“Perhaps we should go in?” Susan said. “It must be nearly time.”
Lionel uncrossed his legs and rose in a fluid motion. Then he swept up his handkerchief, flourished it in a circle, and stuffed it into his pocket.
“Neatly done, Sir Lionel,” Louise said. “An acrobat as well as a jester.”
“My dear Princess, one learns to be nimble in government service.” Dermott offered his arms to the ladies. “Who else is expected at luncheon?”
“Peter FitzGerald and his wife,” Louise said.
“Harriet FitzGerald … Do you know, I imagined I saw Your Royal Highness on Bond Street last Thursday,” Lionel said. “I had prepared my best bow when I saw it wasn’t the princess after all. It was Harriet.”
“So, you made your second-best bow?” Susan said.
Lionel grinned. “I ducked into a doorway and avoided it altogether.”
“What an odd mistake,” Louise said.
“I had the same sensation at the ball,” Susan said as they walked across the lawn. “It’s the style of hair and manner of dress that are similar.”
Lionel said, “They say imitation is flattery, Princess.”
They parted briefly inside the house for the ladies to dispose of their wraps and hats and freshen up in their rooms. Ten minutes later, Susan joined Lionel at the dining room doorway.
Dermott took her elbow and drew her aside. “I hope your first experience—and the unhappy examples around you—haven’t turned you against the married state.”
“Whom do you mean?”
Lionel looked meaningfully at the Prince of Wales as he handed Princess Alexandra to her seat. “And Harriet FitzGerald. It looks like the bloom is offthatrose,” he said softly. “She and the major seem to lead separate lives these days.”
“Harriet prefers London to Windsor and Balmoral.”
“A pity. The queen avoids Buckingham Palace as if it were a plague site. Still, FitzGerald manages to get away to the capital for … entertainments of his own.”
“What are you saying, Lionel?”
Princess Louise’s appearance, followed by a footman, spared him a reply.
“Excuse me, Your Royal Highness.” The servant offered the princess a silver platter. “A message.”
She read it and smiled at her brother. “Bertie, I’m borrowing your private secretary this afternoon. Mister Fisher is taking me to the telegraph office to send a cable.”
On Monday, Sergeant O’Malley dropped a stack of reports on Inspector Tennant’s desk with a grunt of disgust.
“Days of asking and still nothing from the canvass of the milkman’s route. High time one of our coppers turned up something.”
“I wouldn’t count on it, “Tennant said. “Our murderer is a disciplined fellow. Discipline reminds me …” He leaned back in his desk chair and contemplated the cracks in the ceiling plaster. “The military is well represented among our suspects.”
“’Tis true,” O’Malley said. “We have two captains—Montgomery and Locock—and Major FitzGerald in the frame.”
“Then there’s Sir Lionel, who resigned his commission as captain several years ago. I need a better sense of them as men.”
“Three of our pigeons belonged to the same Guards regiment.”
“Yes … the Blues,” Tennant said. “Except for Major FitzGerald, who was in the 4th Royal Irish Dragoons.”
O’Malley shrugged. “’Tis a shame none of them were in the Grenadier Guards. You’d be knowing them, I’m guessing.”
Tennant righted his chair. “That’s a thought, Paddy. Ask around the Yard. Coppers who served in the ranks in Crimea. See if you can find someone who fought with either regiment.”
