Death at Glamis Castle (16 page)

What Kate did not say was that she was deeply surprised that Queen Alexandra had permitted her daughter to leave the Danish court and come to Scotland. Over the fifteen years or so since Toria had come of marriageable age, many in Court circles had expressed concern that the Princess had not been permitted to find a husband. It was even whispered that Queen Alexandra had refused at least one match—a love match, sadly—and intended to keep her daughter by her side, unmarried, as her life-long companion. If this was true, Kate thought, it was a very unfortunate thing. There was no shortage of ladies-in-waiting anxious to serve the Queen, and Toria ought to have the right to do as she wished.

Of course, it would have been one thing if Toria herself had chosen not to marry and if she were happy to be constantly with her mother. But as Kate well knew from earlier conversations with the Princess, neither was the case. Now, looking at her friend, she thought the Princess looked even more unhappy than she had when they took their clandestine shopping expedition the previous winter. She was thinner and more pale, her eyes bleak, her mouth pinched. It looked as if she were increasingly frustrated by the narrow limits imposed upon her life by a compulsively possessive mother.

Toria picked up a roll and began to butter it. “Motherdear
did
expect me to stay with her, but she finally allowed me to be excused when I told her that I felt very ill.” After a moment, she added, with a carefully restrained bitterness, “It is the one reason Motherdear will accept when I want to be apart from her. She supposes me to have returned to Sandringham for a week of resting in bed.” Her face lightened. “Of course, Papa knows that I am here and encouraged me to practice my little deception. It was he who instructed me to come.” Roll in hand, she began to eat her soup.

King Edward had sent his daughter to Glamis? Feeling rather confused, Kate took up her soup spoon. “Why, if I may ask?”

“Why, for the same reason he dispatched Lord Sheridan and the men from London.” Toria's dark eyes rested quizzically upon Kate. “Papa believes that one family member must be here, to make sure that things are done properly. He needs Georgie with him for the talks with the Kaiser, although I'm not sure why, since nothing is ever decided. They just talk and talk, and then the Kaiser struts off and does exactly as he pleases.” Her voice softened. “But I was the logical one for Papa to send. After all, Eddy and I have always been very close. We understand one another, whilst the others . . .” She shrugged. “And of course I'm very glad that Papa feels he can count on me in an emergency like this.”

Eddy.
Nothing about this was making sense. More confused than ever, Kate sipped soup from her spoon. “You obviously know more than I about the reason Lord Sheridan was sent here,” she said ruefully. “Perhaps you can tell me.”

Startled, Toria met her eyes. “You mean, you don't
know
? Lord Sheridan didn't tell you what happened here?”

“He couldn't,” Kate replied. “He didn't know either—at least, not until we arrived early this morning, at which point I was immediately whisked off to the castle. No doubt he has been told what is going on, but I haven't seen him.”

Toria was silent for a moment. “Well, then,” she said at last, “we shall have to have a frank talk.” To the footman, she said, “I would be glad if you could put the serving dishes on the table so that her ladyship and I may help ourselves. And please see that we're not disturbed.”

A few moments later, they were alone. Toria leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “You must keep what I'm about to tell you in the strictest confidence, Kate. As Papa says, it is a state secret.”

A state secret?
“Of course,” Kate said, startled. “But I don't understand what—”

“My brother Eddy lives here at Glamis Castle.”

“Your brother—” Kate stared at her, only half-comprehending. “Prince Albert Victor? But I thought . . . I lived in America then, but the story was in all the newspapers. About his death, I mean. It was—how long ago? A decade, surely.”

“Well, that's just the thing, you see,” Toria said matter-of-factly, pushing her soup bowl away and beginning to fill her plate with sandwiches and salad. “Eddy's death was only a pretense, a necessary pretense. Papa and Mama arranged it in order to permit him to live quietly here, and allow Georgie to take his place as Papa's heir. Perhaps you don't know, because you were in America during those years, but the rumors and gossip—most of them lies, of course—made it utterly impossible for dear Eddy to ascend to the throne. Georgie has made a much more suitable heir. Eddy himself says so.”

