“You lost them in Covent Garden?”
“I wouldn't go so far as to say lost,” Horan countered. “The Paddy put up a devil of a fight, he did. My blokes call him a murderin' savage, like what all them Irish are. Left one man fer dead on the rookery roof, and the rest scarpered.”
“Then I suggest you hire some Irish, capable of killing him,” von Stühlen said evenly.
“I've got them papers as you wanted from the Temple.” Horan tossed an oilskin packet on the table, nearly oversetting von Stühlen's claret. “And look what I pinched from the bird's 'ouse.”
The Count's eyes flicked up. “I believe I told you what to take. You were not to steal anything else.”
“Nor have I.” Horan reached into his vest and withdrew a packet of letters, tied with a narrow black ribbon. “These 'ere have the Royal crest, they do—fetch a pretty penny from the newspapers, I reckon. What'll you give me for 'em, then?”
With his good eye, von Stühlen studied the foreman. “Do you read the newspapers, Horan?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then you must be aware of the tragic end of the Queen's coachman?”
“Aye. Broke his neck on 'ampstead 'eath.”
“There are so many ways to die in the dark.” Von Stühlen extended one white hand for the stolen letters. “Don't haggle with me, Horan. I might consider too deeply how you failed me today—losing Patrick Fitzgerald in St. Giles.”
It was Alice who drafted the telegram to the consulate in Nice. She had sent one the previous night, at eight o'clock, when Papa was still alive.
Pray break to Prince Leopold that the Prince is very ill and we are in great anxiety about him.
During the past week she had sent letters and telegrams to brothers and sisters far from Windsor: to Affie at sea in the North Atlantic, and to Vicky in Berlin. Vicky was the most desperate for news, being Papa's firstborn and special pet. When Papa asked what she'd written, Alice said calmly: I told her you were very ill.
He had looked at her with his heartrending smile. You did wrong. You should have told her that I am dying.
Which made her press her hand to her mouth in agony and walk swiftly from the room.
He had known what was coming. He had looked over the black edge of the abyss, and hurled himself in.
Alice wished she had held his hand, and gone, too.
Her father had never been a man to cling to false comfort. He spoke the absolute truth, no matter how brutal. Which made the words he'd muttered into her ear, in his final hour, all the more disturbing.
There is no one I can talk to, she thought. Not Vicky, far away in Prussia. Not Bertie, already burdened with guilt. Never Mama.
She looked up from her paper and pen, overwhelmed with the sharpness of loss, with the terror of being alone. She missed Leopold acutely; despite the ten-year difference in their ages, they were fond of each other. What would Papa have said to her eight-year-old brother? What should she write to a child, so utterly alone?
Stay away from this place, my darling. There is no home here anymore.
But she could not send such a telegram over the wire. They would think her mad, at the consulate in Nice.
Please break to Prince Leopold that the Prince Consort passed away at ten minutes before eleven last evening. . . .
Mad.
Alice closed her eyes. She would have to tell someone. But who?
Chapter Fifteen
These are the symptoms of typhoid fever, as I have observed them in the wasting frame of my Beloved: stomach pains, a general weakness, persistent aching of the head, loss of appetite. And fever, naturally—although Albert's was not so high as is often seen, Jenner tells me. My Dearest was sleepless, and spent much of the last week of his life in roaming about the halls of Windsor, murmuring under his breath, which Jenner also declares is not generally associated with the malady. Albert failed altogether to throw out the characteristic typhoid rash of flat, rose-coloured spots. I asked Löhlein whether he had observed such a thing in his washing and dressing of the Prince, when I met the valet in the Blue Room this evening; he replied in the negative, his dear face quite contorted with emotion. Albert suspected Löhlein was his natural half brother—the old Duke his father being a dissipated and corrupt man, much inclined to exercising his droits du seigneur among the household servants, of which Löhlein's mother was one. The intimacy of blood would perhaps explain the valet's devotion.
I had gone to the Blue Room just before dinner to strew flowers about the bed on which Albert expired. His remains have been moved to the neighbouring one, and he looks very fine in his uniform—although rather like a wax figure out of Madame Tussaud's. Jenner would not allow me to touch the corpse or kiss it for fear of infection, which I know to be sheer nonsense—no one else in all of Windsor has contracted typhoid—but I submitted to his strictures, as being the best course of conduct for the Kingdom.
It was only a few weeks ago that our dear nephew, the King of Portugal, was carried off by typhoid, along with his brother; it is this, I must suppose, that has given Jenner the idea of it. Stomach pains, weakness, persistent aching of the head—it might have been any kind of disorder that killed that Angelic Being. But Jenner is an acknowledged expert in typhoid; he sees it everywhere. For my own part, I will maintain Albert died because he preferred it to living.
“Do you feel at all indisposed, Mama?” my daughter inquired as we met before the door of my rooms. “You look decidedly unwell.”
“That is to be expected, dear child, is it not?” I attempted. “I have lost the All-in-All of my existence. I cannot long endure on this earth without the support of my Beloved. You will understand a little better, Alice, when once you have been married.”
She took a step closer, and searched my countenance keenly. “Perhaps you should take dinner on a tray, Mama.”
“I have no appetite. My head aches acutely. But if you would be so good, dear child, as to order a pot of tea, and perhaps some gruel—and a few of the Scotch oat cakes—to be sent up to my rooms, I should wish for nothing more.”
“Very well.” She turned away, then hesitated a moment. “Violet informs me, Mama, that some of my silk flowers—for the dressing of my hats—have gone missing. She found them absent from the wardrobe when she turned out my gowns.”
I stared all my bewilderment. “I must suppose that such things are often gone missing! In a household so large as this— And who is Violet, pray?”
“My dresser, Mama,” Alice faltered. “We were to meet with the seamstress, to prepare my mourning clothes—and it was then Violet noticed. She thought perhaps my little sisters had taken the flowers for playthings.”
“I know nothing of trumpery trimmings,” I returned, with a commendable hold on my patience, “—other than that you cannot expect to require them for the next twelvemonth. I do not suppose the flowers were black?”
“No, indeed,” Alice said. She curtseyed dutifully, and quitted my presence without another word.
I studied her the length of the hall, until she turned at the landing and disappeared from view.
I shall have to speak to the Master of Household about Violet.
Once in the privacy of my own bedchamber, I withdrew Albert's nightgown from his wardrobe and pressed my face into its dear folds, drinking in the scent even as it vanished—that ineffable, unforgettable odor of a distinct and irreplaceable human being. It was then, at long last, that the dreadful sobs were torn from me—the stricken grief of one who has lost the core of strength from the very centre of her being. I did not bother to undress; I did not admit my personal maid; I lay in a paroxysm of weeping in the centre of the great bed, my husband's linen entwined in my arms, until all light had failed and a discreet knock at the door informed me my tea and gruel were arrived.