The Counterfeit Heiress (32 page)

“
Non?
This is excellent news—”

“It is not quite that,” I said. “It appears she has been living, all this time, in the crypt of a tomb.” My friends stood, their faces slack with horror, as I described for them what Colin and I had found. “We must go at once and find a ladder.” From the chapel, getting to the Garde-Partier, where we had met the custodian, was simple enough—all we had to do was cut over to the avenue Principale and walk in a straight line. I did my best to keep everyone’s spirits up, suggesting that, once we had rescued Estella, we might as well take advantage of the moonless night to see if the skulls on Mr. Robertson’s grave did, in fact, dance.

When we reached the main gates of the cemetery, Jeremy insisted that we summon the police before doing anything else. I did not want to leave Colin alone in the dark, vulnerable to Mr. Jones, but I could not argue that Jeremy’s plan was a wise one. My husband had given me the gate key entrusted to him by the custodian, and we let ourselves out, crossed the boulevard de Ménilmontant, and shouted for help. We did not see a policeman, but a waiter at a café, who had come forward to see who was causing the commotion—and, he admitted later, to scold us for disturbing his customers if we were not in dire straits—agreed to call the police and have them meet us at the entrance to Père-Lachaise.

That done, we returned to the cemetery. “One of us needs to wait for the police,” I said. “It cannot be me, for I alone know how to find Colin, and I will not delay getting back to him.”

“I want to see Estella,” Cécile said. “From everything you have said, Kallista, it is clear she is in a dangerous frame of mind. I am the only one among us known to her. I must try whatever I can to help her. Furthermore, Jeremy would never allow one of us to wait here, alone and unprotected.”

“I don’t much like the idea of the two of you setting off without me. If Jones—”

“From what Estella said, it does not sound like he made a habit of coming to her this late at night. I do not anticipate any problems.” I did not feel entirely confident in this statement, but said it with force, and, as I have found on many other occasions, speaking in such a manner often persuades one’s audience to believe one, regardless of the facts.

“Other than those problems one ordinarily expects to face in cemeteries in the middle of the night,” Cécile said. The flash in her eyes told me she was back to herself. We opened the guard’s house, and in a small back room found a ladder that, between the two of us, we could carry without too much difficulty. Before we left him, I showed Jeremy on the map where the tomb was in section 28, but I could not leave it with him in case Cécile and I lost our way. There was a large board with a plan of the cemetery near the entrance, and he said he would study it while he waited for the police.

The ladder made it impossible for us to move quickly. I had tied the lantern to a rung so that we could—more or less—see where we were going, and we started up the avenue Principale, I holding the front, Cécile in the back. This return trip was far less frightening than the one I had made by myself. Cécile, bolstered by the knowledge that her friend was alive, made little jokes and twice tried to scare me. Her efforts, much to her despair, failed. When we turned onto the street that held the Godeau tomb—carefully, as navigating narrow spaces with a lengthy ladder requires a certain degree of skill—we fell silent, listening for sounds of struggle. There were none. Soon I recognized my husband’s footsteps on the cobbles. He untied the lantern and took the ladder from us.

Cécile rubbed her hands. “These gloves are entirely ruined. I see now, Kallista, why the undertaking of work in a cemetery requires something far heavier.” She gave Colin a kiss on each cheek. “You have found my friend.”

“Emily is the one who spotted the tomb.”

“Any sign of Mr. Jones?” I asked.

“None, but I think we should operate on the assumption that he could appear at any moment. Let’s not dawdle.”

Back inside the stone structure, I opened the trapdoor in the floor and was immediately greeted by Estella’s raspy voice.

“Monsieur Jones, is that you? I am being harassed by some young people—you must make them go away if you see them.”

“Estella,
chérie,
it is Cécile. I have come to pay you a visit. Monsieur Jones assured me you would be most pleased to see me. May I come down?”

“Cécile, did you not receive my letter? I do not wish to be disturbed. My travels keep me so very busy, I have not time—”

“We have brought you information about the Côte d’Ivoire,” I said. “Cécile made the acquaintance of a gentleman who has only just returned from there, and he would like to speak to Miss Hexam about her concerns about the lack of bakeries.”

