Swiss Vendetta--A Mystery

by Tracee de Hahn

  Agnes watched him turn, watched the arc of his arm, the direction his shoulder tilted. She judged the distance, the movement of air, her own nerves, and found her kneeling stance.

  The shot reverberated. The gun she had found in Arsov’s chair dropped from her hand. Estanguet fell backward, an ugly patch of red flowering high on his chest, near his shoulder. She watched him release his knife and go still. Then she passed out.

  When she opened her eyes, Julien Vallotton was kneeling over her. In her line of sight blood had pooled on the beautiful parquet floor. Somewhere in the background a woman, one of the maids, she decided, was crying. She turned her head to watch Nurse Brighton lean over Arsov.

  “Is he dead?” she murmured.

  Julien Vallotton took her hand and followed her gaze. They watched Nurse Brighton pull a clean blanket over Arsov’s face, her eyes brimming with tears.

  Agnes tried to pull herself up to a sitting position and failed. “I took a first at Bienne. George was proud.” Her thoughts were disconnected, but she remembered that was the day George met Carnet. In her mind that was also the day she had practiced for, and was the reason she had handled so many weapons, but it was too late to save anyone.

  She started to shake. Vallotton removed his coat and laid it over her. She tried to object but her hand struck the floor and she felt the warm stickiness dripping from her side and closed her eyes thinking that now she knew how George had felt. Unafraid. At peace.

  Thirty-four

  The doorbell rang and Agnes called out to say she would answer it, but her eldest son ran to the door before she could move. She sighed deeply and sat back, not knowing whether to be grateful or worried. The boys hadn’t been allowed to see her the first days in intensive care, and afterward in the hospital she hadn’t wanted them to worry. Now, at home, they had missed the worst of the bandages and the medicines streaming in through tubes, but she knew that their father’s death was on their minds, and now they had nearly lost their mother. It was too great a burden for children.

  She heard the murmur of voices from the front hall and adjusted the blanket across her legs, thankful for the fire blazing on the hearth of George’s parents’ home. Even though the air in the weeks following the storm was spring-like, she still couldn’t get warm. The voices got louder and she hoped it wasn’t another neighbor coming to visit. There had been an interminable stream of guests, each one saying they knew she needed rest but that they had to bring something to cheer her up. The visits were always followed by low-voiced arguments with Sybille, who said Agnes wasn’t grateful enough for their interest. An argument that alternated with how reckless she was. How little she cared for her boys.

  She closed her eyes and swallowed hard as the scent of a winter stew wafted into the room. The thought of food made her ill. Weak tea and clear broth were all she could stomach. She tried to breathe without smelling, but the effort was too great. She gave up and swallowed again to stifle what came next: the bitter taste of adrenaline. It lingered along with the cold. The taste and feel of fear.

  The voices in the hall grew louder and she sat up abruptly, wincing.

  “Don’t get up on our account,” Julien Vallotton said.

  Agnes tried to anyway, and he crossed the room and put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

  “They wouldn’t let me out of the hospital for the funeral,” she said, instantly regretting her words. She sounded so impolite. Why did he unsettle her so? “No one told me about it until it was too late, or I might have left anyway.”

  “Hello to you as well.” Vallotton smiled. “You were missed, but we knew you couldn’t make it. They said a special prayer for you at the service.”

  She squirmed at the thought. Was there an appropriate prayer for someone who arrived too late to save a life?

  “We reinterred Anne-Marie Faivre when we buried Monsieur Arsov. That was her name. Faivre. And of course Frédéric Estanguet’s last name when he was a child. Anne-Marie and Arsov are now in our family plot. The monument hasn’t been placed yet, but Marie-Chantal designed it and I think Arsov would approve.”

  Agnes closed her eyes for a moment and shifted to a more comfortable position. There was a clack-clack of high heels.

