Mystery at the Edge of Madness

by Beth Byers

  “You should get a car,” Lisette told Severine from where she’d sat watching Severine put the final touches to her appearance.

  “I’ll have Mr. Brand get me one,” Severine answered. “It’ll be a good test.”

  “A test?”

  “He says he’ll let me make my own way and have my money now. Let’s see him buy me something that a more uptight man would declare I shouldn’t have.”

  “You should get a pretty little speedster.”

  “I need an auto with room for the dogs,” Severine said. “Can you drive?”

  Lisette nodded and grinned. “A chum of mine taught me.”

  “The beau kind of chum?”

  Lisette’s grin was wicked and that was the only answer she gave.

  “What kind of auto then?”

  “Is money a factor?” Lisette demanded.

  Severine shook her head.

  Lisette whistled. “A red Rolls-Royce Phantom.”

  “No,” Severine replied. “A black one.”

  Chapter Four

  Clive DuNoir was in the office when Severine arrived with Anubis at her side. She’d parted from Lisette who’d gone to find her mother and hire a locksmith. Alone with the large dog, Severine would have expected a glance, but her cousin was too busy leaning on the desk of the clerk to glance her way.

  Severine sat opposite the desk and examined his stance. She couldn’t see his face, but she could imagine it. She would see her father in his jawline and in the way he was attempting to intimidate the clerk. She would see herself in matching dark eyes. She had once thought Clive quite handsome, but that faded as she watched him growl, “I have other plans this afternoon, Crosby.”

  Severine glanced towards the harassed clerk behind the desk who was nodding as he said, “I have told Mr. Brand you are here, sir. But, of course, he has an appointment.”

  “Something more important than me? Surely the DuNoirs are his largest client.”

  “Ah,” the clerk’s gaze frantically moved to Severine and then back to Clive and then glanced over his shoulder at the closed door.

  Severine nodded once and pulled the scrapbook into her lap. She flipped through the pages idly. It didn’t bother her to be kept waiting. She was, after all, early. Her gaze landed on an article about her parents’ lives before they died and she frowned. It listed their activities and clubs and suddenly a memory hit her.

  Flora and Lukas dressed to the nines as they left to a special meeting. A seance, Severine suddenly recalled. A seance with the Specter Society. Father had crowed about starting a newer, better version of London’s Ghost Club.

  “You didn’t create it, Lukas. Fitzgerald did.”

  Father had shot Flora a dark look. “It wasn’t great until I joined, Flora. Idiots gathering around candles and burning sage and jumping at gris-gris.”

  Severine let her fingers trace over the words on the page and then glanced up as the door behind the desk opened. Mr. Brand met her gaze before approaching Clive DuNoir.

  “Ah, Clive,” Mr. Brand said.

  “I’ve been waiting,” he snapped and then she saw his shoulders relax. He wanted something, Severine thought, as the intimidating form adjusted to what was probably intended to be charming.

  “Yes, well,” Mr. Brand said, “you didn’t have an appointment, and I was on an important telephone call.”

  “I need to speak with you.”

  “I have another client, Mr. DuNoir. I’d be happy to see you afterwards.”

  The shoulders tensed again. She still couldn’t see Clive’s face, but she could imagine it. Imagine those cold black eyes flashing with an icy fury.

  Severine flinched and Anubis leaned into her. The dog made a low sound that could have been taken for a growl and Clive jerked around, eyeing her. She realized as his dark gaze raked over her that he hadn’t realized she had arrived.

  “Mr. DuNoir,” Mr. Brand started.

  “Yes, for a lady, I’ll wait,” Clive said, trying and failing for charming. She shivered, but she was sure only she knew her reaction. It wasn’t Clive. It was her father in Clive that unsettled her.

  “For your cousin,” Mr. Brand said. “Severine has returned, as you can see.”

  Clive’s jaw dropped as Severine rose. “Sevie?”

  “Severine, please.”

  His gaze adjusted and she could see him move from weak charm masking fury to avarice. Young, single cousin Severine DuNoir. Whoever married her, Severine said in her mind for him, would have control of it all. The big house, the New Orleans mansion, the mountains of gold her father had acquired.

  She smiled a fake smile. “So good to see you again, Clive.”

  “I didn’t know you were coming back.”

  “I didn’t know I could until Mr. Brand came to visit me at the convent.”

  Clive’s gaze narrowed for just a moment and then moved to Mr. Brand. Severine dug her fingers into Anubis, letting him anchor her as Mr. Brand took in the combination of excitement and greed. No doubt her cousin was thinking he would have first crack at her.

  “After this,” Clive said, giving her his unwanted attention, “we shall have to have lunch together.”

  “Thank you,” Severine said with an ease she did not feel, “but I am afraid I have another obligation.”

  Her cousin didn’t hide his frustration well. “Dinner then?”

  “She’s agreed to have dinner with me,” Mr. Brand lied, saving her. “We have much to discuss regarding her father’s will.”

  The barely disguised frustration increased to levels that would have had herself, as a child, slipping from the room before Father exploded. Instead she caressed Anubis’s ear and said, “We’ll have time to catch up soon, Clive. Do you live at the big house, still?”