“Would he, now?” came the voice from below. “You may come down, Cécile, but only for a moment. My train leaves in the morning and I must be ready to get to the station.”

Colin lowered the ladder into the crypt and held it steady while Cécile stepped onto it. I waited until she was halfway down to follow. Estella—and, one must presume, Mr. Jones—had fitted out the crypt with once-fine Persian rugs. Tapestries with medieval hunting scenes covered the stone walls. A bookcase at one end held at least a dozen dolls and a profusion of books. There were two lamps, casting a dim yellow light over everything. Against one wall stood a large stone sarcophagus with a flat, slablike top. It had been made up like a bed. I shuddered. The entire space smelled of damp and mildew and unwashed body.

Estella cowered in her chair, her breathing coming ragged and hard. “I do not like being disturbed like this. Why have you come, Cécile, when I asked you not to?”

If Cécile felt any horror at the sight of her friend, she did not show it. Estella flinched when she tried to take her hand. “Now I will have none of that,
chérie.
” Cécile picked up an ivory-backed hairbrush that, along with the rest of a dresser set, was on a trunk at the end of the room opposite the bookcase. “You cannot travel with your hair such a mess. What will Mademoiselle Hexam say when she returns?”

“Do you know Mademoiselle Hexam, Cécile? She did not tell me.”

Cécile began to brush Estella’s hair, getting out the worst of the knots and then braiding it and coiling the thick rope on top of her head, fastening it in place with pins she pulled from her own hair. The act had a calming effect on Estella, but it was short-lived, as a commotion from above signaled the arrival of Jeremy and the police. She knocked the brush out of Cécile’s hand with a force I would not have expected, sending it flying across the crypt. “Who is that, now?” Her eyes were wild. With great effort she pushed herself out of the chair. Once on her feet, she started for the trunk. Her every movement was labored; her strength had wasted away from years of hardly using her limbs. She bent down over the trunk, removed the dresser set, and raised the lid, pulling out a shredded piece of dark blue velvet that looked as if it had once been a cloak. Cowering in a corner, she wrapped the tattered remains of the garment around her.

Cécile approached her, but Estella shrieked, begging her to stop and go away, all the while sobbing hysterically and clawing with bent fingers at the air around her. I climbed the ladder until my head was out of the trapdoor.

“She is not going to go gently. Even if she were not so upset, I do not think she is in possession of the strength necessary to climb the ladder.”

“I will come down,” Colin said.

“She will not like it.”

“She has no choice.”

I descended and he followed. The sight of him set Estella into another round of terrified shrieks. He crouched in front of her, speaking quietly, doing everything possible to try to ease her fears, but nothing worked. He did not flinch when she hit him, again and again, begging him to leave her be. At last, realizing she was not going to go willingly, and knowing that she could not remain in this sordid state, he gathered her up in his arms, with the intention of—somehow—carrying her up the ladder.

No sooner had he taken a single step than Estella, exhibiting that same maniacal strength as when she had flung the hairbrush, kicked and flayed, desperate to free herself from his arms. He held her with more strength, but did not approach the ladder. Instead, he lowered her onto her bed. Estella, now panting like a wounded animal, gathered herself up into a small ball, bringing her knees to her chest, and rocked forward and back, forward and back, muttering something I could not understand.

“Cécile, you stay with her. Your presence is the least upsetting. Emily, ascend with me.” He climbed the ladder first, helping me when I reached the top. There was a long scratch on his left cheek.

“Good God, Hargreaves, what is going on down there?” Jeremy, along with two sturdy-looking policemen holding bright lanterns and wielding clubs, gathered around us.

“Removing her is going to prove something of a challenge,” Colin said. “She is—”

“She does not want to go. I’ve tried more times than I can count.” The voice, with a clipped English accent, came from the door of the tomb. We all turned as one and saw him—Farrington Jones, the auburn-haired man.

