Elene knew it well enough, but she could not let it deter her. It was something that must be done before she could feel free in her mind. She must try at least.
She began with Madame Rachel Pitot. She had no particular reason except that it seemed the woman might be easier to persuade to give her bottle up since she could have little idea of exactly what it represented. By way of persuasion, Elene prepared a story of a bad ingredient in the perfume which could cause a rash, and planned to carry what money she had with her to offer so that replacement perfume could be bought. She hoped the last would not be necessary, since Madame Pitot was a woman of wealth and had not, in any case, paid for the perfume originally. However, she knew that the wealthy were notoriously tightfisted when it came to small things.
For some reason she felt on her mettle where her appearance was concerned on this visit. Her walking costume of blue poplin was eminently suitable for the visit, and her small straw hat with its veil as protection from the sun was stylish as well as practical. But she took the time to pinch color into her cheeks that were still pale from her illness and even had recourse to a bit of carmine for her lips. As she viewed the results in the mirror when she was ready, she also vowed to stuff herself until she was as round as a barrel at every meal, for though she had regained some of the weight she had lost, she was still too thin.
She had no conveyance to take her to the house of the widow. The way was not long; still, she was forced to stop twice to rest, pausing to sit on one of the benches that were placed outside many shops and houses for convenience in taking the evening air, or else as a resting place for elderly shoppers. The sun grew hot as it rose higher in the morning sky, so that heat shimmered in waves above the dirt of the road outside the palisade, and dried the fresh footsteps made in the mud almost before the eyes. Elene could feel perspiration creeping down the back of her bodice, and she kept her handkerchief in her hand to slip under her veil and blot the beads of sweat from her skin.
At last the widow’s house was before her. As Elene climbed the steps and passed under the coolness of the gallery, she realized she should have sent word that she was coming. The lady might well have a visiting day when she was at home to callers, while all other mornings were spent in paying visits to others.
The door of the house stood open, however, in the effort to entice any faint breeze, of which there were few, into the house. At Elene’s light knock, a manservant appeared and bowed her inside, begging her to be seated in the salon while he went to see if his mistress was at home to callers.
Rachel Pitot received Elene in her boudoir, a room hung with watered silk in a flattering peach tone and liberally set about with the satin-covered gilt chairs of a more opulent age. She looked for all the world as if she had just that moment risen from her bed. Her hair straggled down her back, and her nightgown and wrapper were wrinkled in a pattern to indicate she had been lying about in them. She reclined on a chaise longue liberally strewn with lace pillows and with a plate of bonbons and a pot of chocolate on a small table beside her. It was as well that Elene did not care for the brew, for none was offered to her. The smell of the chocolate turning cool in a delicate china cup hung in the air along with a hint of blowsy decadence, but there was nothing else, not even a whiff of perfume.
Rachel Pitot stretched out a negligent hand and picked up a bonbon. “So brave of you to come when I hear you have been ill, Mademoiselle Larpent. I trust it will not prove too much for you.”
“I’m sure it won’t,” Elene said, her voice dry as she watched the woman pop the bonbon she held in her mouth. If the widow Pitot had any concern, she would have offered refreshment. Otherwise, her words were mere pretense.
“Perhaps you came to see Morven? I believe he is amusing himself by rehearsing with a young new actress in the summer house in the rear garden. I can ring for a servant to fetch him, if you wish, though I doubt he will be overjoyed; the girl is so impressionable.”
“No!” Elene said, then added more quietly, “I didn’t come to see Morven.”
“Josephine, then? She went early to town, before the heat grows too severe she said, though I don’t expect her back from whatever assignation she is actually keeping until evening.”
Elene let the comment pass. “I saw Josie just two days ago, and though I would not mind saying hello, my business is not with her.”
“I’m sure that when you catch your breath, then, you will tell me why you have ventured here.”
