“But expected to find Princess Marina?” He raised an eyebrow. “I suspect it’s more likely that she was killed elsewhere, maybe in a motorcar, and her body was left at Kensington Palace to try to place the blame on the Duke of Kent.”

“Who would do such a disgusting thing?”

He smiled. “You’ve led a sheltered life, my lady. If a man can kill, then besmirching a good name means nothing to him. Especially if he is desperate. It might even be the work of communists or fascists using this as a means to bring down the British monarchy.”

“You said ‘he.’ We are assuming the killer was a man, are we?” I said and noticed his eyebrows rise. He had big bushy brows and the effect was startling. “If Miss Carrington had been knocked out then it wouldn’t have taken much strength to suffocate her.”

“Yes, I suppose we have to consider that a woman could have been capable of killing her, but it would take a strong woman to haul her out of a motorcar and deposit her under the arch.”

There was a silence punctuated only by the ticking of the clock on the wall and the cooing of a pigeon outside the window. Then he cleared his throat. “There is something else that you should know. The doctor states that the young woman had recently been pregnant.”

I stared at him, trying to digest this. “She’d had a baby? When?”

“Within the last three months, the doctor thinks.”

I remembered Belinda saying that she hadn’t seen Bobo at the nightclubs. That would explain it. I swallowed back the desire to say “Golly.”

“Do you know what happened to the child?” I asked. “Was it a live birth, or did she perhaps have an abortion?” It was hard to bring myself to say the word to a strange man.

“The doctor says it was a full-term baby. And no, we have no idea where the child is now.”

“Not at Miss Carrington’s flat in any case?” I said. “I take it you have searched her flat?”

“We’ve made a preliminary search, but no sign of a child there.” He paused, then took a deep breath. “You can see our dilemma, can’t you, Lady Georgiana?” CDI Pelham said.

I nodded. “It would depend on whether the Duke of Kent was the father of the child.”

“Precisely. We need to know whether he was involved with the young woman within the last year, and whether she had told him about the child.”