open one door after another as he spoke, venting his frustration. “Your father’s right. It’s time for you to grow up and be a man for once in your life, not just some—”
The words caught in Russell’s throat.
The bedroom wasn’t empty. There was someone in the bed.
He hadn’t really expected to find the prince. At best this was just an exercise in futility to cover all the bases. But there he was, in bed, stark naked from all appearances, with a sheet draped over his loins, and sound asleep as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Damn it, Reginald,” he said in the familiar voice of a man who had been a friend for more years than he should have, “how can you just lie there like that? Don’t you know that everyone’s been waiting for you to turn up for the last two days? You didn’t come to the airport, you didn’t come to the gala. You’re supposed to be getting married in two days. How can you be—”
Exasperated, Russell abruptly halted what he felt was a well-deserved tirade. The prince was sleeping through it all, anyway.
With a weary sigh, Russell crossed to the bed and took hold of the prince’s shoulder, shaking it. Reginald was a sounder sleeper than most, especially when he’d been drinking, so Russell shook him again. There was still no response, no indication that the prince was waking up. His expression remained unchanged.
“Sleeping the sleep of the dead?” Russell mocked with no trace of humor. “Because it certainly isn’t the sleep of the just. Well, I don’t care how drunk you are, the king sent me to find you and find you I did, so come on, get up. Get up and get dressed, your father’s waiting. You’ve really done it this time with those ‘wild oats’ of yours and it’s going to take a lot to reverse all the bad press you’ve been getting.”
The prince remained inert.
Russell looked at him. Something wasn’t right.
He could feel it in his bones. Feel it just the way he had when he had been away at school and had suddenly sensed that his father had fallen ill. That his father needed him. He had no idea how he’d known, he just had. He’d come home just in time to be at his side when his father had died.
A gut feeling had prompted him then. And now he was experiencing another one.
Russell dropped down to one knee beside the bed, staring at the prince. “Reginald?”
The prince’s hand felt cold when he took it. The sensation registered the very same moment that he realized the prince’s chest wasn’t moving. Reginald wasn’t breathing.
Adrenaline raced through his veins as Russell tried to find a pulse. There was none. As he looked more closely at the prince, he had the sickening feeling that there hadn’t been a pulse for at least several hours. Perhaps even a day. The body was not stiff, but rigor mortis was a condition that came and then receded.
He needed an expert. He needed help.
“Oh, God,” Russell groaned under his breath. Rising to his feet, he took out his cell phone and quickly called the royal physician. The number was on his speed dial. The man had been summoned on a fairly regular basis for more than a decade, always to see to the prince after a lengthy spate of debauchery.
“What’s the matter?” There was a hint of irritation in the doctor’s voice once Russell had identified himself. “Is he hungover again?”
Russell glanced over his shoulder at the still form. “I’m afraid he’s much more than that, Doctor.” Rather than ask the doctor to come, he told the man what was wrong. “The prince is dead.”
“Dead?” the doctor echoed in a hushed voice throbbing with disbelief. Everyone associated with Reginald had come to believe that he had a charmed life. “How did it happen?”
Russell leaned over the body. There were no telltale marks to identify the cause.
“I have no idea. He wasn’t shot or stabbed and doesn’t look to have been strangled. Everything is neat and as far as I can tell, in its place. There’s no evidence of any kind of a struggle.” These days, with the preponderance of television crime programs that came to them thanks to the Americans, everyone was an armchair crime-scene investigator, Russell thought, and that included him.
“We’re going to need an autopsy.” He heard rustling on the other end. The doctor was preparing to leave. “Does the king know?”
“Not yet.” There was a reason why he had delayed that call. He was afraid of what the shock of Reginald’s death might do to the king. “I wanted to give you some time to reach him before I called. He’s probably going to need to be sedated.”
The doctor’s tone indicated that he was not so sure. “Don’t underestimate the old man. He’s a lot tougher than you think.”
“Even tough men have been known to fall apart and he hasn’t been looking too good lately,” Russell said quietly. “How long will it take you to get to the palace?”
The doctor didn’t need any time to consider. He’d made the trip often enough, both from his home and from his office. “Fifteen minutes.”
“All right. I’ll wait fifteen minutes, then,” Russell replied. “Once you see to the king, I need you to come here.”
“Of course,” the man agreed. “And here would be—?”
“The prince’s country estate.”
“I’m on my way,” the doctor promised.
His eyes never leaving the prince’s body, Russell slowly closed his cell phone and slipped it back into his pocket. A shaft of guilt pierced him. God help him, but his first thought was that Amelia wasn’t going to have to go through with the wedding.
He couldn’t think about that now.
There was a brocade armchair in the corner of the room beside the window. Russell dragged it over next to the bed and then lowered himself into it, his eyes never leaving Reginald’s body.
What a waste. What a terrible waste.
He thought for a moment of dressing the prince, of giving him a dignity in death that Reginald had turned his back on while he’d been alive. But he knew better than to tamper with anything. Although there were indications that the prince might just have finally taken the wrong combination of alcohol and drugs, this might still be considered a crime scene. It was bad enough that he had touched first Reginald’s shoulder and then the pulse at both the prince’s throat and his wrist. He didn’t want to compromise the scene any further.
Russell folded his hands in his lap and proceeded to wait for the longest fifteen minutes of his life. The minute hand on the ancient timepiece his grandfather had given him dragged by like a snail dipped in molasses working its way along a rough surface. It seemed almost frozen in place each time he looked at it.
Fifteen minutes took forever. But finally, the minute hand touched the sixteenth stroke. Russell flipped his cell phone open once again and called the palace.
It took several more minutes for someone find the king. He’d initially met with resistance when he refused to divulge the reason behind his call, saying only that the king was expecting it.
