Swiss Vendetta--A Mystery

by Tracee de Hahn

  “You confronted her, didn’t you?” Agnes said.

  “No.” He plunged his hands in his pockets. “Yes. But she was alive when I left her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us this before?”

  “And admit that I was the last person to see her alive?”

  “The last person before her killer.”

  “That’s too close for comfort.”

  Agnes took a step back, stifling a sigh. He was just a big kid. Tall and muscular, but still a kid at heart. “Marie-José was in the library cleaning and you left.” She held out a hand to stop him from speaking. “She doesn’t know where you went but when you returned she met you in the blue sitting room. The two of you spoke, and you walked away. Toward the library. She was upset and went in the other direction. Toward the fur vault where she heard movement. Mademoiselle Cowell was alive when you returned to the library. Marie-José is your alibi for the time of Felicity Cowell’s death.”

  Graves relaxed perceptibly.

  “I want to hear your version of what happened when you saw her last.”

  Graves removed his hands from his pockets like a schoolboy preparing to recite a lesson. “I’d had enough of her ignoring me. Like I wasn’t good enough for her. Me, not good enough. I was telling the truth about the ice hitting the library windows and driving me nuts. I had to get out of there, but it was storming and I didn’t want to go outside. I didn’t go after her on purpose but I wandered around a little, into rooms I normally don’t go into. Closed-up rooms, just curious. There she was, trying on dresses. Wearing a fancy old-fashioned gown. Acting like she was the lady of the manor.”

  “You spoke?”

  “Hell, yes. I told her she was a deceitful tramp and would never fit in here. I could tell that’s what she was thinking.” His lips tightened into a grim line. “I said things that weren’t true. She would have fit in. She was like water on fire, a smooth perfect surface that made everything else fade by comparison. But I was angry. The way she treated me. Ignoring me. I told her I was going to tell them all. I was going to tell her nasty secret.”

  Agnes knew there was an array of secrets to choose from: Felicity’s real name, her lack of education. Was the pregnancy a secret? “Tell me everything you remember about the room.”

  “There were a lot of boxes. Couple of chairs—”

  “No. What was she wearing? Were there other clothes around?”

  “She was wearing some sort of evening dress. Stones, probably diamonds, on it. Sounds like what you found her in.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Look, I was worked up. Angry. Her own clothes were draped on the back of a chair and I may have thrown them at her. That’s all I remember. Then she yelled at me to leave. I’d never seen her like that before. Even in London, when she told me everything, her anger was cold. This time was different.” He shrugged. “I didn’t care. I’d had my say. She slammed the door behind me and locked it. That was the last time I saw her. I headed downstairs.”

  Agnes imagined those minutes when Felicity Cowell was interrupted while trying on the coronation gown. Likely she was thinking about Thomason and his proposal, wondering if she would fit in with his family. Already worried about her past. Then Graves threatens to tell the Vallottons. He throws her clothes to the ground where they land halfway concealed under the table. Felicity is panicked now. Angry, she tells him to leave. When alone she replays his threat in her mind and hurls the mirror to the floor, beyond caring what she breaks. When Marie-José turns the doorknob Felicity’s state of mind is precarious. She doesn’t know who it is: Graves returned? A member of the family? Even the marquise. It doesn’t matter. She can’t risk being seen in the dress and the family and servants have the door key. Before anyone can enter she runs from the room, down the small spiral stairs. Reaching the lower corridor, she vomits.

  Agnes remembered her own pregnancies. How nausea would come on suddenly, then pass as quickly. Felicity was already distressed, perhaps questioning her entire future. Pregnant and unsure about marrying Thomason—feeling trapped—and her secret past about to be exposed. Her options were closing in. Agnes recalled where other members of the household were at that time. The housekeeper had joined Marie-Chantal in the corridor off the entrance hall to discuss Julien Vallotton’s arrival. The cook had sought them out to finalize the menu. Agnes visualized their paths. Dressed as she was, Felicity could not have risked a member of the household seeing her. She was trapped. Footsteps nearing from two directions. The only way she could avoid being caught was to descend the steps by the kitchen. When the voices drew nearer she would have worried they might descend the stairs and find her, and … she what? Agnes asked herself. Had she used the coat and boots to stay warm while waiting for everyone to leave, then panicked and gone outside? What went through her mind in those final moments?

