A flash of surprise crossed Vallotton’s face and in that instant she was convinced he didn’t know anything about Felicity Cowell’s hidden life. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “You must more than suspect this or you wouldn’t mention it.”
She relayed what Nick Graves had told her.
“And you believe him? Of course you do,” Vallotton said slowly. “Why would he invent this? He knows you will be able to check the details in a few hours or days at the most. It’s surprising, but not impossible. Evelyn told me he first hired Mademoiselle Cowell—”
He cocked an eye at Agnes who replied, “Same last name apparently, and I will still think of her as Felicity Cowell.”
“Fair enough,” Vallotton said. “Evelyn hired her as a summer intern, and he told me that she’d worked out so well he’d kept her on. Probably didn’t inquire too carefully for the summer—likely didn’t pay her—and once she was there he didn’t think to go back and get references.” He took a long slow breath. “Even her name isn’t her real one? It never occurred to us.”
He fingered the top of a painting, an abstract, Agnes noted. The artist’s name was scrawled near the bottom of the canvas. Picasso. Of course.
“Graves said that it was three years ago when he was in London with her?” Vallotton asked.
“Three years ago exactly.”
“When I glanced at her photograph online there was also a résumé. I remember that she graduated from the art program at the Sorbonne three years ago. Makes it more likely her credentials are fake. She couldn’t have been in both places at the same time.”
“She would have been fired if Graves told someone,” Agnes said. “She would have been unhireable in the art world.”
“You don’t know the art world very well,” Vallotton said. “But I get your point.”
“She created this path out of a much harder life and now, in an instant, it’s all over. She would lose her job, who knows what else, and—”
“What, stabs herself in despair?”
“No, but she and Graves could have had an altercation. Maybe she knew something about him that he’s not telling us. We have a point of provocation. It escalates. Imagine you’ve worked hard—transformed your life—and now all will be lost. She would have been fired from this job, regardless of how the art world operates.”
“Fired? Not by me. You won’t believe me when I say that I don’t care about her past. I have some sympathy for Mademoiselle Cowell. Yes, Evelyn would have dismissed her for this falsifying of her curriculum vitae, lying about her studies, claiming certificates and courses at prestigious institutions she had never visited, but I understand. I know what it’s like to want to create a new past. I’ve lied about myself. Leaving off Le Rosay and Georgetown, saying ‘attended some college.’ Letting the bosses think I was ashamed about the name. I can appreciate that she might not have gotten her position if she had told the truth. Did she have the right to show her worth? I think so.”
“When have you lied about your résumé?”
“You really want to ask, when have I worked. For nearly a year at a ski resort in California. Squaw Valley. I ran the lifts, taught a few classes, and enjoyed myself thoroughly as far away from people I knew as possible.”
“I would think that your clothes, your voice, would give you away.”
“Like Mademoiselle Cowell’s?”
“Your aunt thought she was hiding something.”
Vallotton paused in his study of the art. “My aunt has unsurpassed instincts. It could be that she pays more attention to people, despite her appearance of negligence, or possibly she has a sixth sense.”
“You understand this makes our job harder.”
“Our?”
She frowned at Vallotton. “Mine, Carnet’s, and Petit’s. We start an investigation with known contacts—friends and family—and hope to tease out the problems that lead to murder and now our victim appears to have a double life.”
“Not necessarily a double one. More of a ruptured one? A double life implies she has a husband and twelve kids somewhere back in Newcastle who call her Courtney and like her stripping act. I doubt that. I think she found a way to move beyond her past. I’d like to think that’s admirable.”
“Still, she lied.”
Agnes could imagine the horror and confusion on the girl’s parents’ faces when they were told: their daughter was dead so far from home and at a place so different than where they were from. She wondered if they already thought she was dead. If Nick Graves was telling the truth then Courtney Cowell had started her life far from where her life ended as Felicity.
