The Adventuress (13 page)

She glanced up sharply. Godfrey Norton “leading” a witness, that is, posing questions that demand answers, was a phenomenon that even a statue would have had difficulty in resisting. I had seen him robed and bewigged in the Royal Courts of Justice on Fleet Street, his barrister’s face assuming an innocent concern, a profound understanding, that surpassed all suspicion. At such times, even a murderess might forget herself and confess all.

Madame Montpensier drew herself up as if recognizing this quality. She looked at Irene and then at me, wonderingly. “It is kind of you to take an interest in our affairs.”

“It is nothing of the sort,” Irene said quickly. “We, after all, feel responsible for having returned Louise to a situation that has led to her ‘apparent’ loss of life. And it is indeed our business, in a way. We are”—she glanced roguishly at Godfrey and myself—“experienced inquiry agents into matters criminal and, occasionally, merely puzzling. We wish to see justice done.”

The poor woman eyed me uncertainly.

Irene continued. “Miss, ah, Mademoiselle Huxleigh is our valued friend and assistant. There is obviously more to this matter than even the Paris police suspect, Madame. I think you can tell us something more of it than you have hitherto revealed.”

The woman shrank into the chair while we gathered around, our backs to the fire and basking in the fact. Godfrey gently deposited the small spaniel in her lap.

She absently stroked the creature’s silky ears while she spoke.

“I wonder that you discern so much of the situation from such slight acquaintance with it—and us.”

“Obviously,” Irene put in, “Louise was kept under strict supervision by her uncle. Few Paris demoiselles require the unattractive likes of Pierre to shepherd them through the city. One would think your husband feared kidnapping by pirates. But we are not prescient, merely observant. Louise told us of the mysterious letters that came to your husband. And of another matter that we are sworn to keep secret—”

“You know even of
that?”
Madame Montpensier had leaned forward in something like horror; now she drew back in dismay. “You have told my husband?”

“Nothing. He did not seem interested. Besides, he is a suspect. Unlike the Paris police, we do not find it wise to settle too soon upon a candidate for suspicion.”

“He is suspected of what?” I asked, shocked.

Irene’s answers came readily. “Of ill will, at the most; indifference to his family, at the least. Am I not right, Madame Montpensier, in saying that this was a house of distress; that your husband ruled home and hearth with an iron poker; that he became even more vile-tempered after the letters began arriving three years ago?”

“True, Édouard was always high-tempered. It is understandable; he was the eldest of a family that was falling into ruin. He objected fiercely to his younger brother’s marriage to a milliner, although Marianne was kind and pretty. I fear that the contempt of his brother drove Claude to seek his fortune at the tables of Monte Carlo. Of course, Claude found only further ruin there.”

“And death,” Irene said. “He took his own life.” Madame Montpensier did not deny it. “Marianne had died in childbirth; the infant had succumbed also. Louise was only five. I was surprised when Édouard took the child, but by then it was obvious that I myself could have none.” A smile smoothed her haggard features as she rested her chin on the dog’s blond head. “I welcomed Louise’s presence. She was never any trouble, nothing but a joy. That is why it worried me when Édouard grew jealous of her movements as she grew older. A young girl should not be penned into an empty old house, dogged everywhere by a crude servant!”

“How old was Louise?”

“Just twenty when she.... Twenty last April.”

“So when she matured, your husband’s attitude toward her changed.”

“He had been indifferent; then he became angry, suspicious, stifling. He became like a melodrama father, afraid that someone would steal away his daughter, save that Édouard had never regarded Louise as anything but an encumbrance... and a distraction for me, like Chou- chou.”

“His manner changed exactly three years ago, when the letters began coming?”

Madame Montpensier blinked, then considered the question. “Why, yes, about then.”

“I must see one of those letters!”

Godfrey, who had been observing Irene’s interrogation with an expression of amused admiration, lifted his eyebrows at that point. I was more blunt; I rolled my eyes.

“That is impossible, Madame Norton!” For the first time, the woman showed spirit, even if in a cowardly cause. “My husband has responded with nothing but unimaginable ire to the appearance of the letters. They vanish immediately. No one in the household would dare refer to them.”

“You are his wife. You must know where he keeps them.”

