Death at Glamis Castle (29 page)

He put his hand in his pocket for another comforting touch of the money, and began to whistle. Thinking of the new life that awaited him in Montreal, he left the path and stepped out jauntily across the dam. He didn't have much gear in the small room where he slept and it wouldn't take long to pack it up. He wouldn't wait for the morning train, or risk being stopped by those soldiers on the Dundee road. He'd strike off across country straightaway, and be in Petterden by first light. He could catch a ride there—a farmer taking a wagon-load of fresh vegetables into Dundee, perhaps. Then passage to Canada, and Montreal, and—

And on that happy thought, Douglas Hamilton died.

William Shakespeare
Merchant of Venice

 

 

 

 

Wearily, Charles sat down in the chair and tugged off one boot. He was wrestling with the second when Kate knelt before him and pulled it off.

“You must be very tired, my dear,” she said. “The railway journey last night, all your work today, and that dreadful dinner tonight.”

“It was truly dreadful, then,” Charles asked with a wry chuckle, “and not just my martyred imagination?” He had not brought dress clothes for the occasion, so he'd had to ask Simpson to find something suitable in Lord Strathmore's closet. The coat and waistcoat were far too tight, and it was a merciful relief to get out of them. And Kate was right. He
was
tired. He was, in fact, exhausted.

“Yes,” Kate said. She rose and poked up the fire. “It was frightful.” She went to a table, unstoppered a decanter, and poured two small glasses of port. “The Princess was stiff and formal and unable to say what was on her mind, Colonel Paddington was unbearably full of military exploits, Andrew was anxious and stammering, you were absent-minded, and I was bored.” She handed him one glass and took the second to a yellow-upholstered sofa. “Not to mention that the sweetbreads were inedible and the mutton as tough as a piece of boot leather.”

Charles chuckled as he stretched out his stockinged feet, wiggled his toes, and glanced appreciatively at his barefoot wife. She was wrapped in a green silk dressing-gown, her russet hair tumbled loose around her shoulders. The front of her gown had fallen open slightly, and he could see the inviting curve of her bare breast.

“Well, it's over at last,” he said, “and we can go to bed.”

“In a moment.” Kate tucked her bare feet under her, pulling her dressing-gown over her knees. “I've dissected the dinner party, and now it's your turn. You must tell me what happened this afternoon after you left me in front of the castle, and why you and Andrew were so preoccupied this evening.”

Charles leaned his head far back, watching the light from the flames dancing across the ceiling. “Nothing much happened,” he said dejectedly. “Nothing worth telling, anyway.” Was it just that he was tired, or was it really true that for all their efforts, he and Andrew had learned nothing very helpful? They had not found the Prince, he had no clue as to Hilda MacDonald's murderer, and while he was now sure that German agents somehow had a hand in the business, he wasn't an inch closer to locating them.
“Truth will come to light,”
Shakespeare had said, but it all seemed very dark to him.

“That's not good enough!” Kate sat up, took aim, and tossed a pillow at him. “You're to tell
all,
Charles Sheridan, no matter how trivial, or I shall march straight down to the camp and wring the information out of Andrew.” She looked down at her silk dressing-gown and smiled slightly. “Perhaps I shall
vamp
it out of him.”

“Oh, dear,” he murmured ironically. “Well, to keep you from throwing your virtue away, I suppose I'd best fill you in.”

“Yes, please, m'lord,” Kate said, settling back again. “You can start with Memsdorff. Is it true that he is a German agent?”

“It seems so,” Charles said. “The list of numbers you found is a simple cipher, and the volume of Scott turned out to be the key. Andrew is clever with such things, and it took him only a few minutes to decode it. The message confirmed that the Germans planned to kidnap Prince Eddy. Wilhelmstrasse—the office of the German Foreign Ministry—was involved, which suggests that the affair was coordinated at a high level, not by Steinhauer, their Intelligence man, but by Friedrich von Holstein himself.”

“Oh, dear!” Kate exclaimed. She clasped her hands around her knees, frowning. “But you're speaking in the past tense. Are you suggesting that their plot has failed?”

“We can't be sure, although things definitely did not go as they planned. According to the cipher message, Firefly—Herman Memsdorff—was meant to abduct the Prince tomorrow night. Then he would meet his spy-master, and together they would take Eddy to a fishing village not far from here, where a German freighter would be standing by offshore to pick them up.”

“But that's not what happened, is it?” Kate said thoughtfully. “The Prince was kidnapped on Sunday night, at the same time that Hilda MacDonald was killed.” Her eyes grew large. “But all this suggests that it was Herman Memsdorff who murdered Hilda—his own aunt!”

“Either he, or the other one,” Charles said. “There was someone with him.”

Kate frowned. “How do you know?”

“The cipher message indicates that Memsdorff was working with a local man,” Charles replied. “Unfortunately, he is not named in the message, and while he may have left fingerprints in the Prince's rooms, they cannot yet be matched. But the worst of it is that we have no idea whether the two of them still have the Prince in their custody.”

When he and Kate had parted that afternoon, Charles had first sought out Andrew, to have the message decoded, and then had gone to the Prince's suite to look for any evidence that the kidnappers had left behind. He had found nothing immediately helpful, although he'd collected a number of clear fingerprints: a set that was presumably Eddy's, from the Prince's cigarette case and the silver hair-brush on the dresser; several that matched the prints he himself had taken from Hilda, and several as yet unidentified. In the morning, he would obtain prints from Duff and Simpson, and from Flora, too, as soon as she was located. Presumably, the remaining prints would belong to Memsdorff and his accomplice. Memsdorff's could be verified by taking prints in the cottage loft where Firefly had slept. If a match could be made, the case against Memsdorff would be proven, since he had no business in the Prince's rooms.

