Leonie (67 page)

His profile against the pale wash of the sky was still arrogant, still strong, but then he had always been a handsome man. He leaned back in the wheelchair he hated, dressed as immaculately as ever, the same striped shirt, the silk tie neatly tied by his valet, for his own trembling hands were powerless even for such a simple task—he couldn’t even hold the newspaper still enough to read it. His feet in beautifully polished handmade shoes had been placed on the footrest by the valet and his perfectly pressed trousers concealed his useless legs. What the crash hadn’t succeeded in accomplishing the heart attack and the stroke that followed it had. Gilles was paralyzed from the waist down. And there was one other, even more terrible thing: Gilles had no voice. No one knew why, the doctors and nerve-specialists had puzzled over the question for three months now and were none the wiser. Maybe it will return when the shock is over, they had told Gérard, it’s possible.

Gilles turned his head to look at her and their eyes met. His dark blue ones were cold, empty. What was he thinking? she wondered. There was no way to know. He couldn’t write because his hands shook too much, and he couldn’t speak.

She stood up hurriedly. “Gérard, I must leave,” she said, avoiding Gilles’s eyes.

“I’ll take you home, Mother.” Gérard put down the paper. “I’ll be back later this evening,” he promised, taking his father’s hand for a moment. “I’ll read some more to you then. Or maybe I could get tickets for the theater or a concert?” Gilles shook his head and resumed his gaze out of the window.

Gérard watched his father sadly. He never went out. He refused even to be taken to the park—he was so desperately ashamed of being crippled.

Marie-France paused by the door. “Good-bye Gilles,” she called. She knew he could hear, but he didn’t acknowledge her. She
knew
she should never have come.

I was right, thought Jim, following Marigny at a discreet distance across the Pont Sully. He had been uncertain about the man
for a while when he had turned into a building across from the station, but it had been a cheap rooming house. He’d obviously taken a room and left his bag there and then he emerged ready for action—or almost. First there’d been a visit to the Bar Augustine, and then to the Bar Michel, and then a couple more bars. His man drank a
lot
, there was no doubt about that, and the guy at the boat yard had said it made him aggressive. Maybe he was just getting up his courage for the task ahead. He had to be Charles’s killer.

He stopped as Marigny paused at the gates of the great private mansion. Marigny hesitated for a moment and then shambled across the courtyard and up the broad steps. He thrust out a stubby hand and pulled the bell, stomping his feet impatiently as he waited.

The butler opened the heavy doors and Marigny said something to him. The butler shook his head and began to close the door. Jim crossed the road, slowing down and loitering past the gates, taking in the scene. A footman had come to the aid of the butler and they were trying to force Marigny outside, but his foot was in the door. Someone else was in the hall. It was Gilles de Courmont, in a wheelchair. Then it was true, he was crippled. The door closed suddenly on the scene and he stared at it for a moment or two. Marigny was inside.

Gilles faced Marigny across his desk. They were alone in his study. The man was talking, threatening him. Of course, he thought wearily, it’s blackmail. Oh, God, Verronet, why did you have to die on the Amazon River? I need you now! Only Verronet would have known how to deal with this—Verronet would have been his voice, his hands; there was no one else he could trust. No one who cared.

Marigny prowled the study confidently. Who’d have thought the old boy would be in this state? Well, it only made it easier, didn’t it? He could do all the talking and the old bastard couldn’t even answer back. This might be the easiest day’s work of his life. “I’ll go to her,” he threatened, “I’ll tell her everything. I’ll tell her what you did—you wouldn’t like that, would you? She’s famous now … and rich. Of course,” he added, wiping the sweat from the pasty flesh of his hairless face with the sleeve of his shirt, “then I may have to go elsewhere … to your son—or your wife.”

He walked to the side table and picked up the decanter of whiskey,
pouring himself a healthy slug. “Like some?” he asked, waving the delicate Venetian crystal decanter in the air. He grinned at Gilles’s expressionless face as the decanter hit the ground, splintering into a hundred fragments with a delicate tinkling sound, splashing whiskey across the cream and gold of the old Chinese rug.