“We’re not making progress,” Agnes said suddenly, deciding it might not be “our” investigation. Based on Bardy’s recommendation, she had trusted Julien Vallotton this far, she might as well trust him all the way. “We may never know who did this. The chances of trace evidence are almost nonexistent, given the storm.”
“One of us might confess. There’s still time.”
“And now we have a victim who was not who she pretended to be and for days we are stuck here with no access to her life in London. Every hour means evidence is eroding. And there can be jealousies and guilt that follow someone missing for ten years. There can be petty office troubles or evidence of mind-boggling deceit that is uncovered and I’m stuck here, maybe for another day or two, with no more information to go on.” She rubbed her forehead and half laughed. “That may be the best news in fact, because when things return to normal, someone, Bardy in particular, will want to know what direction to take this investigation and I won’t have any idea.”
Vallotton opened a book that lay on the desk. It was filled with glossy photos of country houses of England. “Strange book for her to bring here.”
“It’s not yours?”
“Ours are stamped on the flyleaf.” He flipped through a page or two. “I remember when this property came up at auction. Nearly bought the place. Beautiful nineteenth-century topiary gardens.”
Agnes read the caption. She didn’t know where Cumbria was in England, but it looked cold and dark. For a moment she dreamed of sunny Florida, a place she usually hated but sounded good right now. “Why would you buy a house there?”
“A developer planned to purchase the property and destroy it to make room for a row of execrable cheap modern houses. Fortunately someone turned up and bought the house to live in.” He thumped the book shut, but Agnes opened it again. She turned the pages one by one. Near the back there were words penciled in the margin next to a photograph of a Tudor-era mansion. The façade was flat gray stone punctuated by leaded windows. It was impressive in an austere, cold way.
“‘My house,’” Agnes read the penciled note.
Vallotton looked over her shoulder. “You think Mademoiselle Cowell wrote this? If she’s from a modest background then this isn’t her family home, and it’s certainly not where she lives in London. Do you have her address in the city?”
“Yes, from her handbag.” Agnes gave him the address and he thought for a moment. “Nice neighborhood, the kind of place you want a younger sister to live if she is trying to escape the posh family home; could be expensive, but wouldn’t have to be. Definitely flats or a townhouse and not what is in this photograph.”
“A good address to aid her pretense of an affluent background?”
“Certainly. Someone on Evelyn’s staff would have noted it when she started work and it would have sent a subtle signal of ‘she’s one of us.’”
Agnes opened the auction catalogue and glanced at the handwritten notes. “Looks like the same handwriting; mind you, I’m not an expert.”
Vallotton studied the two samples side by side, then read the printed caption next to the photograph. “‘Ancestral home of the Smythson-Markums.’ Name doesn’t mean anything to me, and you’re right that it wasn’t Mademoiselle Cowell’s home unless she has a triple secret life as a Smythson-Markum. From what Graves said she has been true to her last name throughout. Ma
ybe she just liked the house. Marked it as a goal. A concrete manifestation of her dreams. No different than saying one day I will live in New York City or exhibit work at the Pompidou Centre.”
Agnes was about to agree when Winston rose, giving a few seconds’ warning before Marie-Chantal arrived. She was flushed and out of breath.
“I’ve been looking everywhere.” She glanced accusingly from one to the other. “I wish mobile phones would work again. Felicity Cowell had a fiancé.” She paused deliberately. “He’s here and he’s upset.”
As they followed Marie-Chantal down the stairs, Vallotton leaned close to Agnes. “About Squaw Valley, let’s not tell my brother. He thinks I was at Stanford, doing post-bac studies, not trying out his lifestyle for the winter.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“I loved it, but in the end we are who we are, and for me that life could only be one season.”
Fifteen
Harry Thomason was in his late twenties, handsome in a boyish sort of way, the kind of man who would never look old. His dark hair was cut so it fell long over his brow and he looked fit without the build of an athlete. Despite winter gear, he appeared tired and cold.
“It’s taken me most of the day to get here,” he said, adding that he was currently a guest at the Beau-Rivage Palace hotel on the lake in Ouchy and was worn-out with worry that he hadn’t heard from Felicity in days. He peeled off his outer garments and, without hesitating, handed them to the housekeeper.
