions had she asked that Pitt had not? Why had Tyndale answered her, and yet would not tell Pitt? What terrible thing had her questions made him realize?

  “At what time?” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?” Tyndale was putting off answering.

  “When was it broken? At what time? That will tell you who did it, surely?”

  “I. . I don’t know.” Tyndale was flustered. “Some time the. . the day of the death of that woman. We were all upset. I dare say we didn’t notice it immediately.”

  “A Limoges plate was lying smashed on the floor, and the maid cleaning didn’t notice it?” Pitt said with open disbelief. “I’m sorry, Mr.

  Tyndale, but that won’t do. Where was the dish?”

  “I don’t know.” Tyndale’s face was set in refusal.

  “It was a pedestal dish,” Pitt said, guessing as he went. “Mostly white with a blue picture in the center, and a gold edge. I found pieces of those.”

  “I don’t know,” Tyndale repeated stubbornly.

  “Then I shall ask the maids,” Pitt replied. “And the footmen.

  Someone will have seen it. Don’t they dust regularly?”

  “Yes, of course they do! But. .” Tyndale tailed off. His face was blotched; a muscle ticked in his jaw.

  “Assemble the staff in the servants’ hall, Mr. Tyndale. I shall speak to them in fifteen minutes. I want everyone there,” Pitt ordered.

  Tyndale hesitated.

  “Don’t oblige me to ask the Prince of Wales’s assistance in this,”

  Pitt warned.

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with the murder!” Tyndale protested again. “It’s. . it’s a domestic matter! This is absurd.”

  “An ornament is smashed on the night of a murder,” Pitt said grimly. “Someone was in the room, and committed a violent and extraordinary act, perhaps of rage. I want to know which room it was, and who was there. Assemble the staff, Mr. Tyndale.”

  Tyndale left obediently, walking like a man under condemnation of some fearful punishment.

  Pitt waited, feeling guilty. Was he really pursuing a clue that would explain the anomalies in the case and enable him to be satisfied that Julius Sorokine had killed both Sadie and his own wife? Or was he merely determined to force his will on Tyndale because he had defied him, and Pitt wanted an answer for no reason except his own satisfaction? Did he resent the fact that Minnie Sorokine could as-semble these facts and deduce the truth, and he could not? Had she known some extra fact that he had not?

  In fifteen minutes exactly he walked to the servants’ hall and saw them all dutifully lined up, hot-faced and frightened. Gracie was at the front, probably so as not to be hidden behind taller, plumper girls.

  He avoided looking at her.

  “A Limoges plate was broken on the night the prostitute was murdered,” he said gently. “It was probably a pedestal plate, mostly white with a painting in the middle with quite a lot of blue in it and a gold rim. I don’t think any of you broke it. I think it may have been one of the guests, either the one who actually killed the woman, or someone who saw what happened.” That was a stretch of the truth. “I want to know which room it was in.”

  They all stood staring at him. No one spoke.

  “Who does the dusting?” he asked.

  “Me and Norah, mostly,” Ada said nervously. “An’ Gracie, since she come.”

  “Which room was that dish in?” Pitt asked.

  “I dunno.”

  “Didn’t you dust it?”

  “I never seen it.”

  Pitt turned to Mrs. Newsome. “You are the housekeeper-aren’t you responsible for works of art? Especially valuable ones?”

  “Yes, I am,” Mrs. Newsome said stiffly. She looked puzzled and unhappy. She was avoiding looking at Mr. Tyndale so clearly that it was obvious.

  “Where was that dish kept, Mrs. Newsome?”

  “I don’t recall a dish like that,” she said flatly.

  “Did you send maids to clean up, wash and scrub a room on the morning of the murder?”

  “Of course. The linen cupboard. But only after you told me to,”

  she said stiffly.

  “Before that! At the end of this wing, or into the east wing?”

  “No. And the east wing is not my responsibility. I would be exceeding my authority to do that.”

  There was nothing else he could think of to say. They stood stiffly, shoulders back, faces carefully blank. No one was going to tell him.

  There was nothing for him to do but accept defeat with the little dignity left him.

