PITT WAS HAVING BREAKFAST a little later than usual the next morning, having slept well for the first time in over a week. He had just helped himself to a second cup of tea when the front doorbell rang. The bell itself was in the kitchen, so that a servant would be unlikely to miss it. He glanced at Charlotte, but both of them left it for Minnie Maude to answer. She came back, closely followed by a white-faced Stoker.
“Sorry, sir,” Minnie Maude said quietly. “But Mr. Stoker says it can’t wait.”
Pitt nodded to her, then turned to Stoker. “What is it?” he asked.
Stoker never dragged things out for effect.
“Mrs. Kendrick, sir. I’m afraid her body was discovered this morning. She must’ve got up in the night and…” He glanced at Charlotte, questioning whether he should say this in front of her.
Pitt hesitated only a moment. “What, Stoker? I imagine we’ll all know, sooner or later.”
Stoker’s voice dropped a tone. “She hanged herself, sir. At least that’s what the local police say. She left a bit of a note. Not much, just—‘I deserve this.’ When they questioned Mr. Kendrick about it, he was very upset, naturally, but he told them that when he thought about it, it wasn’t so surprising. He blamed himself that he didn’t see it coming and stop it. Least that’s what they said. Lucky it was a pretty smart sort of man they had in charge. He told them to keep everything as it was, and sent a message to us. I came straight to tell you. The hansom is waiting, in case you want to go there…”
“I do.” Pitt rose to his feet. “My coat’s in the hall. We need to get there immediately.” He gave Charlotte a wordless glance, saw the horror in her eyes, and wished he had the time to talk with her, but there was nothing that would make this better. He smiled bleakly, then followed Stoker along the hall to the door, grabbing his coat and hat as he passed.
It was a silent ride, made as swiftly as possible. Perhaps Stoker’s mind was racing as fast as Pitt’s, trying to fit this new, tragic fact into the picture to make sense of it. They arrived at the Kendricks’ house fifteen minutes later and noted that the mortuary wagon was waiting across the street. There was a constable on duty close to the front door.
Pitt showed his identification and a few moments later he and Stoker were in the large, handsome hallway, facing Inspector Wadham, a fierce man of perhaps forty-five, who looked deeply unhappy.
“Sorry to get you out on this, Commander,” he said. “It may be no more than an ordinary suicide, but considering Mr. Kendrick is such a close friend of His Royal Highness, and that business with Sir John dying like that, I thought you should see it.”
“Thank you,” Pitt replied with sincerity. “Another man might not have seen the relevance. It may not be connected, but I’m afraid it is far more likely that it is…somehow. I see you’ve called the mortuary van. Have you taken her down?”
“No. I’m sorry, it seems indecent, but I thought you should see her as she was. I think the husband was too shocked to do it himself. Either that, or he had enough sense to leave her so we would find her exactly as he did. The police surgeon verified that she’s been dead at least several hours, but I told him to wait to move her until you got here. Know you used to be regular police before you moved over. He is waiting for us in the back-kitchen storeroom, where she is.”
Pitt was startled. “Back-kitchen storeroom?”
“Yes, sir. Only place with big hooks in the ceiling. I’m sorry, but it’s pretty ugly. Husband is waiting in the morning room. Got one of my men with him. Doctor’s waiting, sir.” He turned and led the way across the hall and through into the back of the house, Pitt and Stoker following directly behind.
There was another constable in the passage outside the closed back-kitchen door. A third stood close by. Judging from his demeanor and a large leather Gladstone bag beside him, he was the police surgeon.
“Dr. Carsbrook, this is Commander Pitt, Special Branch,” Wadham said briskly. “What can you tell us?”
Carsbrook looked at Pitt and clearly changed his mind about what he had been going to say, and possibly the manner in which he would have said it.
“She’s still hanging there. From the body temperature and lividity I’d say she did this about midnight. That’s as much as I can tell. I ought to know more after I get her to the mortuary and take a more thorough look.”
“Are you sure she did this herself?” Pitt asked.
Carsbrook’s eyebrows shot up. “Good God, what are you suggesting? A woman doesn’t get up in the middle of the night, go down to the back kitchen, stand on a stool with a rope around the ceiling meat hook, and then kick the stool away by accident!”