  André Petit arrived at a trot, startling Agnes from her reverie. “Thought I heard shouts,” he said, looking from Agnes to Graves, grasping the atmosphere but not the reason.

  “Officer Petit,” Agnes said. “Please take Monsieur Graves to his room and ask him to repeat to you what he told me. The more detail the better. Then find the maid, Marie-José, and ask her to tell you what she told me this evening. She’ll know what I mean.”

  Petit’s eyes bulged with excitement and he grabbed Graves’s arm, manhandling him down the stairs. Agnes didn’t object, returning her mind to Felicity on that last day. Embarrassed by what Graves knew, unsure if she could deceive Thomason. Trapped by others approaching. Had she, in that moment of despair, run outside? A need to hide, to be alone, to think. Agnes shook her head. A momentary lack of regard for her health in the cold of the storm? Even a desire to take the quick way out. To kill herself. With a sense of surety Agnes touched her own forehead as if to check a fever. She knew that feeling. Just the smallest fleeting sense of despair where the idea of an end to suffering seems like the only alternative. But Felicity took a coat and shoes, something in her mind still rational. She wasn’t George. She sat on the bench, she didn’t walk into the lake. Agnes wondered if Felicity would have stood up and walked back into the château if she hadn’t been killed.

  “What were you thinking?” Julien Vallotton’s words brought her back to the present. He was speaking to Thomason while rummaging through a cabinet. He located a couple glasses and a bottle and poured. “Fist-fighting like schoolboys.”

  Agnes approached. Was alcohol always the answer here? Both men took a swig while Agnes waved off the offer, although she wouldn’t have turned down a cigarette. She caught Vallotton’s eye and wondered if he read her mind. She decided to not frown so about the alcohol. Everyone could have their own vice.

  She turned her mind to Thomason. Upon closer inspection he had dark circles under his eyes. She knew all too well what he was experiencing, and wondered if Vallotton was worried about the other man’s state of mind, just as she was worried about Felicity Cowell’s. People did strange things in the midst of grief. The young man was surely struggling between maintaining a façade of imperturbability and the need to grieve. She let the shade of suspicion cross her mind, torn between regretting even the thought and reminding herself that he would need to be watched. Watched and questioned again. It was possible he had met Felicity outside in the storm. And killed her.

  “The things he said about her—”

  Julien Vallotton stopped Thomason with a raised palm. “Enough of what was said. Inspector Lüthi has questions. There are still serious matters to discuss.”

  Agnes watched the transformation. Thomason slipped his gentlemanly façade back on like it was a shirt. There would be no more outbursts tonight.

  “I thought the Swiss police would have solved this overnight,” he said politely. “Have you learned more about Felicity?” He stumbled over her name.

  “It’s okay,” said Agnes. “We all knew her as Felicity and should respect her choice.”

  She wished Thomason had taken the sleeping pills Doctor Blanchard suggested. He would have a
voided the fight with Graves and, more important, she could ignore him for a few more hours. She needed to sleep and then think. She indicated a grouping of chairs in an alcove.

  “Let’s go back to when you arrived in Switzerland. This might give me some insight into Felicity’s mind-set. How did she sound before she left London? And while she was here, could you sense she was concerned? Or troubled?”

  Thomason paced, and for a moment Agnes thought he was going to run to a door and leave. Instead, he walked the ten meters to the end of the corridor and drew back a heavy curtain. The gray-on-black silhouette of the French Alps dominated the landscape under the sliver of moon.

  “She left London earlier than planned and I tried to call her and got voicemail. Not unusual. If she was working she wouldn’t have answered her phone.”

  “Probably endeared her to your employers,” Agnes said. “A serious young woman. Hardworking. She didn’t know you were in Switzerland?”

  Thomason twisted the drapery in his hand and let it sling loose. “Yes, she knew I was here.”