Gilles felt the sweat break out on his back and he pushed himself away from the desk, maneuvering his wheelchair awkwardly as he fumbled with the key to the bottom left-hand drawer of the desk. Oh, God, he thought, why is it so difficult, why won’t my hands do what I want them to do? The key went into the lock at last and with a scrabbling pull, the drawer opened. He leaned sideways and put his hand inside. He always kept cash in there, you never knew when you might need instant money for business—or for blackmail, he added ruefully. He watched his trembling hand with fascination as it attempted to curl itself around the bundle of notes; it was as though it were not his hand at all. With a final jerking leap the hand managed it; exhausted, he pulled back his arm, resting it in his lap.

Gilles recoiled from the sour odor of sweat and drink as Marigny leaned over him. “Thanks,” he said, picking up the notes and tucking them into his pocket. “Thanks very much, Monsieur le Duc.” Marigny began to laugh as he made his way to the door, kicking the broken glass as he went. “They say, Monsieur le Duc,” he said, pausing by the door, “that God smites the wicked. Well, he certainly took care of you.” He patted his shirt pocket with a grin. “I’ll be back,” he promised, “when this runs out.”

Oh, my God, thought Gilles. Oh, my God, he’ll come back and I’m powerless. I can’t move, I can’t speak. There’s no way I can get rid of him. I’ll have to sit here waiting, wondering when he’ll be back—and who he might tell. Gilles stared mutely at the closed door.

Marigny had already visited three bars by the time he reached Le Six Zero Un on the busy corner of the rue Ponsard. Jim followed him inside. He took a seat at the opposite end of the room and ordered Scotch, sipping it slowly, keeping an eye on his man. Marigny sat alone at the bar, drinking whiskey and talking to no one. Had he accomplished what he went for? How was he to know? Wait, he ordered another drink. Marigny’s hand went to his shirt pocket and pulled out a wad of notes. He gave one to the
bartender, who looked at it in surprise before he went to the till and came back with a handful of notes in change. Marigny had given the bartender a big bill, so he must have succeeded in blackmailing Monsieur.

Marigny stood up suddenly, knocking back his whiskey like a man in a hurry, and making for the door. His normally rolling gait was becoming even more uneven, and he stumbled over the step, turning back to look accusingly at it, before lurching onto the pavement. Jim followed him, waiting to see what he would do next—he was obviously too drunk to talk now. Would he go back to the rooming house to sleep it off?

Marigny lurched forward again, striding into the road purposefully, making for the bar opposite just as the car turned the corner of the rue Ponsard. Jim had time to glimpse the horror on the driver’s face before the car hit Marigny, knocking him clear across the street. The big flabby body seemed to be suspended in the air for minutes before it crashed with a sickening thud to the ground.

The car hit the curb and stopped, its driver crouched in shock over the wheel. Jim ran across the road to where Marigny lay, face up on the edge of the pavement. His eyes were open and he was dead. One hand still clutched a thick wad of Monsieur’s notes and they drifted gently one by one down the grimy street, blown by the wind.

So Marigny had done it! Monsieur had paid the blackmail money. Every day, he’d wait for Marigny to return, every day he’d wonder if he would be coming back. He would sit there, in his wheelchair, crippled, mute, and afraid—afraid that his secret would be out at last. Jim gazed at Marigny’s body, grotesque in death. Monsieur would never know that his blackmailer was dead. He would live with fear. Marigny had succeeded where everyone else had failed: Monsieur was powerless.

Jim looked at the face of Charles d’Aureville’s assassin. “Well, Léonie Jamieson,” he murmured, “there’s your revenge.”

–
• 61 •

Amélie chose a rich white silk taffeta for her wedding dress, and the sumptuous fabric lent her tall rangy figure a regal air. She waited patiently, arms aloft, as the dressmaker pinned the bodice tighter at the waist, enjoying the swirl of the spreading skirts over the rustling frilled petticoats. She had designed the dress herself, poring over sketches and pictures with Xara and Isabelle until she had it exactly right. Double ruffles edged the skirt and ran down the center of each short puffed sleeve and the scooped neckline left her throat bare for the beautiful pearls her mother had given her as a baby.