“That is not the only alternative,” Pitt told him wearily. “In view of another recent death that appeared to be accidental, I need to be sure.”
Carsbrook stood very still. “The husband? Or are you suggesting one of the staff? There have been no break-ins, nothing stolen. The police have already established that. Or did they not tell you?”
“I am the head of Special Branch, Doctor, not the local burglary squad,” Pitt said sharply. “I need to know, from the facts of the body, the nature of the death, whether you are certain she did this to herself.”
“Then you’d better look at it and let me get the poor woman down,” Carsbrook replied equally tartly.
Pitt walked round him and opened the door. The room was like any other back kitchen in a large house. It was designed mostly for storage, especially of things too big to put in the kitchen or larder: whole flitches of bacon or sides of beef, large sacks of grain or potatoes.
Delia Kendrick was hanging from the largest of the iron meat hooks, set deeply into the lowest crossbeam, about eight feet above the floor. The noose around her neck was made of knotted garden twine, thick enough to take her weight. It was tied in a slipknot such as an executioner would use. She was wearing a nightgown and slippers and her long black hair was loose, half covering her face. An old three-legged milking stool lay on its side a couple of feet away.
Pitt would have liked to have left her the decency of hiding her face from these strangers, but he could not. He walked over and touched her hand. It was cold, and he noticed that there were little bits of skin, just shreds, under the fingernails, but none of the nails was broken. He looked at the other hand, and none of those was either. He looked closely at her face, congested and blue. Her mouth was open, eyes bulging and dotted with the tiny red spots of minute blood vessels that burst when a person struggles desperately to breathe, and cannot.
It could have happened as the doctor assumed.
He turned and spoke to Carsbrook. “Take her down. I would like to see her neck when you get that rope off. And remove it carefully, please.”
Carsbrook came forward and, with Pitt’s help to lift her a little, climbed up on the seat of a kitchen chair, brought for the purpose, and lifted her down. With Wadham’s help, they laid her on the stone floor. Very carefully Carsbrook eased the noose off and laid it beside his bag. He could do so without having to cut it.
Pitt looked at the skin of her neck. It was horribly bruised, but even the most minute examination could not find any torn skin. There was no tearing, no battle. Death had come quickly.
“What are you looking for?” Carsbrook asked.
“There’s skin under the nails of her right hand,” Pitt replied. Carsbrook frowned at him, looked at her neck again, then pursed his lips. “It must have come from some other place.” As he spoke he pushed up the sleeves of her nightgown, but both arms were unmarked.
“If you find anything on the body, let me know,” Pitt said. “In fact, let me know even if you don’t.”
“What are you thinking?” Carsbrook demanded. “What are you going to say to the newspapers? I know suicide is a crime, but in God’s name, what is the purpose in telling every prying Tom, Dick, or Harry that the woman was…out of her mind with…I don’t know. Grief? Fear? We don’t need to know every damn thing about one another. Give her some peace.” There was deep anger in his voice, his face, even the stiffness of his hands. Or perhaps it was just pity, deeper than he could deal with, that he dare not express.
“I need to know if she did this to herself, and if she did then I agree with you entirely,” Pitt said more gently. “And I shall issue no statement at all, and answer no one’s questions. But if someone else did this to her, then I won’t rest until I find out who it was, and see they answer for it.”
Carsbrook turned to look at him steadily. “Frankly, I don’t know what you’re doing here at all!”
“Fortunately, you don’t have to,” Pitt told him. “It’s not my concern if she did this to herself, and it’s not your concern if she didn’t.”
“Does this not tell you, man? It’s clear enough, look!” Carsbrook picked up a paper from the floor and held it out.
“Yes, I see.” Pitt took it from him. “It says ‘I deserve this.’ It is not addressed to anyone, nor is it signed. I expect it will be her handwriting, but it could refer to anything.”
“Damn it, man!” Carsbrook’s voice shook. “It’s on the floor beside the corpse. What else could it refer to? It’s hardly going to be that she deserves a new dress, or a piece of chocolate cake.”
“Where is the pencil with which she wrote it?” Pitt asked. “Or the rest of the sheet of paper?”
Carsbrook looked confused. “Well, obviously she wrote it somewhere else and…brought it with her.”
Pitt looked at Wadham. “Please be very sure indeed that you make a point of finding the rest of the paper; the pencil will probably be somewhere near it.”
