The Counterfeit Heiress (19 page)

“Swiveller owns an entire building?” Colin asked. Jeremy, who had been a picture of intelligent efficiency when we first sat down, had gradually taken on his usual posture, and was now slouching with an air of perfectly studied ennui. My husband’s question must have reminded him of the importance of his story, for he shot up, arrow straight.

“Not at all. I was confused at first because I saw no shop front—the building by all appearances was strictly residential. My flower grower friend explained that he had met Swiveller out front, each of them with their wagons. He had assumed he would unload his bounty into a shop or a warehouse or some sort of place in which Swiveller’s employees would then arrange the flowers, but Swiveller only wanted them transferred to his own wagon. The grower apologized, saying he would have happily met in a more convenient location so that Swiveller would not have to unload the wagon before setting to work—he admitted to me that he had hoped that he might be able to get a regular share of Swiveller’s business—and asked where it was Monsieur Swiveller had his establishment. Swiveller gestured to the building and said he works out of a room in his apartment, with no employees to help.”

“That is an unusual arrangement,” Colin said.

“It certainly is. No concierge in a Parisian apartment building is going to tolerate someone running a business from what is meant to be a home.” Jeremy swirled more cream into his coffee and stirred. “Any ordinary mortal, myself included, lives in fear of all Parisian concierges, so you can imagine well how I hesitated before disturbing Swiveller’s. I waited until the flower man had made his way off, buzzed for entrance to the building, and was growled at by a lady who could not have been taller than three feet or younger than a hundred and ten. I told her I was an old friend of Swiveller’s and that he was expecting me.”

“Jeremy! You were meant to keep yourself firmly out of danger.”

“I had a plan, Em. If admitted to his apartment, I was going to order flowers to be sent to a lady of my acquaintance who would not object to the attention. It never came to that, though, because the concierge told me—quite rudely—that there was no person of such a name in the building. She would not give me the names of anyone in the building and somehow, despite her size, managed to remove me rather forcibly from the premises. Here is the address of the building as well as details of the flower suppliers.”

“Well done, Bainbridge,” Colin said. “I am most impressed. You are not nearly so useless as you advertise.”

“I do hope you will keep that tidbit between us. My reputation would suffer immeasurably if word got out.”

*   *   *

Cécile’s rate of success that afternoon could only be described as mixed. On the one hand, she had not located a single individual who could with any plausibility say he or she had directly spoken to Estella during her travels. A handful of them insisted they had seen her, but none of them could count themselves among her acquaintances in Paris or elsewhere, and, as such, were not in a position to recognize her. On the other hand, Cécile had identified among them three young ladies whom she believed to possess an aptitude for drawing. She was already arranging for them to advance their studies.

“I am most skeptical of this Swiveller,” she said. “Even a man with three mistresses and a jealous wife would have no need for a private florist—I have never even heard of such a thing. It is nonsensical. Furthermore, if such a company did exist, why would Estella have needed it? She abhorred romantic assignations and certainly did not require discretion regarding the arrangement of flowers in her homes.”

“Quite right, Cécile,” I said. “I have been considering Estella and her travels. Ordinarily when a person of her position in society is abroad, she would make contact with the ambassadors in the places she visited. I have been meaning to call on Sir Edmund since we arrived in Paris; I haven’t seen him since he was posted in Athens.”

“Not everyone is so conscientious as you, my dear, in keeping up with the diplomatic community.” I suspected my husband of no small degree of sarcasm, but thought it best ignored.

“It is wise, when traveling abroad, to check in with one’s embassy,” Cécile said.

“I shall telegraph to inquire with the ambassadors in the pertinent locations,” I said. “Do you know, Cécile, if the Lamar family was personally acquainted with any of them?”

“It is highly unlikely.”

“Do you think we ought to visit Estella’s villa?” I asked.

“Please allow me to assist with that,” Jeremy said. “All this work has left me exhausted. I could take the train down to Marseille, hop over to the villa to investigate, and then spend a few days on the Côte d’Azur to restore my strength. You wouldn’t miss me here.”

