Mystery at the Edge of Madness

by Beth Byers

  “We’re sorry for your loss,” Meline told Severine precisely, with a direct gaze, so Severine knew the words were heartfelt.

  “Thank you,” Severine said and it was, perhaps, the easiest thing she’d said to them yet. There was something wrong with her mind, she thought. She was a half-step from seeing her parents in front of her and could discuss their murder easier than she could discuss dresses.

  “There was more family, wasn’t there?” Lisette asked. “A daughter and a son?”

  “My mother had been married once before,” Severine said. “Her son, my half-brother, was at the house too.”

  “At the party?” Lisette clearly knew the details. Or at least, she knew what had been printed in the paper. No one knew what Severine knew, and she wondered just what that meant for her in the coming days, with the goal she hadn’t been able to even say in her own mind yet.

  “Stop!” Meline ordered her friend. “That’s her family.”

  Severine swallowed thickly and then reached out, taking the cup of coffee she’d been sipping from the mantle. She adjusted herself on the stool, grateful her dress was black to match her feelings. She had never stopped mourning her family. How could she when her parents were dead, and she had been bundled away from everything? There was nothing for her to move onto in the covent. When adding in how dissatisfactory things had been for her, it was as though she had to mourn both what had been and what she’d always wanted at the same time.

  “It’s all right,” Severine said. “I’ve told the story every time a new acolyte appeared at the convent. There had been a party the night they died. I had turned twelve-years-old, and Father had just bought that big house in the country. He was so proud of it.”

  Severine could see him, throwing the doors open, wanting her to bounce on her toes or rush in and fly up the stairs. She had disappointed him when she’d slowly walked in, closed her eyes, and breathed the place in. Flora had laughed and demanded a drink as Father squatted next to her.

  “What do you think, Sevie?”

  She’d flinched at the name and then whispered low, “It’s so big.”

  “Bigger than the last place,” Father agreed, picking her up and throwing her on his back. “Bigger than most places. The big house.” He had laughed and the name had stuck.

  It had been ridiculous. It was ridiculous. It was a few hours travel into the countryside with acre upon acre around it. The lane was lined with cypress trees and ancient oaks and there was a lake. The house was made of stone and gray brick. The floors were black walnut and shone with so much polish, she could see her dark eyes in the reflection. Paintings on the walls were from modern geniuses and grand masters. There was a room for everything, and Severine had gotten lost so many times, her mother started sending a maid come and get her in the morning to walk her to breakfast.

  “Father had bought it off some brilliant early businessman.” Severine laughed, and she heard the bitter tone to it. “Those American royalty types who’d gone mad and lost everything. He loved that even more, I think, than building his own place.”

  “Oh,” Meline said and her blush was dark.

  “Mean, wasn’t it?” Severine said, and she didn’t apologize for it. “He was murdered, after all.”

  Lisette gaped and then asked, “Do you think that’s who killed him? The people who loved that house before?”

  Severine shook her head. It wasn’t that at all. It was the feeling behind her father’s triumph. He loved that house more because someone else wanted it. He was murdered because that was the kind of man he’d been.

  She just went on. “Father had invited everyone he knew. His business partners and associates, my brother, my uncles and their wives. I was surprised he hadn’t invited my mother’s first husband just to show that Father had done better than he.”

  “It’s awful they never learned who did it.” Meline said, unable to help herself. Or she was trying to steer the conversation away from Severine’s description of her own father.

  Lisette eyed Severine and her gaze was bluntly honest. For once, however, she held her tongue.

  So Severine spoke for her. “The most likely killer is, of course, one of the people who were there.”

  “You mean like the servants?” Meline asked. That had been the theory thrown around and Severine was sure they had been treated quite cruelly as answers were sought.

  Severine had rolled her eyes at the idiocy then, and her opinion hadn’t changed.

  “Dumb idea,” Lisette muttered. “Why would some poor Joe who polished the silver murder rich folks like that?”

  “They wouldn’t,” Severine answered. “They were all new. They didn’t have time to grow an abiding hatred for good reason. My parents were killed by someone they knew. A person they had invited to the house. Anything else is just foolish.”

  “Why did you come back, cher?” Meline asked, the conversation overtaking her desire to let Severine alone. Her tone was gentle and Severine could guess that Meline would have taken the fortune Father had gathered—probably stole and cheated for—and escaped to where the DuNoir name didn’t carry so much weight.

  “I couldn’t stay in a convent forever.” It was a lie, or at least only half the truth and both Lisette and Meline knew it.

  “The world is a whole lot bigger than New Orleans. You’re rich, aren’t you?” Lisette said, shaking her head. “You could go anywhere.”

  “I could,” Severine admitted. She examined herself in the mirror. It was a relief to turn from her thoughts and face herself instead. She didn’t look bright or really all that young. She did, however, qualify as a ‘thing.’

  What would her parents have thought, she wondered, of their daughter now? Would they have been horrified to see the wraith she had become? But that was ridiculous really. She’d always been ghostly. Their deaths had only made it seem natural instead of wrong.

