Malice at the Palace (The Royal Spyness Series Book 9)

 

 

I sat. He leaned back in his big leather chair and folded his arms, never taking his eyes off me for an instant.

 

“I called you back here because I don’t think you did quite tell me everything when we chatted last time. You kept some interesting snippets of information from me, didn’t you?”

 

“Such as what?”

 

His expression didn’t change. “You and Mr. O’Mara, for example. Not just a friend, is he?”

 

“My relationship with Mr. O’Mara has nothing to do with you,” I said, keeping my haughty stare rather well, I thought.

 

“Oh, but I think it’s most important,” he said. “Most pertinent to this case.”

 

“That’s ridiculous. In what way?”

 

He leaned back in his chair. “A motive for killing Miss Carrington, perhaps?”

 

“A motive? Whose motive?”

 

“Yours, Lady Georgiana. Jealousy is the strongest motive I’ve ever come across. That and fear.”

 

“And who is supposed to be jealous of whom?”

 

“You were jealous of Mr. O’Mara’s relationship with Miss Carrington, obviously.”

 

“Since I didn’t find out about it until after she was dead, I would say it’s hardly relevant,” I said.

 

“That’s your word.”

 

“Surely you can’t think I had anything to do with Miss Carrington’s death?” The laugh sounded a trifle uneasy.

 

He leaned forward again now, hoping to be intimidating, I suspected. “That’s exactly what I might be thinking. But the one thing I’m not sure of—was it you alone, luring her to the palace in a fit of jealousy, or had Mr. O’Mara found that he needed to get her out of the way and you helped him to do it? Because, you see, he has an alibi for the whole evening she was killed.”

 

This time I did chuckle. “Oh, and I didn’t? I think dinner at Buckingham Palace with the entire royal family is a pretty watertight alibi.”

 

“We’re not sure exactly when she was killed,” he said. “It could have been earlier in the evening, given the bitter cold out there. And you were seen, you see.”

 

“I was what?” I looked up, startled. “I was seen where?”

 

“In the courtyard where the body was found.”

 

I gave another chuckle, this time of relief. “Of course I was seen. I believe I told you how I saw something and went to investigate and discovered the body lying there.”

 

“That was when you returned from dinner, and actually I’ve been puzzled about your statement. It didn’t make sense at the time that you thought you saw something—because from the front of the house there is no possible way you could see anything under that arch.”

 

“I told you—I saw a glowing sort of light.”

 

“We checked. There is no light source under that arch, or in that courtyard, apart from a couple of windows. And the time you were seen was before you went to dinner.”

 

“Before?” I shook my head. “But I wasn’t in that courtyard before we left. I came straight out with Princess Marina and got into the car. It was still raining. A footman held an umbrella over us.” I glared at him. “Who says they saw me?”

 

“The foreign lady. The countess. Sir Jeremy had a little talk with her today because you had told him you suspected her because her coat was wet. And the interesting thing was that she claimed she had seen you in the courtyard, prowling around, right before you went to dinner.”

 

“How utterly absurd,” I said. “I never went near the courtyard. What does she think she’s playing at? And how did she explain away her wet jacket?”

 

“She says she went out later. She said the food was so bad that she decided to walk down to the town and have something to eat in a café. But she said that nothing was open except pubs because it was Sunday evening, and she wasn’t about to go into a common public house.”

 

“That’s interesting,” I said, “because she told me that she had spent the evening in, reading. And did she explain the knife in her pocket?”

 

“Miss Carrington was not stabbed, Lady Georgiana. She was drugged and then suffocated. If anyone carries a knife it seems to be irrelevant.” He gave an annoying half sniff, half snort through his nostrils. “And what possible motive could a foreign lady have for killing an Englishwoman she had never met?”

 

“The perfect motive, Chief Inspector,” I said. “She worships Princess Marina. She would do anything to protect her, and if she’d learned that Bobo Carrington had been Prince George’s mistress and that he may be the father of her child, she would stop at nothing to prevent that news from becoming public.”

 

He was staring at me as if he was digesting this information and it was beginning to make sense.

 

“And she was alone all evening with servants who aren’t the most attentive and who would have been having their own evening meal in a kitchen where they would not have heard or seen anything.”