  He nodded and his anger broke free for a moment. “Your grandmother does not allow dogs.”

  Severine glanced down at Anubis and then at Mr. Brand, who cleared his throat. “Yes, well. The house is Severine’s, not Therese’s.”

  “That has never mattered to Therese before. Perhaps for you,” Clive said, but it was delivered in a way to tell Severine she should get rid of her dog before the battle started.

  “I’m sure Grandmère and I will come to an agreement.” Severine kept her voice even and mild as she had when she was a child and her father was on the edge of exploding.

  “I hope so,” Clive said. She could tell he wanted to seem to be on her side, but he was truly reveling in her anticipated pain.

  “I would like a car,” Severine told Mr. Brand in his office. “And to learn how to drive.”

  He nodded. “Very sensible. Especially as the big house is so far from anything. Was all as you needed when you reached the mansion here?”

  Severine nodded. It had been cleaned and stocked with food. She supposed that a young woman raised in girls’ schools and mansions would have needed help, but if the convent had taught her anything it was how to take care of not just herself but others as well.

  They chatted about her journey, her dogs, her grandmother, the house and mansion until Mr. Brand finally said, “I’m concerned about you going to the country house, Severine. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized what you were trying to say about my position in your life. Lukas must have known that danger was coming, something that could lead to his death, and he arranged for me to look after you because—”

  “Because,” Severine interrupted, “he didn’t trust the people in his life who would have been more natural guardians.”

  Mr. Brand leaned back and rubbed his hand over his face as Severine sipped from her wine glass. It was filled with a sort of blended fruit juice. Even the convent had wine, she thought, but she didn’t comment on it.

  “That might put you in danger as well,” Mr. Brand said. “We don’t know who killed your parents or their motive. If—”

  “If the motive was financial,” she said, “then I’m a possible victim.”

  “And the house would be quit
e dangerous for you given that those who could benefit from your death will be there as well.”

  “Who inherits if I die?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” he admitted. “We’ll need to talk to a lawyer for that.”

  “Clive wanted money?”

  Mr. Brand nodded.

  “What were my father’s instructions for everyone else?”

  “Those who got anything had funds set aside into a trust. Each of them gets payments quarterly from the trust.”

  “Versus a lump sum amount of money?”

  Severine wanted to rage. It would have been so much easier for her father to have given them the money and sent them on their way.

  “Who is included in that trust?”

  “Your half-brother, several of your cousins on the DuNoir side, your grandmother, his sisters.”

  “Not his brothers?”

  “Your father felt that a man should stand on his own. He told me he only put Andre in the trust at all because your mother caused a war in the family until your father gave in.”

  Severine wasn’t sure she agreed with anything her father had set up. “Can we change that trust? And just give them the money? I don’t want anyone having to supplicate to me to get money that they should have just received from the beginning.”

  Mr. Brand leaned back. “You can do whatever you want with it when you reach your majority in three years. Full control of it is intended to be yours.”

  Severine nodded and then took a deep breath. “Until we find out who killed my parents, I suppose it’s better to keep them on the leashes Father gave them. Once we discover who killed my father and mother, I want them out of my house.”

  Mr. Brand’s eyes crinkled with approval. “Lukas DuNoir was lucky to have a daughter such as yourself.”

  Severine didn’t think her father would agree, but neither of them had been able to choose their family.

  Carefully, Mr. Brand changed the subject. “I believe that your cousin may have designs…”

  Severine sipped her juice and then finished for him. “Upon my fortune? Yes, I know.”

  “Mr. Clive DuNoir can be quite charming when he wants to be.”

  Severine was sure that was true, so she nodded and sipped again, keeping her thoughts to herself.

  Slowly, she brought the conversation around to her parents’ hobbies. Mr. Brand paused and said, “I suppose you wouldn’t have known as much.”

  “I was at school for most of the time.”

  He nodded absently. “I’m, perhaps, not a resource to learn more about your father. I suspect I didn’t know him as well as I thought.”

  Severine wasn’t surprised. He’d have barely been an adult himself when he’d agreed to be her guardian, and he’d probably never expected it to happen. She suddenly felt sorry for him. What dreams had been his before her father had overtaken Mr. Brand’s life? Given what Severine had seen earlier that day, she wondered how many times Mr. Brand had to deal with a spoiled heir of Lukas DuNoir.

  “What about the Spirit Society?” Severine asked. “Were you aware that Father and Mother were both members?”

  “Not while they were alive. I lived in New York City then. I found that I had to relocate to take care of business here. But part of the trust includes donations to the society. Your father was a member of its board.”

  Severine’s brows lifted. “Like a business?”

  “Very much so,” Mr. Brand agreed. “One of your aunts is involved. And one of your father’s closest business partners. Are you interested in those things as well?”

  No, Severine very much wasn’t interested in them. “I’d like to know more,” Severine said rather than answering the question.

  Mr. Brand frowned lightly, but he nodded. “I’m sure you can join if you want. They can be a bit difficult about such things, but I think that the continued support from the trust is something they’ll be very much interested in.”

