Dangerous to Know lem-5

by Tasha Alexander

  “I shall have to content myself with that. Your mother is a force nearly as unmovable as my own.”

  “Give her time, my dear, she’ll come around. As I was the only bachelor brother, she’s come to depend on me since my father died.”

  “I don’t want that to stop,” I said. “She should be able to depend on you.”

  “And she will, but she’ll have to get accustomed to sharing me. She’s used to having me all to herself much of the time. I admit I thought she’d adjust more readily and am sorry her reaction to you has caused you grief.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “Come, though. If we don’t head down now, we’ll be late, and that will only serve to put her off me all the more.”

  He took me by the hand and led me to greet his mother’s guests. The oldest parts of her house dated from the fourteenth century. Built in traditional style, the low ceilings and beam construction on the ground floor made for cozier surroundings than those to which I was accustomed. The space was warm and welcoming. Long rows of leaded glass windows lined the walls, letting in the bright summer sun. The surrounding gardens were spectacular, bursting with blooms in myriad colors, and enormous pink, purple, and blue hydrangea popped against the estate’s velvety green lawns.

  Halfway down the narrow, wooden staircase, Colin stopped and gave me a kiss. “I suppose it is for the best that you decided not to take dinner upstairs,” he said. “As I do have a surprise for you. Coming, I think you’ll agree, at a most opportune time. She’s likely not only to cheer you immensely, but also to terrorize my mother into accepting you.”

  “Cécile!”

  “Mais oui,” he said.

  I’d met Cécile du Lac in Paris, where I’d traveled while in the last stages of mourning for my first husband. An iconoclast of the highest level, she was a patron of the arts who’d embraced Impressionism when the critics wouldn’t. She’d had a series of extremely discreet lovers, including Gustav Klimt, whom she’d met when we were in Vienna together the previous winter, and considered champagne the only acceptable libation. Although she was nearer my mother’s age than my own, we’d become the closest of friends almost at once, brought together by the bond of common experience. Like mine, her husband had died soon after the wedding, and like me, she had not been devastated to find herself a young widow. Of all my acquaintances, she alone understood what it was to spend years pretending to mourn someone. And even when our histories diverged, it did not drive a wedge between us. When, at last, I came to see Philip’s true character, and found my grief genuine, she accepted that as well, even if it was due to empathy rather than sympathy.

  Had Colin not informed me of her arrival in Normandy, I would have guessed in short order, as the yipping barks of her two tiny dogs, Brutus and Caesar, greeted us at the bottom of the stairs. Cécile patently refused to travel without them. I rushed down—realizing full well the hem of my dress was about to be the victim of a brutal attack—and reached for my friend.

  “Chérie!” She embraced me and kissed my cheeks three times. “It is unconscionable that you have made me miss you so much and for so long. Paris has been crying for your return.”

  “I’m beyond delighted to see you,” I said, squeezing her hand and then tugging at my skirt in a vain attempt to remove the two sets of teeth bent on destroying it.

  “They are terrible creatures, are they not?” She picked them up, one in each hand, and scolded them, Caesar, as always, receiving the lighter end of her wrath. Cécile viewed preferential treatment of his namesake the only justice she could give the murdered emperor. “Ah, Monsieur Hargreaves, is it possible you have become even more handsome?” She returned the dogs to the floor so Colin could kiss her hand while she glowed over him.

  “Highly unlikely, madame,” he said. “Unless you can see your own beauty reflected in my face.”

  She sighed. “Such a delicious man. I should have never encouraged Kallista to marry you without first trying to catch you for myself.” Soon after we’d met, Cécile had adopted the nickname bestowed on me by my first husband, making her the only person who’d called me Kallista to my face. Philip had used it only in his journals, and I’d not known of the endearment until after his death.

  “You flatter me,” he said. “But truly, your timing could not be more flawless. I can’t think when we’ve needed you more.”