Kate checked her first feelings of amazed incredulity. The British people were quite aware that the Royal Family held many closely guarded secrets, in particular those involving the scandalous behavior of Prince Eddy in the late 1880s. But she and Charles had come to know rather more than most people about the Prince's secret life, since Charles's investigation of a blackmail scheme involving Jennie and Winston Churchill had led to the discovery that Prince Eddy had entered into a secret marriage to a Roman Catholic commoner, and that he had fathered a child by the woman. Then there was all that wild talk about his being involved with the Ripper killings, which had no more died down than the papers began trumpeting the notorious scandal at the male brothel on Cleveland Street. There was little doubt that Prince Eddy was involved in the sordid business, since his best friend, Sir Arthur Somerset, fled the country to escape being brought to trial and forced to name Royal names. The whole thing was quashed quick as you please, the one journalist who dared to write of it being hustled off to jail. Eddy himself was dispatched to India to protect him from further public scandal.

Meanwhile, however, it was also well-known that Queen Victoria was seeking a wife for her erratic grandson. After her advances were rejected by two more promising princesses, she fastened her attention upon the unpromising Princess May, spinster daughter of a penniless aristocratic cousin, who dutifully agreed to marry the Prince in return, it was said, for the settling of the family's debts. The engagement was announced with the usual fanfare. Eddy's parents professed themselves satisfied, and a posed photograph of the Royal couple appeared in the newspapers, May wearing an ironic smile, Eddy gloomy and remote, his expression as stiff as his neatly-waxed mustaches.

All seemed well, or as well as could be expected, since this was an engagement arranged by royal decree. But a mere month before the wedding, at the family home at Sandringham, Eddy had died, suddenly, unexpectedly, inexplicably. His tragic death had transfigured him from the butt of jokes in the press to a romantic hero of Byronic proportions, and he was entombed in the Memorial Chapel at Windsor Castle amidst an outpouring of national sympathy for the bereaved family.

And now, Eddy's sister, in a brisk, matter-of-fact tone that rang with absolute truth, was saying that her dead brother was still alive, and living at Glamis Castle.

“I . . . see,” Kate said quietly. “It was your brother's choice, then? He preferred exile?”

Kate could hear a world of hurt in Toria's deep sigh, and in the words that came very slowly and painfully, as if they were being carved out of her heart. “To tell the truth, Kate, it was difficult to know just what Eddy would have preferred. He was then—is still, unhappily—quite muddled in his mind.”

Muddled in his mind?
“You mean,” Kate asked, concealing her pity, “that he was—is—deranged?”

“Not that, exactly, I don't think,” Toria replied, not looking at her. “Perhaps ‘unbalanced' is a better word, or ‘troubled. ' Eddy's behavior was always erratic and impulsive, and when Grandmama and Papa ordered him to marry May, he seemed to . . . well, to snap. He actually set a fire at Sandringham that nearly destroyed—” She stopped, biting her lip as if she was afraid she had said too much. After a moment, she took a breath and went on, in a steadier voice. “To answer your question, Kate, yes—Eddy chose not to be King. And the time it became clear that something had to be done, the whole family could see that it was impossible for him to ever inherit the throne. He was far too unstable for that.”

“How dreadful for him—for all of you!” Kate exclaimed, thinking that mental instability was difficult enough in an ordinary family. In the Royal Family, whose every member had many public duties to perform, it must be agonizing. And when an heir to the throne was unbalanced—

Toria nodded. “Papa and Motherdear were devastated, of course. Papa tried to persuade Eddy in all the usual ways to do his duty, but nothing succeeded. Perhaps, if Grandmama hadn't been so absolutely dead set on Eddy's marrying May, something might have been worked out. There was even some talk of sending him to an asylum, but that was felt to be too horribly public and embarrassing. In the end, Papa and two or three of his closest advisors conceived the pretended death and carried it all out—with Eddy's consent, of course. Motherdear was aghast at the idea, as were Georgie and I, but we were finally forced to agree that it was the only way out of the dilemma. Grandmama never knew. Like everyone else in the kingdom, she thought Eddy had died.”

Kate felt as if all the dirty Royal laundry of the past decade was being washed right in her lap. “It must have been very difficult for your brother George, who had to take Prince Eddy's place as heir,” she murmured, trying not to show how moved she was by the tragedy of all this. “But especially for poor Prince Eddy.”