  “Madame Lüthi has offered tea and I came to see if Julien would also like a slice of cake. Daniel says he can’t manage the steps. He’ll wait in the car.” Marie-Chantal Vallotton walked in and Agnes grinned despite the pain. Marie-Chantal’s outfit would no doubt impress Sybille. She wore a very chic wool suit with extremely high-heeled leather boots and a concoction of wool and feathers angled on her head. An ensemble at home on a Paris runway. She stole a glance at Julien Vallotton and realized that he was also extremely well dressed, beyond his usual tailored suit. She knew they did this as a tribute to her and tears came to her eyes.

  A few steps behind Marie-Chantal, Sybille arrived wearing a fresh apron, smoothing her hair back into a bun.

  “Your friends are very nice to stop by and check on you.” She smiled across the group as if expecting—hoping? Agnes wondered—one of the Vallottons would counter her suggestion that they were friends.

  “It wasn’t necessary,” Agnes said. “Bardy sent me a full report.”

  “Of course it wasn’t necessary,” Marie-Chantal said, turning the full force of her smile on first Agnes, then Sybille. “But we were anxious to see you. We peeked in at the CHUV when you were in intensive care but you were sleeping and wouldn’t have known. Poor Mimi was nearly sick with jealousy when the medical helicopter landed to evacuate you to the hospital. If she hadn’t already convinced Doctor Blanchard that she was merely dehydrated and exhausted, she might have joined you and Officer Petit on the ride.”

  Agnes smiled. Her boys had asked her about the journey to the hospital, clearly disappointed that she didn’t remember anything about the dramatic flight. She had later learned that a second helicopter had taken Arsov and his butler, along with Felicity Cowell’s body and Estanguet, to the hospital. Petit had recovered quickly, and was in good enough spirits to remark that finally he’d gotten his evacuation. He had brought his son from the maternity ward to see her.

  “Julien’s aunt,” Marie-Chantal said in Sybille’s direction, “Madame la marquise, wanted to come today, but we wouldn’t let her. You aren’t well enough to have a crowd and we stopped by unannounced. Terrible manners.”

  Agnes stifled another smile, now positive this performance was for her mother-in-law’s benefit. The marquise wasn’t likely to leave the château for anyone.

  “When you are ready, walking, and feeling better, you have to come stay with us.” Marie-Chantal clapped her hands together as if an idea just struck her. “You could come now. Madame Lüthi can have a respite from her role as nurse and you will be very comfortable—”

  “I couldn’t dream of Agnes leaving us. I am devoted to her care,” Sybille interrupted as if she hadn’t wanted exactly this only a few minutes before they arrived.

  “We wouldn’t have come today,” Julien said, “but Étienne Bardy phoned to tell me that you are receiving a special commendation. For heroism and bravery. He will give you all the details but there will be a formal presentation ceremony and he wanted us to know. I insisted on coming here and telling you myself.” He crossed the room to shake Sybille’s hand. “You must be very proud of her. A hero in the family.”

  Agnes thought Sybille would choke.

  “Maybe I can help you with tea and cake,” Marie-Chantal interrupted, escorting Sybille from the room. “The cake smells so good. Vanilla-flavored with orange, is it?”

  “Thank you,” Agnes said to Vallotton with a nod after her mother-in-law, wondering for a moment what the Vallottons thought of her home. The atmosphere rolling off Sybille was cold, but the home itself was warm, full of dark wood and relics of distant ancestors.

  “My aunt would visit, you know.” At Agnes’s expression, Vallotton shrugged. “She offered.”

  “Knowing I would politely refuse and come to
her instead.”

  “‘Old habits die hard’ is the saying.”

  “I was glad I didn’t kill him.”

  “Bardy told me that if you’d meant to kill him, Estanguet would be dead. He knew you shot to disable. Nurse Brighton would have been a good hostage, or maybe he would have killed her immediately. From her account Estanguet was spiraling out of control. Of course you know that Arsov’s butler and Officer Petit recovered from their injuries, but something happened between the time Estanguet attacked them and when you arrived. Estanguet was in a rage. Honestly, it was a miracle you could aim at all. You’d lost a lot of blood.”

