“Dead!” exclaimed Minister Falow furiously. “How?”
“Poison, Minister,” replied Balhern, forcing himself to remain calm while fury and shame raged inside him. ”Not just him but all the prisoners. Minister, I have failed you again. I have failed you twice. I hereby submit myself for...”
“Oh shut up!” replied the Minister for Internal Security. “Our enemies surround us and are closing in. This is not the time for me to discard my best people. You will remain as head of the palace guard and you will use your anger to find the traitor.”
“Yes, Minister. Minister, the fact that all the prisoners were killed tells us something important. None of the guards did it. They all had access to Pettiwell. Any of them could have killed just him.”
“So who did do it?” demanded Falow. “I want a list of everyone who's been to see him since he was brought here.”
“Everyone’s been to see him. Pretty much everyone in the palace. Minister, this wasn’t done by someone visiting him in person.”
Minister Falow nodded his reluctant agreement. “Who had access to the food the prisoners were given?”
“Also a long list, Minister. The food prepared for the King and the other members of the royal family is carefully watched. Only carefully selected people are allowed to take part in its preparation and delivery. Food for the prisoners, though, less so.”
“There is a traitor in the palace, Balhern. Someone in the pay of Carrow.”
“With respect, Minister, we already knew that. The attack on the Princess...”
“I want him caught, Balhern. Find the traitor, before he or she strikes again. You are responsible for security in this palace. Find him.” The Minister then spun on his heel and marched out of the room, a black cloud of fury hovering around him.
Balhern stood there for several minutes while he allowed the Minister’s fury, and his own, to boil within him. He had been humiliated twice. He had failed the King twice. There would not be a third time. He felt the traitor’s actions to be a personal insult against him, and that insult would be answered and avenged. He would catch the traitor, or traitors, if it was the last thing he did.
The possibility that there might be more than one traitor haunted him. Surely he couldn’t be so incompetent as to allow more than one fox into his henhouse. Of course, it was possible that the traitor had been in the palace for many years, that the mistake was not his but that of his predecessor...
He shut off that train of thought with a snarl of self contempt. It would be so easy to blame others, but he was the current captain of the palace guard. The responsibility was his, both for the hiring of new staff and the scrutiny of veteran staff members, even those whose families had been serving the King for generations. Nobody was beyond suspicion. Not even his own men. Killing all the prisoners might have been a deliberate distraction to draw suspicion away from the guards, who could have slipped a knife between his ribs any time they wanted. Yes, he realised, a sour taste rising in his throat. Any of his men could have done it. Anyone except Thurley, of course, who'd been down with a throat infection for the past few days...
He paused as a memory came to him. It had been Thurley who had originally pointed the finger at Pettiwell, claiming to have heard incriminating gossip in the tavern he frequented when off duty. Councidence? He thought further. Pettiwell had been arrested by the city guard on suspicion of burgling the Besswell house. He'd been seen flashing money around town, money that he couldn’t explain having. There was no concrete evidence to link him to the Besswell burglary, though. The idea that he was a traitor, that his money was payment for helping attack the Princess, had been, and still was, entirely plausible. If that was so, he had been killed to prevent him from naming his co-conspirators. In the cells of the city watch, though, he had been out of reach. His murderer would have had to arrange for his transfer to a place where he could get at him. And it had been Thurley who had accomplished this...
But Thurley had been down with a throat infection, or so he had claimed. If he was the traitor, why not just stay on duty and wait for his chance to kill him? Could it be because Pettiwell would have recognised him? If so, and if Pettiwell realised Thurley was going to kill him, all be would have had to do was shout “Thurley is a traitor!” as loudly as he could before he died. Killing a man instantly was difficult. Unless you arranged things very carefully, there was always a chance for the victim to shout out a few final incriminating words and there were all the other prisoners in neighbouring cells, separated only by iron bars. Watching, listening... Maybe Thurley had just decided that it was too risky, and that poison was the only answer.
Thurley would have needed access to the kitchens, in order to poison the prisoners’ food. If he’d been seen there though, his claim to having a throat infection would have been blown. He stiffened as his thoughts reached their conclusion. There would have to have been a second traitor, one who had access to the kitchens. If his suspicions regarding Thurley were correct, that is, and he had to admit that his suspicions were based on pure speculation. Even if he was wrong about the guard, though, the fact that this chain of suspicion pointed to him left him no choice. He turned and marched out of the room, towards the palace guard house.