“I would miss you terribly, Bainbridge,” Cécile said. “You must not think of abandoning me.”

“You wouldn’t miss me at all so long as you had Hargreaves to look at.”

“A palpable hit, but you cannot blame me. I am only human.”

My husband ignored both of them. “I sent a telegram this morning to the steward at the villa. His reply matches up neatly with what we have seen for ourselves here and in London. I do not think there is any cause to travel south.”

Jeremy scowled.

“We have not yet shared with you the final oddity about Swiveller’s business,” I said. “M. Pinard has no address recorded for it. The invoices he receives instruct payment to be remitted to
poste restante
—general delivery. We have asked him to post today a cheque for Estella’s current balance. The post office will receive it tomorrow. We will take shifts in turn watching the counter. As soon as anyone turns up to collect Swiveller’s mail, we will leap upon him. I speak figuratively, of course.”

“Bainbridge and I will take shifts. You and Cécile are not leaping on anyone, literally or metaphorically.”

I knew better than to argue with his position. I might not like it, but it was reasonable. “Cécile and I will find another way to occupy ourselves.”

Leaving our friends, Colin and I called at the post office on the rue du Louvre, the destination for general delivery mail. The postmaster there was as unhelpful as might have been suspected, but he did agree—begrudgingly, and only because of Colin’s credentials, which now included a letter from the Sûreté, France’s equivalent to Scotland Yard—to allow the gentlemen to sit, out of sight, and observe all collections of
poste restante.
We had no way of knowing how regularly Swiveller collected his post, but the large amount that was currently waiting for him at the post office suggested it would be soon. Jeremy was to take the first turn. Colin insisted upon this because he thought it unlikely that Swiveller would appear before he expected the large payment on behalf of Estella to have arrived. While Jeremy was inside, Colin would watch from an outside table at a café across the street, ready to assist, if necessary, in the pursuit of our man.

Cécile wanted to send Jeremy, who would not be comfortably ensconced in a café, off with a picnic basket, but Colin would not allow it—much to Jeremy’s chagrin—so she limited herself to giving him a small sandwich, but made no effort to hide the fact that she did not consider this adequate. The look on Jeremy’s face showed his agreement on the matter. The gentlemen had been gone for a few hours when a footman arrived with the morning mail. I had a letter from Nanny, whom I had instructed to send regular updates on the boys, and one from my mother. Nanny assured me her charges were all thriving. My mother scolded me for fleeing London in the middle of the season. Truth be told, having no interest in sporting with my intelligence, I did not read to the end of her letter.

Cécile’s stack of mail was considerably more substantial. She attacked it in her usual fashion, ripping open invitations and either casting them aside with great zeal or placing them in a neat pile on her writing desk. Bills had a pile of their own, and this was more unruly than the one for rejected invitations. Personal correspondence she liked to save for last, so I was surprised when, only a few minutes after she had taken the mail from the footman, she waved a letter in front of me.

“Estella has written,” she said, “and evidently from Paris.”

Ma chère Cécile,

I have returned to Paris, but only for a short—and I hope anonymous—visit. I understand you have been seeking information about me, and I plead with you to not continue this maudlin pursuit. You, better than anyone, understand the difficulties I have faced in my life. I may have chosen a path that is difficult for my few friends to accept, but please, you must do just that. I have discovered my true self outside of France, and have returned only because a personal situation requires it. I wish to see no one, even you, my dear friend, as I know that any time in your company would make leaving again all the more difficult.

Let me assure you that I am quite well, happier, in fact, than I ever hoped to be. Should we never meet again, know that your friendship was instrumental in giving me the courage to pursue this new life of mine, and for that I will always be grateful.

The planning of my next trip is well under way, and I hope to leave before the end of the week. You will approve of my destination, I hope: I shall be touring coffee plantations in the Côte d’Ivoire. Should I discover any of particular note, I shall send you a sample of their beans.

