Mystery at the Edge of Madness: A Severine DuNoir Historical Cozy Adventure (The Mysteries of Severine DuNoir Book 1)

by Beth Byers

  Mystery at the Edge of Madness

  The Mysteries of Severine DuNoir

  Beth Byers

  Contents

  Summary

  Quote

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Also by Beth Byers

  Summary

  July 1925

  Severine DuNoir was twelve when she discovered the bodies of her parents, and the day after the funeral, she was sent to a convent in another country. By the time she resolves to go home, her sole focus is to reveal what happened to her parents.

  Coming home, however, unveils a far more sinister plot than she could have expected. It’s clear from her first night that something is afoot. The motives are many and the target is clear: Severine herself.

  We are not effusive creatures.

  —Sister Mary Chastity to Severine DuNoir

  Chapter One

  “I don’t understand,” Severine said, feeling particularly dim.

  The gentleman smiled kindly. “I’m your guardian.” He had said it more than once, and his tone and delivery had turned slow to the point of speaking to someone who wasn’t quite capable of understanding.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t know he was her guardian. Of course, she did. Regardless of her confusion, she was not an idiot. She’d heard of the mysterious Mr. Brand who watched over her inheritance in trust, but she hadn’t expected this fellow. He was not that much older than she. She’d expected a life-long school chum of her father or perhaps one of his mentors. A much older man filled with wisdom and a shared history with her father.

  That was the key factor. Severine would turn eighteen in two days. This fellow had to be in his late twenties. Which meant, given her parents had died almost exactly six years ago, that he had control of the DuNoir estate when he was barely old enough to have his legal majority. He looked as if he were a mere year or two older than herself, so how had he looked six years before? The fellow had pale, nearly white, blonde hair, the sort of pale skin that showed every passing emotion with the shade of red he turned, and the blue eyes that revealed his thoughts. He was tallish, broad-ish, thinnish, and handsome-ish. He was very medium, Severine thought. Unremarkable really, except for that pale, pale skin, which wasn’t very remarkable to her considering her own pale, pale skin.

  “Your father came to me just before he died, and he asked me to look after you. We had quite a long conversation, really.”

  Her father, who had two brothers, business partners, a best friend, and a slew of friends, had discussed her with him when this man was barely a legal adult himself..

  Severine took a deep breath. “It’s not that I don’t understand your words,” Severine repeated. “It’s that I have a half-brother who could have served if Father was going to choose someone so young.”

  “Your father didn’t want your brother to look after you. He wanted you to have your freedom. Your half-brother is of quite a different cloth than I am.”

  “But Father didn’t love me. Mother either.” Her gaze moved to the convent where she’d lived since her parents’ death. Being raised in a convent didn’t inspire one to imagine a future of early freedom, let alone control of her inheritance and the two houses.

  He coughed and avoided her gaze as he cleared his throat and blushed enough for her to be sure that Mr. Brand had suspected the same thing she’d known since before she could read.

  “Perhaps rather than trying to understand your father’s reasoning,” Mr. Brand suggested softly, “we can accept him at his word. He wanted you to be safe as you grew up and be free of the meddling of his friends and relatives.”

  “Father was murdered,” Severine told him precisely.

  “He was,” the man said, looking sympathetic but without answering.

  Why! Severine wanted to shout, but she guessed this man was being purposefully vague. He wasn’t looking at her at the moment. He was staring at the statue of Mary and baby Jesus in the garden and taking in the magnificent stained-glass windows. He was avoiding her gaze and side-stepping her questions and offering her the money that belonged to her, without explaining why her father had come up with such an irregular future for her—all just before he had been murdered.

  She knew the answer of course: because he had known he was going to die. Or suspected it enough to put plans into place. Plans that meant her father hadn’t been sure of any of the regular choices for guardian. Which suggested, Severine thought with a sudden chill, that she could trust no one.

  She listened without commenting as her guardian explained that she would have control of her money, of the houses, of all of it, the moment she returned to the United States. He finished with, “Your father said he trusted you to look after yourself, the fortune he was leaving you, and the accoutrements of being a DuNoir.”

  She didn’t repeat that she’d been a disappointment to her parents. Even her name, which they tried to make a joke of later, had been a glaring symbol of that disappointment. Father had told her the story once.

  “Sevie,” he had said, using the nickname she’d despised even at ten years old. “We expected you to enter the world screaming. I was prepared to laugh indulgently, press a kiss on your sweet forehead, and tell your mama what a good job she’d done, but you were the most serious little thing I had ever seen—looking as though you were possessed by Lady Justice.”

  That had been when he’d laughed nervously. “It’s why we named you Severine, of course. So serious from the moment you entered the world.”

  Severine snapped back to the present, completely having missed whatever nonsense the man had been telling her.