“Oh, my dear,
yes
!” Toria exclaimed passionately. “Of course, George has been a brick through it all. But Eddy . . . You know, Kate, all those terrible things the newspapers wrote about him, none of them were true.” She paused. “Well, almost none. Eddy was—he
is
—such a gentle person, but quite naive and malleable. I'm afraid that for most of his growing-up years, he felt like a fraud, as if he was born into royalty but somehow didn't deserve it.”

A fraud,
Kate thought. She could understand why the Prince might have felt that way. Royal birth must have seemed a burden that he was not equipped to carry.

“And he was often misled,” the Princess was going on, “by wicked men who took advantage of his trusting nature and his deafness. I honestly believe that if Eddy could have heard everything that was said to him, he would have been a different person.”

“Deafness?” Kate asked, in surprise. “Like the Queen?”

“Exactly.” Toria's expression was inexpressibly sad. “Another of our family traits, I'm afraid, passed down from Motherdear's side. Poor Eddy. He didn't ask to be born into the Royal Family—none of us did, and it certainly hasn't made any of us very happy.” Her eyes lightened. “But things have turned out for the best, I suppose. Eddy has been content here at Glamis. George is far better suited to public life, and he and May do their duties without a fuss. They even seem, amazingly, to love one another.”

Kate knew that part of the story, anyway, since it was a matter of public record, a romance that had caught the public fancy. After Eddy was dead—or exiled, as it now seemed—Prince George took his older brother's place in the line of succession. Eighteen months later, he also took his brother's place at the altar, and he and May were married. Now the Prince and Princess of Wales, the pair had quickly performed their most important Royal responsibility, producing, to date, three healthy sons and one daughter, thereby ensuring that the succession would continue.
⁵

From the well-filled tray on the table, Kate took a slice of cold jellied ham and a serving of chicken salad garnished with slices of hard-boiled egg and cucumber, neatly contained in a lettuce cup.

“So Prince Eddy has lived privately here at Glamis for the past ten years, then,” she said in a musing tone. She didn't doubt that he could have done so in complete secrecy, given the monumental size and complexity of Glamis Castle. He would require only a few trusted servants to meet his needs, and perhaps occasional visits from his family, to cheer him up and bring him news of the outer world. “I suppose you've come to spend some time with your brother,” she said, “but what has brought my husband here, and all those soldiers on the train?”

The Princess tried to mask her anxiety with a casual tone, but Kate could see the worry in her eyes. “It appears that Eddy—Lord Osborne, as he is known here at Glamis—has disappeared. Angus Duff, the estate manager, wired Whitehall with the news, and Lord Salisbury wired Papa, in Hamburg. Some men from the Household Guard were sent to

search for him, and Papa sent Lord Sheridan, to make sure that the job was done right.” She paused, managing a smile. “And I have come as Papa's emissary, to report back to him personally when Eddy is found.”

“I see,” Kate said, and then looked up. “I'm so sorry, Toria. This must be very difficult for you.”

The Princess looked down at her plate, and something like anguish came into her voice. “I have been afraid for years of something like this, Kate, terribly afraid. Eddy must be found and returned to the castle just as quickly as possible. It would not do for anyone to discover who he is.”

“No,” Kate said softly, understanding the enormous public embarrassment that would be caused by a dead prince who was discovered to be alive and living in exile in Scotland. “It would not do at all.”

Poor Toria,
she thought with a sudden sympathy,
living day to miserable day with the awful fear that her dead brother
might somehow be discovered to be alive, and his death revealed as a fraud and a sham. It would bring down the monarchy.

Toria pulled in her breath, steadying herself. “I'm glad I've told you, Kate. And I'm very glad you're here, because you can help me get to the bottom of this. I am quite sure that dear Eddy, confused as he is, would never have left this place on his own account. He must have been coerced into leaving, or even taken by force. After lunch, I intend to question Angus Duff and the house steward, Simpson. They may be in possession of some facts they don't understand, or they may know something they have not yet revealed.” Her expression darkened, and her voice took on an imperious ring. “But they shall reveal it to me, or we will know the reason why.”