Dorchester Terrace (20 page)

They sat and talked casually: light comments on the weather, the latest gossip, rumors that were of no serious consequence. Charlotte had time to look at the paintings on the walls, and the very beautiful ornaments that graced the mantel and two or three small tables. One was a porcelain figurine of a woman dancing. It had such grace that it seemed as if, at any moment, it would actually move. One of the largest ornaments was a huge statue of a wild boar. It stood with its head lowered, menacing, yet there was a beauty in it that commanded admiration.

“He’s rather fine, isn’t he?” Blantyre remarked, seeing her gaze. “We don’t have boar here anymore but they still do in Austria.”

“When did we have them here?” Charlotte asked, not really because she wanted to know, but because she was interested in drawing him into conversation.

His eyes opened wide. “An excellent question. I must find out. Have we progressed because we no longer have them, or regressed? We could ask that question of a lot of things.” He smiled, as if the possibilities amused him.

“Have you hunted boar?” Charlotte asked.

“Oh, long in the past. I lived for several years in Vienna. The forests around there abound with them.”

Charlotte gave an involuntary little shiver.

“I imagine you would greatly prefer the music and the dancing,” he said with certainty. “It is a marvelous city, one where almost anything you care to dream of seems possible.” He looked for a moment at Adriana, and there was an intense tenderness in his face. “We first met in Vienna.”

Adriana rolled her dark eyes and a flash of amusement lit her expression. “We first
danced
in Vienna,” she corrected him. “We met in Trieste.”

“I remember the moonlight on the Danube!” he protested.

“My dear,” she said, “it was the Adriatic. We didn’t speak, but we saw each other. I knew you were watching me.”

“Did you? I thought I was being so discreet.”

She laughed, then turned away.

For an instant Charlotte thought it was out of modesty, because the look on Blantyre’s face was openly emotional. Then she caught something in the angle of Adriana’s head, the light catching a tear in her eye, and felt that there was something she had missed entirely, far deeper than the words conveyed.

A few minutes later they were called to the dining room, and its lush, old-fashioned beauty took all Charlotte’s attention. It was not the least bit English; there was a simplicity to the proportions, which lent an extraordinary grace, and a lush warmth to the coloring.

“Do you like it?” Adriana asked, standing close behind her. Then she apologized. “I’m sorry. If I ask, how could you possibly say you did not?” She gave a rueful smile. “I love England, but this room carried the memory of my home; I want people here to like what I used to know and love as well.” Without waiting for an answer, she moved away to take her place at the foot of the table, while Blantyre sat down at the head.

The meal was served by footmen and a parlormaid, silently, and with a discretion born of long practice. First there was a clear soup, followed by a light fish, and then the main course of lamb in red wine sauce. The conversation moved easily from one subject to another.
Blantyre was a highly entertaining host, full of anecdotes about his travels, especially his time in the capitals of Europe. Watching his face, Charlotte saw an undisguised enthusiasm for the individuality and culture of each place, but a love for Austria that superseded all the others.

He spoke of the gaiety and sophistication of Paris, of the theater and art and philosophy, but his voice took on a new intensity when he described the Viennese operetta, the vitality of it, the music lyrical enough to make everyone wish to dance.

“They have to nail the chairs and tables to the floor,” he said, almost seriously. He was smiling, his eyes staring into the distance. “Vienna’s always in my dreams. One minute you cry there, the next you laugh. There is a unique richness in the blend of so many cultures.”

Adriana moved very slightly, and the change in the light on her face made Charlotte look toward her. For a moment, she saw pain in Adriana’s eyes, and in the shadows around her mouth, which was still too young for lines or hollows. Then it was gone. But for a second, Adriana had seemed utterly lost. Her hand was on her fork, and then she set it down with a clink, as if she could not eat any more.

Blantyre had seen it—Charlotte was quite certain of that—yet he went on with his tale of music and color, as if to avoid drawing attention to it.

The next course was served. Blantyre changed the subject and became more serious. Now his attention was directed toward Pitt.

“It has changed lately, of course,” he said with a little grimace. “Since the death of Crown Prince Rudolf.”

