"I give you my word."
"I am told that violent deaths are not unknown at the Court of Lautenburg-Detmold."
My curiosity reached fever-heat.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"Unfortunately, or rather, fortunately, nothing definite. Still, we can't ignore the fact that two persons stood between Duke Frederick Augustus and the crown."
"But the Grand Duke Rudolph died of sunstroke in the Congo," I said. "It was reported in the press."
"Agreed. That was a natural death all right, but apparently the same cannot be said of the death of Countess von Tepwitz—the present Duke's first wife and the mother of Duke Joachim."
"Do you mean that the Grand Duke was responsible for her death?"
"The Grand Duke Frederick Augustus is a very extraordinary man," continued M. Thierry, "able, well-educated, but a master of dissembling. Is he playing for his own hand? Or for that of the King of Würtemberg, his immediate suzerain? Or, indeed, for the Kaiser? I have studied this question from the point of view of German high politics. It isn't a simple one. Frederick Augustus is a man of ambition, and I don't think he would stop at anything."
"Anyhow," I said, "his calculations have had to take account of the Grand Duchess Aurora. Her consent to marry him was an essential factor."