He grinned. “You’re right. I do adore your mind.”
“You’re too kind,” I said. “But I must ask—have you made any progress with our friend Sebastian?”
“Your friend, Sebastian. Let’s be clear on that point. He’s not shown a single sign of being around. I’ve been working on the assumption he followed you here.”
“I wish I could say I’d seen him and recruited him to the Crown’s cause.”
“This is one bet, Emily, you’re not going to win.”
“I’m sure you’d like to believe that. But I’ve not time to discuss it at the moment. Will you excuse me?” I asked. “I want to speak with Laurent. He may prove himself useful yet.”
I applied my usual method for locating Laurent—following the sound of moody Beethoven up the stairs to his room. This time, I didn’t bother to knock on the door, opting instead to head straight for the passage between our two chambers.
“You’re quite good, you know,” I said, coming up behind him as he sat at the piano. “Do you compose as well?”
He grunted in my general direction.
“I’ve spoken with Dr. Girard again. He didn’t do what you asked of him. Edith gave birth to her baby and the child is still alive.”
He stopped playing. “Impossible.”
“Is it?”
“He—” Laurent looked almost flustered, his eyes darting in all directions, his mouth drawn tight. “He wouldn’t have done that. Not without telling me.”
“He had to have known you wouldn’t approve of the choice.”
“He had no right.”
“So far as I can tell, Edith is the one who should have had rights,” I said. “Can you imagine how it must have tormented her not to be able to raise her own child?”
“Of course I can. Why do you think I asked him to do what I did?”
“Wouldn’t what you wanted have been even worse than her simply giving the child to someone else to raise until she was recovered from her illness?”
He didn’t reply.
“Regardless,” I said. “He couldn’t bring himself to go through with it, and now won’t tell me what became of the child. We have to find it.”
“Vasseur. He must have given it to Vasseur.”
“Vasseur was already away in the Legion when the baby would have been born. This might, however, be the time to give me whatever information you can about the man. Where is his family? Where did he live?”
“It is time for me to have a very serious conversation with Girard. You have no reason to be part of this.” He rose to his feet and stormed out of the room, not even bothering to slam the door behind him. All in all, a disappointing exit. I’d come to expect more from Laurent. If nothing else, one should be able to count on a gentleman like him to brood masterfully.
I started down the steps (long after having heard the front door bang behind Laurent—I was glad his departure from the house hadn’t been completely lackluster) and found Colin and Cécile in the garden with Madame Prier and her husband. The sun still stretched high in the summer sky, the air felt warm, and bees skipped happily from flower to flower in search of sweet nectar. Cécile and Madame Prier sat close together, both shaded by Cécile’s lacy parasol. Colin, his long legs stretched in front of him, occupied the wrought-iron chair across from them and was fanning himself with a folded newspaper while Monsieur Prier occupied himself with the inspection of a thread that had come loose from his jacket.
“Come join us, Kallista, and try one of these,” Cécile said, picking up a plate of bergamot oranges in honey. “You look far too melancholy for such a beautiful day.”
I crossed over to them, rejecting the candied fruit and pulling a chair next to my husband’s. “I’m not melancholy, just tired. All this to-ing and fro-ing, and I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Oh dear!” Madame Prier lifted her eyes to the sky. “It’s the room, isn’t it?”
“The room?” I asked.
“Dominique—” Monsieur Prier glared at his wife, but she didn’t let him continue.
“I shouldn’t have dreamed of putting you in Edith’s room,” she said. “I never gave much credence to her claims of hearing voices, even when I heard her talking back to them. But since her death, it’s all tormenting me. What if there really was something in her room, as she insisted? What if some ghostly girl did speak to her? I suppose I wanted to prove to myself it’s not haunted or possessed or I don’t know what, and I thought—hoped—your staying in it would put my worries to rest.”
“What specifically did she hear?” I asked.
“She was never very lucid about it,” Madame Prier said. “But she’d speak to someone, and she claimed it was a girl—she’d talk about tying ribbons in her hair—got upset when I told her I didn’t see anything. I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything strange while you’ve been up there?”
I steeled myself, hoping to disguise the anxiety tingling through me at her description of the child that so well matched what I myself had experienced. “Only Laurent’s musical efforts.”
“He’s a dreadful boy, isn’t he?” she asked.
“Worthless,” Monsieur Prier said.
“He’s feeling the loss of his sister keenly,” Colin said.
“He’s a fine one to talk now,” Madame Prier said. “But it was he who first noticed her health deteriorating. He’s the one who told us she was talking to people who weren’t there. He recognized her delusions before any of us.”
“What exactly happened to Edith?” I asked. “Forgive me if it’s too painful a question.”
She sighed. “I know I ought to be keening and lamenting and mourning,” she said. “But Toinette’s right. At the moment I’m suffering more from guilt than grief.”
“That’s not uncommon when one has had to deal with a chronically ill family member,” Colin said.
“You’re far too reasonable, Monsieur Hargreaves. Edith was difficult from the time she was a little girl. Headstrong and determined. Always getting into trouble. And always with her brother. That’s the way with twins, I’m told. They even had a private language when they were small.”