In the woman’s acid words, her slovenly appearance, and her cool reception of Elene there was a deliberate insolence, as if she considered her inferior in station, on the same level as a milliner or seamstress come to offer a hat or gown. Elene felt it even if she could find no reason for it. Still, it could not affect her unless she permitted it.
“Yes, indeed,” she said, her tone brisk and her back as straight as an applewood slat. “I have come about the perfume.”
Rachel Pitot listened with a slight frown between her brows that she reached up to rub now and then with a forefinger against wrinkles. When Elene had finished, she said, “I had the perfume, yes, but it’s gone now so there’s no need to worry.”
“Gone?” The word was blank. Elene had expected many things, but not this.
“Quite frankly, I believe it was stolen. If I had to suggest a culprit, I would say it was Josephine, though she denied the theft when I taxed her with it. She had the impudence to hint that my maid had taken it.”
“Is there any possibility that could be true?”
“None whatever. My servants would not dare, since they know I would have the skin off their backs for it.”
“A strong deterrent.”
“I’ve found it effective. But I confess I’m amazed that you would go to such trouble over a possible rash. Some women are susceptible to such annoyances, others are not. In any case, no one is likely to connect such a thing with your perfume.”
“Perhaps, but I would know.”
“Oh, come, I am not so naive! I believe this has something to do with a whisper among the quadroons and free women of color about a perfume with strange properties. I had thought it mere superstition, but it seems I should have guarded the scent with more care.”
“I can’t think what you might have heard, but surely you can’t believe—”
The other woman paid no attention to Elene’s attempt at denial. “There are things we don’t understand, things that in our subjection of the Africans we have forced them to hide from us. I have seen them myself, in the rites the slaves hold in the swamps. Such demonstrations can be most stimulating. Still, if it’s true, what they say, then it’s easy to see what Josephine wanted with the perfume.”
Elene’s protests died on her lips. “What do you mean?”
“Why, Josephine had a great passion for Morven, didn’t you know? And when it proved disappointing, there was another man she had been keeping on a string for some time whom she felt the need to captivate.”
“Her lover.”
“If you want to call him that, though I would not. M’sieur Tusard is hardly any woman’s idea of a beau ideal.”
“Tusard?” Elene’s voice was blank.
“Surprised? He has a weakness, so they say, for actresses. Even Hermine—”
Elene, sickened by the woman’s casual and heartless revelation of things better left unknown, sprang to her feet. “Excuse me, but I must go. It was good of you to see me, and I do appreciate your — candor. It was most helpful. Good day.”
“Do come again,” Madame Pitot said, but Elene had the feeling the words were no more sincere than the woman’s concern for her health.
Elene made haste to leave the widow’s house as far behind her as possible. One reason was her dislike of the woman, but another was the fear that Morven might return and find her there, forcing her to repeat the lies about the perfume, a performance she had no wish to make again any time soon. She was no actress.
Nor was she as strong as she had thought, t
hough a part of her gasping weariness was from trying to outrun her thoughts.
She slowed and looked around her, then left the road back to the city, whose rooftops and palisade walls lay not far ahead of her, to sit down under the shade of a beech tree. She leaned her head against its solid support, removing her hat so as not to crush it. Closing her eyes, she waited patiently for her heartbeat to slow and the heat flush to die away out of her face.
Josie and M’sieur Tusard. Their affair had a strange kind of logic, given the man’s penchant for women on the stage. Was it possible that the rapture of the former official with his paramour was caused by the perfume? Had Josie stolen it as Rachel Pitot said?
And what of before? While the fragrance had been in Rachel Pitot’s possession, Morven had been enamored of her, but now had apparently, from the widow’s tart remarks, turned his considerable charm to the seduction of his new ingénue. What a muddle it was.
But there was one possibility slowly emerging which Elene did not like, one that had laid slowly festering in the back of her mind since she had learned that Hermine had given away the perfume. The bottle of scent that Elene had given to Hermine had been used by the widow to win the affections of Morven, however temporarily. It had been during that period of his infatuation with the woman that Hermine had died. Could it be that the woman who had loved Morven best had so despaired over the unusual strength of his new attachment that she had taken her own life with an overdose of arsenic?
