The Orchid Affair

by Lauren Willig

  “Père Beniet?”

  “The children’s grandfather. My wife’s father.”

  It was a strange way of phrasing it, but that wasn’t what caught Laura’s attention. Beniet. The name nagged at her memory. It might have been from the Pink Carnation’s files on Jaouen. His wife’s family’s name would have been in there somewhere, along with all of the other pertinent details, especially since it was through his wife’s family that he was connected to Fouché. But that wasn’t it at all. Beniet. Julie Beniet. She could hear someone saying it, with the English inflection, not the French. Candlelight glinting off claret, crystal glasses above a polished table. She had been brought in as an extra to round off a table, seated all the way at the end by the vicar’s brother-in-law. But at the top of the table, the talk was all of Julie Beniet.

  Laura looked wide-eyed at Jaouen. “Your wife was Julie Beniet?”

  The drawings in the poetry book, the canvases piled by the wall, that charcoal drawing of Pierre-André and Gabrielle in Jaouen’s study . . . She knew it was rude to stare, but she couldn’t help it. André Jaouen and Julie Beniet! It was like finding that Fouché had been married to Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, or Leonardo da Vinci to Lucrezia Borgia.

  “The very one.” There was a tightness to his voice that ought to have signaled a warning, if Laura had been listening for it.

  “I saw an exhibition of her paintings.” Laura almost added “in London,” but caught herself in time. “They were . . .”

  “Awe-inspiring? Groundbreaking? Life-changing?”

  “All of that.”

  She might not have any artistic gifts herself, but she could appreciate them when she saw them. No wonder the sketches in the margins of her mother’s poetry had seemed to leap and dance. Julie Beniet. She had been invited to paint the Royal Family and refused. Her work had caused a brief sensation in London, both for her painting and her politics.

  It was said that Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun had gone into a sulk that lasted for months.

  “What—,” Laura began, and then snapped her mouth closed. There were some questions one didn’t ask, and especially not of one’s employer.

  “What happened to her? Not that.” Jaouen obviously hadn’t missed her brief, betraying glance at Pierre-André. In a clipped voice, he said, “It was a fever.”

  Laura had thought she was immune to embarrassment, but it had her in its grips now.

  “I am sorry,” she said. It sounded painfully inadequate.

  Jaouen apparently felt the same way. He pushed away from the window. “So am I. Do you have any more personal questions you wish to ask?”

  Laura’s spine stiffened. “No.”

  “Good. The children have my permission to explore the house. But take care where you go.”

  Without another word, he turned and walked away, his boots clicking against the dusty floor.

  “Papa!” Pierre-André scrambled after him, tripping over the long coat-tails of the uniform jacket.

  Gabrielle, her arms wrapped around the book of poetry, gave Laura a dirty look.

  So much for winning the love and trust of her charges and building a rapport with her employer.

  Blast.

  Proper governesses didn’t curse, but Laura had been raised in a different school.

  Blast, blast, blast.

  Chapter 8

  Blast. In multiples.

  So much for a romantic weekend in Paris with my boyfriend.

  At least the rain had let up. It hadn’t stopped entirely, but it was more of a mist than a drizzle. I furled my umbrella and dashed across the crosswalk, which seemed to operate less on lights and more on an honor system—i.e., if you moved fast enough, they wouldn’t actively try to mow you down. Slow-moving pedestrians were fair game. I made it safely to the other side and paused, panting, considering my options.

  Across the street, I could still see Colin through the window of the Minerve, sweet-talking the woman at the desk.

  I knew that this weekend was more stressful for Colin than for me, that I should be kind and patient and all that politician’s-wife jazz, but I still wanted to shake him. Wasn’t this weekend stressful enough without sharing space with his sister? I set off grimly down the Rue des Écoles, in what I hoped was the direction of the Musée de la Préfecture de Police. I had a miniature Lonely Planet guide with an equally miniature map buried somewhere in the bowels of my bag, but it was very hard to stalk effectively while consulting a map. Right then, stalking took precedence.

