Prince of Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page B

roared at the Grants, ‘I am looking forward to our rendezvous with you in the North, Lady Dinah. Make sure that husband of yours brings along all his musical instruments to entertain us. Lady K. tells me that he’s a devil on the banjo, too.’
    Cobie had bowed agreement and Dinah had made what she thought were the kind of suitable noises which the Marquise de Cheverney, who had been her social tutor, would have approved of. She did not say, although she thought it, that she would be relieved to be in her own home again, and was not very eager to spend yet another week or so in her sister’s grand mansion with people whose interests she did not share.
    Besides that, not only would she and Cobie be off to Markendale, but nothing was yet resolved between them. She had begun her campaign to win his love, but it seemed mired in the pleasant stalemate which her life had become.
    Not that Cobie knew that there was anything to be resolved. He remained his own equable, charming and kind self. There were times when she almost wished that he would say or do something for which she could reproach him! She sometimes wished that his manners, like the restof him, were less than perfect. It was hard to have nothing to criticise.
    Take this morning, for example. He had eaten, sparely for him, and was now drinking coffee while he read the The Times , having excused himself for doing so, saying that he needed to be au fait with the world’s news before he went off into the City.
    Finally he put the paper down, and said in what she thought of as his deceiving voice, ‘I had hoped that I might spend the day with you today, but I find that I need to go into the City. You will forgive me, my love, I will make it up to you tomorrow.’
    â€˜Of course,’ she said. If he were the perfect husband, then she could be no less than the perfect wife. Something had disturbed him, she knew that, but had no idea how she knew it. Something in the paper. Other people might not be able to see behind the mask he wore, but she was beginning to. She wondered what it could be.
    After he had gone Dinah picked up the newspaper. He had carefully refolded it. She had no idea what she was looking for. She doggedly skimmed through its pages after the fashion which her father had taught her to read documents. It was full of the usual kind of thing. Towards the end there were some discreet headlines about what the popular press were calling ‘The Dockland Vampire Murders’. The Times referred to them so delicately that Dinah could hardly make out what had occurred, other than that this was the second poor child who had been found killed and mutilated either in, or near, the Thames. The police were adjured in no uncertain terms to do their duty and find the murderer. Crime must be seen to be punished.
    It was, she concluded, putting the paper down again, probably something in the financial news, which she was unable to make sense of, that had troubled him. He nevertalked of his money-making activities, either to her or to anyone else. She was quite certain that he had whole areas of life to which no one, including his wife, was privy—other than Mr Van Deusen, that was. And what did that tell her?
    Cobie had read the short account of the child’s murder in The Times with mounting pity and horror. He had no doubt as to who was responsible. Sir Ratcliffe had, like the Grants, been back in London for a week, and doubtless had grown bored with the milk and water life of his social equals.
    He contemplated going to Scotland Yard immediately with what he knew, and the devil take the Prince’s reputation—to say nothing of his own. But what hard evidence could he offer against Heneage? Simply that he had once seen him with Lizzie Steele in a house of ill fame, and that he had helped her to escape from him. His one possible witness, Hoskyns, was dead—and even if he had lived, what would his sole evidence have been worth