I am your most devoted friend,

Estella Lamar

Estella

xii

“She is not so fine as Bettina, but she will do.” Estella bent over the doll her captor had brought her, scrutinizing every detail of it. “I should like her to have a better dress. Perhaps you could bring me a bit of emerald-green silk and some sewing supplies? Although I imagine you don’t want me to have scissors.”

“You will be home again before there would be time to make her a new gown.” He looked uneasy, shifting his weight back and forth from the balls of his feet to his heels. “Do you require anything else? I will come back tomorrow with fresh water.”

“You have already brought me enough to last a week. Leave me in peace tomorrow. What time should I expect you to fetch me on Monday?”

“I shall be at the bank when it opens. Assuming I encounter no difficulties, I should be finished with all of my business by midafternoon, but it would be best if I did not come for you until after dark.”

“Yes, you wouldn’t want to be caught red-handed with me.”

“That is not my concern,” he said. “No one believes you are missing.”

“I want to take the Belzoni book and my doll with me when I go home.”

“That will not prove problematic. You are abandoning the Dickens?”

“It does not appeal to me.” Estella wrinkled her nose.

“I do wish you would give it another try. Perhaps you could take it with you as a gift of sorts from me.”

“Am I not the one who paid for it?”

He stared down at his boots. “I am most thoroughly ashamed of myself.”

“Get yourself gone,” she said, “and leave me in peace until Monday. If you are fortunate, I shall allow you to keep the copy of Monsieur Dickens’s wretched book for yourself.”

He mumbled thanks and wished her well—as well as could be expected in the circumstances—and climbed the ladder. Once the trapdoor had snapped shut, Estella organized her new supply of food, folded the featherbed so that she might use it as a cushion on which to sit, and turned her attention to Belzoni, munching on a strawberry macaron as she read. The explorer’s words thrilled her, and as she was currently enclosed in a small, stone space, much like, she imagined, the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs—although those were much more prettily decorated—it took almost no effort to imagine herself at Belzoni’s side. Why go to all the trouble to travel to Egypt when one could re-create the proper atmosphere here with the most facile labor? Even her bumbling kidnapper had been able to accomplish it. She reached into the little bakery box and pulled out another macaron.
Pistachio,
she thought, and bit into it thoughtfully as she considered the challenges facing Belzoni as he embarked on the task of moving an enormous sculpture of Ramses II.

She read until seven o’clock, when she had planned to stop to organize her dinner, such as it was. He had left her, among other things, a small quiche Lorraine, and had suggested it would make a nice evening meal, but the box of macarons had disappeared, and along with it her appetite. She had no desire for dinner; all she wanted to do was keep reading. Estella looked around her little room and realized that she did not have to dine if she did not want to. There were no servants to consult, no friends to please, no parents to disappoint. She need not consider anyone’s wishes or feelings but her own.

Feeling rather triumphant, she flipped shut the lid of the picnic basket, fluffed the featherbed and returned to her book. When at last she grew tired—she did not bother to check the time—she prepared her bed on the slab, extinguished her lamp, and curled up to sleep. For the first time in as long as she could remember, Estella was looking forward to morning.

13

Estella Lamar was in Paris. Cécile assured me the handwriting could be no one’s but her friend’s, and the postmark on the envelope had been stamped in the French capital. We bathed in elation for a moment before returning to our senses. “What does this mean?” I read the letter over and over. “Why, if Estella does not wish to see you, would she bother to write, especially if she only plans to be in town until the end of the week? Doing so only serves to confirm that she is here, and is unlikely to deter you from calling on her. Her servants will have told her we were at her house—
seeking information
, which she considers a
maudlin pursuit—
but she offers little if any contrition for the worry she has caused.”

Cécile took the letter from me. “It is very like Estella—I have told you she always did whatever she pleased—yet there is something about it that rings false to me. She is so very heavy-handed in the manner in which she sings the praises of this new life, and the way in which she refers to the Côte d’Ivoire feels like an attempt at dangling before me a location in order to satisfy my curiosity while simultaneously ensuring I will not come dashing off in search of her. Estella knows better than to think I would come dashing after her. That she is suggesting I might speaks to the possibility of her being in a situation that would merit such radical action on my part.”