“Let’s try the veil,” said Xara, lifting the thirty yards of silk tulle that formed the base for the century-old Brussels lace that Isabelle had worn to her own wedding, as had her mother and grandmother before her. Together she and Senhora Delfina placed the veil on Amélie’s carefully poised head, anchoring it for the moment with a circlet of silk flowers, though on her wedding day Amélie would wear orange blossoms.

“Perfect,” murmured Xara. “Roberto will fall in love with you all over again.”

Amélie’s reflected image stared back at her, a stranger—fragile in clouds of silk and tulle and lace—subdued by the significance of the bridal white. In three weeks’ time she would be Senhora Amélie Castelo do Santos, a married woman. Roberto’s wife. Her whole life would be different. She and Roberto were spending all their time together, every moment he was free he was with her, and Diego seemed to have faded from their lives as though he had never existed. And Roberto was so different now, so tender, so loving. He still teased her, but in a different way, and often their teasing and games ended in kisses and caresses that grew more passionate, more exploratory, as they discovered a new fascination
for each other’s body and Amélie discovered a new passion in herself.

It was always Roberto who held back, though, she thought guiltily; she wanted more, wanted desperately for him not to stop kissing her, longed for the strange touch of his hands that were yet so familiar. Wait Amélie, he’d whisper, kissing her blushing cheeks, soon we’ll be married.

The knock on the door startled her from her dreams.

“Hello,” called Sebastião, “can I come in?”

“No, no. Senhorita, he mustn’t.” Senhora Delfina rushed to the door in panic. “He mustn’t see the bride in her dress before the wedding day.”

Amélie burst out laughing. “But that isn’t the bridegroom,” she said, “it’s Sebastião.”

“Amélie!” She looked so young in her grand wedding dress, a girl on the edge of womanhood, the bride he had always hoped would be his. Sebastião took a deep breath, it was better that he was going away until the wedding, it was too painful to stay and watch her happiness.

“I just came to say good-bye,” he said. “I didn’t expect to have a preview of the bride in her finery.”

“Well,” asked Amélie breathlessly, “what do you think?”

“You’ll be the most beautiful bride Rio has even seen,” he assured her, “and all the men will be jealous of Roberto.”

Amélie blushed. “Of course they won’t, silly. But Sebastião, you said good-bye? Where are you going?”

“I’m escaping from all these frantic wedding plans. No one can talk of anything else and as hordes of do Santoses are about to descend on us, I’m off to snatch a bit of peace at the
fazenda
while I can. I’ll be back for your wedding.”

“Sebastião”—her face was still close to his and her eyes were anxious—“Sebastião, you will still be my friend won’t you? After I’m married, I mean?”

Poor darling, he thought, she doesn’t know that it will never be the same. “Of course I will.” He patted her cheek reassuringly. “And wherever I am in the world, I expect to receive those letters complete with the little drawings, though soon, I suppose, you’ll be telling me all about your wonderful babies.”

“Babies!” cried Amélie, startled by the idea.

“Women do have babies, you know.”

“Yes, but not yet—not until I’m grown up.”

“Oh, Amélie.” Sebastião hugged her, despite the horrified protests of Senhora Delfina hovering in the background. “Little Amélie,” he whispered, “you are grown up.”

He kissed her on the tip of her nose. “See you in church,” he called, stopping to kiss Xara on his way out. She thought his voice was more cheerful than his face. Could Sebastião have hoped for Amélie, too? And mightn’t Amélie have been better off with him? She sighed. Those were foolish hypothetical questions. After all, it was for Amélie to decide.

Senhora Delfina folded the dress carefully into its enormous box, and stripped of her silken grandeur, Amélie was her old self again. “Oh, poor Onça,” she cried, rushing to the big double windows that led onto the terrace, “she’s been shut out all this time.”