There were three off duty guards there, playing cards on the small wooden table. “You three, with me,” he snapped. Then he left, knowing without having to look that they would be scrambling for their weapons and hurrying after him. He stopped by the palace records office to look up Thurley’s home address, then led the men out of the palace and to the stables where they hitched up a pair of horses to the jail wagon.
“We're going to arrest Thurley?” said one of the guards in disbelief. “He's one of the longest serving of us all.”
“He’s got the Medal of Valour,” pointed out another.
Balhern ignored them both and climbed into the driver’s seat while the men took their places on the back seats. Balhern then drove the wagon out of the palace yard, past the guards on duty at the gates and out into the streets of the city.
Life in the city had returned more or less to normal since the Brigadier had left. The people had had time to process the news of what had happened to the Princess. They were still outraged, but they couldn't stand around wailing in grief and horror for ever. They had lives to get on with. Hundreds of pink ribbons were hung around trees and sign posts, though. All signifying support for the Princess. Balhern’s heart warmed at the sight of them.
The people of other countries couldn’t understand the genuine love that the people of Helberion had for their royal family. The rulers of most countries ruled harshly and cynically, with little concern for the lives of the common people. When a royal house was overthrown by a rival family, the people of those countries would scarcely notice, and would only really care if it meant taxes going up. King Leothan truly cared for his people, though, as had his father and grandfather before him. They had proved this time and again over the past half century, and the people loved them for it. When the Princess had been attacked, therefore, everyone in the country felt the shock personally, as if she were a member of their own family. Balhern wondered whether the traitors had any idea what a keg of gunpowder they had set alight when they'd attacked the royal family, and what would happen to them when they were caught.
Thurley lived alone in a nondescript house in New Bridge Street and Balhern stopped the wagon fifty yards up the road, so as not to alert him. “Mastell, Bowen, go round the back of the house,” he said. “Stop him if he tries to run. Upon no account is he to be killed, though. Understood?”
“Because he's probably innocent of any wrongdoing and we don't want to lose a loyal and valuable colleague?” said Bowen carefully.
“Yes, of course,” replied the Captain. “Now go and do it. Make sure you’re not seen from the house.”
The two guards glanced uncertainty at each other, then slipped between two houses to reach the almost weed choked alleyway that ran between the houses lining New Bridge Street and the backs of the houses lining the next street along. Balhern gave them five minutes to get into position, then drove the wagon to the front of the house, pulling up beside the front door.
There were grimy half raised animals kicking a leather ball around in the street and Balhern chased them away in case there was a gunfight. He saw curtains twitching as the occupants of neighbouring houses looked to see what was going on, and the Captain marched swiftly up to Thurley’s front door before the suspected traitor also saw them and prepared his defence. Balhern gave the door a solid kick and it crashed open with a spray of wooden splinters to bang loudly against the inside wall.
“Palace guard!” he shouted as he and Private Virgil rushed in, pistols in their hands. “You're under arrest. Give yourself up.” From the back of the house he heard another crash as Privates Mastell and Bowen entered through the back door. Virgil stayed by the door as Balhern went further in, and at the back the Captain knew that another of his men was remaining at the back door while the other entered the house. Every palace guardsmen had started out as a member of the city guard and was trained in how to search a house without letting the suspects escape. That training remained with them even after several years of a completely different kind of service in the palace.
The training turned out to be unnecessary, though. The house was empty, everything neat and tidy as if Thurley had had time to clean up after himself and then gone off on holiday. Balhern and Bowen ended up at the base of the stairs after having checked the entire ground floor. They both looked up the stairs, searching for possible traps and ambushes, and then Balhern went up first, Bowen close behind. The house had been built for a whole family and two of the three bedrooms were empty, without even carpets to cover the bare floorboards. The third contained a neatly made bed and a wardrobe containing all three of Thurley’s palace guard uniforms, as well as several sets of civilian clothes. There were a few ornaments but no money or valuables. Thurley was gone.
They questioned the neighbours and learned that he had last been seen early the previous morning. He had set out from the house in a smart set of civilian clothes and carrying a small case. He had flagged down a cab, which had taken him eastwards, towards the edge of the city.
“That was just after Pettiwell was taken to the palace,” said Virgil.
“Yes,” said Balhern through gritted teeth. “He'll have taken a carriage back to Carrow, We'll check their records see if someone of his description took a carriage east, but I'm in no doubt. Thurley was a traitor. His job was to get Pettiwell away from the city guard, to where his accomplice could kill him.”
“His accomplice?”
“Yes,” replied the Captain. “There’s still a traitor in the palace.”