The Counterfeit Heiress: A Lady Emily Mystery (Lady Emily Mysteries)

by Tasha Alexander

  Jones—for there could be no doubt as to the identity of Jeremy’s assailant—must have spotted my friend watching the building and panicked. But what had happened to Colin? “He must have found Colin inside and somehow managed to—”

  Still squatting next to Jeremy, I rose to my feet, wanting to scream, but as I am a rational person, I knew this would accomplish nothing. “We know they were both in the apartment. We know they fought—the state of the rooms and the broken window make that much clear. One of them was injured, and the other more or less dragged him downstairs and past the concierge, who assumed they were drunk.”

  Cécile had pulled Jeremy up from the ground, and the two of them stood in front of me, silent. I started nodding, too quickly, as the words spilled from my mouth. “If Colin had vanquished his opponent, he would have incapacitated him and come for you, Jeremy, which means that we must operate on the assumption that it is Colin who was dragged down the stairs.” Tears were smarting in my eyes.

  Jeremy took my hand, stood directly in front of me, and tipped my chin up until I was looking him directly in the eye. “We are going to the police, Em, and I promise they will find him. You know he would never let himself come to any serious harm, because then you would be left on your own and wholly incapable of fending off my advances. We all know Hargreaves would never stand for that.”

  I sniffed. Cécile put her arm around my shoulders. “He is right. Monsieur Hargreaves would never leave you to suffer that sort of indignation. Nonetheless, we may as well arrange for his rescue sooner rather than later, so let us go at once to the police.”

  Reason was beginning to return to me. “We do need them, I agree with you both there, but we cannot leave it all to them. Cécile, can you manage summoning them on your own? I want to search the building again. The concierge, unreliable though she might be, was adamant that they didn’t leave the courtyard.” Neither of them was prepared to argue with me, and Cécile set off at once.

  The blue tinge of twilight engulfed us as Jeremy and I returned to the house. We had to bang on the door repeatedly—the concierge ignored the bell—and did not gain entry until Jeremy, blood still oozing from his forehead, rapped on the concierge’s window. “I say, good woman, I am the Duke of Bainbridge, come to collect my friend, who I believe has caused something of a commotion this evening. Would you be so kind as to let me in?”

  She opened the door, but only six inches, and stuck her thin nose through the gap. “I’ve had quite enough of this lady.” She glared at me.

  “And I have had quite enough of you.” For the second time, I flung myself against a door, this time meeting with more success. My action sent the concierge flying across the foyer, where she landed in an inglorious heap. I paid her little attention as I stormed past her, back into the courtyard. “Where can they be?”

  “Not here,” Jeremy said, pressing his handkerchief to the gash on his head to stop the bleeding. There was only the single entrance to the building’s outdoor space, and nothing but windows on the walls. After thoroughly searching every inch of it, I rushed back into the foyer and stormed through the open door of the concierge’s loge. Cécile was inside with the woman.

  “The police are on their way,” Cécile said. “I telephoned them from the café.”

  I thanked her and then stood in front of the concierge. “Did you see them go into the courtyard? Actually see them? Or did you merely assume that is where they went?”

  “I heard them on the stairs. It was quite a commotion. I was sitting here in my chair”—she spat the words—“and you can observe well enough for yourself that had they left the building, they would have passed directly in front of me.” The chair was situated so that she had a clear view of the entrance.

  Feeling as if I were going mad, I returned to the foyer and then the sensation of madness gave way to that of revelation. Next to the elevator, on the opposite side from the stairs, around a small corner so that it was just out of sight, stood an iron door, almost medieval in its design, which looked better suited to a castle dungeon than an apartment building. I had not noticed it before. Jeremy, a step behind me, took me by the arm.