“It was ridiculous,” Monsieur Prier said. “I wouldn’t tolerate such a thing, of course, and forbade them to use it. But as they grew older, and it was time for Laurent to go to school, Edith grew more and more obstinate. She didn’t want him to go away from home.”
“Did he?” Colin asked.
“Of course he did,” he said. “He studied in Paris and then returned to Rouen. We hoped he would marry, but he never showed even the slightest interest in any eligible girls.”
“What about the ineligible ones?” Cécile asked.
“You are too bad, my friend,” Madame Prier said, laughing.
Monsieur Prier did not share his wife’s amusement. “He has had his share of romantic attachments, but none of them have held his interest for more than a few months. I think there was someone in Paris about whom he was serious, but nothing came of it.”
“She must have left him,” Madame Prier said. “A well and truly broken heart is the only reasonable explanation for him clinging so assiduously to bachelorhood.”
“And what about Edith? Did she want to marry?” I asked.
“No doubt by now you’ve heard all the sordid dealings she had with Jules Vasseur,” Monsieur Prier said. “Terrible man.”
“I have heard a little about him,” I said. “What specifically made him so undesirable?”
“He came from no family—his father was a tradesman.” Madame Prier’s voice slipped to a coarse whisper. “His mother’s people were farmers. Can you imagine? The father was successful enough to send him to school, where he did well, and he eventually managed to become an officer in the Foreign Legion.”
“Admirable enough,” Monsieur Prier said. “But hardly what one wishes for one’s daughter.”
“Admirable how, my dear?” Madame Prier asked. “The Legion is full of thieves and vagabonds. An utter disgrac
e.”
Monsieur Prier did not respond to his wife.
“Did Vasseur court Edith openly?” Colin asked.
“He did, until I told him in no uncertain terms that he was not welcome in the house.” His voice had taken on a pointed edge, a hint that a nasty temper lurked not far beneath the surface.
“And then?” I asked.
“Then he showed his true colors,” Monsieur Prier said. “He crept around here at night, trying to lure Edith to meet him. He followed her when she went out—she couldn’t call on a friend without him pursuing her.”
“Did she view it that way?” Colin asked.
“At first I think she found it romantic and took it as a sign of his love and devotion, but eventually it became a burden.”
“She was extremely upset,” Madame Prier said. “As you might well imagine.”
“Was she speaking to him through all this?” I asked.
“Absolutely not,” Monsieur Prier said. “We’d told her to ignore him.”
“But she did love him, didn’t she?” I tried to imagine how difficult it must have been for Edith to muddle through such a mess. “Didn’t she want to see him?”
“Her pleasant disposition towards him ended when he accosted her at a ball,” Monsieur Prier said.
His wife continued. “She’d been dancing all evening—she was beautiful and high-spirited and much in demand. Vasseur was lurking in the background, watching her, growing more and more jealous as she spun around the dance floor with partner after partner. He cornered her when she’d stepped onto a balcony to get some air. She would never tell us what he said, but she ran inside, crying, begging to be taken home. After that, they never spoke again.”
“Could she have written to him after that?” I asked.
“I suppose it’s possible,” she said. “But she never received any letters from him.”
“How can you be sure?” Cécile asked.
“He wrote four times a week. We burned everything he sent.”
“Did you read the letters?” I asked.
“No,” Madame Prier said. “We didn’t have any interest in what the worthless profligate might say.” I didn’t believe her; surely simple curiosity would have demanded otherwise. Who could have resisted opening them? If nothing else, I thought she would have wanted to ensure Edith wasn’t writing to him—a question answered in an instant if his words were clear responses to her. I could not rely on the veracity of anyone in the Prier family.
“At what point did you notice Edith’s health deteriorating?” Colin asked.
“Soon thereafter. She started sleepwalking—we actually had to lock her in her room,” Monsieur Prier said. “She talked to herself. Or rather, she talked to people who weren’t there—the little girl more often than not.”
“It was beyond alarming,” Madame Prier said. “Before long, her personality was lost entirely, and she shouted at me as if she didn’t know who I was. She’d beg and plead for us to let her out so she could go home. As if she had no idea she was already there.”
“It must have been awful,” Cécile said. “You are strong to have soldiered through so difficult a time.”
“After she fell down the stairs in the middle of the night, Laurent convinced us she was endangering herself,” she said.
“It didn’t require convincing,” Monsieur Prier said. “We couldn’t even determine how she got out of her room.”
“I’m not sure about that,” his wife said. “But at any rate, Laurent had read about Dr. Girard, and contacted him to see if he felt he could help her. He was willing, so my husband took her to him.”
“And you were pleased with the treatment?” Colin asked.
Monsieur Prier shrugged. “You see the outcome was not so great.”
“Were you happy with the conditions in the asylum?” I asked, knowing full well Dr. Girard had said neither of them had visited her there. “Did you feel your daughter was being properly looked after?”
“It was clean and bright and she seemed safe there,” Madame Prier said. “At that point, what more could I hope for?”
“Did you see her often?” Colin asked.