  Agnes remembered thinking she couldn’t stand because her leg was badly cut. She thought the blood on her chest was from Arsov’s wounds, not realizing that Estanguet’s knife had found its mark, sliding into her abdomen. Later, at the hospital, they had explained that adrenaline conceals pain.

  “He stabbed me and Monsieur Arsov with the same blade he used on Felicity Cowell,” she said. “To think she died because of mistaken identity. She was wearing that borrowed coat, sitting on the bench where he sat every day, and with the storm raging Estanguet couldn’t tell that she was a woman and not an old man. He’d been planning it for months. Ever since he heard the name Vladimir Arsov. He had the day picked and even the storm didn’t deter him.”

  Agnes paused to catch her breath, wondering if she would ever fully recover from her wounds. “That storm,” she said. “It will be called the storm of the century, but people won’t realize that beyond the road accidents it killed in other ways. If there hadn’t been a storm Arsov would have been outside. Maybe Estanguet would have killed him there, or maybe Felicity Cowell’s presence would have saved his life. And her own.”

  “Estanguet would have found another opportunity,” said Vallotton. “He was determined to have his revenge.”

  Agnes shifted the blanket that covered her legs. “When we found Felicity Cowell’s body Doctor Blanchard told me she wouldn’t have felt any pain and I didn’t believe him. Now, I guess he was right. The blade was sharp.” She thought about George. Maybe he hadn’t felt anything, just a great sense of approaching emptiness. Vallotton moved to touch her arm and she shook herself.

  “Just thinking about that day,” she said. “Hard to believe so much harm came from what Estanguet cobbled together as a child. If only he had known the truth. At least he might have realized that they really did what they thought was best for him. If he had, then when he found Arsov the two men might have bonded over their love for Anne-Marie and not turned it into a tragedy.”

  “It’s hard to give up on the notions we have of people that come out of childhood.”

  “If the Estanguets had treated him well things would have been different. Or if he had confronted Arsov. Questioned him.”

  Vallotton stood to look out the front window of the chalet. “I wonder if the serendipity of the meeting made it worse. Imagine sitting in a café and hearing a name that you have harbored a grudge against your entire life. A secret name you were warned not to share. The notion of secrecy ensured a small boy would remember the name Vladimir Arsov. The man who stole his sister away.”

  “It may have been serendipity at the start, but it was premeditated in the end,” said Agnes. “He spent months planning how to slip down the hill and strike. Did you know that Estanguet is a mountain climber? Bardy told me. Estanguet was careful to cover his proficiency and tell me that he was a guide on gentle walks. Instead, he’d climbed some impressive sites recently despite his age. When the storm came he knew that it would be the perfect cover. He had picked the day and made his preparations and suddenly the conditions are even better. No one would see him and he had the skills to climb back up and hide among the others in the village. Any trace was erased and no one suspected that he came from anywhere other than his car. He was enough of a regular by then to blend in. Premeditated.”

  “If he’d resisted the need to find out what happened he would have gotten away with killing her. His offer to help Carnet down the hill was the only reason he was on the property. The only reason you had any reason to suspect him.”

  Agnes pondered this. She wondered if she would have made the connection if they hadn’t found Anne-Marie’s bones.

  Vallotton slipped his hands in his pockets. “My aunt feels responsible. She thinks she should have recognized him.”

  “She almost did. I think it was on her mind, which is why she mentioned seeing Estanguet the first night I was there. We spoke about children and changes that happen over time, and loss. I think that too many thoughts were in her head, and she didn’t pinpoint that it was literally seeing Estanguet that triggered her memories. He was a mere child when she knew him. She had no reason to recognize him. I associated her thoughts with Felicity Cowell’s other name and her parents learning what had happened.”

  “I think he was often on her mind, perhaps subconsciously, but there. When Mimi’s parents died she encouraged my father to adopt her. We didn’t question her reasons, but I understand better now. She had always wondered what happened to the two boys who were with her during the war. After what happened with Estanguet she told me that she had been assured that both boys were well settled; now she realizes that for at least one of them that was not true.”