  Ghostly wasn’t entirely fair, either. Earlier in the day, Meline had brought a friend of hers over to turn the long straight hair that reached past Severine’s waist into deliberate lengths. Locks of it hovered at her shoulders, and the rest nearly reached her waist. With the loss of the weight of her hair, it had become just barely lively. It curled at her cheeks and at the ends. With the smallest bit of hair oil and long minutes brushing, her hair had the look of a raven’s wing. It was nothing that was fashionable, but it wasn’t the tight bun at the nap of her neck that she’d walked off the boat with.

  In this dress, her hair provided a little more cover given that the dress dipped low in the front. It started with spindly straps at her shoulders and it clung to her curves, showing off every aspect of her body. She might as well have been naked, she thought. That was the convent talking, she told herself. There was nothing wrong with this dress. Her curves simply didn’t lend themselves to the straight lines of the day’s fashion. It was no more revealing than the soft pink and blue ones she’d tried in the shop where Meline worked.

  “You were right about her hair,” Lisette told Meline. “She’s striking, isn’t she? With that pale skin and black hair. She’ll gather all eyes and all of us bright things will seem like obnoxiously colorful flowers next to her.”

  “Or,” Severine offered, “I’ll seem like the dead come to life.”

  Lisette laughed, but Severine hadn’t been joking. She didn’t care about setting a new fashion trend. She cared about being seen. No longer did she intend to be the silent specter. It was time to say it, if only to herself. She took a deep breath and told herself she needed to be noticed so she could find her parents’ killer.

  Chapter Three

  They worked on her wardrobe late into the evening and then Severine walked both of the girls to the streetcar with her big dog. She dug her fingers into the fur of her massive Anubis as the two walked back to the French Quarter mansion. She wasn’t afraid when Anubis was with her, and he always was. He was her silent shadow and had been for the last two years. As a Neapolitan Mastiff, he was a good one-hundred and thir
ty pounds of sleek muscle covered in shining black fur. His jowls hung low, and his gaze fixated on Severine. In the convent, he’d been her constant companion, and she had every intention of continuing on.

  Her route took her past one of the old cemeteries, and Severine couldn’t help but turn toward it. There was a DuNoir tomb where her parents had been laid to rest. She made her way through the rows of the dead, feeling as though she was following one of those specters to their crypt.

  She had seen it in her dreams time and again and now standing before it, she wondered if she should be afraid. There was nothing outwardly intimidating to the squat, white marble tomb, aside from the usual sense of mortality that comes with visiting any cemetery. She knew that Flora would have said that Severine was morbid to be at the tomb in the dark, but she didn’t feel morbid. Or, for that matter, afraid. She needed to see them again, even if it was through stone.

  “It’s time,” Severine told Anubis.

  He huffed at the sound of her voice, and his ears pricked forward.

  There was nothing to say to her parents, she thought. Neither her parents nor her more distant relatives. The living DuNoir family felt as though it had come down to just Severine given how abandoned she’d felt at the nunnery. She had, however, a half-dozen cousins, two brothers, and her mother’s side of he family with a grandmother, a half-brother, and two female cousins in Oregon. The dead relatives were in front of her, and she wouldn’t be surprised if they found her as wanting as the living.

  Her wardrobe had been finished. Her bags, such as they were, were packed. Nearly all of it had been purchased on the journey back home. She could go to the big house tomorrow. She could call on Mr. Brand as she’d promised and then begin the journey.

  She fiddled with her hair, unused to the feel of it flying around her face. Meline had suggested the look, and Severine would embrace it—even if it drove her mad. So she tucked it behind her ear, then out again, as she considered the last few days.

  What do you like to do?

  Lisette’s question was bothering Severine almost more than the death of her parents, perhaps because she was still trying to settle into her new life. What do you like to do? Severine hadn’t had an answer. She had no idea. What did she like to do? Had she liked things when she was a child? What had she done for fun?

  Severine remembered her dance lessons. She had loved those. She had loved her black horse. What had happened to him? She’d only had him for a few weeks when her parents died, but she had loved him desperately when he had been hers.

  Slowly Severine turned away from her dead. They had lived and died and had their chances, and Severine wasn’t sure what she’d do with hers now that she had it, but she knew one thing—she would find out what she liked.

  What a ridiculous goal to set. Find things I like to do. Severine huffed softly as she returned to the home. It was dark and there was but one flicking light burning as she walked up the steps. This time, however, her hair didn’t stand on end as she walked through the doors.

  She let Anubis go before her and found the puppies sleeping in their basket. Since they were Neopolitan Mastiffs as well, they weren’t tiny little things, but they were still young having been just old enough to leave their mother as Severine was leaving Paris. Their sweet black bodies were curled into together and Anubis huffed down on them in greet. Not knowing how often she’d be gone from the house, she had wanted Anubis to have companions. And the puppies were helping fill an empty place inside her as well.

  Severine’s long black hair, her oversized black dog, her dark colors when it was the age of bright things, and her goal to find a killer. At least, who she was wouldn’t be hidden. Severine knelt next to the basket and let her fingers trail over Persephone and Kali. The pups woke enough to follow Severine to the back garden and then again up to the bedrooms. She had chosen the one at the back of the house rather than her old bedroom or the master bedroom that now belonged to her. It was an unclaimed guest room that she’d made up for herself.