  “I’ve been waiting for the invitation.” We had not seen Cécile since our arrival in France. When the Orient Express dropped us in Paris, my health was not so good as it was now, and I’d been in too much pain for even a short stay at her house on the Rue Saint Germain. “You are pale, Kallista, but that’s to be expected after what Madame Hargreaves tells me you’ve seen today.”

  My mother-in-law entered the corridor, a bemused look on her face. “Are you planning to stand out here all night? Do come sit, Madame du Lac,” she said. “I’m longing to improve our acquaintance.” She looped her arm through Cécile’s and led her into a large sitting room, where the rest of the party waited for us. The furniture reminded me of that in Colin’s house in Park Lane—functional yet comfortable, elegant in its simplicity. The silk upholstery on slim chairs and a wide settee was the darkest forest green, blending beautifully with the walnut wood of the pieces.

  Mrs. Hargreaves made brief introductions—her neighbors, the Markhams, a handsome couple, had already arrived—and dove into eager conversation with Cécile. As they were of an age, it did not surprise me to see them quickly find common ground. I hoped their new friendship might distract her from criticizing me. Colin pressed a glass of champagne into my hand then crossed the room to bring one to Cécile and his mother. I took a sip, but could hardly taste it, still feeling more than a little disjointed, off-balance, after the events of the day. Mr. Markham came to my side.

  “Do you find this all quite nonsensical?” He was English, but looked like a Viking—broad shoulders, blond hair, pale blue eyes. “Someone was murdered today and we’re all to stand about acting as if nothing’s happened? Drinking champagne?”

  “It’s beyond astonishing,” I said, relieved to have the subject addressed directly.

  “And you’re the one who stumbled upon the body, aren’t you?” he asked. “Forgive me. Have I made you uncomfortable? I’ve a terrible habit of being too blunt.”

  “There’s no need to apologize. Nothing you could say now would make the experience worse.” My stomach churned as I remembered the brutal scene.

  “What are the bloody police doing?” he asked. “Will the inveterate Inspector Gaudet be joining us for dinner? Will he regale us with tales of his investigation?”

  “George, are you tormenting this poor woman?” His wife, slender and rosy, appeared at his side and laid a graceful hand on his arm. He beamed down at her.

  “You are unkind, my darling,” he said. “I wouldn’t dream of tormenting anyone, let alone such a beauty. Lady Emily and I were merely discussing the way everyone is avoiding the topic much on all our minds.”

  “I can’t imagine the tumult of emotions throttling you at the moment,” she said. Her English was flawless, but made exotic by her thick French accent. “But I must admit I’m desperate to ask you all sorts of completely inappropriate questions.”

  “I shan’t allow that,” her husband said. “You, Madeline, don’t need any fuel for bad dreams.”

  “He’s beyond protective.” She beamed up at him. “But so handsome I’m likely to forgive him anything.”

  “She requires protection,” he said. “Anyone would, living where we do.”

  “Are you afraid the murderer will strike in the neighborhood again?” I asked.

  “No, one murder does not make me believe the area’s entirely dangerous—not, mind you, because I have any faith in Gaudet’s bound-to-be-infamous manhunt. Protection is necessary because the condition of the château in which we live would give Morpheus himself nightmares. Half the time I expect to wake up in the moat and find the entire building collapsed. The one
remaining tower has grown so rickety I’m afraid we’ll have to tear it down—it’s unsafe.”

  “My love, it’s not all that bad,” she said. “Structurally you have nothing to fear. Aside from the tower, that is. But that hardly matters. What concerns me is our recent visitor.”

  “Visitor?” I asked.

  “Intruder, more like. We’ve received a rather unusual gift,” he said. “A painting.”

  “And how is that unusual, Mr. Markham? Are you known to despise art?”

  “Quite the contrary,” he said. “And you must call me George. There’s no use in adopting airs of formality this far in the middle of the country. We’re all stuck together and may as well declare ourselves fast friends at once.”

  “A lovely sentiment,” I said. “Do please call me Emily. But why do you disparage Normandy? I can’t remember when I’ve been to such a charming place.”

  “It is too far from civilization,” he said.