23

Colin started for Jones at once, but the auburn-haired man stepped forward, his hands raised in a position of surrender. “I am all too aware of my crimes, sir, and have no intention of running from you now. This is no time for discussion, however, as you see how disturbed Mademoiselle Lamar is. I have what you need—”

“Stop right there, Jones,” Colin interrupted as the man reached for his coat pocket. Mr. Jones raised his hands again.

“There is chloroform and a clean handkerchief in my left pocket. Please remove it yourself. I understand that you cannot trust me.”

I could hear my husband muttering under his breath something about understatements as he removed the items from Mr. Jones’s coat. “Keep this with you always, do you?”

“Not ordinarily, no. Did you find my ladder or bring one of your own?”

Colin stood directly in front of him and glared at him, and then turned back to the hole in the floor and nodded at the policemen, who quickly bound Mr. Jones’s wrists. “Bainbridge, come with me. I may require your assistance.” The look on my husband’s face pained me. I knew it went against every fiber of his being to restrain a lady against her will, but in the circumstances, what choice did we have? I did not watch from above as they administered the chloroform, but the bansheelike cries that came from Estella as she resisted shattered the night and reverberated horribly against the stone walls of the tomb. The silence that followed was almost as painful. Colin carried Estella up the ladder, Jeremy following close behind, helping him keep his balance with his awkward load.

Cécile emerged last from the crypt. “We must get her to a doctor at once.” Her voice was calm and steady. “How long, Monsieur Jones, can one reasonably expect the effects of chloroform to last?”

*   *   *

Once Estella had been safely remanded to the excellent care of the staff of the Maison Municipale de Santé on the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis—the hospital upon which Cécile had insisted—we went to the station where the police had taken Mr. Jones. The physician treating Estella had told us that her physical difficulties were not great. She was not suffering from malnutrition, but the atrophy to her muscles from so many years spent without a great deal of movement would prove challenging, though not impossible, to overcome. Her mental situation, however, was very bleak.

The police led us into a sorry little room, empty except for a grubby table and some chairs—they had brought more in so that all of us could sit down. Mr. Jones was already seated, his wrists still bound.

“Mademoiselle Lamar—is she all right?”

“Are you concerned she will die and you will be facing two murder charges?” Colin asked.

“You do not understand, sir, not at all—”

I believed I did understand. “If you will allow me to speak…” No one objected, so I continued. “I presume you used chloroform when you took Mademoiselle Lamar?”

He hung his head. “I did. I am so ashamed—”

“Now is not the time for assuaging your conscience, Mr. Jones,” I said. “You were after money? Do not answer, that much was evident the moment I found the records from your ill-fated business venture. Mademoiselle Lamar was, perhaps, not quite so wise as she thought when she refused to invest in Dr. Maynard’s Formula. Ordinarily one does not expect businessmen to be twisted kidnappers.”

“I never, ever intended for things to get so out of hand. It was only to be for a few days—just long enough for the cheque to clear—but then there were delays and when at last I was ready to free her, she was no longer willing to go.”

“You cannot be foolish enough to think we would believe that,” Cécile said.

“Does it matter?” Mr. Jones shifted in his chair, still unable to meet our eyes. “I thought it was a flawless plan. She had no family to speak of—her half siblings paid little enough attention to her—and it was so easy to take her. I owed a great deal of money, you see, to very unpleasant and violent men, and they were going to kill me. The scheme came to me when I was attending the funeral of a friend. Père-Lachaise does rather get one’s imagination going, and when I saw how easy it was to enter long-abandoned tombs…”

“What you did is reprehensible,” Jeremy said. I hushed him, for although I agreed with his sentiment, I wanted to hear the rest of Mr. Jones’s story.

“How did you settle on the Godeau tomb in particular?” I asked.

“When I learned that tombs that have fallen into a state of disrepair could be more or less repossessed, I began to search the cemetery. The Godeaus’ fit my every need. It was large enough to have a spacious crypt, so that Mademoiselle Lamar’s stay would not be too unpleasant, I hoped. It was showing signs of dereliction, but not so much that it was in danger of being repurposed. No family members seemed to have visited in years, and I was able to discover that the only remaining son had long since moved to America. Confident that it was a safe place, I brought Mademoiselle Lamar there.