  On some level, I knew that I was being cranky because I was nervous. I didn’t like Jeremy and I didn’t like what I had heard of Colin’s mother, but she was still his mother and I still had to meet her and I still wanted her to like me, because on some level her opinion still counted. At the same time, I was worried about Colin and what this weekend was going to do to him. I was also worried about Serena and how seeing her mother and stepfather was going to send her off the deep end. And of course, if Serena went off the deep end, there it would be, all dumped on Colin again, and I was worried about that, too. It was all a great big mess.

  I sloshed through the rutted streets, the Parisian puddles seeping through the untreated leather of my brown suede boots. They had been very snazzy at one point, but they had not been designed for utility. I could feel my stockings soaking up the icy water. It might be March, but it felt more like January.

  I was looking for the Rue des Carmes, the home of the Musée de la Préfecture de Police. Not that I trusted myself to get much work done. I was one, big churning mass of undigested emotion: guilt, anger, trepidation, indignation. Should I go back and apologize? I stopped, wondering whether I ought to turn around and find Colin and make nice. It really hadn’t been fair to walk out on him like that.

  I reached into my pocket for my mobile. Something crinkled under my palm.

  I pulled it out. It was the flyer for that special exhibit at the Musée Cognacq-Jay. Artistes en 1789: Marguerite Gérard et Julie Beniet.

  The name Julie Beniet sounded familiar. AP art history, perhaps? On either side of the diagonal band announcing the title, the flyer showed a picture. The top was a family grouping: a woman with frizzed and powdered hair, wearing a natural-waisted dress in blue-and-white-striped silk, a filmy fichu at her throat, holding a young boy in the crook of one arm, a man seated at a desk next to her with another child. Marguerite Gérard, perhaps?

  Below was an entirely different sort of woman. This one was dressed in the new fashion, in a high-waisted gown of white muslin. Her flyaway blond curls were held back by a white bandeau. She was portrayed alone, looking directly out at the viewer, a paintbrush held suspended over a palette. She seemed to be laughing—at herself or at the viewer.

  10 Février 6 Avril 2004, it read on the bottom. Musée Cognacq-Jay, 8 Rue Elzévir, 75003 Paris.

  The exhibition would be closing fairly soon. It would be gone by the time I came back to Paris in July for a final research wrap-up.

  I flipped the flyer over to the back. It was closely printed with a paragraph about each artist, and under that, in even smaller print, Informations Pratiques, about fees and visitor hours.

  Marguerite Gérard had been sister-in-law of Fragonard . . . all very exciting. I skipped down to Beniet. Trained in the studio of Antoine Daubier, big in Revolutionary circles, pals with the young David . . . married to André Jaouen.

  Ah.

  That was how I had heard of her. Julie Beniet had been the wife of the man in whose household the Pink Carnation had placed her spy known as the Silver Orchid.

  I checked Julie Beniet’s birth and death dates. She had died four years before the period in which I was interested. Well, that made sense. Based on the reports I had been reading back in the archives of Selwick Hall, it might have made for some marital discord had it been otherwise. The tension between the Silver Orchid and her employer struck me as more than a little sexually charged. Or maybe I had just seen The Sound of Music one too many times?

  Th
e museum turned out to be one of the many minor mansions that dot the streets of Paris, smooth stone walls unremarkable from the street until you enter a courtyard and realize that you’re in a private palace. The Cognacq-Jay wasn’t quite a palace, but it was certainly a substantial gentleman’s residence. I made my way through the small, stone courtyard to the entrance, presumably a servants’ entrance back in the days of affluence. An attempt had been made at modernization. There was a very ugly desk at the front with a very functional cash register and a very grumpy concierge. The permanent collections were free; the special exhibits five euros, three euros fifty for students. A bargain! I flashed my student ID, handed over my tarif réduit, and was pointed down a narrow hallway to the special-exhibition rooms.

  I showed my ticket to the guard and walked in, breathing in that museum smell of flaking paint and old fabrics. It was dark in these rooms, a stark contrast after the bright, white-walled modernity of the hallway, with its plastic racks of flyers and brochures. These rooms looked as they must have done in the mid- to late nineteenth century—paneled in dark wood, the lights kept low to avoid fading the art.

