Blood Royal (37 page)

“Through his actions, the prince flaunted in the bride’s face that he had not married her out of love, but out of duty. And that, like some Oriental potentate with a new woman in his harem, she would have no voice in the marriage.”

She could feel Trent’s discomfort beside her. He stared straight ahead, his features blank. She sneaked a glance up at the princess. Her head was down, her cheeks streaked with tears.

Marlowe felt empathy and fear for her. For a moment, she lost her place in her thoughts and had to fumble through her papers to get back on track.

She forced herself back into eye contact with the jury.

“We have to keep in mind the nature of the man she was dealing with … a man of unparalleled power and privilege … a man who spent his entire life surrounded by servants and cronies … who had never bought a pair of socks or walked down a public street without creating a national sensation.

“And in truth, a man with a great sense of duty to his country … but little to his young bride.

“In his own mind, he had taken a girl literally off the street and made her a royal princess.

“In his mind, she was to be eternally grateful to him for what he did for her.

“He had spent his entire life being bowed to. He had no understanding of his duty to his emotional young bride because the only duty he ever had was to perpetuate the royal image.

“He didn’t understand what he was doing to the young woman. And he didn’t care because
he never appreciated the fact that she loved him.
He was used to being loved and admired. The fact that another impressionable young girl was doe-eyed when she looked at him was not important. To him, she was just another object in the royal possessions.

“But it should have been important. She is a caring, loving, and passionate young woman, who needs to love and be loved.

“Less than five months after the honeymoon of the century, this passionate young woman threw herself down stairs at a time when she was pregnant.

“My God!”
Marlowe shook her head and stared at the jurors. “It was a shocking, unimaginable act of desperation … by a tormented woman who could no longer live a lie … an act of self-abuse, yet an abuse that was guided by an unfaithful husband who had humiliated her and deceived her until she had lost her sense of
self.

“The world hailed her, worshipped her, as the fairy-tale princess. But in her husband’s cold palace, she was treated as little more than a valuable piece of furniture, a breeding animal of great value, but not someone deserving of respect.

“She knew her life had become a fraud. She knew she had been tricked into a marriage, trapped into a royal marriage, that left her a prisoner in a gilt cage. Her husband could do what he liked, enjoying his hunting and fishing, his polo and his brandy with his hangers-on and his girlfriend.

“But she had been cheated out of true love, out of a marriage made in heaven. She had saved herself for a man who took her in bed only to create an heir for his kingdom.

“She began to crumble under the pressures of the public demands on her and the pretension of the lies she had to live.

“As she began to unravel emotionally, instead of giving her understanding and psychological support, he belittled her, humiliated her, isolating her from her friends and surrounding her with his hanger-ons, his cronies, restricting her access even to the staff, and ultimately even turning the staff against her by leaving the impression there was no cause for her behavior other than her own neurosis.

“She was never encouraged to seek treatment for her bulimia, pregnancy blues, and postnatal depression. Instead, she was criticized and discouraged.

“And then another factor came into the equation, an unexpected one: jealousy on the prince’s part. Even if her husband didn’t love her, the world fell in love with the Princess of Wales. The public adored her. Everywhere the couple went, the crowds ignored him and shouted for her. The public recognized something in her, she had
charisma
that ignited adulation.

“A prince who had spent his entire life being the center of attention and exaltation, suddenly found that he was taking the backseat in the public eye to the young woman he treated in private with little more than contempt.

“He responded to the reaction of the crowds to her by increasing his criticism of her, repeatedly showing his disapproval of the way she walked, talked, and dressed. Nothing about her pleased him. She couldn’t even faint from exhaustion in a manner to please him.

“The anger and criticisms, the humiliations and degradation, ate at her. And she began to abuse herself.
Physically.
She alternately binged and starved herself, spiraling down emotionally and physically as bulimia and anorexia ravaged her body.