Wadham nodded. He understood exactly what Pitt was thinking—the note could have been written anywhere, at any time.
“The husband is in the morning room, Commander,” he said.
“I’d better go up and speak to him. Stoker, come with me. Thank you, Doctor.” Pitt walked out of the back kitchen and followed Wadham up the steps and through the passage, past the kitchen and into the hall again. Wadham knocked on the morning-room door and opened it.
Kendrick was standing in front of the fireplace and the embroidered screen that hid the hearth at this time of the year. He turned to face the door when it opened. From the look of shock on his face, he had not expected Pitt. Perhaps he had thought Wadham would take Delia’s death no further.
Wadham spoke first. “Commander Pitt from Special Branch is going to handle the matter from now on, sir, so I will go and see to the other arrangements.” That was a discreet way of saying the removal of the body, and perhaps the clearing up of the scene so the domestic staff could resume their duties, if they were in a fit state of self-possession to do anything.
As Wadham closed the door, leaving them alone, Kendrick stared at Pitt, horror marked deep in every aspect of him, from the pallor of his face to the rigidity of his body. His hands were so stiff, it looked as if movement might break them.
“Must you?” Kendrick said hoarsely.
“Yes, Mr. Kendrick,” Pitt replied. “If I could avoid it and leave you to your grief I would do so. I will be as brief as I can. Would you please tell me all you are able to about this?”
“I suppose it isn’t obvious to you, or if it is, you still have to go over it like some…I’m sorry. Perhaps I should have seen it earlier, and I didn’t. This is a total shock to me.” Kendrick stared ahead of him, not at Pitt but at something within his own vision.
Pitt waited patiently for him to go on.
“Delia was always…a woman of deep feelings…and attractive to many men because of it. I knew all about her affair with the Prince of Wales, of course. It was before I met her, and while I was not pleased, it did not disturb me. It was Darnley she betrayed, not me. And I have many reasons to believe he was very far from faithful to her.” Now he was watching Pitt, trying to judge his reaction.
“It all ended before she and I met, years before. She was a widow when I returned to London from various travels. All was well with us for many years. I treated her daughter, Alice, as if she were my own. She is a very sweet girl. I was pleased for her when Delia arranged a fortunate marriage with a Scotsman of good nature and background, who could look after Alice and offer her a life away from London.”
Pitt wondered what else he was going to say about Alice, or about Darnley, but he did not want to prompt him.
“She is very pleasing to look at,” Kendrick went on. “Fair-haired, and with the most beautiful complexion. She resembles Delia’s father, but not either Delia or Darnley. Unfortunately she also resembles the Prince of Wales, and Delia’s courage and distinction have always attracted a degree of malicious gossip. Marrying Alice to a Scot and so getting her out of sight was a way of lessening it, in fact almost stopping it. Delia told me that your predecessor, now Lord Narraway, was of some assistance in the arrangements. I have no idea what his interest was in the matter.”
Pitt guessed it went back to Darnley’s service twenty years earlier, but he did not say so. He would allow Kendrick to get to his point by his own route, and in his own way.
“The gossip ceased,” Kendrick went on. “But not the blackmail.”
“Blackmail?” Pitt was startled.
Kendrick gritted his teeth. “Not merely for money, for…other things as well. Money I would have paid…Delia would have. But when she told him that it was over, I did not at first understand.” He was staring directly at Pitt now, watching him. He drew in his breath and held it for a moment before letting it out in a sigh, as if he had faced an immense obstacle and yielded to it.
“Halberd was not the man you thought, and what is uglier and far more dangerous, he was very far from the man the Queen believed him to be,” Kendrick went on. “I think the prince knew that, but he would not grieve his mother by telling her. He hoped she would never have to know.” He stopped, still searching Pitt’s face, his eyes trying to judge whether he understood.
Pitt understood very well what he was implying, but he needed Kendrick to say it outright.
“Don’t you understand, damn it?” As Kendrick lost his temper, his voice became shrill, his face flooded with color. “Don’t stand there blinking like a damn owl!”
“I do understand, sir,” Pitt replied. “But in case I am mistaken, I need you to be more specific.”