  “Which is why, perhaps, a kind friend thinks you need art brought to you,” I said. “After all, there are no galleries nearby.” This drew laughter from them both, and their happiness was unexpectedly contagious.

  “What makes it strange, though, is that it was more like a theft than a gift,” Madeline said.

  “A reverse theft,” her husband corrected.

  “How so?” I asked, intrigued.

  “The painting was delivered in the middle of the night and its bearer left evidence of neither his entry nor exit. He set it on an easel—which he’d also brought—in the middle of a sitting room.”

  “With a note,” Madeline continued. “That read: ‘This should belong to someone who will adequately appreciate it.’”

  “And this, you see, is why I have no confidence in Gaudet,” George said. “He’s been utterly useless in getting to the bottom of the matter.”

  “What sort of painting is it?” I asked.

  “A building, some cathedral. Signed by Monet.”

  “And what has the industrious inspector done on your behalf?”

  “He questioned my servants, none of whom could afford to buy a pencil sketch from a schoolgirl, after which he declared himself sympathetic to my lack of enthusiasm for the canvas.”

  “You do not like Impressionism?”

  “No, Gaudet is simply incapable of reading a chap correctly. I adore Impressionism,” he said. “We have seventeen works in that style. I bought two of Monet’s haystack series last year.”

  “So the thief knows your taste?” I asked.

  “Evidently.”

  “We’ve no objection to the painting,” Madeline said. “But how am I to sleep when an intruder has made such easy entry into our home?”

  “You’ve every right to be unsettled,” I said. “What is the inspector’s plan?”

  “He’s concluded that there’s no harm done and no point in looking for the culprit.”

  “Madame du Lac is great friends with Monet. She could perhaps find out from him who previously owned the work. You may find you’ve been the victim of nothing more than a practical joke at the hands of well-meaning friends.” We called her over at once and relayed the story to her.

  “Mon dieu!” she said. “I know this painting well. It was stolen from Monet’s studio at Giverny not three days ago—he wired to tell me as soon as it happened. He’d only just finished with the canvas. The paint was barely dry and the police have no leads.”

  I would not have believed, a quarter of an hour ago, that anything could have distracted me from the memory of the brutalized body beneath the tree, but suddenly my mind was racing. “Was there anything else in the note?” I asked.

  “Some odd letters,” Madeline said. “They made no sense.”

  “It was Greek, my darling. But I didn’t pay enough attention in school to be able to read it.”

  My heartbeat quickened with a combination of anxiety and unworthy delight. It could only be Sebastian.

  “Your imagination is running away with you entirely,” Colin said as he untied his cravat and pulled it from his starched collar. The Markhams hadn’t stayed late, and Colin and I had retired to our room soon after their departure, while his mother and Cécile opened another bottle of champagne. “Although that’s not a bad thing in the current circumstances.”

  “How can you not see something so obvious?” I asked, brushing my hair, a nightly ritual in which I’d found much comfort from the time I was a little girl. “This screams Sebastian!”

  The previous year, during the season, an infamous and clever burglar who called himself Sebastian Capet had plagued London and never been caught by the police. He moved in and out of house after house in search of a most specific bounty: objects previously owned by Marie Antoinette. When he broke into my former home in Berkeley Square, he liberated from Cécile’s jewelry case a pair of diamond earrings worn by the ill-fated queen when she was arrested during the revolution. But he left untouched Cécile’s hoard of even more valuable pieces. The following morning I had received a note, written in Greek, from the thief. Later, swathed in the robes of a Bedouin, the devious man imposed upon me at a fancy dress ball to confess he’d been taken with me from the moment he climbed in my window and saw me asleep with a copy of Homer’s Odyssey in my hand. Correctly determining that I was studying Greek (the volume I held was not an English translation), he had delivered to me, over the following weeks, a series of romantic notes written in the ancient language.

  “Capet is not the only person in Europe capable of quoting Greek,” Colin said.

