Tasha Alexander - Tears of Pearl

We returned to Misseri’s, where we could peruse our purloined letters at our leisure.

“Port,” Margaret said, handing me a glass. “Cigar.”

I lit it, but the smell turned my stomach. “I can’t,” I said, snuffing it out in the crystal ashtray on the table.

“Are you ill?”

“Let’s hope.” I looked at the folders in front of me. “Which would you prefer? Mr. Sutcliffe or Sir Richard?”

“Sutcliffe, please. I want to be the one who finds whatever it is we’re looking for.”

“Go forth and conquer.” I pushed the file to her and opened Sir Richard’s. It was dull reading, but that came as no surprise. Records of his assignments, comments about his performance, letters praising his skills and efficiency and dedication from a series of well-heeled ambassadors filled the folder, but nothing suggested any connection between him and Mr. Sutcliffe.

“Anything of note?” I asked Margaret, filling her glass with more port.

“So far just a letter about this West Indies business,” she said. “Terrible. He was granted an extended leave after the funerals, but served out the rest of his tour there. Other than that, though, a remarkably uninteresting record. No sign of trouble yet, however.”

“All right. Let’s compare their postings. Were they ever together?” A quick assessment showed us they had crossed paths in Vienna—on that first assignment of Mr. Sutcliffe’s. “Mrs. Hooper-Ferris mentioned that he’d tried to arrange something with a colleague, someone who’d agreed to switch with him. I’d bet anything the colleague was Sir Richard.”

“Is there reference to such a thing in his file?”

I flipped through the pages, skimming as I went. “There’s this—when he requested assignment in Constantinople, it was noted that he had never before asked for a specific post.”

“Does that signify?” Margaret asked.

“Only if Mr. Sutcliffe thought he’d asked for the West Indies.” I closed Sir Richard’s file. “May I?”

“Of course.” Margaret leaned back in her chair, blowing rings of smoke. “I have to admit I liked feigning swooning better than going through papers. My dedication is suspect at best.”

“I love you regardless,” I said, and kept reading. “Here, here it is. A letter he wrote asking to be allowed to have a colleague, Mr. Richard St. Clare—pre-knighthood—be assigned to the West Indies in his place. ‘Mr. St. Clare has assured me he would happily take this post and has already submitted the appropriate paperwork to arrange the details.’ ”

“But he never did?”

“It seems not.” I took a long breath, rubbed my forehead, and went back to Sir Richard’s file. “Yes... Yes. This is enough, Margaret, it’s enough. Look.” She stood beside me, reading over my shoulder. “The page here that says he never made any such requests was stamped as received here only six months ago.”

“Why the delay?”

“Who knows? Perhaps it was misfiled, or never sent from wherever he was posted when he applied to come here. The point is that Mr. Sutcliffe is the one to whom it would have gone to be filed—he’s the one who would have stamped it. And when he did, if he read it, he’d know that Sir Richard never tried to help him avoid the West Indies.”

“And hence, let his family die from typhoid.”

“Which to a man thoroughly devastated by loss—so grieved that he never remarried and became fixated on others suffering a similar loss—might be sufficient to inspire him to seek revenge.”

“So he poisons Sir Richard?” Margaret asked.

“But doesn’t kill him—makes him look incompetent to the point he loses his job. And he hires thugs to harass his son.”

“But Ceyden?”

“I don’t know yet how or if she fits. Can you doubt he’d find it sweet revenge to kill the daughter of the man he holds responsible for the deaths of his own children?”

“We don’t know that’s what he’s thinking,” Margaret said.

“Agreed,” I said. “But it’s decent conjecture. And suppose he killed Jemal—the man who knew of Benjamin’s dealings at the harem. He might have been bribing Jemal as well and decided it was time to make sure he’d keep quiet about something.”

“Is this enough evidence to take to the ambassador?” Margaret asked.

“It should be sufficient to at least get his attention and persuade him that the matter requires further investigation. It shows Mr. Sutcliffe had a powerful motive. Now we need to find some evidence of him possessing chloral hydrate—and more about his friendship with Bezime. Let’s not forget she liked to play at being a physician.”

As it was too late to confront Bezime herself, I had to settle for talking to the only person left who might have the answers I sought. Perestu started pacing almost as soon as I asked my first question. The lines in her forehead deepened, and her brown eyes clouded. “I don’t know how to answer you,” she said. “I have not had contact with your Mr. Sutcliffe in months. I told you that before.”

“What was his relationship with Bezime?”

She closed her eyes. “How could I possibly know that?”

“You read her diaries, didn’t you?” I asked. “You must have. How could you have resisted? Didn’t you want to know what her relationship with him was?”

She did not answer.

“He loved you. I’ve no doubt of that. You should have seen his reaction when he realized your ring was gone.” I hated the knowledge that he’d been putting on an act, but I had no reason to doubt his feelings for Perestu and even less reason to want to see her more hurt.

She turned, tears hanging heavy in her eyes. “You must not speak of love between us. There was none.”

“Friendship, then. Whatever you want to call it. He cared for you. Any woman in your situation would have read those diaries.”

“He came to her frequently, but I do not think they were lovers,” she said.

“Did she say anything about discussing Ceyden with him?”

“Nothing at all.”

This was unfortunate, but far from a shock. “What can you tell me about the loss of his family? I know it affected him deeply.”

“Of course it did. You’ve no idea—what it is to lose a child. Two children. And his wife. He loved her.”

“I know.”

“And to then have found out that a man he called his friend lied about the one thing that might have prevented all of it...”

She paused, and I dared not even breathe. But when she didn’t continue, I had to say something. “It might have been a mistake, you know. Sir Richard could have filed the request and all those years later it could have been lost.”

“You know the story?” She smiled, a slim, halfhearted effort. “That makes me feel less like I’m betraying him.”

“I don’t know the details, but I’m not convinced it was anything more than a misunderstanding.”

“No, that’s not possible. When he saw the paper, he confronted Sir Richard, who admitted everything. He apologized, but what good was that? Said that he couldn’t leave at the time because he was following some new lead as to where his daughter might have been. It all amounted to nothing, of course, and poor Theodore lost everything.”

“Sir Richard knows all this?” I asked.

“Yes. There can be no doubt. The last time I saw Theodore was when he came to me immediately following their conversation. I’d never seen him so upset, so... ragged.”

“And it was that day that you broke off your friendship?”

“Yes. The timing was appalling, I admit. But something in him scared me that day—the intensity of his hurt, his anger. And I knew that I was in danger of getting too drawn in to him. I didn’t want that, so I cut it off.”