  The first room of the exhibit was devoted to early works by Gérard and Beniet—set side by side to emphasize the distinction between Marguerite, the more traditional; and Julie, the Revolutionary in art as in politics. These early compositions were mostly pictures of friends and family—men in periwigs and women in wide, sashed dresses.

  Even there, Beniet’s paintings had a different tone from Gérard’s. Many of Beniet’s were little more than charcoal sketches—vivid, living things that looked as though she had tossed them off in a moment, her hand racing impatiently across the page. There was a gaunt woman with hands on her hips, knitting sticking out from under her arm; an elderly man in spectacles, napping in his library; a baby sleeping in a basket in a garden. But it wasn’t just her family she had portrayed; there were street hawkers, vagrants, old women doing the washing . . . anyone, it seemed, who came within range of her pen.

  One portrait caught my eye. This one was part of a series done in crayon, shaded with color rather than black and white. It showed a man in buff breeches with white stockings. His shoes were plain black and slightly scuffed. No fancy buckles or other decoration. He wore a long, brown coat over a red waistcoat—not a flashy red, but a deep maroon color, quiet and serviceable. His hair was shoulder-length, unpowdered. He certainly wasn’t a dandy. His appearance should have been unremarkable.

  What you noticed about him was his gaze. He looked directly out at the viewer, interested, unapologetic. Beniet had caught the way the light limned the frames of his spectacles and the bright blue of the eyes beneath them.

  I didn’t need to check the card underneath to know who he was.

  I looked at the card anyway and found that I had been right. The picture was of André Jaouen, husband of Beniet, the likeness taken during his time as a member of the Nantes delegation to the National Assembly. It was thought to be a study for a larger painting that was never completed. That might be accounted for, the card noted primly, by a shift in Beniet’s career that had taken place shortly thereafter. Soon after arriving in Paris, Beniet had abandoned personal subjects for allegorical topics on a grand scale. Those paintings, considered her finest, could be seen in the next room.

  The stillness of the room was suddenly broken by an obnoxious electronic sound blaring out a version of Mozart that would have made Mozart howl.

  Oh, crap. That was me.

  I snatched the phone up out of my bag and hit Receive, scooting crab-like towards the exit while the other two patrons glared and the guard gave me one of those peeled-back-nostril looks that suggested that he smelled something very, very bad but wasn’t going to lower himself so far as to acknowledge it. It’s a look the French have down pat.

  “Hey,” I muttered, scuttling down the hallway towards the front desk. I leaned hard against the door into the courtyard, feeling the glare of the concierge burring into my back like an engraver’s awl.

  I had a feeling the museum authorities wouldn’t be exactly thrilled with me for whipping out the modern technology, so I sidled off to the side, phone pressed to my ear. There was a bench. It was wet. I plopped down on it anyway.

  “Where are you?” demanded Colin, without preamble. He sounded short of breath. He also sounded distinctly pissed, and I don’t mean in the British sense of the word.

  “At the Musée Cognacq-Jay. They’re having an exhibit on women painters of the French Revolution.”

  There was a strangled sound on the other end. “Right,” Colin said shortly. “Stay there. I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

  “Wait,” I said belatedly. “Where are you?”

  “I,” said Colin grimly, “am with the police.”

  “What?”

  It was no use. I was speaking to a dead line.

  I pressed Redial, but Colin must have turned it off. It went immediately to voice mail.

  Turned it off . . . or had it taken from him?

  All sorts of improbable possibilities began to unroll in my head. Jeremy had gone ballistic, murdered Colin’s mother, and framed Colin. Serena had arrived early, gone ballistic, murdered Jeremy, and framed her mother. Jeremy was the head of a gang of international art thieves and had framed everyone.

  I wondered uneasily if I was supposed to be sprinting to the Prefecture to rescue my boyfriend. Would Colin need bailing out? Did they even have bail in France? And if so, would they take traveler’s checks?