Was it possible that she, Elene Larpent, had caused Hermine’s death?
Surely the cause was not as she suspected, and yet the doctors had called it suicide and Elene had seen herself the unhappiness Morven’s defection had caused. It made no sense that a woman like Hermine, one who had been taking arsenic for years for her skin, would be so careless as to take too much. Yet, if neither of those explanations was true, what else was there?
There was murder. If the dead woman had been Josie instead of Hermine, and the death had occurred two weeks later, then one could always say the wronged wife, Madame Tusard, had done it. Poison was known as the weapon of women, after all, and husbands and wives were traditionally the first to be suspected in murder involving a lovers’ triangle. On the other hand, Hermine had known M’sieur Tusard no better than Elene herself. Admittedly there had been that peculiar accusation made by Madame Tusard that Hermine was the actress her husband had known years ago, but that little misconception had been straightened out quite satisfactorily.
No matter the cause of Hermine’s death, there appeared to be no connection between it and that of M’sieur Mazent. How could there be? Still, there had been a bottle of perfume in the Mazent household also, that belonging to Germaine. Suppose the death of Mazent had not been from stomach colic or fever or poison, but rather from apoplexy due to overexcitement from the effects of the perfume on the body of his mistress, as Madame Tusard had suggested?
No, no, that was too morbidly fanciful. She was giving too much credit to the perfume, or else taking too much blame upon herself. The fault could not be hers in the death of Mazent, surely it could not.
If there was a merciful heaven, she would find that she had gone to sleep here in this place and dreamed this whole nightmare. On waking she would discover that the perfume had no magical effect at all. She would come miraculously to understand that she had no part in these deaths around her, that there was some evil abroad that chose its victims at random. As much as she longed for the comfort of either explanation, however, she could not accept them. Unable to rest, Elene pushed to her feet and began to trudge once more toward the city gates.
So exhausting was her expedition to see the widow that it was more than three days before she could find the energy to emerge from Ryan’s house once more. Even then, she was driven not so much by duty as by fear of what might happen if she did not retrieve the perfume.
Regardless, she was not sanguine about her chances of success. It was just as well.
There was no way she could see Germaine without Flora being present, since the girl was in the parlor of the set of inn rooms when the door was opened to her. Flora Mazent took it for granted Elene had come to see her. She seemed delighted to be able to entertain a visitor, bustling about with a red splotch from excitement on her pale cheeks and her black skirts swinging around her.
“Would you care for chocolate — no, that will not do for you, will it? I was forgetting. I’ll order coffee and cakes, then. Shall I?”
“Please don’t go to any trouble.”
“It’s no trouble at all, I assure you.”
The order was given to Germaine who was busy in the connecting bedchamber, though she must have left on her way to the inn kitchen from another outside door, for she did not come through the parlor. After a moment, however, Flora returned.
Elene, grasping at a reason to explain her presence while she sought for a way to speak to the girl’s maid, rushed into speech. “I’m sorry I was unable to make my visit of condolence on the loss of your father.”
Flora sobered, settling deeper into the dull and heavy settee that was typical of most inn parlors. “Thank you, but I do understand. You are quite well now?”
Elene answered, and they spoke of the progress of the fever through the city, of the heat and the daily rains that made it doubly hard to bear. They discussed also the arrival of a ship from France, regrettably without the news of the cession that everyone awaited. All in all, Elene was impressed with the way Flora conducted herself. On reflection, she could never remember her having so much to say, probably because in the past she had tended to rely on her father to answer most questions for her.
Still, no opportunity presented itself for an exchange of words with Germaine, though the woman brought the coffee and poured it for them, then retreated once more into the bedchamber of the set of rooms. There was nothing to be done except bring the subject out into the open.