  “Allow me,” he said, and swung open the portal. Narrow stone stairs descended into the dark, which meant we had to return to the concierge for candles (fortunately for us, Cécile had the woman now well under her thumb) before beginning our descent. The room at the bottom was dank and dusty and full of a motley collection of boxes and trunks that looked as if they had been abandoned in some earlier century. Though we listened carefully, we heard no sound but that of our own breath. I raised my candle above my head and went to the center, where I stood and turned slowly and methodically, looking for anything that might provide a clue as to my husband’s fate.

  The dust of the floor was disturbed, suggesting that ours were not the only feet to have recently trod on it, but there was no clear path marked in it. Once I had made a complete rotation without noticing anything else amiss, I closed my eyes to focus my attention—all the while ignoring the pounding in my chest—and then opened them to repeat the endeavor. This time, I did not stay in the middle, but walked the perimeter, and noticed a stack of boxes that had fallen over. I kicked them aside, only to find a heavy trunk directly in front of me, more boxes piled on top of it. A handprint stood out in the dust on the dark leather of the trunk. Jeremy lifted the boxes off the trunk, the pile reaching above the top of his head, but he managed, with my assistance, to deposit them on the floor without dropping them. Our candles struggled against the unrelieved darkness as we turned back to the trunk. Now that the boxes were gone, we could see the outline of a door on the wall behind it.

  Jeremy bent to move the trunk, but I was too impatient to wait for that. I reached over him and pushed against the door, finding, fortunately, that it swung in the opposite direction from the trunk and was unhindered by its proximity to the luggage. We scrambled over the top and entered into a tunnel whose Stygian darkness swallowed us. Terrified, but bent on finding Colin, we followed it as it meandered beneath the city.

  I had read about the network of tunnels beneath the city, and knew how extensive it was, but until now I had not appreciated just how extensive. After walking for what felt like miles, the passage twisting and turning, we reached a junction. “Which way?” I asked. I closed my eyes and struggled to hear anything that might indicate the path Colin and his attacker had taken, but could hear nothing except the occasional rustle of rodents. I sighed. “The only thing to do is try one direction, and if we find nothing, come back and go the other. I do not think it would be wise to investigate separately.”

  “Absolutely not,” Jeremy agreed.

  “We should make some sort of mark so that we can find our way back.” The mere act of entertaining the possibility of getting lost made me feel as if the walls, carved out of the city’s bedrock, were pressing in against us. I reached down for a rock and struck it against the wall of the passage that led back to the entrance, but it did not leave a mark, so I tore a strip of fabric from my petticoat, rent it into three pieces, and laid them along the edge of the wall.

  “I always thought, Em, that I’d feel rather a different sensation if I ever saw you removing your petticoat.” I appreciated his attempt at humor even as he slumped against the side of the passage, his face alarmingly pale.

  “Right or left?” I asked. He made no reply. I took his hand in mine and pulled him to the right.

  Right proved wrong. After traversing a distance of approximately seventy-five yards, we reached a dead end, and were forced to retrace our steps. This time, we meandered for a goodly distance, and I was beginning to feel extremely disoriented. Panic pushed against my chest. Jeremy, recognizing this, squeezed my hand, and we continued on, our candles doing their best to fight the smothering darkness. At the next junction, there were three paths from which to choose. I ripped my petticoat again, and again used strips of fabric to mark the way from which we had come.

  “Let’s make a p
ractice of always choosing the passage the farthest on the left to begin,” I said. There was no reason for this decision, but I felt it incumbent on me to attempt as organized and controlled an assault on these tunnels as possible. If we did, eventually, get confused and lost, having followed a rational and consistent system would prove helpful. This time, my first guess was a good one, and we did not reach a dead end, but as we continued along the narrow path, I worried that either of the two we had not taken might have been a better choice. We went back to the junction, and explored the other two, both of which went only a short distance before ending. From this, I drew the conclusion that we could reasonably assume there to be one main route through the tunnels, with shorter, subsidiary ones splitting off. So long as we did not reach a dead end, we were headed—headed where? And headed to what?