  “No one but Frédéric Faivre-Estanguet is responsible, not you, not the marquise. Not me, even though if I’d arrived minutes earlier Arsov would have lived.”

  “He’d nearly died the day before.”

  “That’s my point. We did the best we could.” She thought about George. Could she have saved him if she’d understood his struggles, or would any acknowledgment of what had already transpired have moved him toward the same end for a different reason? “Estanguet took that knife from its case at Arsov’s when he toured during the Fête Nationale. I suspect he hoped to kill Arsov that day but for whatever reason was unable to. He decided to wait. Plan. Perhaps if he had confronted him that first day Estanguet would have gotten the truth he needed.”

  “Mère, have you seen—” A small blond boy stopped a few feet inside the living room, surprised by the sight of a stranger.

  Julien Vallotton stepped forward to introduce himself and motioned toward the window. Daniel saw them and tapped the horn. “You like it?”

  “Like it? A 1907 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost? It has a seven-liter engine that’s naturally aspirated, a side valve, and a four-speed manual gearbox.”

  “You know your cars,” Julien said.

  “Is it yours? Wow!”

  “This is Peter, my youngest,” Agnes said, smiling.

  “I thought you and your brothers might want to go for a ride. When your mom is completely healed we can bring her out in it.”

  Peter’s eyes widened and he nodded.

  “Go get your brothers,” Agnes said. “Nice of you,” she said to Vallotton after her son ran into the kitchen, hollering for his siblings.

  “A ploy to get on their good side after we nearly killed their mother.”

  Agnes noticed the package leaning against the door frame. It was the size and shape of a small painting.

  “The auction is going ahead? I’m sure you’ll have a great deal of interest after all…” She wasn’t sure how to characterize what had happened.

  “The notoriety?” Vallotton laughed. “I’m sending one painting to London by courier and they have promised to bury it in the back of a sale catalogue. My duty will be done for the attorneys. I’ll send a large check to charity to satisfy everyone else, and we will hope that the outside world forgets us again. This one is for you. Something to say thank you … A little better than a ride in a car.”

  Over his shoulder Agnes caught sight of the woods that stretched down the hill and eventually over the small mountain and toward Château Vallotton and Lac Léman. She squinted into the cold sun. In her mind’s eye she could picture a small girl running across the lawn, shrieking with delight as Winston chased her. The lawn would still be dotted with gre
at piles of branches gathered from damaged trees. It would be some time before the landscape recovered and she wondered if humans should model their recovery on Mother Nature; she knew it took years.

  “How is Mimi?” she asked.

  “She talks about those days often, but the doctors say that’s good. Now she’s staying with us as our guest.”

  “Guest? Where else would she go?”

  He half laughed. “Technically she now lives next door. Arsov made the request and we’ve honored it. We’ve deeded the villa to her for her lifetime. Right now, while she is so young, she stays as our guest at the château.” He smiled at Agnes. “She likes that word—guest—and has tried to use it against Madame Puguet and Nanny with only some effect. Something along the lines that guests don’t have to do homework, or eat their dinner. I think it will take some time to resolve.”

  “Likely until she is eighteen.”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “I didn’t have a chance to thank you that day,” Agnes said.

  “Once I knew Mimi was more scared than hurt I followed you. I should have run.” He leveled his gaze on her. “How are you healing?”

  Agnes touched her side involuntarily. “Well enough. No wonder that dagger was famous. Cut straight though the muscle, but I’ll be fine, didn’t lose any organs, which I gather was a possibility. Leg nerves a bit damaged and the scar is quite nasty, but they say it will fade. It was the knot on my head that gave them fits in the hospital. Stitches I can handle, but MRIs every day for a week wore me out. I think they like the idea that they haven’t discovered the injury that will kill you, but they still might.”

  Marie-Chantal was laughing as she entered the room, three adoring boys in tow. “Julien, I think we should go for that drive now. Daniel is waiting.” The boys were pulling on outdoor coats and gloves and Sybille Lüthi opened the door, her eyes drawn straight to the gleaming automobile in the drive.