  When she focused back to him, he blushed again lightly. He cleared his throat a few more times and said, “So, you’ll need me to sign off on things until you’re twenty-one, but for all intents and purposes, you’ll be making the choices. I promised your father that you could make your own way—regardless of my opinion on the matter. That’s a promise I intend to keep.”

  Severine hesitated and then demanded, “Why?”

  “Your father saved my life during the war.” For once Mr. Brand didn’t avoid her gaze. “I’d have seen him live a long and full life if I had my wish. I didn’t, but I’ll be”—those blue eyes settled on the statue of Mary and he censored himself—“darned if I don’t keep my promise to him.”

  Well, Severine thought, that made sense at least. A man who seemed to be one of honor. One who wasn’t connected with Father’s business practices. Who was old enough to stand for her father and beholden enough to him to just do as he wanted. Was this the only man her father had trusted Severine with?

  Severine rocked back on her heels. “So if I wanted to go home—”

  Severine Euphrasia DuNoir stared at herself in the mirror and saw a stranger. Her face was all sharp angles and high cheekbones. It was what it was, she thought, having vanity thoroughly scoured from her in her youth and then completely buried with living in a convent f
or six years. She would never be lovely like her mother, and that had been the only useless wish of Severine’s heart when she’d bothered to make wishes. She had once wanted to be pretty and frivolous and as loved as her mother, and she had accepted it would never happen.

  The days of useless fairy wishes were long past for Severine and she was stolidly something else. She met the gaze of the shop girl and asked, “Is this a normal dress?”

  The dress reached mere inches below her knees, and Severine’s dark brown eyes were fixed on her naked legs. Her legs weren’t actually naked given the stockings, but she certainly felt as scandalous as Godiva on her nude horseback ride after all. The dress was a soft pink that made her want to vomit as she took in her white skin against the color. She looked like a blushing ghost.

  She felt naked and ridiculous. Women wore such things here? Clearly, however, they did. The shop girl looked lovely and vivacious. Her pretty dark-brown locks were cut quite close to her head and smoothed into curls that clung to her forehead and cheek. While Severine thought it was quite flattering on the girl, she was sure it would never do for herself, even if one didn’t take into account the difference in their hair texture. The shop girl seemed to be of mulatto descent and had the Creole accent of so many in New Orleans. Severine’s mouth twisted. She had a goal, and that goal required she look the part of one of these bright young things. She had accepted she’d never be frivolous like her mother, so how was she to accomplish her goal?

  “This is a normal dress,” the shop girl said gently. “Where you been, cher? The moon?”

  Severine paused and admitted, “Almost.” She tried for cheery but failed.

  “And people don’t bob their hair where you were? Or—” The girl gestured to the dress rather than explaining. Her horrified gaze was enough for Severine to laugh, but she was positive her humor didn’t really appear on her face.

  “Oh.” Severine hesitated, her mouth twisting. “No. Not really.”

  “Well, hello, darlin’,” the girl said cheerily, drawing out the hello. “Welcome to the new world.”

  Severine tried and failed for another smile, but it seemed the attempt was sufficient. Or perhaps the warmth that appeared in the girl’s eyes was from what Severine said next.

  “I need to change my look. You seem…” Severine struggled for the words and then hoped that ready money would make up for inarticulate words. “Quite modern and…” Another awkward pause until Severine added, “Quite fashionable. Lovely. So many of the others I’ve been watching look as though they’re parroting the fashion, while you look as though you’re setting it.”

  It was the right thing to say. The girl held out her hand and said, “Meline Boucher. Fashion is my passion. I hope to have my own shop with my own line someday.”

  They considered dress after dress and then Meline’s head tilted as she said, “I think we need to embrace you as you are, cher. Putting you in a rose dress and bobbing your hair will make you look like a penguin wearing peacock feathers.”

  Severine waited for Meline to explain, but instead the woman disappeared into the back. She returned with sketch papers and a pencil box. In moments, Meline was sketching in black pencil and Severine was watching with interest as her face and her form appeared on the paper.

  Dress after dress filled the pages that followed. Some of the dresses were black on black. Some were dark gray with black embroidery. One was a black and red wine that reached from chest to the floor and even had something of a train. Severine, for the first time in her life, desperately wanted the dresses on those pages.

  When Meline paused drawing, Severine asked, “How long?”

  Meline paused and then offered a date that was too far away.

  “Is it possible to have them in two weeks? Perhaps if you hire help?”

  Meline paused and then nodded, a slow, excited grin crossing her face. “I’ll get fired for certain if Madam,” she said it like an insult, “realizes that I’ve taken on a job like this.”