  “At the Beau-Rivage. Nice hotel.”

  “Like I said, it’s where my family … and the firm always stay.”

  “Would you have expected Felicity to stay there? It’s what, an easy half hour by automobile? A beautiful drive.” Met with silence, Agnes persisted. “This is one of the most important unanswered questions and I know you were asked before. Wouldn’t you have expected her to stay there?”

  “Yes, until I thought that she was staying at the château. Who wouldn’t choose to stay here? But I couldn’t come and knock on the door after—” he paused. “She was working and we hadn’t spoken since she arrived. We were both busy.”

  Thomason returned to the table and Vallotton refilled the other man’s glass.

  “You were in a state of great distress when you arrived yesterday,” Agnes said gently.

  “I was worried, I hadn’t spoken with her in days.”

  “But you said it wasn’t unusual for her to ignore phone calls when she was working. Did you have a reason to be worried for her? Here, in Switzerland?”

  Thomason looked astounded, a flash of total honesty. He laughed. “No, I wasn’t worried about her, although I should have been. I was worried that she might forget me, not need me. And I was right. She did need me, here with her, protecting her.”

  “You called her Wednesday? The day she died?”

  “Of course I did. No, I called Tuesday night, by Wednesday my phone battery had died. That’s when I realized I hadn’t packed my charger. I meant to get one, but I was so upset and she hadn’t answered any of my other calls, so it didn’t matter. Then the power went out.”

  “Why were you upset? Had you fought?”

  “No,” Thomason sounded weary. “No fight. It was just her way. She had a way of keeping me unsettled. She could have married anyone; I know that she had boyfriends before we met. People more successful than me. What if she decided she had made the wrong decision? What if she changed her mind?” He turned to them suddenly. “She said she didn’t have a family. Why did she lie to me?”

  He closed his eyes and for a moment Agnes thought he was praying. Then Thomason gripped his hands into fists. “I wanted to marry her. She was perfect. The most beautiful, smartest, funniest person I knew and we were going to have a great life together.”

  Vallotton spoke, “She promised you a decision at the end of this trip, didn’t she? It would either be yes or no.”

  The look of devastation on Thomason’s face was genuine. “She wasn’t like most girls. When they hear your voice and learn your name and who your people are and where you live, they are ready to marry you no matter if you have a chimpanzee for a brother. Felicity was different; she didn’t care. She loved me, but she wanted to give it consideration. I gave her a bloody book with our house in it, I was so desperate to impress her. She just laughed and said, ‘Who lives in places like this?’ She didn’t care about any of that; she had her own ideas.” He lowered his head to his hands. “She said she would answer when she returned from the trip. Then I ended up in Switzerland at the same time and had to know. I knew that she wasn’t answering her phone, because we had agreed on a timeline: I was going to her flat to have dinner when I returned. She was a stickler for keeping to arrangements. But we were just a few kilometers apart and that changed everything. I had to know.”

  Agnes wanted to turn away from the pain on the young man’s face while at the same time she wondered if Felicity had turned him down and he had killed her.

  “I think now I know why I hadn’t met her family. I think you know why.” Thomason buried his face in his hands for a moment, then he turned to Vallotton. “Are you married?”

  “No.” He paused. “I’m a widower. My wife died in a car accident a year ago.”

  Agnes looked at him carefully, searching for a lie. Something invented to placate Thomason, but his eyes had the look of truth.

  Thomason turned to him; their knees touched they were so close. “You do understand.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “How did you meet your wife?”

  Agnes expected Vallotton to brush the question aside, but he didn’t.

  “Meet Amélie? We didn’t meet; we were born knowing each other. My family doesn’t meet people, we just see those whom we know, acquaintances renewed, strengthened, let go. It was always a matter of finding the link, the brother or mother or common distant cousin. I had … lost someone dear to me, someone I thought to form a life with, and Amélie dared me to marry her, saying who else would tolerate all of my relatives. She didn’t need me, didn’t need anyone, and was funny and beautiful and swept me off my feet. She was the most daring woman I’d ever known.”