  Our candles flickered and I blew mine out, not wanting to have no light waiting for us in reserve. The passage turned and then ended sharply at a staircase cut into the rock. We descended it, and at the bottom, met with a horrible sight. Bones—human bones, mostly femurs—covered the floor, almost a foot deep. “We must be at the Catacombs,” I said.

  “I don’t think we should walk over them.” Jeremy winced and sat on a step.

  “I’m afraid we must.” I took his candle and bent over, illuminating the pathetic remains beneath us to reveal a channel of sorts that crossed through the bones, as if they had been pushed apart. “Someone else has already made his way through here.” Gingerly, I stepped into the pile, doing my best to disturb the bones as little as possible, and tasting bile every time I heard one crunch beneath my feet.

  I still had the candle, and Jeremy was just behind me. The passageway widened and then grew suddenly narrow before ending at another set of steps. We descended, thankful for the absence of bones on them. At the bottom of these steps was a large, circular room. Femurs, stacked one on top of another, their ends pointing to the center of the chamber, lined the walls, and in front of their eerie display were more bones, these crushed and fragmented. We followed a passage out of this room, which snaked around for a while, the ceilings considerably lower, until we saw letters carved on the wall: Chemin du Port Mahon. Beyond this, someone had made elaborate carvings in the stone walls. The scene looked like a medieval citadel with no detail forgot. I stopped, just for a moment, in front of a depiction of an ornate building over which the words Quartier de Cazerne had been carved, and stood very still.

  “Did you hear that?” I whispered. Jeremy shook his head and silently raised a finger to his lips. “There—again.” It was unmistakable this time. This was not the rustle of a small animal, this was something much larger, and it sounded as if it—he?—were moving rocks. We crept in the direction of the noise, exiting the room with its carved walls and entering an extremely narrow passageway that went down two steps before turning hard to the right. From here, no fewer than five tunnels presented themselves to us. The noise grew louder, and became clearer. It was not someone moving rocks; it was someone moving something against them. I raised my candle and stepped into the passage from which it came, following twists and turns until I saw my husband, his chiseled features bruised and battered, his wrists and ankles bound. His arms had been wrenched behind his back, and he was methodically rubbing the rope around his wrists against a bit of the wall that jutted out enough to create a hard edge.

  “Colin!” I fell upon him at once, covering his face with kisses before removing from my reticule the penknife I always carried with me. My hands were shaking so much I did not trust myself to free him from his bonds without further injuring his dear person, so I gave the knife to Jeremy, who made neat work of it. Colin’s wrists were bloody and raw, and he winced as the rope fell to the ground.

  “Did you see him?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied. “What happened?”

  “He found me in his rooms and we fought. I had the advantage, but he managed to throw himself across the room and make his way into his bedroom. He bolted the door behind him. I was ready for him when he opened it, only a few minutes later, but now our struggle was not so evenhanded. He had soaked a rag with chloroform—the bottle must have been in his bedroom—and held it over my face long enough to incapacitate me. I have vague memories of being dragged through darkness, but not much else. I take it we are in the Catacombs?”

  I replied in the affirmative and helped him to his feet. Jones, no doubt, had long since made his escape. “I do not think he meant you serious harm,” I said. “We are not so far from the main route through the path taken by tourists that your struggles would have gone unnoticed.”

  “There are only tours of the Catacombs twice a month, Em,” Jeremy said.

  “And one of them was yesterday,” I said. “Thank heavens you were not left down here for a fortnight. This Jones is not quite so clever as he thinks. It was a grave error to take you someplace so easily located from his own residence.” I wanted to keep the mood light. “Now then, let’s make our way back. Cécile will be beside herself with worry and will not enjoy having to manage the police by herself.”

  We retraced our steps back past the carved citadel, the cavern of bones, and up the stairs. Colin nodded his approval when he saw the shreds of my petticoat marking our way. “Good thinking, my dear.” We lit my reserved candle long before we reached the cellar, and when, at last, we came to the still-open door, our return was greeted by a gaggle of disgruntled-looking policemen.