  She curled into the bed with the curtains open, so she could watch the moon move across the sky. As the night faded to morning, Severine finally slept.

  “Miss Severine!” Lisette called as Severine took her dogs to the old park.

  Severine looked up and smiled at the girl. She wore a smart dress and shining shoes and her dark brown eyes flashed in the morning. Severine felt like the risen dead this early, and Lisette had the look of a girl who had just come back from the holidays.

  “Hello, Lisette!”

  “I—” Lisette blushed and then confessed, “I told my momma about you. I reminded her of the story of your parents and how I had been obsessed, and she reminded me of something.”

  Severine lifted her brows.

  Lisette handed over an old book that was glued with clippings. Severine took it from her and then gasped as she found article after article about her parents’ deaths. She had been bundled away so quickly that she’d never seen these things. Severine traced the picture of her mother in the newspaper and then glanced up at Lisette.

  “I—”

  Lisette smiled and nodded. “I shouldn’t have asked those questions. My momma reminded me of my manners, but—”

  Severine waited, leaning down to let the puppies off of their leads so they could run with Anubis in the park.

  “I think you must want to know what happened to them.”

  Severine didn’t argue.

  “I think you must intend to find their killer. That would be my goal if it were my momma.”

  Severine didn’t confirm Lisette’s guess, but their gazes met and Lisette nodded. She understood all too well.

  “Are you going to that big house in the country?”

  “I am.”

  “Alone?” Lisette gasped. Her gaze was wide and worried and Severine suddenly wondered if she had made friends in Lisette and Meline. The concern…you wouldn’t feel that for a stranger, would you?

  “I’ll have Anubis and the girls,” Severine answered.

  Lisette shook her head and said, “You shouldn’t go alone. I know it isn’t my place to tell you that, but you shouldn’t go alone. Aren’t you scared? You said it could have been anyone who was there and aren’t they mostly all living there? Your family, I mean?”

  Severine had to concede to Lisette had a point. “Yes, and that’s why I’m going alone. I can’t trust any of them. Not yet.”

  “What about someone else?” Lisette demanded.

  Severine lifted her brows, waiting for an idea.

  “Me,” Lisette said suddenly. “I’ll be your secretary. All rich folks have secretaries. I can’t stay up there all the time, but I think you’ll need to get away in between or you’ll go mad surrounded by possible killers and no one you can trust. You should have the locks changed on your big old mansion here and then make it your special place that the rest of them can’t come.”

  Severine eyed her. “Can you type?”

  Lisette shook her head.

  “Shorthand?”

  Another quick shake of the head.

  Severine saw the sudden wisdom, though. “My assistant, then, to do whatever I need.”

  Lisette’s gaze narrowed, but she nodded.

  “You’ll be learning the regular stuff too. Those courses by correspondence.”

  Lisette paused, and Severine could see that the girl was thinking of declining.

  “You’ll be better for it. If you decide to escape the madness of the DuNoir house, you’ll get a better position than whatever you have now.”

  “I’ll be taking double wages for being at risk then. Murderers and all. Double wages of a white girl’s pay,” she added.

  “Agreed,” Severine said and then sighed. “I feel better about going already,” she confessed, to Lisette’s pleasure. “I have a few more things I want to do, and I have to meet with Mr. Brand at his office this afternoon. He can get your wages for you then.”

  “We’ll come back often? Momma won’t forgive me
if we don’t.”

  Severine nodded.

  Lisette grinned widely, her pretty, even teeth flashing in the sunlight. “Wonderful! Mr. Abe was going to sack me for sure for being late to bring you this book. Momma would have wrung my neck for losing another job.” Lisette took the puppies’ leashes and went to round them up.

  Severine laughed and then realized she couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed. It was so relieving to feel joy again, even passing joy, that she almost stumbled. Anubis pressed his head under her hand, and she dug her fingers into his ruff and breathed deeply.

  “What does your momma do?” Severine asked when Lisette returned with the two puppies and they turned back toward the mansion.

  “Cleans for a bunch of houses.”

  “Maybe she’d be interested in staying at the mansion? Looking after it and us when we come back?”

  Lisette’s gaze widened and then she turned, momentarily calculating. “She’s too old to clean a big old place like yours.”

  “Are you bargaining for your momma like you did for yourself?”

  Lisette readily admitted it.

  “She can be my housekeeper, and she’ll be paid generously.”

  “Like a white woman.”

  Severine didn’t object. It was the same work, wasn’t it? Of course she’d pay the same. “I’m far more concerned of knowing we can trust whoever is in the house when we’re escaping the big house.”

  “You can trust Momma with anything.”

  “I was guessing so,” Severine answered. “Your momma raised you, didn’t she?” She shocked herself realizing that she did, indeed, trust Lisette.

  They returned to the mansion and Severine put her dogs in the back garden and changed her clothes. She put on a light grey dress with black pinstripes a drop waist. She cinched the belt at her hips and the black tie around her neck. She carefully placed a black cloche over her head and examined herself in the mirror.