  “Of course not,” I said. “But you must agree the manner of the theft sounds just like him. Stealing a painting to give it to someone who would appreciate it?” I slipped a lacy dressing gown over my shoulders and pulled it close.

  “How does that bear any similarity to a man who was obsessed with owning things that belonged to Marie Antoinette?”

  “It’s the spirit of it! They both reveal…” I paused, looking for the right word. “There’s a sense of humor there, a clever focus.”

  “Heaven help me. You’re taken with another burglar.” He splashed water on his face and scrubbed it clean.

  “There is no other burglar. I recognize Sebastian’s tone.”

  “And you remain on a first-name basis with the charming man. Admit it—for you, my dear, there will never be another burglar.”

  “You’re jealous!” I said.

  “Hardly,” Colin said. “In fact, I don’t object in the least to you investigating the matter further. It might prove an excellent distraction.”

  “Did you really have the impression that Inspector Gaudet is competent?”

  “He seemed perfectly adequate.” He drew his eyebrows together. “Has he done something to lose your confidence?”

  “George wasn’t pleased with the way he handled the issue of their intruder.”

  “Which is why I suggest you spend as much time as you’d like investigating the matter,” he said.

  “And the murdered girl?”

  “Sadly, Emily, she is none of our concern.”

  5 July 1892

  I’m trying my best to tolerate my son’s child bride, but the effort would be taxing for a woman of twice my stamina. I realize she’s not so young as I imply, but youth, I’ve always believed, is less about age than experience, and this unfortunate girl has a dearth of it. She’s been sadly sheltered for most of her years and perhaps it is unfair of me to expect—or hope for—more from her. Still, given the way Colin had spoken of her, I’d imagined another sort of lady entirely. I thought he’d be bringing me someone who might prove an interesting sort of companion. Instead, I should perhaps have paid more attention to what her first husband fixated on: her appearance. There may be a reason he went no deeper.

  She, of course, views things differently altogether, and is quite proud of her accomplishments—imagines herself an independent woman of the world, despite the fact she’s the pampered daughter of some useless aristocrat. I don’t mean, of course, t
o insult her father, whom I’m told is a decent man. But I have no use for a social hierarchy that places accidents of birth above merit and achievement. It was my own dear Nicholas’s cause, and I’ve taken it on as mine since his death. Unoriginal, I suppose, to do such a thing. Colin tells me his wife did the same after Ashton died—says that she learned Greek and reads Homer and has a propensity for the study of ancient art. Such endeavors must require a certain aptitude and intelligence, but I’ve yet to see her demonstrate much ability to accomplish anything beyond reading a seemingly endless supply of sensational fiction.

  She is taller than I’d expected.

  3

  I woke up early the next morning, the first day since we’d arrived in Normandy that I’d come downstairs before luncheon. The combination of my injuries and my mother-in-law’s scorn did little to inspire me to action. But today Cécile and I were to visit George and Madeline and examine the note left by their mysterious visitor, and the prospect filled me with excitement. We rode to their château accompanied by a protective footman, following winding roads that meandered through golden fields and into a small, dense wood opening onto a moat whose water was so clear I could see the rocks settled on its bottom. Branches hung heavy from weeping willows along the bank, and on the far side of the water stood a round stone tower with a pointed roof. It could, I suppose, be described as crumbling.

  To say the same about the rest of the château wouldn’t be entirely correct; George, it seemed, was prone to exaggeration. This was not the refined type of building found in the Loire Valley or at Versailles. It was more fortress than Palace, a true Norman castle, with an imposing keep. We looped around the water and over a rough bridge, then followed the drive along a tall gatehouse fashioned from blocks of stone and golden red bricks, its windows long and narrow. Defensive walls had once enclosed the perimeter, but now all that remained of them were bits and pieces of varying heights, few much taller even than I, most of them covered with a thick growth of ivy or dwarfed by hydrangea bushes. Long rows of boxwoods lined gravel paths in the formal garden, and the flowers, organized neatly in pristine beds, must have been chosen for their scents, as the air was sweet and fragrant.