  Agnes suddenly wished she’d taken that drink.

  “Felicity was afraid I would leave her if I met her family,” Thomason said. “She lied because she didn’t trust me enough to tell the truth.”

  Agnes felt the anxiety of a young woman running through the château, hiding her past, unable to confide in anyone. About to be exposed. Pushed outdoors into a killing cold.

  “But you now know the truth,” said Vallotton, “and that’s the truth she would have learned if she lived. You wouldn’t have cared about her family. That’s what you have to take away with you. Your truth.” Vallotton started to stand, but Thomason gripped his knee.

  “But I think I would have cared.”

  DAY FOUR

  Thirty

  She was tired and cold. She had waited and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark, but they hadn’t. It was pitch-black. Her stomach grumbled and that made her angry. She had nothing to eat or drink. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes and she squeezed them shut. Crying wouldn’t help; it never did. She thought of Monsieur Arsov and what he would do. He wouldn’t cry.

  He would do something; he would find a way out. She pushed her lips together and concentrated on stopping the tears, but it was difficult. She had never been alone like this; even when she hid there were always people around, walking by but not noticing, looking, calling her name. When she hid she was in control.

  She bit her lip. Monsieur Arsov. What would he do? She remembered the stories he told her about when he was young and first came to Switzerland, and earlier, when he lived in France. In the stories he was always hungry and there was mud and loud noises, but in the end he always made it home safely. Not luck he would say, but per-something. She sounded the word out: “perseverance.”

  She lay curled into a ball with her hands over her face. Slowly she moved, stretching out her legs, then her arms. The floor beneath her was hard, cold, and slightly damp. Like rock. She rubbed it and realized that it was exactly like rock. She was in a cave. Bats! she nearly screamed.

  Mimi sat up and wrapped her arms around her bent knees. It took several minutes to stop shaking, she was so frightened, but she drew a few deep breaths and decided to try another experiment. She spoke out loud. Nothing. She called out again, this time lo
uder. Her voice echoed, but it wasn’t a long echo. She remembered an outing with Madame Puguet. They drove into the mountains. There they had picnicked and walked into a cave that had gone on and on. When they were so far away they couldn’t see the entrance, they had called out and their voices echoed back and forth and back again. This was different. This place didn’t sound very big.

  Her stomach growled and tears overflowed her eyes and fell onto her cheeks. If only she had Elie. She gulped and strained to see, but there was nothing. It was black, black, black. What would Monsieur Arsov do? Something. That’s what he said, that he never gave up and he always did something. Keep moving forward, he said. She inched forward, sliding on the rock. Nothing changed and she moved a little more. There was a scuttling noise nearby and she froze, then she understood what it was and started to cry in earnest.

  Thirty-one

  Agnes stopped at the door to a room she had not seen before, as surprised by its interior as she was to see Doctor Blanchard hunched over a microscope in the middle of the night. A row of oil lamps cast overlapping shadows across the table in front of him.

  “Couldn’t sleep thinking about the girl,” he said when she entered. “Settled for this.” He waved a hand over the instruments.

  “I agree.” Agnes had the same problem sleeping. She was exhausted, but couldn’t rest thinking of Mimi not in her bed. She suspected others were wandering the corridors of the château, unable to sleep, waiting for daybreak so they could continue to look for the girl. After they officially called off the search for the night she had asked Petit to radio up the hill and alert the gendarmerie. The transmission was an admission that there was real cause for concern. At the same time, Agnes knew that alerting the village police was giving false hope to everyone around her. Mimi hadn’t climbed the cliff. Perhaps it would be better if she had.

  Madame Puguet had whispered the idea to her: could Mimi have wandered out to the edge of the lake and fallen through? The frozen edge was deceiving. Even if Mimi knew that there was no land under the far end of the cliff she might have been tempted to edge her way onto the seemingly solid surface. Every winter otherwise intelligent adults fell through ice-coated lakes and ponds and died. A full day after Mimi disappeared there was no chance she would have survived a plunge into the lake. This would be a search for her remains.