“But the originator of that physical abuse was not herself, but her husband. It was her hands, but he drove her to it by tormenting her, crushing her spirit under his heel, exploiting her weaknesses.

“As she grew more emotional, crying out for help, he became more critical, colder, and more distant.

“When she was crumbling under the pressure, he pushed her over the edge.

“He abused his power in vicious and insidious ways.

“He betrayed her love.”

She paused and pretended to shuffle her papers as she fought back tears. She got control of herself and turned back to the jury.

“Finally, he delivered a blow that put her into a heat of passion, a heat of anger and frustration so powerful, she lost her own will and ability to control her rage.

“Operating under the years of provocation, overwhelmed by a rage that erupted as he committed one final act of humiliation, one last act of torment, she lashed out.

“The physical and mental abuse that she had suffered for years in their relationship came full circle.

“She picked up a gun and used it to stop the abuse.”

She paused and once again looked at each juror in turn, connecting with each momentarily, making a bond with them.

“Most of the women alive today were raised in a man’s world, a world dominated by and governed by men. During the course of this trial you will learn that much of your deliberation will center around whether the princess acted
reasonably.

“During the course of the trial you will hear about how a
reasonable
man would have acted in her shoes. Now, the law tries to accommodate women by stating that what the law really means is how a reasonable person, male or female, would have acted. But we will prove that the psychological and legal rules that the prosecution attempts to have you judge the princess by were rules
made by and intended for men.
”

Desai stood up. “My lord, Miss James is arguing her case rather than simply opening it.”

“Quite so. I assume you have finished your opening?” the judge asked Marlowe. She nodded. “Then we will recess until tomorrow, when you will call your first witness.”

“Thank you, milord.” She smiled to herself as she gathered up her papers. She had wanted just once to have used the phrase.

Her first witness would be the armorer. She also had to have other witnesses standing by. She needed to meet with her main psychiatric expert. The psychiatrist was going to explain Marlowe’s theory that a woman cannot be judged the same way men are judged when it comes to reacting to provocation, that just as women react to sexual stimuli differently than men, they are less likely to suddenly blow and commit an act of violence. Instead, the arousal to violence of a “reasonable woman” was a slow buildup rather than an abrupt snap. She also needed to run by the psychiatrist the princess’s story about obtaining the gun for a suicide attempt. There might be a way the story could be made credible with expert testimony.

She followed Philip Hall out of the courtroom, hurrying a little to try and catch him in the hallway. He usually walked out with her to run interference with the mob of reporters waiting outside the building, but this time he had disappeared by the time she came out of the courtroom. She assumed that they would have lunch together and discuss the case.

When she came to the front doors of the building, Trent was facing a mob of newspeople. He turned to her as she approached.

With a blank face and great solemnity, he handed her a small envelope.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“An instruction from the princess. She has fired you.”

Dutton made peace with Cohn the Barbarian and showed up at the
Burn
office to get Hacker to conduct an electronic search. He chose a time when Cohn was out so he’d avoid having the editor looking over his shoulder.

“We won’t find anything under his own name,” he told Hacker. “Start with the Royal Protection Service. Can you get into their accounting records? Good. The Royals are all in town, so look for an expense out of town, gas receipts, train fare, hotels, pubs, anything that would indicate there are officers on an assignment outside London, maybe even across the Channel.”

He decided to concentrate on outside the city for two reasons—the expenses incurred inside the city would be too numerous to provide any meaning, and it seemed logical that Howler would have made a run for it, maybe even across the Channel to continental countries.

It didn’t take long for Hacker to make a hit. “York mean anything?”

“What about York?”

“Quite a bit, actually. Authorizations for car, train, inn, pub food.”

“Any agents named?”

Hacker scrolled down through a list. “Four agents: McKinzie, Miller, Grindstaff—”

“Grindstaff! That’s it.”

“There’s four altogether. The other’s Tucker.”

“That has to be it. Unless they’re holding a bleedin’ convention, there’s no reason for four, and Grindstaff tops it off. What else is there?”