“He wanted favors that were—repellent! When she could no longer bear it…she…killed him!” Kendrick looked desperate. “Does this have to come out? The Queen would be devastated. If it is in all the newspapers—and it would be—no one could keep it from her. She is old, but she is far wiser than many would imagine. Halberd had no family, but there are many who trusted him. Can’t we bury it all? Who else, in God’s name, has a right to know?”
Pitt was more shaken than he had expected to be. Nothing he had learned about Halberd indicated anything of that nature, but he had been a policeman long enough to know with a bitter certainty that the deepest vices are not just hard to recognize, they can be completely invisible. Victoria would not even have imagined them, let alone believed them of someone she had both liked and trusted.
But had they been true, or were they Kendrick’s creation, in order to justify Delia’s actions?
He must respond now. Kendrick was staring at him, waiting.
“No one,” he said. “You’re quite right, it is far better that we give nothing to the newspapers beyond the fact of her death. For legal reasons alone, it would be unwise to say anything about Halberd. It would only cause speculation of the most unpleasant sort.” He watched Kendrick’s face and saw the relief in it, even possibly a gleam of satisfaction, carefully guarded.
Was this the end of the question of Halberd’s death? It made sense of both motive and the action itself, the place and the time of it.
“I assume Mrs. Kendrick was not at home, in your company, at the time you told the police she was, the night of Halberd’s death?” Pitt asked. He forced himself to sound courteous, even sympathetic.
Kendrick hesitated. Apparently the question caught him off guard.
“Er…yes. I’m sorry. I was aware that she was out of the house late in the evening, but I truly believed it was an…innocent matter, at least innocent of having killed Halberd. Believe me, I had no idea of his…bestiality. She was obviously ashamed to tell me. If I had known I would have found a way to stop it. I don’t care how powerful he was, or how well the Queen thought of him. She is old and very frail. Edward will be king within a year or two.” His face was pale and haggard with strain, his voice catching in his throat.
Pitt nodded very slightly. It was not something with which he could argue, and he found himself surprisingly sad. It would be the end of a century, and of an age. Whatever the new century brought, there was a familiarity, even a love, of the old that would leave a kind of grief at its close.
“I apologize for misleading you,” Kendrick went on more calmly. “I believed I was protecting my wife from unkind gossip, not from…from the charge of having killed a man, even if she was driven to it by his…brutality.”
Pitt was not certain if he believed Kendrick, but he must behave as if he did. He asked the question that would have come to his mind if he believed him.
“Why did you submit to this treatment from him at all? You could have ruined him, and surely you would have, had you known he had such things in mind? The Queen would’ve been appalled, but you could have handled it so that Halberd would simply retire to the country, claim ill health, and whatever other excuse he liked.”
Kendrick smiled bitterly. For a moment he turned away. Was it to give himself time to think? Was he really so shaken he had not prepared this beforehand—at the very least, before Pitt came? Was it even conceivable that he was telling the truth?
Kendrick looked desperately uncomfortable, shifting his weight a fraction from one foot to the other.
“I…I knew she had a relationship with him, but I thought it was no more than a flirtation. He was aware of her…intimacy with the Prince of Wales, before her daughter was born, and before Darnley…died.” His hesitation implied meaning. “Halberd used his knowledge to make it more than that. She only told me that in the letter she left me.” Now his eyes were hot and defiant. He stared straight at Pitt. “I burned it. I have no intention of telling you what it said. You, or anyone else. They are both dead now. Nothing you say or do can bring them back. For God’s sake, if you have any decency at all, let them rest in peace. They have both paid the ultimate price.”
Pitt was taken aback, not yet completely believing. For now, he would appear to accept, but he would investigate. He must. He wished desperately that Narraway were in London. He knew them all so much better than Pitt did. He had been in the same social circles and known Delia at the time of her affair with the prince, and he had known Roland Darnley. He was born and bred in the same stratum of society and understood such people. Pitt was feeling so very like a blind man, not even recognizing what he saw.
Kendrick was waiting for his answer.
“I will do all I can to make that possible,” Pitt said. Immediately he saw Kendrick relax. The man might not have meant to show it, but the language of the body, unintentional, was almost universal. Pitt understood that very well. Kendrick had been worried, even afraid. Pitt would not forget that.