  “Worthless,” Cécile said. “They are all worthless.” One uniformed officer helped me over the trunk that blocked the door. “I couldn’t even persuade them to move that, let alone go after you.”

  A rough voice called down from the top of the stairs. “You had better hope you have not damaged anything! I will not tolerate the destruction of property!” I am not ashamed to say that Colin had to physically prevent me from doing bodily harm to the infuriating concierge. She is fortunate he was there to protect her.

  Estella

  xviii

  The train to Marseille would take almost no time, and from there, one had only to catch a steamer to Alexandria, from where—Estella consulted the guidebook Monsieur Jones had brought to her the day before—they would travel by train to Cairo. She would have to hire a companion and order some suitable traveling clothes, but neither of those tasks would prove problematic. She began a letter to her dressmaker, but found herself so distracted by the thought of the Great Pyramids at Giza that she could not focus on writing an orderly set of directions for the woman.

  Putting aside her missive, she opened Monsieur Belzoni’s book, and spent a blissful four hours making a list of every site he mentioned that she intended to visit, pausing frequently to consult her other Egyptian books, and adding sketches to the margins of her list. The sketches, and her inability to satisfactorily reproduce the complicated hieroglyphic signs, frustrated her. Tomorrow she would ask Monsieur Jones if he could get his hands on a copy of Monsieur Champollion’s Grammaire Égyptienne, which was referred to her in travel book as including a list of all the signs. She wondered if it might include instructions on how to draw them.

  “I would not trouble myself with such a task now,” Monsieur Jones said the next evening. She had persuaded him to have a glass of wine. “I will, of course, find the Grammaire for you, and you can dedicate yourself to the study of it on the boat to Alexandria.”

  “That is an excellent idea.” Estella drained her glass and refilled it. “I am beginning to think, Monsieur Jones, that you ought to accompany me on my journey.”

  “I could not—”

  “Do not reject the idea out of hand. I was rather fond of you before you flung me in here, and you have taken good enough care of me for these past days—weeks?—how long have I been away?”

  “It is a approaching a fortnight now, mademoiselle.”

  “I will hire a companion, of course, as it would not be proper to travel, unaccompanied, with a man. I am of the opinion that your presence could prove most useful.
You are capable of handling baggage, I imagine?” He mumbled some sort of incoherent reply. “I will take you on as a member of my staff.”

  “If you require the services of a companion, mademoiselle, you will want to interview candidates. Would you like me to place an advertisement for you? You could arrange to meet applicants at your house starting at the end of the week.”

  “I shall do that as soon as I have finalized our itinerary. May I count on you to make one of the party?”

  “I could hardly deny you anything, Mademoiselle Lamar, after what I have done to you.”

  “Very good,” Estella said. “Tomorrow I will give you a letter to post to my dressmaker. I will need you to buy new trunks for me—ones from Galeries Lafayette will do nicely—have them delivered to her so she can pack the clothes directly into them and send them to the train station. If all goes smoothly, we could be steaming across the Mediterranean in only a few weeks. I have never before so looked forward to anything in my life.”

  Monsieur Jones smiled. “I am most glad to hear it. If there is nothing else…” He started for the ladder.

  “One more thing, Monsieur Jones. I would like another doll, please. One with blond hair this time, I think, and dressed in a traveling costume. Would that be too much trouble?”

  “It will be my pleasure.”

  19

  The clock struck midnight long before we arrived back at Cécile’s. Both Colin’s and Jeremy’s injuries appeared superficial, but—despite their protestations—I required them to submit to the examination of a physician. The police, after very firm direction from us, agreed to make as comprehensive as possible a search of the Catacombs, but not until the following morning. If I had not suspected Mr. Jones had long since made his getaway, I would have demanded they start immediately, but given the battered condition of our gentlemen, I agreed that a period of a few hours of rest would be advisable.