“From the dates on the expenses, I’d say they all lead to a village in the West Yorkshire area, more or less northwest of the city of York. They have expenses authorized there until further notice.”

“What’s the name of the inn?”

“They’re staying at a pub that rents rooms, the Fallen Sparrow.”

“Give me a minute.”

Dutton called information and got the inn’s number and placed a call to it. “This is the
Sunday Travel News,
” he told the clerk who answered. He went on to explain that the Sunday supplement travel guide wanted to do a story about the pub and the region. “Are there any notable noble manor houses, royal palaces, castles, that sort of thing nearby?”

There were none. But the clerk told him that there was a rather prestigious medical facility.

“Bingo,” Dutton told Hacker. “There’s a mental hospital close by. Howler’s a genuine nutcase and he has a serious drug problem. They couldn’t just grab him and hold him anywhere, he’d go into shock if he didn’t get medications to take the place of the drugs. I can’t just call up and ask them if he’s there. Any chance you can tap into their system?”

“Not much, not unless the hospital is part of a larger organization or they hire out their accounting. If it is, they’d likely be online for their accounting services. Medical billing is a paperwork nightmare—many facilities send it out to accounting jobbers who specialize in paperwork required by insurance companies and the government.”

“How long will it take you to find out if they’re online?”

“Minutes. You know how many times I’ve been asked to check a mental facility to find out whether a VIP, a spouse, child, or girlfriend is in for a cure? Abortions and STDs are other treatments Cohn has me frequently check for.”

Hacker slowly laid out the information for Dutton. “By coordinating the date the RPS officers checked into the inn with the patient admissions into the facility, I came up with one man who fits your profile, right down to sex, diagnosis, and date of birth. One John Smith.”

“These coppers are original thinkers, aren’t they? Mr. Smith has been admitted for what?”

“Substance abuse. And his security rating requires twenty-four/seven lockdown.”

Dutton was so elated, he almost hopped up and down.

“What’s with this Howler character?” Hacker asked. “Cohn will ask me the minute you’re out of here.”

“He’s the prime minister’s lover,” Dutton said.

“No bleedin’ way. What a story. Watch yourself, Cohn will steal it.”

“I’ve got a lock on it,” Dutton said. “I’ve got pictures of unnatural acts
in flagrante delicto.
One more thing: Does the Royal Protection group keep a copy of their officers’ photo IDs in their computer system?”

“Probably.”

“See if you can print one out for me, make it a handsome devil, about my age, hair color.”

Hacker gave him a look. “I’ll see if I can find one as homely-looking as you.”

He got out of the
Burn
offices before Cohn found him and made a demand for the fictitious pictures of sex and the prime minister.

Marlowe sat in her room and sobbed as she poured herself another apple martini and watched herself on TV. She had ordered up a pitcher of the apple-flavored booze to drown her sorrows in. She sobbed because the TV cameras had caught her looking utterly shocked and dumbfounded when Trent handed her the note and told her the princess had fired her. Actually, the note didn’t use that ugly word,
fired,
or even the more ominous-sounding
terminated.
Rather, it stated in polite but firm terms that her services were no longer needed on behalf of the princess, expressed great gratitude for her “outstanding services,” and assured her that all monies promised would be faithfully tendered.

But the saccharine coating didn’t diminish the fact that she had been canned, sacked, dumped, and given the boot.

“Fuck you!” Marlowe threw the remote at the TV. Her aim was too good—it hit the screen with a crack, there was a flash of light, and the TV went dark.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Watching the TV had been company, even if it depressed her. Now she had to drink alone. It wasn’t the first time she had been fired by a client. Clients came in all shapes and mental states, sometimes they were just too crazy to deal with. But her previous firings had all occurred during mutual recriminations with raised voices. This was the first time she was fired by a client with whom she’d thought she was working well—and the firing was broadcast around the world.