“Oh, dear, I had almost forgotten,” Elene said to Flora. “My maid asked me to deliver a message to your woman, if you don’t object?”
“Why, not at all.” Flora called out, and within seconds Germaine reappeared to stand in front of them. There was nothing servile in her manner, only a quiet, waiting stillness.
She said, “You needed something, chère?”
Flora indicated Elene, who launched into her prepared speech about the rash. She ended with a direct question concerning the whereabouts of the perfume supposed to cause it.
“My perfume?” Germaine asked, her smooth, cream-colored face as expressionless as the great sphinx unearthed from its centuries of sand by Napoleon’s soldiers in his Egyptian campaign. “Oh, it was spilled a few days ago.”
It was a lie, of that there could be no doubt. That Flora knew it also was apparent by the change of color under her fair skin. What reason the woman had for telling it made little difference, whether it was the kind of soothing tale told to keep a white person from fretting, for her own protection until she knew there was no danger for herself, or if it was simply because she had no intention of giving up such a powerful weapon. The fact was the perfume could not be pried from her.
Unless Flora could be induced to supply the lever.
Directing her words at the young girl while pretending to speak to Germaine, Elene said, “You know, I suppose, that people are spreading scandal concerning the death of M’sieur Mazent, saying that he — so to speak — died in your arms?”
“No, mademoiselle, I did not know that.”
“I assure you, it’s true. I fear that if rumors of this perfume should begin to spread, I may be blamed. There could be an unsavory scandal, something I’m sure we all want to avoid.”
“I would help you if I could,” Germaine said, and her dignity was such that she made Elene ashamed of the innuendos she had dragged forth.
Elene turned instead to Flora. “This is a delicate matter for you. It would be unfortunate if your future fiancé should conceive a dislike for the arrangement between you because of
the idle gossip of a few. I have no wish to be involved in it myself, which is why I am anxious to remove any hint that my perfume was associated with the tragedy.”
“I see,” Flora said slowly, her face clouded, “though I don’t know how I can help you. My father died of a stomach disorder that had plagued him for some time, almost as long as I can remember. There can be no question of this no matter what idle gossips are saying. As for the perfume, Germaine has told you it is gone. I’m afraid I can add nothing to that, as much as I hate the idea of people saying horrible things about my father.”
Elene was left with no more to say, nor did it appear there was anything further to be gained by talking to Flora Mazent and her maid. Elene took her leave.
She had not much hope of regaining the perfume Serephine had bought after her lack of success with the other bottles. It was just as well. Serephine made no excuses, told no tale of lost or stolen scent. She was not rude, but she made it plain that she valued the perfume and its supposed benefits highly, and was suspicious of any attempt to wrest the little she had left from her. Quite simply, she refused to part with it. Nor was Elene inclined to pursue the matter when Serephine told her the cause. Durant, the quadroon said, loved for her to wear it. The reason was because it made his mistress smell like Elene.
Ryan was waiting for Elene when she reached the house once more. He rose from a chair on the gallery, walking to the head of the stairs to meet her as she ascended the steps from the courtyard. He took one look at her pale face and the shadows of exhaustion like bruises under her eyes, and the planes of his face hardened into grimness. Taking her by the arm, he propelled her into the nearest chair.
“What in the name of living hell have you been doing to yourself?”
“Nothing. That is—”
“You’ve been gone all morning, and without so much as a word to Benedict or Devota. Why?”
He loomed over her with a hand braced on either arm of her chair. The implacability of his voice and the hard glint of his eyes affected her with a peculiar combination of annoyance and extreme weariness, distress, and guilt. The worst thing was the knowledge that his wrath was fueled by an anxiety and concern that had its roots in his abnormal desire for her. How different everything would be if she could think that what he felt was for herself alone, without artificial aid. It was not. There was no point in wishing for what could not be. Therefore, she must answer him somehow without telling him precisely what she had been about.
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