“The blasted storm ended any hope of a phone call. Clearly couldn’t fly back to London, so I decided to see her. Roads are closed even if I had a car. The hotel had some cross-country skis left by a guest, but they don’t work on the ice, so I dumped them after a bit, kept the poles, and walked.” They all glanced to his boots as if assessing the difficulty of the task. “Kept to the lake edge. Thank goodness it’s flat because it was slick as hell and hard going. Where’s Felicity?”
He looked around expectantly and Agnes glanced quickly from Julien Vallotton to Marie-Chantal, then the housekeeper. Her heart sank. No one had told Thomason his fiancée was dead. She asked him to accompany her out of the entrance hall, too many weapons there for this kind of news. He was at ease, turning to ask Madame Puguet if he could have a cup of tea.
“Now that I’m inside I can feel the cold, Earl Grey if you have it, with lemon, no sugar. Thank you.”
Madame Puguet walked very slowly from the room, as if reluctant to leave. Marie-Chantal and Vallotton stood near, too near, as if they were waiting to catch the young man when he collapsed.
Agnes delivered the news quickly and with little detail, realizing as she did that there was little to relate. His fiancée had been found the afternoon before, stabbed outside the château just after the storm struck. A brief end to a brief life.
Thomason shook his head slightly and looked at Agnes stupidly. She repeated the words, then said them again in English to make sure he understood. As she spoke, a pit formed in her stomach and she knew it was too soon, she should not be here dealing with death when it was so close to her own heart. She saw what Carnet had seen when he told her about George—Thomason’s eyes widened and his face froze, the expression blank. His skin was red from cold and wind, but beneath that he paled. Tears welled in his eyes and Agnes felt him remind himself to breathe. He swallowed, struggling to control emotions, then clenched his jaw. The others in the room did not speak or move.
Finally Thomason mastered himself and took the first step of many toward understanding. Even before he spoke, Agnes knew what he would ask, for they were a version of the same words she had used: where is she, can I see her, how did it happen? The words tumbled out, then there was nothing; he swayed. The perfect servant, Madame Puguet anticipated what he needed and moved fastest, leading him to a chair before he crumpled. Vallotton handed him a glass of something that Agnes assumed was alcohol.
“Impossible,” Thomason said. “She didn’t like the outdoors. Felicity would never be outdoors in a storm. You must be mistaken.” He drank what was given him in a gulp, sputtered, then nearly dropped the glass. Madame Puguet refilled it.
Petit walked in holding the ancient radio to his ear, yelling into it. When he saw the group he stopped. “My wife had a boy!” He turned in a big circle, eyeing each of them with a grin on his face. When he got to Thomason he stopped. “How’d he get here? You found a way for someone to come down and didn’t get me out?” Marie-Chantal pulled him away, whispering into his ear.
Thomason looked around wide-eyed as if accustomed to malicious pranks that could be righted through perseverance. Agnes wanted to congratulate Petit but didn’t move. She paced her breathing to Thomason’s, wondering if he would faint. She had.
His words didn’t string together in sentences, they were snippets of remembrances, of questions, and of denial. Finally Vallotton interrupted. Thomason seemed to believe a man’s voice more than a woman’s, although Agnes thought it might be the tone of the man’s voice, for she had recognized Thomason’s accent and clothing and manner and knew that he was at home among these people.
Madame Puguet interceded and escorted Thomason from the room before he succumbed to an exhausted emotional collapse.
“Finally, someone who really knew her,” Vallotton said quietly.
Agnes didn’t respond. She mumbled an excuse and left the room, knowing where she needed to go. Sitting again in the dead woman’s workroom, surrounded by paintings and little else, she wondered if it was possible for a room to feel emptier than empty. Only a half hour before, she had felt Felicity Cowell’s presence. It had spoken of her personality: orderly, efficient, and confident about her business. Someone who had worked to achieve everything she had. Now the room felt abandoned like a stage set with props not yet used. The woman was a kaleidoscope of fiction: lower-class dropout with a brilliant mind; a stripper with a posh fiancé. She was everything and nothing.