  He returned to his own room confused and angry. He paced the floor, trying to think of a way to force Tyndale’s hand. He was certain Tyndale knew where the plate had been, and had told Minnie. The more he refused to say, the more certain Pitt became that it mattered.

  It had belonged somewhere. Why were they all lying? He had not seen a flicker in the faces of any of them, even Mrs. Newsome. Was there any point in asking Gracie to speak to them? Were there any tiny pieces embedded in a carpet, or into the wood of the floorboards, between the cracks? Might Gracie even have seen it already, without recognizing what it was?

  He went to the bellpull and was about to ring it, when another thought occurred to him. His hand froze, fingers stiff, still clinging to the pull. Maybe they were not lying. Perhaps they had not seen it because it was not in any of the rooms they cleaned. What if it had been in the Prince of Wales’s own rooms?

  A furious quarrel, a hysterical woman, china smashed. It would have to be concealed-at any price. Is that what had happened? Perhaps Sadie had refused to do something that was asked of her, or been unable to? The Prince was drunk. He had lost his temper and lashed out. And what? Killed her? Cut her throat with one of the dining room knives, and then gone on slashing at her?

  Had he been so drunk he had then passed out, then woken up in the morning beside the bloody corpse, and sent for Cahoon Dunkeld to help him?

  There was a knock on the door and Pitt whirled round as if it had been a shot. He steadied himself, breathing in and out slowly, his heart pounding. “Yes?”

  Gracie came in and closed the door behind her. She stood still, leaning against the knob, staring at him. “ ’E din’t tell yer, did ’e?” she said softly. “Wot does it mean, Mr. Pitt? They in’t lyin’. Nobody knows, fer real. Wot’s goin’ on?”

  “I think it means it was in a room they don’t go into,” he replied, his mouth dry. “Mr. Tyndale knows where it was, and he’d rather be blamed for concealing murder than tell anyone.”

  Her eyes grew wider and her face more tight and drawn. He knew she had thought the same thing. He was sorry she had had to know this. She would not have had to if he had not brought her here. It was unfair. She was civilian, not police, and certainly not Special Branch.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  “Wot are yer goin’ ter do?” she whispered. “Mr. Tyndale in’t never gonna tell yer. An’ if it were smashed in a fight or summink, ’e would, ter save yer thinkin’ wot yer is now. T
here weren’t no blood on it, though.”

  “I know that. But if it didn’t mean anything, and had nothing to do with Sadie’s death, then why is Mr. Tyndale lying about it? And he is lying.”

  “I know.” The misery in her face was naked. “ ’E’s protectin’ ’Is Royal ’Ighness. I reckon as ’e does quite a lot o’ that. It’s ’is. . ’is kind o’ loyalty. Mr. Pitt. .”-she frowned, screwing up her face-“d’ yer reckon as that’s right? Is that wot we’re supposed ter do? ’Ave yer gotta do it too? An’ me?”

  “And let Sorokine spend the rest of his life in a madhouse for something he didn’t do?” he asked.

  She shook her head minutely. “Wot are we gonna do, then?”

  He sat against the edge of the table. “I’m not sure. That plate wasn’t just knocked off something and broken into two or three pieces. It was smashed beyond recognition in an uncontrollable rage.

  Whether she laughed at him, belittled him, threatened to tell everyone and make a mockery of him, we’ll never know. But he flew into an insane fury and cut her throat-”

  “Wot with?” she interrupted.

  “Maybe the table knife-there was blood on it. Or maybe a different knife altogether, a paper knife or fruit knife he had there. We wouldn’t have found it because we haven’t looked. The other knife was put into the linen cupboard after we took the body out anyway.

  The blood could have been from anywhere.”

  “Then she weren’t killed in the linen cupboard, were she?” Gracie said.

  “No. She will have been killed in his room. That’s why the footmen were up and down with buckets of water, cleaning up.”

  “You reckon as ’e called ’em?” she said with disbelief.

  “No. I think he called Cahoon Dunkeld. I expect the footmen only brought the water. I should think Dunkeld, and possibly even the Prince himself, did the principal cleaning. They wouldn’t trust anyone else with a secret like that.”

  “Wot are we gonna do?” Fear was sharp and bright in Gracie’s eyes. “We can’t never say as ’e done it! They’ll ’ave us ’anged fer treason!”