  Severine nodded and then changed the subject. “I’ll have to go soon.” They both knew she meant the big house in the countryside. She’d have to drive away from the comparative freedom of New Orleans, the comfort of the French Quarter where she’d spent her early years and the holidays between school visits. It wasn’t going home to return to the big house. She’d lived in that house mere weeks between when her father had finally moved the family in and her parents’ murder.

  Still, it had been long enough to dream of a version of her life where things had been different for her, for them. She had often wondered since she’d left the convent if the life she mourned was the dream rather than the reality.

  Chapter Five

  “He sounds like a sap,” Lisette told Severine, running her hands over the wheel of the new auto. “That cousin of yours isn’t going to give up with all this flash and shiny behind you. Would you look at this thing?”

  The auto had arrived at the mansion after a brief telephone call from Mr. Brand so that Severine could approve his choice. She had been surprised by the swiftness. She owned a black Rolls-Royce merely hours after saying she wanted a car, but there seemed little that the right amount of wealth couldn’t achieve.

  The red interior and gleaming black and silver accents screamed wealth as Severine supposed she wanted it to. There was a part of her who couldn’t help but compare it to the rickety wagon that had taken her away from the convent. She remembered the bumpy drive away from the huge old building through the oversized forests that surrounded it.

  She hadn’t been herself, she thought, since those surreal moments. Lost since then, unsure of what to do, and heading blindly forward. Today’s step to show up at the Spirit Society was another blind step forward.

  She wanted to know why her parents had been involved in the society. Had they been so concerned with spirits or was it something else that drew them to the club? Nearly every member of the society who had been a member when her parents lived had been at that party.

  Which was why, she reminded herself, that she was going. Going there, in fact, before she went back to the big house.

  Yet again, Severine had slid into her private thoughts and found herself jerked back to the present when Lisette said, “It’s odd to bring me along as your companion.”

  “But you are,” Severine said easily. “The paid kind. I’m the Victorian old woman, and you are the poor relation. Except different. Someone who spent over half her life in either a girls’ school or a convent clearly needs a companion to buffer the delicate little flower from the world.”

  Lisette laughed and glanced at her sideways. “A flower? I thought you were a broken bird. I felt sorry for you when I first met you. But you aren’t, are you?”

  “We’re all a little broken.” Severine ran her fingers down her dress. It was a long swath of black that clung to her curves, ended in fringe, and met all the standards of the day, save the one that required she look boyish. Her pale, pale skin seemed even whiter next to the black.

  Lisette was dressed in the theme. Her lovely dark skin was covered in a creamy white. From head to toe, even her shoes, they were opposites.

  “I apologize again for the themed dresses and putting us in them.”

  “You wanted to be noticed,” Lisette said with a bit of a snort. “My payment is getting to drive this beauty and the other dresses I compelled from you. I suppose I can be an accent to you for the evening.”

  Severine wasn’t sure a few more evening gowns and cocktail dresses were sufficient gifts for turning her friend into an accessory, but she’d find a way to make it up to Lisette.

  “Shall we?”

  Lisette’s answer was to roar the engine of the Rolls and speed down the road.

  The Spirit Society’s meeting hall was a mansion of red brick and spiked iron fences. A fellow in uniform approached the auto and pulled open the round door. Severine directed him to be careful with the car in the snooty way she imagined Clive Brand used and winced at the look on Lisette’s face.

  She winked at both of them
and then nodded at Lisette’s purse. She could tip the man and make up for Severine being horrible. She’d have to go to confession and tell the priest how the Mother Superior would have been disappointed.

  Severine walked up the steps slowly, ensuring she was alone and could gather the gazes of those who would watch her approach. Meline had promised that the look would work, but Severine felt anxiety roiling in her stomach.

  There was a tall, slim black man of a distinguished air who answered the door. She handed over her card and said nothing. She felt Lisette at her back and as they followed the man, Lisette murmured, “I know that man.”

  Severine glanced at Lisette, whose gaze was narrowed on the man as she muttered, “But where do I know him from?”

  Severine turned her gaze to the man again and she had to catch herself before she gasped. He was in one of the newspapers articles about her father.

  She kept silent, however, as he led them into the large room where the members of the society roamed. It was a large receiving room with chairs along walls and in cozy situations. There were uniformed people walking with trays of cocktails.

  Severine’s brows rose at that, but she wasn’t surprised to see the alcohol really. She supposed as long as they weren’t selling the alcohol it wasn’t technically illegal.

  Her name was announced, followed by “and companion” and then the butler stepped back.

  Severine watched as all eyes turned towards her. She kept her face emotionless as she let her gaze move openly and slowly around the room. One of the men with a tray of drinks approached, and she took a glass.

  Severine stepped further into the room and Lisette stepped out from behind her.

  “They look like a bunch of startled pigeons,” Lisette said low.

  “They’re pretending,” Severine replied easily. “They knew we were coming.”

  The reason for the lack of surprise called out to her. “Sevie!” Clive DuNoir stepped forward and Severine smiled smoothly.