“No. I have glimpsed them only as they arrived; that is enough for me to know that the entire household will suffer for it for many days. That is all.”

“Think!” Irene knelt beside the woman’s chair. With the veils of her mourning bonnet spilling around her pale face like a black rose’s wilting petals, her russet hair and entreating expression, she reminded me of Mary, Queen of Scots, pleading for her life with Queen Elizabeth. “Did he burn them? Surely no woman—wife or servant—could resist checking the grates the day after such a dire missive arrived. That much must have been determined.”

Madame Montpensier blinked again, as if just awakening. She sat up straighter and lifted the dog absently—to my arms. Of course I could do nothing but take it, heavy squirming creature that it was. A pink tongue took liberties with my bonnet strings while I tried to follow the scene unfolding before me.

“No,” Louise’s aunt said, realization dawning in the troubled skies of her lovely dark-blue eyes. “No! Not burned. The distinctive heliotrope-and-sable-colored wax, the size of... of one of Chou-chou’s paw prints, would have melted on the grate.” She shuddered. “Wax like a clot of black blood. There was no peace in the house for a fortnight after such a missive’s arrival. And the scent of it, heavy and foreign. No, Édouard could not have burned the letters. The fact would have been apparent to anyone in the house.”

“Could he have buried them, or thrown them into the mere? It is convenient for necessary disappearances.”

“Irene!” I hissed, appalled by her insensitive reference to Louise’s last resting place.

“Don’t worry, Nell. Louise Montpensier is no more in the mere than she is in Fleet Street... although she could more likely be there than in the mere, because she is not dead.”

Madame Montpensier’s face whitened. Godfrey made some sudden movement behind me. I inadvertently squeezed poor Chou-chou until he squealed like a little pig.

“My God, Madame Norton! You are—”

“No fool, thank you, Madame,” Irene said modestly. “You see, your husband was quite right. Nobody had anything to gain from Louise’s disappearance... except Louise. You yourself admitted that this house was a hell for her. I can imagine how the torment intensified when she was returned by strangers after having eluded Pierre and undergoing an unexplained absence of hours.”

“But the bracelet dredged from the mere—” Godfrey began.

“A deliberate trail to a wrong conclusion. That is why Madame Montpensier has hidden it. I noticed it myself on Louise’s wrist. If it were merely a foreign bangle— ivory or coral pieces strung upon elastic cords, for instance—it might conceivably catch upon a sunken tree limb and slip from a drowning victim’s wrist. But this bracelet closed with a strong metal clasp, and gold would not break. Did it break, Madame?”

The woman shook her head.

“A mistake. You and Louise should have broken it first.”

“She was too fond of it to harm it,” the woman murmured.

“But—” I bent to deposit the leaden little dog on the wooden floor “—if Louise is
not
dead and has left of her own will, why do you keep silent before the police, Madame?”

“She protects Louise’s absence, is that not right, Madame Montpensier?” Godfrey put in. “She believes that it is better for herself to be accused of murder than it would be to keep Louise in this house a moment longer.”

I could not accept this melodramatic answer. “Why cannot everyone know that Louise has left? Why must anyone suffer? The uncle is indifferent to Louise’s wellbeing; the aunt is protective and willing to give up her niece. I do not understand.”

“Because,” said Irene, “the uncle may be indifferent to Louise’s well-being, but he is not indifferent to the letters, and they involve Louise, intimately. I doubt that she has any idea of why, but she knows she is safer free, her whereabouts unknown by her uncle. It is better for him to think her dead than for him to know her alive.”

At this point Madame Montpensier blinked several times. “But, Madame, you said you
knew.
I assumed—”

“Of course I knew about the tattoo. We all did.” Irene smiled pleasantly.

“But, Madame—Monsieur—Mademoiselle!” Louise’s long-tried aunt was growing indignant. “I know nothing of any tattoo, and the letters, while mysterious, likely have nothing to do with Louise. She had to appear dead only in order to elope with her intended fiancé, a young American journalist. Édouard would have forbidden the match. Louise’s only use to him was to marry well and bolster the Montpensier coffers. Why else did he marry me, although my dowry was far from splendid? You said you
knew!”