He excused himself and went back to find the police surgeon. He had more to ask him. And he would ask Stoker to check in intense detail if Delia could have killed Halberd. He should look again, harder, for witnesses who might have seen a woman answering Delia’s description anywhere even remotely near the Serpentine at the right time.
CHARLOTTE HAD BEEN PRESENT when Stoker had told Pitt of Delia Kendrick’s death, but she wanted to learn more. She could see that he was moved by it, shocked because he had not foreseen even its possibility and grieved at the manner of it. There was pity in his eyes and in his voice. Even his choice of words showed distress more than merely discretion. But what Charlotte herself felt was guilt. She remembered the face of the maid, Elsie Dimmock, and the fierce compassion she had felt for a woman she had known since she was a child. Closeness does sometimes breed mercy, but there was more than simply long familiarity in her manner. She had seen both courage and pain in Delia, and she was moved by it. Delia had lost a husband, and—cutting far more deeply than that—she had lost a child. She had known both wealth and hardship. Certainly she had known loneliness. Perhaps in striving to be a prince’s mistress, defeat is inevitable. But whatever the cause, rejection is a defeat, and a very public one. It was not as if she had chosen to step aside; she had been pushed, and when she was at her most vulnerable—widowed, grieving for the death of a child.
Charlotte felt a rush of gratitude for Narraway’s discreet help to Delia, made as if it was a debt he owed, not a charity. It was a grace she would not necessarily have expected from him, and given entirely in secret.
What troubled her the most was a persistent fear that she and Emily might have contributed to Delia’s despair, and thus to her taking her own life. Everything they knew of her, though, said that she was not a cowardly woman, the last person to give up on life.
What had happened that she felt was beyond her strength to fight?
Charlotte said nothing to Pitt, except to sympathize with his weariness and give him something simple to eat. He was not hungry, but he did not refuse freshly toasted crumpets with butter and blackcurrant jam and a cup of hot tea. They both went to bed as early as possible. She listened, held him in her arms, gently, and then after he had fallen asleep, lay awake herself and worried about what she could do, at least to vindicate Delia’s reputation. What could be saved from this wreckage? Anything good? Anything to ease the news for her daughter far away in Scotland? Anything that would alleviate Charlotte’s own sense of guilt? She was certain that Emily would feel the same.
WHEN PITT HAD LEFT in the morning, Charlotte picked up the telephone to speak with Emily, telling her that she would leave immediately and be at Emily’s house within half an hour. They must talk, and plan. She was relieved to hear in Emily’s voice a trace of the same consciousness of the part they could have played in this, and the acute sense of having been too quick to meddle, too superficial even to weigh the possibilities of doing such harm.
She walked to the end of the street and found a hansom. In just over half an hour she was sitting in Emily’s boudoir with a pot of fresh, hot tea.
“Did Thomas tell you what happened?” Emily asked. She looked distressed and very earnest. “Could it have been an accident?” Her voice lifted in hope.
Charlotte had not told her any details. They were not of the sort one relays over the telephone.
“No.” She shook her head minutely. Emily looked ready to argue. Charlotte hesitated only a moment. “There is no way one can create a noose, put it over a hook in the back-kitchen ceiling, and hang oneself by accident.” She ignored Emily’s horror. “There are only two possibilities. Either she deliberately and hideously took her own life—executed herself, if you wish to put it so—or someone else very carefully murdered her.”
“Oh…”
“I’m not sure which is worse,” Charlotte said after a moment. “I wish I could think it was murder, because that might mean we had no part in it, but if it was, then how could it have been anyone except her husband?”
Emily’s face was tight, her eyes bleak. “Why would she kill herself? I know people are talking about her, but they’re always talking about someone, and she has certainly experienced it before. Did she really have something to do with Halberd’s death?”
“I don’t know,” Charlotte admitted. “Thomas didn’t say very much, and I don’t know whether he believes she killed herself. Honestly…I didn’t ask him because I was afraid of the answer. What if she did?”
Emily looked miserable, but she did not evade the answer. “Could it be anything we said or did, do you think?”
“We stirred up the questions as to who killed Halberd, rather than letting anyone go on thinking it was a stupid accident,” Charlotte said.
“Did anyone really think that?” Emily’s eyebrows were raised. “What did people think he was doing there?”