  “Then, let’s not tell her. Let’s find something that will do for now, and we’ll meet at my house for the rest. I’ll need sensible day dresses and skirts with pockets along with this look. Can you make that happen as well?”

  Meline nodded quickly.

  Severine wrote her address on a page with her name and left the shop. When she stepped back onto the bustling streets of New Orleans, she winced. There were people everywhere. Handsome, fashionable, hard-working. There was a scent in the air, and Severine flashed back to a random afternoon in her childhood when her father had brought her to a ramshackle place that served beignets and chicory coffee. He’d let her have both, though she’d been too young for coffee, and she’d dared to dunk her beignet in the coffee just as her father did.

  He’d grinned wide and she’d seen a little of herself in his face. His sharp jawline perhaps, or those dark eyes that were almost black.

  Maybe he hadn’t disliked her, but she’d never know. Her eyes burned with something that was more complicated than grief. Her parents had been murdered before she could know them, and it had changed her forever.

  Chapter Two

  Severine felt haunted.

  Years ago, she’d been measured in this very room, on this very stool, for school clothes. It was just before her parents had purchased the oversized house in the countryside. Back then, Severine’s mother had been lounging, feet up, sipping a cocktail while Severine stood as a statue, ignoring the prick of every needle. She had been too-slim, too-white, with too-dark eyes peering out of a pinched face and her mother had squeezed her cheeks, bemoaning Severine’s lack of color.

  Severine felt as though she could turn her head towards that blood-red chaise lounge near the fire and see Flora DuNoir, with her blonde curls and ready smile.

  She shivered and closed her eyes, breathing in deeply. She was alone in the French Quarter mansion, save for her dog, Anubis, and the two puppies, and she’d yet to tell her family she’d left the convent, let alone that she’d moved back into the mansion.

  “You’re so quiet,” Lisette, one of Meline’s roommates, told her.

  “I suppose so,” Severine said simply, shrugging slightly and getting a dark look from Meline when she moved.

  It was too hard to apologize when she could hear the echo of her younger self during that other fitting long ago.

  “Oh, she’s not a giddy little girl,” Flora had laughed. “She’s like a little ghost.”

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” Severine had said, seeing the odd look from the seamstress and was uncertain of what it meant.

  “What do you like to do?” Lisette asked, ignoring the even darker looks coming from Meline, who had already discovered Severine was almost always uncomfortably quiet.

  “I—” she started to answer and then slowly shrugged. She wasn’t quite sure. She’d taken long walks in the woods near the convent. Helping to bake the bread with Sister Sophie had always been…fine. Severine had rather enjoyed helping in the herb garden and reading in the library, but would she have done those things if she’d had options?

  Too much time passed before she gave a reply, and she’d already crossed the line from awkward to strange. She didn’t blush, any more than she had as a child, and she shifted slightly. She had always wished she were effusive, and she’d always struggled to be more than silent.

  “Where have you been?” Lisette asked, ignoring the quieting looks from Meline.

  “Austria,” Severine answered, grateful for an easy question. “A convent.”

  “A convent!” Lisette’s declaration caused Severine to start, and Meline pricked her with a pin.

  “Oh, I am sorry,” Meline said.

  “This whole time?” Lisette demanded. “Ever since—”

  She gasped when Meline pricked her friend with another pin, this time purposefully.

  Severine watched the appearance of the small dot of blood on her bicep for too long and then, too late, answered, “Don’t worry about it.”

  M
eline had blushed for all of them, and the rosy color on her dark cheeks made her all the more lovely.

  Severine admitted, “I’m not entirely sure what I like to do. It’s not as though hobbies and the like were even choices at the convent.”

  Both Meline’s and Lisette’s gazes widened and they glanced at each other. Severine didn’t let the looks bother her.

  “Are you from the DuNoir family that had that murder when we were girls?” Lisette asked, and Meline elbowed her friend, not even trying to hide it.

  Severine swallowed, the feeling of being haunted flowing over her so strongly that gooseflesh appeared on her arms and prickled down her back. Even the hair on her head seemed to be saluting the ghosts that had swirled around her since the moment she’d returned to New Orleans, let alone to this mansion.

  “Lukas and Flora DuNoir, the victims, were my parents.”

  Meline gasped, but the loquacious Lisette wasn’t deterred. “Were you at the convent when they died?”

  Severine slowly shook her head. “I spent most of my time at school in New York. After their deaths, I was sent to the convent.”

  “Can you imagine?” Lisette said to Meline. Then Lisette turned to Severine and demanded, “Who killed them? Did they ever find out?”

  “No.”

  She could feel their presence as though they were standing across from her. The spookiness she’d felt since she’d come home was intensifying and transforming into something else. Something more personal. It would be so easy to see them there, in front of the fireplace. How many times had she found them that way, kissing, or sharing a drink, or fighting?