Irene sat back on her heels, sinking into her dark garb like a funeral barge into its black silken sails from which all wind has fled. “An elopement. Well, no, I did not suspect that. Louise had said nothing. But then, I am not a romantic at heart.”

Godfrey was laughing by the mantel, trying to bury his mirth in his mustache and a fan of fingers. I had never seen him behave in such an ungentlemanly fashion before. I was most amused.

“An elopement,” Irene repeated. “How... unexpected. For Monsieur Montpensier, as well, if he knew.”

“He must not!” Madame Montpensier looked terrified. “You must investigate this matter no further. If you were to alert Édouard to Louise’s disobedience, I could not answer for it! Through all those years past, he was infuriated by his brother’s profligacy; he even seemed to begrudge Claude his suicide, as if by it Claude had escaped Édouard’s murderous rage. Now, with Louise—”

“We will remain as silent as the grave upon the matter, Madame,” I promised. Someone had to take a responsible stance in this muddle. “I am most sorry for my friends’ misconceptions and regret that their meddling has caused you worry. I can testify that they are reliable in most instances and will see to it that no news of this development reaches the ears of either your husband or Monsieur le Villard.” I turned to my companions. “Really, your curiosity has led us to seriously overstep the bounds of good sense.”

Irene was biting her lips, whether from mortification or from laughter I could not tell, although it was the former if she had any shame in her.

Godfrey bent to assist Irene up from the floor, while Chou-chou took advantage of the rearrangement to claim Madame Montpensier’s lap again.

“Thank you, Nell,” Irene said with a sharp glance at me, “for your stirring apology on my behalf. I am convinced, however, that it is utterly unnecessary. Save for the addition of an American swain, I believe the situation sits much as it did before: Monsieur Montpensier is a dangerous individual with some secret interest in Louise that does her no good; Madame Montpensier is a courageous woman to shield her niece at the cost of her own reputation, but her silence may hurt Louise more than her speech would; the letters signify in some key manner, as do the tattoos, both old and new—no matter how lurid you personally may find these elements, my dear Nell.

“However, you are right that the facts must be held privately among us four,” Irene continued. “You must trust us, Madame, to protect your niece and to unravel this mare’s nest. Otherwise, I cannot be responsible.”

In the course of a single speech, Irene had turned our heads around. I was possessed of a nearly irresistible urge to apologize for apologizing on Irene’s behalf. Madame Montpensier leaned over the idiotically grinning Chou-chou, her hand to her heart, and herself apologizing.

“I tried to dissuade Louise from rash action, yet I could hardly advise her to remain in this house. She was so distraught after you returned her.”

“If Louise did not tell me of her romantic involvement,” Irene said gently, “she did not tell
you
of how she really fell into our hands. Godfrey rescued her from the Seine. She had cast herself into the water after having been unaccountably kidnapped from the Bois de Boulogne, rendered unconscious and tattooed upon the breast.”

“My God, my God,” the woman whispered, clasping Chou-chou in horror. “I had no notion. A suicide, like her father? Is Édouard right?” She seemed liable to throttle the dog accidentally in her emotion.

(I should note that the poor woman’s profanity, which I reproduce, is understandable given the situation’s gravity. For some obscure reason, the Lord’s name seems less taken in vain when uttered in French, and the words
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu”
ring more graciously than their English translation—although, of course, the regrettable intent is precisely the same. Such are the mysteries of language.)

“Now I understand Louise’s suicidal despair,” Irene said, walking to and fro as if to put logic through its paces. “She undoubtedly often met the young American in the Bois de Boulogne.” Irene smiled meaningfully at Godfrey. “Parks are famed as scenes of romantic rendezvous; I think of London’s Regent Park in particular. But despite poor little Louise’s fears that her suitor would reject her after such an
outré
episode, evidently he was more understanding than she thought. His must have been the second cloaked figure seen by the mere, the one taken to be Madame Montpensier when she was found alone on the sedge, with Louise gone. Now, Madame, I must have his name and the destination toward which the young lovers have fled.”

I pitied the woman. Her face plainly showed the strain of having resisted all questions, domestic and official, for several days. Now she was being asked to put her faith in a stranger, and a foreigner at that.