Adriana’s eyes widened in surprise, probably that he should mention such a subject at the dinner table, and with people they hardly knew.

Instantly, Charlotte wondered if Pitt’s real reason for being here could possibly be connected to the tragedy at Mayerling. But what concern could that be to British Special Branch? She looked at Pitt and saw a slight frown on his face.

“The emperor is a martinet,” Blantyre went on. “Sleeps in an old army bed and rises at half-past four in the morning to begin his work on the papers of state. He dresses in the uniform of a junior officer,
and I wouldn’t be surprised if he eats only bread and drinks only water.”

Charlotte looked at him closely to see if he was joking. His stories had been full of wit and lighthearted mockery but always gentle. Now she saw no lightness in his face at all. His nostrils were slightly flared, and his mouth was pulled a little tight.

“Evan …” Adriana began anxiously.

“Mr. Pitt is head of Special Branch, my dear,” Blantyre said, very slightly criticizing her. “He has few illusions. We should not add to them.”

Adriana went very pale, but did not argue.

Charlotte wondered where the conversation was heading. How much of it was information that Pitt was seeking, and why had they come to learn it this way? She turned to Blantyre.

“He sounds rather grim,” she observed. “Was he always like that, or is it the effect of grief over the death of his son?”

Blantyre replied, “I’m afraid he was pretty much always a bore. Poor Sisi escapes whenever she can. She’s a trifle eccentric, but who could blame the poor woman?”

Charlotte looked from Blantyre to Pitt; she saw the mystified expression on his face before he could hide it.

“The empress Elisabeth,” Blantyre explained, eyebrows arched a little. “God knows why they call her Sisi, but they all do. A bohemian at heart. Always taking off for somewhere or the other, mostly Paris, sometimes Rome.”

Charlotte plunged in, hoping she was judging correctly that in some fashion this had to do with Pitt’s current case.

“Which came first?” she asked innocently.

Blantyre turned to her with a bright stare. Was that a ghost of amusement in his eyes? “First?” he inquired.

She looked straight at him. “Her desire to escape his being a bore, or his retreating into solitude because she was always off on some adventure?”

He nodded almost imperceptibly. “Neither, so far as I know. But Crown Prince Rudolf was caught up in a considerable conflict between his father’s rigid military dictatorship and his mother’s erratic
flights of fancy, both metaphorical and literal. He was really rather clever, you know, when given half a chance to escape the straitjacket of duty.” He turned to Pitt. “He wrote excellent articles for radical newspapers, under a pseudonym, of course.”

Pitt straightened, his fork halfway to his mouth.

Blantyre smiled. “You didn’t know? It doesn’t surprise me. Not many people do. He was of the opinion that an Austrian invasion of Croatia would be a cause for war with Russia, which Austria would start against a completely anti-Austrian Balkan peninsula, from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. He said not only the present would be at stake, but also the whole future, for which Austria was responsible to the coming generation.”

Pitt stared at him. There was complete silence at the table.

“Almost a direct quote,” Blantyre said. “As closely as I can match the English to the German.”

“Evan, the poor man is dead,” Adriana said softly. “We will never know what good he might have done had he lived.” There was intense sadness in her voice, and her eyes were downcast.

Charlotte’s mind raced. She could think of no way in which a suicide pact between a man and his mistress, however tragic, could concern British Special Branch. And yet it appeared that Blantyre had introduced the subject very deliberately, even though it was hardly polite dinner conversation among people who barely knew one another.

Now Blantyre was looking at Adriana. “My dear, you mustn’t grieve for him so much.” He reached out a hand toward hers, but the table was too long for them to touch. Still his fingers remained in the open gesture, resting lightly on the white cloth. “It was his own choice, and I think perhaps all that was left to him. He was tired and ill, and desperately unhappy.”

“Ill?” she said quickly, meeting his gaze for the first time since Rudolf’s death had been mentioned. “How can you know?”

“Because now Princess Stéphanie is also infected,” he replied.

The expression in Adriana’s face was unreadable: surprise, pity, but—more complex than that—it seemed to Charlotte to include a kind of hope, as if a long-standing problem had at last been resolved.