  On the other hand, Colin had told me to stay put. He had also said he would be over as soon as he could. That didn’t sound like he was expecting to be incarcerated in the Château d’If. Not for a long stay, at any rate.

  I didn’t go back inside. Instead, I lurked around the courtyard, pretending to scroll through my saved text messages, but really scanning the street for signs of Colin.

  When my phone buzzed, I pounced. “Hello?” I said eagerly, not bothering to check the caller ID. “Colin?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be with Colin?” It was a woman’s voice, with a unique mid-Atlantic drawl, neither quite American nor quite English.

  Damn. Pammy. I’ve known Pammy since I was five, which is why she can begin a conversation without so much as a hello or how-are-you. And I love Pammy, really I do. She’s a constant source of entertainment and advice. I appreciate the former and usually ignore the latter, especially when it has to do with guys, clothes, or guys and clothes. In contrast, her long-term investment advice is usually fairly sound. That’s Pammy for you. Sounds like a ditz; business brain like a steel trap.

  As I was saying, I love Pammy. But hers was not the voice I wanted to be hearing on the other end of my mobile at that precise moment.

  “It’s a long story,” I said with a sigh. The damp from the bench was creeping through my underwear. It was a very depressing feeling.

  “Well, never mind that.” Pammy and I have been friends long enough that the social niceties get dropped. At least, Pammy drops them. I usually make a pretense. “Do you remember Melinda Horner?”

  “What?” Pammy had a thing for non-sequiturs, but even for her, this was taking it a bit far.

  I could practically hear her snapping her fingers in the background, willing me to keep up. “You know, Melinda Horner. You’ve only known her forever. You can’t have forgotten her.”

  I’d tried to forget. She had been one of the “popular” girls in our class at Chapin, the tiny all-girls’ school Pammy and I had both attended from kindergarten on. You form some pretty strong friendships when you’re in the same place for thirteen years. You also form some pretty firm enmities. Melinda fell somewhere towards the latter end of that spectrum. She wasn’t my least favorite person from our class, but she was probably second or third.

  I’d heard she’d started calling herself Melynda von Horner for a while—plain old Melinda Horner, apparently, not being quite glitzy enough for the purposes of Page Six—but switched back to received
spelling when someone had confused her with a German porn star. For a few weeks, the Chapin alum phone lines had been buzzing with the delectable gossip that Melinda had become a porn queen, but it had all fizzled out fairly quickly. Among other things, no one could figure out how she had picked up sufficient German. She was not the brightest bulb in the fixture.

  “What about her?” I asked.

  “I saw her in London last night.” Despite the fact that her mother had whisked her off to London when we were in tenth grade, Pammy kept in touch with more of our class than I did. Pammy’s contacts list was a thing of wonder, akin to the begat chapters of the Bible in length and complexity. “She’s PA to Micah Stone!”

  I gathered I was meant to be impressed by this. “Who?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Ellie! Where have you been living? Under a rock?”

  “The British Library?”

  “Same difference.”

  “Mike Rock?”

  Pammy let out a long-suffering sigh. “Micah Stone,” she said, with exaggerated patience. “He is only the new Keanu Reeves.”

  I was tempted to say “who?” just to annoy Pammy, but controlled myself. Even I knew who Keanu Reeves was. Plus, I had just spotted Colin approaching the museum.

  “Hey!” I gave a little wave in his general direction. “Pams, can I call you back?”

  “Whatever. I just wanted you to know that Melinda’s in Paris this weekend.”

  Colin spotted me and executed a brisk turn. He did not look precisely thrilled to see me.

  “Um, thanks,” I said into my mobile. I wasn’t sure why she was telling me. Melinda and I don’t exactly move in the same circles. Even her third-grade birthday parties were far cooler than mine. “I really have to go now.”

  “Ta,” trilled Pammy. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Smooches!”

  “Right back at you,” I said, and hit End, just as Colin came through the gate.

  I shot off the bench. There was a big wet spot on my behind, courtesy of said bench, but that was the least of my worries.