The Golden City (14 page)

WEDNESDAY, 1 OCTOBER 1902

B
y the time Duilio made it down
st
airs in the morning, he’d already thought of a dozen things he needed to get done and about a hundred more que
st
ions he wanted to ask Miss Paredes. He found his mother and Miss Paredes in the dining room, already eating breakfa
st
. His mother looked more alert than she had in some time, able to concentrate enough to greet him this morning. He went and kissed her cheek before sitting down. Having a companion might suit her after all.

For her part, Miss Paredes looked far more re
st
ed than she had the day before. She wore a white shirtwai
st
with a ve
st
in royal blue that flattered her pale complexion. Her black skirt wasn’t the one she’d worn to make her late-night visit, but a finer woolen that looked well made, if not in the mo
st
current fashion. Recalling her
st
atement that she’d hit her head again
st
the boat that night, he noted the faint bruising on her temple. She looked serene despite the difficulties of the pa
st
several days. That might be a facade. He didn’t know her well enough yet to be sure.

Miss Paredes held one of the newspapers in her mitt-obscured hands,
st
ubbornly keeping her eyes on the printed words. Duilio wondered if she was the sort of woman who read the gossip pages, but decided that if she did so, it was only as a part of her job. She seemed too serious. The paper she currently held was his mother’s trade daily. He would love to know whether Miss Paredes enjoyed reading that. Personally, he found it a dead bore.

While waiting for the footman to bring his cu
st
omary breakfa
st
, Duilio sipped at his coffee. “Are you settling in well, Miss Paredes?” he asked.

His mother a
ct
ually appeared intere
st
ed in her answer, a good sign.

Miss Paredes folded the paper and laid it down. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

Duilio turned to his mother then.
No time like the present
. “Mother, do you recall that the Carvalhos are having a ball tomorrow night?”

She appeared to consider his query for long enough that he feared he’d lo
st
her attention, but finally said, “Isn’t their younge
st
daughter turning seventeen?”

“Yes.” None of the three Carvalho girls had managed to find a husband yet, despite their father’s be
st
efforts. Duilio only hoped his mother’s attendance at the ball—her fir
st
outing in years—wouldn’t be misinterpreted as intere
st
in Carvalho’s elde
st
daughter on Duilio’s part. “Miss Paredes and I need to speak to someone there. A police matter. Would you be willing to go, Mother, as a favor to me?”

His mother sighed. “Am I out of mourning now?”

His mother hadn’t attended a social fun
ct
ion of any sort for three years, but mourning wasn’t the reason behind it. “You’re in half mourning, Mother. It shouldn’t cause too much comment as long as you don’t dance,” he said, “or run off into the gardens with some young swain.”

His mother didn’t respond to his joke, but the prepo
st
erous comment drew a dry glance from Miss Paredes. He rather enjoyed seeing that expression on her solemn face.

“If it will help,” his mother said, “I’ll manage, Duilinho.”

Despite being made to feel about eight years old in front of Miss Paredes, Duilio couldn’t help smiling at his mother’s long-suffering tone. She had never enjoyed the fripperies and gossip of the social set. “So, Miss Paredes,” he asked, “you and my mother have two days to prepare for a ball. Is that feasible?”

Miss Paredes ca
st
a glance at his mother, but nodded shortly. The paper apparently captured her attention after that, for she said nothing else to him. She began reading one of the articles to his mother in
st
ead, something about
st
eam trawlers, a type of fishing boat banned from the area. A portion of the family’s money—his mother’s money—was inve
st
ed in the boatbuilding indu
st
ry. Apparently Miss Paredes already knew of his mother’s intere
st
s there.

Duilio would give anything to have his father and brother back. Among other things, then he wouldn’t have to oversee the family’s inve
st
ments. While his grandfather had amassed a decent fortune buying up fabric mills in the north of the country and building a shipping fleet to get those goods to markets, Duilio didn’t know a great deal about either; he’d always believed Alessio would inherit. His father had shifted his funds to inve
st
ment in those indu
st
ries rather than a
ct
ive participation, removing some of the
st
ench of trade from their hands. Fortunately his man of business kept him apprised of the pertinent news, saving Duilio from reading the trade papers every morning.

After breakfa
st
, Duilio asked Felis to join them in the front sitting room to read to his mother. He hoped that eschewing privacy would
st
em any gossip about himself and Miss Paredes in the household, so he dire
ct
ed Felis and his mother to two ivory-brocade armchairs set by the window. A few minutes later he was ensconced on the pale leather sofa before the hearth. On the low table before him he laid out the timeline, a sheet of foolscap on which Joaquim had drawn a long dateline across the top, with each pertinent event written perpendicular to that in his tidy hand.

Miss Paredes nodded toward it. “What is this?”

Duilio pulled the sheet of foolscap closer. “We’ve done our be
st
to put together a chronological chart of every event pertaining to
The City Under the Sea
.”

She nodded her head slowly, eyes
st
ill downca
st
. “I found much of this information in the newspapers. I ju
st
didn’t think to lay it out this way. It’s clever.”

Duilio shifted closer to her on the couch. “This
st
arts ju
st
over a year ago, when the fir
st
house, the Duarte mansion, was discovered in the water. And this,” he said, pointing, “in early September, was when we put together the reports of missing servants with the timing of the appearance of the houses in the water. Then we were ordered to close the inve
st
igation.”

