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"Naturally," Saye said. "I have always relied upon you for that service."

In the next room Elizabeth heard their voices rise into familiar argument and took comfort in the sound. Friedrich and Albrecht had once been brothers like these. If Minna could have heard Saye and Richard that evening, Elizabeth thought, she would have known that her daughter had not been left alone.

At the Falkenrieds' London lodging, Adelheid was seated at her dressing table when Albrecht returned. She saw at once that he had been told something she did not know.

"Have the gentlemen discovered the driver?" she asked.

"They have discovered more than a driver."

She set down her hairbrush. "What does that mean?"

Albrecht looked at her reflection in the glass. For thirty years he had known every change of her expression, every silence that announced displeasure and every smile that meant she had forgiven him. He could not now tell whether her face showed anxiety for Elizabeth, fear for herself, or the knowledge that his trust was gone.

"I have received a letter from Falkenried," he said. "It concerns Minna."

Adelheid's hands became still.

"Then perhaps," she answered, "we should speak of it in the morning. You are tired."

"No," he said. "I have spent twenty-three years allowing tomorrow to carry questions I ought to have asked today."

He did not accuse her yet. He asked whether she would be willing to meet him in a place where the evidence could be discussed with their solicitor present. She tried to persuade him that old grief was making him credulous. He repeated the request, once.

When she agreed, he bowed as politely as he might have done to a stranger.

In the room he left behind, Adelheid drew the curtains and stood a long time in darkness. The world had begun to narrow around her. She could still lie; she had become accomplished at it. But the lies no longer moved events where she wished. Each one brought another person into the story, and each person carried some fragment she could not command.

Outside her door, Albrecht paused with his hand upon the banister. He had loved his wife sincerely. That love had not vanished at once, and he wished it had. He descended the stairs slowly, knowing that on the following day he must learn whether the life he had lived beside her had been built upon a crime.

CHAPTER 30

A Wife's Betrayal

Adelheid entered the private sitting room shortly before noon. The room belonged to the Earl of Matlock, who had placed it at Albrecht's disposal for a conversation rather than a formal examination, and its windows overlooked a quiet garden. Mr. Harcourt, the family's solicitor, sat at a writing table with his papers closed. Years of managing correspondence and negotiations with German houses had made him fluent in spoken as well as written German; Lord Matlock had asked him to attend precisely so the conversation would not be distorted by hurried translation. The Earl remained near the hearth. Albrecht stood by the window, his back to the room, until he heard his wife's steps.

"You asked me to come," Adelheid said in German. "I hope you have not allowed strangers to persuade you that our family's sorrows are theirs to investigate."

Albrecht turned. "I asked you because the questions concern us. You, me, Friedrich, and Minna. The gentlemen are here at my request. If you prefer, I shall ask them to withdraw."

She turned toward the solicitor and asked in English, "What have you been told?"

"Only the documentary evidence relevant to a possible inquiry in England, Your Highness," he answered in English. "I am not sitting as a judge. The purpose is to preserve an accurate account if you choose to make one."

Adelheid resumed German, addressing her husband alone. "I have been your wife for so many years. Will you not speak with me privately before allowing others to listen?"

"I have spoken privately with you about Friedrich's death for twenty-three years," Albrecht answered. "Every time you told me the same story. Today I need to hear what happened."

He held out Frau Lenz's statement. Adelheid read the opening lines and set the paper down.

"An old woman wishes to feel important. She remembers a distressed girl saying dreadful things after her brother died. That is not proof of murder."

"I have not called it proof. Did Minna tell you that she had seen Friedrich pushed?"

Adelheid's eyes flickered. "She was in no state to know what she had seen."

"That is not an answer."

"Then the answer is that she spoke wildly, and I prevented her from making accusations she would have regretted."