“We went every week at first, then every other week. She wouldn’t talk to us, only sat and looked vacant. So we stopped going more than once a month.”
“When did you last see her?” I asked, wondering who was telling the truth: the doctor or the parents? It seemed unlikely Dr. Girard would lie about such a thing. More reasonable, I thought, to believe the Priers preferred to hide their sins of omission when it came to Edith.
“Two days before she vanished,” Monsieur Prier said.
“What was her mental state?” Colin asked, his voice calm in the extreme.
“Unchanged.”
Madame Prier smiled fetchingly. “This must all be such a bore for you. Please don’t feel that you have to ask questions to make us feel better. We’ll manage. As I said, we’ve already grieved the loss. Edith was never herself after she left this house. I do hope, Monsieur Hargreaves, that you haven’t come here to collect your charming wife and run away again. It’s so nice to have friends around. We must have a party for you.”
17 July 1892
Oh the excitement I’m missing! The election is in full swing, and I’m desperate to be in the middle of it. It looks as if the Conservatives shall gain far too many seats—but I cling to the hope they will fall short of an overall majority and the Liberals will be returned to power. If nothing else, we should be able to count on those who support Irish Nationalism, an issue that has been consuming Gladstone for years now, particularly after the defeat of his Home Rule bill…a topic on which I would happily speak for days if allowed. Much as I admire the man, to have undertaken the writing of such a piece of legislation essentially without the input of anyone else was a grand mistake. Let us hope, now, he will have the chance to remedy the errors of the past and put an end to all these Irish troubles.
How I miss the days when Nicholas and I hosted political dinners, subtly (and not-so subtly) influencing the views of those around us. Choosing to bury myself deep in the country—exiling myself from England—was not, perhaps, the wisest decision. I’ve mourned all these years, and will continue to miss the dear man for the rest of my days. But it’s time to reengage.
I shall contact my solicitor and instruct him to find a home for me in town. Maybe one in Park Lane, near Colin.
He left for me some of his wife’s work. Apparently she is translating Homer’s Odyssey from the original Greek. This evening I shall read what she’s done. Is it hubris that enables someone like her to take on such a project?
19
“We’re not staying here,” Colin said, tightening my corset before I slipped into a luscious dark red velvet gown for dinner. Madame Prier had promised sole meunière, the delicate fish drenched in brown butter and lemon, and I found myself looking forward to the meal more than I’d anticipated. My husband did not share my enthusiasm, but it was not the food that caused him grievance. “I’d rather sleep in rooms over a tavern than in this house.”
“They are an interesting lot, aren’t they, the Priers?”
“If by ‘interesting’ you mean ‘slightly deranged’, yes, I suppose.” He fastened his cuff links. “I lunched with Monsieur Prier before you returned this afternoon. He didn’t speak to any of us. Read a book through the entire meal.”
“Could you see the title?”
“Les Miserables.”
“Quite a choice,” I said. “According to Toinette he keeps out of the house as much as possible, but she doesn’t know where he goes.”
“He has my sympathies. I’m ready to flee after less than a day.”
“I think there’s something to these visions Edith had,” I said. “The description of the child matches that of the girl I saw at the Markhams’.”
“Insofar as they were both wearing ribbons.” He put his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t let your mind trick you, my dear. All little girls wear ribbo
ns.”
“But pale blue—”
“Madame Prier said nothing about color. You’re molding the situation to what you saw.”
“I feel like we’re missing something. Toinette said Laurent deliberately drove Edith to insanity.”
“Do you think he’s trying to do the same to you?” Colin asked. The lack of skepticism in his voice took me aback.
“I’m not sure why he would.”
“What if he killed his sister? What if he’s afraid you’ll find him out?”
“Heavens, what’s become of you?” I closed the clasp on a delicate gold and ruby necklace. “That sounds more like my wild speculation than the solid sort of theory you’d present.”
“Nothing in this case makes sense in an ordinary way. I don’t really subscribe to all this nonsense of hauntings and driving people mad. Edith came unhinged—I believe that. There’s a history of insanity in the family, and that’s the most likely explanation for her illness. Her brother may have exploited that with ghost stories, but I don’t believe it’s possible he literally made her come undone.”
“All right,” I said. “So she’s been forced to throw over the man she loves. She realizes she’s with child, and she’s terrified of what her parents will do—her mother’s beyond eccentric and it’s easy to believe she had cause to be scared of her father’s reaction. That sort of stress could put an otherwise stable mind close to the precipice.”
“So Laurent plays with her—”
“According to him because he was worried and wanted to get her help.”
“And she’s sent to Girard, who hides the pregnancy, delivers the baby, and sorts out a caregiver for the abandoned infant.”
“Which must have hurt Edith all the more,” I said. “To have her child taken from her like that—” I bit my lip and tried not to cry. Colin took my hand in both of his.
“I’m so sorry, my love. This must be incredibly difficult for you.”
“I thought you’d decided it was time for me to be over it.”
“There are ways in which it is time, but this case seems to be digging it all back up again.” Deep furrows appeared in his brow. He dropped my hand and started to pace. “Am I doing the right thing letting you pursue this?”
Dangerous to Know Page 16