“It doesn’t matter whether we meant to stir things up or not, or even whether we really did,” Charlotte said very quietly. “We didn’t care enough to think hard about what we said, or what meaning people took from it. Thoughtlessness is not an excuse. We aren’t children, and we both knew what it’s like to be the victim of other people’s gossip.”
“You haven’t—” Emily began.
“I’ve seen it!” Charlotte said more sharply than she intended to. It was herself she was angry with, and she would not have excuses made for either of them. They had taken it too lightly, enjoying the involvement, the exercise of imagination, the swirl and color of being in society again. She was not going to excuse herself from blame. Delia Kendrick was dead, and people were assuming it was by her own hand, because she was guilty of having murdered John Halberd. “We have to find out if this is true,” she said. “Even if she did kill Halberd, and then herself, what we did is still wrong, because we didn’t care enough to think first. And if she didn’t kill him, then we must prove her innocence.”
“You’re angry because you didn’t like her, and now you owe her a debt,” Emily pointed out. She bit her lip. “So do I.”
“Then we had better think hard, and plan.” Charlotte finished her tea and poured some more. “Where do we begin?”
IT WAS LATER THAT day that Pitt was contacted by Dr. Carsbrook. It was just a brief note, delivered by messenger.
Pitt tore it open while the boy waited.
I examined the body in detail, specifically looking for scratches that could account for the shreds of skin under Mrs. Kendrick’s nails. I found nothing at all, not the slightest abrasion.
I can only conclude that it is not her own skin.
I have made a report to that effect. She fought for her life.
I am obliged to you for that knowledge.
Richard Carsbrook
“Thank you,” Pitt said to the messenger. “There is no reply, except that I appreciate it.” He gave the young man sixpence from his pocket, a generous tip.
It was half an hour later that he was sent for by the Prince of Wales. This time a footman had come, and sat in one of the offices until Pitt was free to accompany him. It was after five and the traffic was heavy. Nevertheless, before six Pitt was ushered into the room where the prince was waiting for him comfortably.
The prince was standing, as if too restless to sit. This mild summer evening he looked very gray, and all the lines of his face dragged downward.
“Ah, Pitt! Thank you for coming,” he said as Pitt entered the room and heard the footman close the door almost silently behind him, just a soft snick as a latch caught.
Pitt had not expected to be thanked. In fact he had imagined the prince would show anger rather than what looked more like grief.
“It is a very sad occasion, Your Royal Highness,” he replied gravely.
“I heard only the barest news,” the prince said, brushing aside the formality. “Tell me what happened.”
Pitt had thought on the journey here how much he should tell the prince, depending upon what he asked. If he had actually cared for Delia Kendrick, then he deserved as much truth as he wished to know. If he had merely used her for her wit, intelligence, and willingness to please him, then Pitt would tell him as little as possible, without appearing to concede anything of importance to a onetime friend.
Pitt looked at the prince’s face, recalling what he had learned of him in the last few weeks. If it was not real grief he saw, then the man was superbly gifted at affecting it.
“I am not yet certain, sir,” he said quietly. “Appearances suggest that she took her own life. There was a note that could be interpreted as a confession to her having been the one who killed Sir John Halberd…” He decided not to mention Carsbrook’s message about the skin. It was an intimate detail that would distress, and he did not yet know where it would lead.
“Suggest?” The prince’s voice was thick with emotion. “What the devil do you mean? Be plain with me, man! And how and why on earth could she have killed Halberd? That’s preposterous! Who suggested anything so absurd? Halberd was a tall man, and fit. Very fit. How could Mrs. Kendrick have had the strength to kill him? The whole idea is ridiculous.” It wasn’t merely denial in his voice; it was genuine disbelief.
Pitt must choose his words carefully, not just because this was his future sovereign he was speaking to but, more important to him, because the prince was a man who clearly felt a real sense of bereavement, possibly even of guilt for a breach it was now too late to mend, whether he had ever intended to or not.
“She chose a particularly grim way of ending her life, sir, and the note she left said clearly that she felt she deserved it. But that is not yet proof. I find it hard to believe. Her reason for it is extreme, and I have only Mr. Kendrick’s word for it…”
The prince’s fair brows rose high. “Do you doubt it?”
Pitt looked at the prince’s face, and it appeared as if he was struggling to find any answer other than the one Pitt had implied. It was not defense of Kendrick he seemed to want so much as simply a denial of the whole, tragic issue.