“So it would have been the Archduke Franz Ferdinand anyway?” Adriana said after a couple of seconds.

“Yes,” Blantyre agreed. “Did you think poor Rudolf’s death could have had something to do with the succession? It wasn’t political, at least in that sense. If Rudolf had become emperor, he had planned to make the empire a republic and be president of it, with far greater freedom for the individual nations within.”

“Would that have worked?” Adriana asked dubiously.

He smiled. “Probably not. He was an idealist, very much a dreamer. But maybe.”

Pitt looked from one to the other of them. “Is there any doubt that it was suicide?”

Blantyre shook his head. “None at all. I know there are all kinds of rumors flying around, but the truth is far beyond that which is known to the public. But I believe that some griefs should remain the property of those who are the victims. That is about the only decency we can offer them. I am quite certain that his death and that of Marie Vetsera were by their own hands, and there were no others involved. Who has blame for the patterns of their lives is not an issue for us.”

Pitt seemed about to say something, then changed his mind, and instead made some remark about one of the many beautiful paintings on the wall.

Adriana’s face lit with pleasure immediately. “The Croatian coast,” she said eagerly. “That’s where I was born.” She went on to describe it, her words full of nostalgia.

Charlotte noted Blantyre’s face. There was a lingering sadness in his eyes as he listened to his wife remembering her childhood, the changing seasons, the sounds and the touch of the past.

Adriana said nothing more of Vienna, as if it were part of another world.

A
FTER DINNER CHARLOTTE AND
Adriana returned to the withdrawing room for tea and delicate, prettily decorated sweets.

“Your country sounds very beautiful,” Charlotte said with interest.

“It’s unique,” she said, smiling. “At least it was. I haven’t been back for several years now.”

“Surely you can go back, at least to visit?” Charlotte asked.

Suddenly Adriana was very still. The delicate color of her skin became even lighter, almost as if it were translucent.

“I don’t think I would like to. Evan is very protective of my feelings. He keeps telling me that it would bring back old pain that is best left to heal, and perhaps he is right.”

Charlotte waited, believing an explanation would come. Even if it did not, it would be clumsy to ask.

“I’m sorry, I am making no sense. My father died a long time ago, and my mother some time before that. His death is something I still find hard to think about. Others loved him and grieved also, but not as I did.” For some minutes she had difficulty keeping her emotions under control. She looked at Charlotte with startling trust, as if there was clearly a friendship between them, but she did not say anything more.

Charlotte thought of her own elder sister’s death: the grief, the fear, the disillusionment that had followed it. It was during that series of murders that she had first met Pitt. She had grown up during that time, had learned to look more honestly at the people she loved. She had tried to accept failure, her own and theirs, and learn not to blame them because they fell short of her idealistic and rather immature perceptions of them.

She had no idea how Adriana’s father had died, but clearly it had been part of some complicated situation that had caused her much pain, if, even now, she would not speak of it.

Charlotte looked around the withdrawing room and chose a lovely, very ornate piece of carving in wood to admire and ask about.

The tension was broken, and Adriana responded with a flush of gratitude, giving an account of its history.

I
N THE DINING ROOM
, the butler brought in port and cigars; at Blantyre’s request he left them alone. Then the serious conversation began. Blantyre offered no preamble.

“I have looked more closely at the situation, Pitt. I have been obliged to change my mind. I admit, I thought you were being a little hasty and had jumped to conclusions. I was mistaken. I now believe that you are right to consider the danger serious, possibly even as catastrophic as it looks.”

Pitt was stunned.

Blantyre leaned forward. “Of course, the indications are slight: an inquiry about timetables, which seems natural enough; a desire to know how the signals work, in more detail than the average person knows, or wishes to; a technical description of how the points work. They do not indicate to the Foreign Office that there is anything amiss.” He gave a rueful, self-deprecating smile. “To me, knowing the names of the men concerned, it indicates that they plan something large and complicated enough to require the use of men who have killed before, and are willing to cause any number of civilian casualties in order to succeed.”