“And then it was the Amaral house,” Miss Paredes said softly.

Duilio sat back. “Espinoza is the only person we definitely have conne
ct
ed to this,” he said, “so several of these entries pertain to our efforts to find him.”

She touched a date shortly after the fifth house was placed. “Espinoza
st
opped giving interviews about this time. The papers said he tired of being hounded by the writers.”

“Yes,” he said. “That sounds right.”

“He lived in Matosinhos before he became famous,” she said, naming a town only a few miles north of the Golden City. It was on the Leça River, the site of the unfinished port of Leixões. “He mu
st
have come to the Golden City about two or three years ago, I think, but I didn’t find anything about where he lives or works now.”

“He was renting a flat in Massarelos parish,” Duilio said, “but moved out about a year before the fir
st
house was placed. We’ve not been able to trace where he went from there. Not so far. He had to have had space to build the houses and a way to get supplies. But he’s essentially building small boats, and there are dozens of boatbuilders in this city and the neighboring ones. He could be hiding among those.”

“They’re not boats,” she pointed out. “The house continued to float after it filled with water. The newspapers say there’s a charm on the top of each that keeps them floating. Could you hunt for the person who made those?”

Duilio frowned. “The charms are of que
st
ionable effe
ct
iveness. They do nothing more than make sailors feel safer. And anyone can put together a charm, I’m afraid, Miss Paredes.”

“Oh.” She looked back down to the timeline. “How many people do you think it takes to build these . . .
things
and submerge them? The newspaper articles said there mu
st
be dozens.”

“I don’t think so. Keeping a secret with that many people is nearly impossible, and Espinoza has managed. I think we’re talking about one dozen at mo
st
. Unless there’s some cause they’re espousing,” Duilio added. “If they have a cause, they’re more likely to keep their mouths shut.”

“What
cause
could this possibly serve?” Miss Paredes’ lips thinned, her eyes taking on the same hurt look he’d seen in the submersible. She’d shifted away from him, her black-clad hands clenched tightly in her lap. “What is the point of killing so many, and in such a manner?”

She, more than anyone else alive, had the right to ask that que
st
ion. Duilio ju
st
wished he had an answer. “Perhaps your meeting tomorrow night will give us that information. Did you not tell me that you had a sketch of the table?”

“It’s not much,” she said. “I couldn’t remember any of the symbols in the inner ring, so what I have may not be useful.”

“It’s more than we had ye
st
erday morning,” Duilio assured her. He wanted to set her at ease, talk about something trivial, but he suspe
ct
ed this was better done swiftly. So he asked her que
st
ions about the coachman who’d acco
st
ed her and drugged her, about the man who’d drawn her into the boat with Silva, about the voices she’d heard from inside the replica, and even the rattling of the chains she’d heard. He tried to recall everything she’d said the day before in the bathroom, so as not to make her repeat herself.

“How did you get out of the replica?” he asked. “Was there a door?”

“No,” she said. “I kicked at the upper corner of the roof—well, the floor, since it was upside down—and it gave eventually. I managed to squeeze out. The damage wasn’t visible from the submersible, ju
st
a line of light from inside. From the table.”

He hadn’t seen that damage, but he hadn’t known where to look either. “And you were wearing the housemaid’s co
st
ume.” That would be the “black and white” that Aga had reported.

She nodded jerkily. “I’d lo
st
the cap but I
st
ill had the apron on. I tore up the apron to bandage my hand once I was on the quay.”

Bandage her hand?
“Then what did you do?”

“I don’t know how long I
st
ood there.” She was being careful not to look at him, he noted, perhaps trying to keep her words impersonal. “Eventually I made my way to the Amaral house. I went in through the back. The butler found me there and sent for Lady Amaral. I told her that Isabel had been grabbed by someone, but I couldn’t tell her what had a
ct
ually happened.”

“She doesn’t know you’re a sereia?”

She shook her head. “I told Lady Amaral I’d been drugged and dumped off a bridge. I said I didn’t know what had become of Isabel.”

He could under
st
and the lie. She’d had a lot to lose that night. “Did she believe you?”

“I don’t know. She said I was a lying . . .” Miss Paredes paused. “She fired me and ordered me out of the house.”

Without a care for her welfare, he surmised, even after more than a year of service. Lady Amaral couldn’t afford to a
ct
as if her daughter wasn’t safely married, so Miss Paredes had to be silenced. He suddenly liked Lady Amaral even less. “So, where did you go from there?”

“I’d hidden my bag next to the coal room
st
eps.” Her hands began to shake. “I
st
ayed there, hiding down by the
st
eps until after dawn, trying to plan what to do. I had a bit of money in my bag and some extra clothes. The fir
st
footman has a relative with a boarding house, so I went there.”

Duilio couldn’t imagine what he’d do in the same circum
st
ances, having watched a friend die, left on the quay after midnight with no family to turn to, unable to go to the police, and soaked to the skin. He hoped he would have a
ct
ed with the same presence of mind.

He reached over and patted her folded hands, hoping to reassure her. “That’s all I need at the moment,” he said. “I suspe
ct
I’ll come up with a dozen more que
st
ions by this afternoon. I usually
st
op into the library in the evening before I go up to my room. If you think of something you want to discuss with me, you could leave a note on my desk.”