“I question everything until it is proved, sir. That is part of my job. And when someone unexpectedly takes their own life, or appears to have, I need proof before I accept it. Mrs. Kendrick seems to have been a woman of great courage. She had already survived the death of her infant son, then of her first husband, who apparently did not treat her well, then the financial hardship that was imposed on her, albeit temporarily.” He did not mention her affair with the prince himself, or that she seemed to have cared for him more than he cared for her, but he saw a shadow in the prince’s face and thought that perhaps he knew it, if not at the time, then now.
“Why on earth would she kill Halberd, even if she had the strength?” the prince demanded. He was angry because he was hurt and, Pitt was increasingly convinced, also feeling guilty for what was now irreparable.
Pitt answered the latter question first. “If Halberd was not expecting an attack he would be unprepared. Whoever killed him took one of the oars and struck him with it, across the head, extremely hard. But with so long an instrument, a full shoulder swing would have great momentum. He was knocked unconscious and left to drown. A determined woman could have done it without great difficulty, especially one from whom he was not expecting any trouble.”
The prince flinched at the picture painted by Pitt’s words. “I see. But why? Why on earth would Delia wish to attack Halberd at all, let alone kill him? Could it not have been an accident? And she had no idea that she had knocked him senseless and he would drown?”
“If the quarrel had been very fierce, and she was afraid of him, that is possible,” Pitt asserted, but dubiously. “It still leaves the question as to why she was there at all.”
“Yes…Why was she? And why would she be afraid of him?”
“Kendrick said she had an affair with Halberd, and then because of it, he blackmailed her into obscene practices, which she finally could bear no longer, and that was why she killed him…deliberately.”
The last shred of color drained from the prince’s face.
“That’s…vile! I don’t believe it, sir. I don’t. It is totally…obscene!”
“I agree,” Pitt said softly. “That is why I need proof, far more than one man’s word, before I accept it as true.”
The prince looked puzzled—when he spoke it was a genuine question, not a challenge. “What can you find? What would prove it? You said she left a note?”
“Only a few words, sir. Just that she deserved it. That could have meant anything.”
“Sounds pretty clear…”
“That at some time, she felt she deserved something,” Pitt said slowly, watching the prince’s face to see if he followed the meaning. “We could think she was referring to her death.”
“How did she…die?”
Pitt hesitated.
“How did she die?” the prince repeated more sharply. “For God’s sake, man, tell—”
“She hanged herself, sir. In the back kitchen, from a hook in one of the beams.”
The prince stared at him, too appalled to find words.
“I’m sorry, sir. I would rather not have had to tell you that.” Pitt meant it. For these few moments they were simply two men grieving over the death of a woman they had both known, even if to a very different degree.
The prince nodded. “I forced you to. Poor Delia—” He stopped abruptly, choked with grief. Pitt saw in his face so many conflicting emotions. He imagined that other memories were running through his mind, other regrets, and perhaps a sense of his own mortality, and surely that of his mother and all that that would mean for him and the world.
The prince stared at Pitt. Was he wondering now what kind of a man Kendrick really was? That would cause grief as well, and a sense of betrayal. The prince might be used to them, but that did not lessen the hurt; in fact, perhaps it made it deeper.
“I’m sorry, sir.” Pitt meant it.
The prince nodded, and for a few moments he remained silent.
Protocol forbade Pitt from interrupting.
“Er…thank you, Pitt,” the prince said at last. “Please keep me aware of what you discover. I imagine Mrs. Kendrick will be buried as quietly as possible. I could send flowers, but I cannot go myself.”
“Of course not,” Pitt agreed. “But flowers would be excellent, something very simple. She will know, and no one else will.”
“Will she?” It was a sincere question, full of both hope and fear. To sit in church, and to obey the rules, or most of them, was one thing. To believe, in the face of actual death, was another. It was beyond knowledge, a leap of faith when one was weakest.
“Yes, sir,” Pitt said without hesitation. Since the Angel Court affair he had given spiritual matters much quiet thought. Whatever conclusion he came to, this was not the time to acknowledge any doubts at all.
The prince gave a half smile. “Thank you, Pitt. I’m obliged you came.”
It was permission to leave. Pitt bowed and obeyed. The footman who had come for him was waiting outside the door.