They had doused the candles earlier and Agnes didn’t want the light now. Blowing on her fingers to stimulate circulation, she flipped through the book of English manor houses. Despite everything she had learned, she wanted Felicity Cowell to be an innocent victim. A good girl, not from a wealthy family, but one who worked hard and made a life for herself with a loving fiancé. She wanted the murderer to have committed the crime, not in reaction to something Felicity had done, but in reaction to something in his or her own life. Agnes wanted her to be an innocent victim who would never have the chance to live in her English manor house.
Sitting in the dead woman’s desk chair, Agnes admitted the picture she painted was most likely fiction. She knew that except in rare cases of random violence the victim was usually involved, somehow. Not culpable, but involved: domestic violence, jealousy or rage between work colleagues, a party to a love triangle. In this one case she hoped for a difference; she didn’t want Felicity Cowell, outsider among the château’s inhabitants, to be linked to the cause of the violence.
Thomason would need time before she could question him. This she knew from her own experience. She closed her eyes and tried to picture her husband, but the image was difficult to conjure. He was a memory, not a corpus.
“Am I disturbing you?”
Agnes rose, startled to see the marquise in the door frame, a candle in her hand.
“No, I’m just—”
“Remembering?”
“Yes,” Agnes said, surprised. “More accurately, trying not to forget.” Long shadows flickered between them.
“Be careful what you struggle to recall. In my experience the result is suspect. A filter across the truth and the haze of time. The desire to remember plays tricks.”
“It’s my husband, I have trouble recalling his face.”
The marquise blew her candle out, plunging the room back into near darkness. “Be thankful. That is all I remember of mine. His face the last time I saw him.”
Agnes waited for her to continue but the woman was gone. She sat in silence, listening. Then heels tappe
d. They were brisk, not those of the elderly marquise. A moment later Marie-Chantal hesitated at the threshold, framed by the reflection of her flashlight beam.
“I stayed here once—in the bedroom next door I mean,” she said. “Years ago. A house party Julien organized when we were all at Le Rosay. I was sorry she didn’t sleep there. It’s such a pretty room. I didn’t think to ask why she didn’t.” Marie-Chantal was beautifully dressed in a dark knee-length cashmere sweater dress over tall high-heeled boots. Agnes wondered how it was possible that such a woman could be unhappy.
Marie-Chantal started to remove her scarf, then stopped as if realizing that the room was exceptionally cold. “It seems neglectful now that I didn’t even know she was engaged. She didn’t wear a ring.” Unconsciously Marie-Chantal glanced to her own left hand and enormous diamond.
“Apparently they were waiting to get the ring from his family.” That much Harry had mumbled to Agnes.
Marie-Chantal moved to the front of the desk and flipped the catalogue open, aiming her light across the pages. “The few times we spoke, she talked about her work. The art here, and the sale. She loved what she did.”
She moved toward the paintings and leaned against the wall, aiming her flashlight beam over them. “Wonderful pieces, but here they are the leftovers. Have they told you I paint?” She stepped back as if studying the canvases carefully. “Are you familiar with Morandi? There is one here. Or maybe Julien has it with him in London. Morandi painted only one thing his entire life. Bottles. He was a great favorite of my studio instructor in Paris. One thing, he would say. Paint one thing over and over and you have to infuse it with yourself, you can’t simply go through the motions.” She stepped away from the canvases. “I painted Julien. Sketches, careful studies in oil. Extravagant period pieces. Over and over. Interest. Infatuation. Obsession. You heard us earlier?”
Agnes nodded carefully. Wondering why it had never occurred to her that George might be having an affair. This beautiful woman suspected her husband, and yet that had never been her fear. Perhaps it should have been. Something about the smell of lotion jogged her memory. Had she simply not suspected?
Swiss Vendetta--A Mystery Page 14