“I suppose,” Kate remarked quietly, “that Memsdorff would need another man to help him abduct the Prince, even if Eddy wasn't very strong.”

“Yes,” Charles agreed. “And he'd need someone who knew his way around the castle. Or
her
way,” he added.

“Not Hilda,” Kate said firmly. Her conviction spoke in the lift of her chin, the flash of her gray eyes. “She would never have betrayed the Prince. She served him too long and faithfully to become part of a plot against him.”

“Not knowingly, perhaps,” Charles replied, hating to disillusion his wife. “But she may have been the unwitting source of Firefly's intelligence regarding Eddy—who he was, where he was. After all, Memsdorff was Hilda's nephew, and she had no reason to suspect him of deceiving her or harming the Prince. Perhaps he simply asked a few casual questions, and she told him, bit by bit and over a period of several months, without any idea how her information would be put to use.”

“Poor Hilda,” Kate murmured sadly. “And Flora, too—what a tragedy for both of them.” She leaned forward to put her glass on the low table in front of her, and her dressing-gown fell open to her waist. “And nothing has been heard of Flora?”

“Not a thing,” Charles said. “Simpson is quite put out, since she was expected back here at the castle before teatime, to serve you.” He tossed off his port and stood up. “I'm ready for bed. As you said, it's been a long day.” He was less tired now, though. The sight of his wife's bare breast was a powerful restorative, and he found himself wanting to hold her against him.

Kate gave him a frowning glance from under her lashes. “But I haven't told you what
I
found out, Charles.”

Sighing, Charles sat back down again and prepared himself, patiently, to listen, thinking that she might have found out one or two interesting bits. But it took several moments for Kate to relay the information she'd obtained from the servants, together with her own speculations. When she was finished, he stared at her, amazed as he always was by her ability to persuade people to tell her things they would never in a hundred years confide to him, or to anyone else, for that matter. If the Germans employed her as a spy, it would be all up with England.

“So the servants believe that Flora and the Prince are romantically involved,” he said thoughtfully. “And that they've gone off together—to Skye. I must say, it's an interesting way to explain the fact that they've both disappeared.”

Kate nodded. “Of course, we know it's not true. The Prince was kidnapped.” She frowned. “Although you seemed to suggest, a moment ago, that the kidnappers might have lost him.”

Charles nodded. “But it's Flora's disappearance that bothers me most. She has every reason to go on about her business as usual: to testify at the inquest, bury her mother, remain in her accustomed post at the castle. And yet she's gone, without trace, without explanation. She was aware that I was anxious to question her—perhaps she's attempting to evade my questions, for fear of giving away what she knows.” He sat forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, chin in his hands, pondering the flames. Kate's information had opened other possibilities for him to consider. “What if Eddy has given Memsdorff and his cohort the slip,” he said, thinking aloud, “and he and Flora are in hiding somewhere, together? If they're romantically involved—”

“I don't think that's likely, Charles,” Kate said, shaking her head. “Flora may care for him in a sisterly way—after all, she was only a girl when her mother began taking care of the Prince, and the two have apparently spent a great deal of time together. But she struck me as a practical young woman, not the sort to lose her heart to a man who . . .”

“Who is so much above her station?” Charles asked skeptically. He did not trust the distinctions between the classes, especially where love was concerned. On the other hand, the men he knew who'd had affairs with servant girls had not loved them, only used them for pleasure and discarded them.

“Perhaps,” Kate said, frowning, “although I am thinking about his mental state rather than his station, and doubting, somehow, that Flora could find herself loving him, in a romantic way. And he is a great deal older than she—some fifteen years, at least.”

“You certainly formed a clear idea of her character on the strength of a few moments' conversation,” Charles remarked. And then, fearing he had sounded harsh, added, “But you are so often right, Kate, that I don't doubt you're right in this situation, as well.” He paused. “Let's say, though, just for the sake of argument, that the two are together. Do you believe they may be planning to go to Skye? Eddy because he believes himself to be the Bonnie Prince, Flora to get him out of the way of the men who murdered her mother and captured him? After all, you did say that Flora's MacDonald grandparents are there, and that her mother had recently had a letter from them.”

Kate gave him a doubtful look, her hair brushing her cheek. “Well, then, perhaps they're
hoping
to go to Skye. But seriously, Charles, how could Flora manage to get him away, under the noses of your soldiers?” She wrinkled her nose. “They couldn't go by railway, and you've blocked all the roads.”

Charles looked at her, loving her seriousness and her passion, loving the way she held her head, the way her hair fell over her shoulder. He stood. “Well, wherever they are, we won't find them tonight. Shall we—”

She shook her head, still caught in her thoughts. “If the Prince managed to break free from his captors, Charles, I think they're both in hiding, somewhere in this neighborhood. Somewhere very near, most likely. Flora has lived here all her life, and she probably knows every nook and cranny. They couldn't have got away, so they must be nearby. And Gladys said that she saw Flora—”

Charles cupped his hand under her chin and raised her face. “Kate,” he said softly. He bent to kiss her mouth. “Stop talking and come to bed with me, Kate.”

It was a long while before either of them felt like talking again.

 

 

Charles held his wife against him, feeling the warmth and softness of her body. In the moonlight that came through the window, her hand was like alabaster. It rested on his bare chest, her fingers gently tracing the stripings of scars. He captured her hand and raised it to his lips, kissing her fingers.