Mystery in the Darkest Shadow

by Byers, Beth

  Severine imagined that and surprised herself with a laugh. Should she let them in and speak to them? It was rather like entering the lion’s den in reverse. If Severine knew what Andre was and what he was capable of, was she somehow bound to interact with them?

  Severine rose slowly and noticed that Mr. Brand placed a gun in a holster under his jacket. She frowned deeply and then examined her office. The things that Andre had been looking for were available right here in her office as she and Mr. Brand attempted to make sense of what they’d found in her father’s hidey-hole.

  She glanced at Mr. Brand and back at the things they’d worked so hard to keep. She couldn’t help but imagine Mr. Thorne injured as he had been. What wouldn’t Andre do to get that information? Mr. Thorne was moving again, but it was clear that despite the time that had past, he was still hurting.

  She gathered papers quickly and set them in the basket they’d been using and into their new safe. It had been installed in the back of the closet, and given it was new, Andre should have no idea it had been put in. They’d even ordered from out-of-state and sent Edmée’s son to pick it up.

  Severine locked the safe and closed the closet door, then she put random papers over her desk to make it look as though she’d been working on something else. So far they’d learned so very little.

  Severine had little doubt that her father’s fortune had come from cheating and probably out and out criminal activity. She had little doubt that others had been involved in his schemes. What had he been up to? If the Prohibition had been in effect when her father lived, Severine was certain that he’d have been involved in bootlegging or running speakeasies.

  What instead? Something to do with the Great War? Something to do with stealing a business like he’d stolen their country mansion? Smuggling? She had no idea. The truth was, given that she’d spent the last years in the remote Austrian mountains in a nunnery, she didn’t even know where to start. It wasn’t as though she was aware of criminal activity in New Orleans and how people were getting into trouble.

  That didn’t matter, however. What mattered was those who’d come to her door today.

  “I think we’d better let them in,” Severine said.

  She could see Mr. Brand’s instant rejection of the idea, but what was surprising was Edmée, who said, “Of course you’ll be letting them in. They want something. You need to know what they want. Their intentions will guide your response. They’re up to something.” Edmée’s gaze narrowed and her expression was murderous. “We all know they’re up to something.”

  Severine opened the door a moment later and Grandmére scowled deeply. “I’d have thought the nuns would have taught you manners.”

  “I’m not playing games, Grandmére. I won’t pretend that you didn’t know that Andre was trying to hurt me and let him go anyway.”

  Grandmére frowned fiercely. “Family gets through these things.”

  “We aren’t family,” Severine shot back as she let them into the door. “We’re strangers who share a bloodline.”

  Mr. Brand was there when Andre stepped inside, and Mr. Brand spun him to the door and felt him for weapons, taking a pistol from his ankle before letting him step into the parlor.

  “That was ridiculous.” Grandmére looked as though she were going to leave and Severine stepped back to let her have a free route to the door. She lifted a challenging brow. Grandmére spun and crossed to one of the most throne-like chairs possible. She sat in a pronounced regal way.

  Severine turned her challenging look to Andre, who smiled at her as though he’d won simply because she’d let him into the house. The moment he sat, Severine said, “Anubis, Kali, Persephone, wache.”

  The dogs took up guard positions in a semi-circle around her brother and as he paled, she smiled at him.

  “Those dogs are dangerous and should be put down,” Grandmére declared.

  “The same could easily be said of Andre,” Severine countered.

  Grandmére’s expression tightened as she tried and failed at a conciliatory glance. “We’re here to make peace.”

  Mr. Brand shifted from his position near the fire. Unlike Severine, he hadn’t seated himself and she was certain that he was prepared to gun Andre down should he move wrong.

  “Peace?” Severine attempted to channel Sister Mary Chastity in the cool, even tone. “Interesting that you start with scolding and move on to threatening my dogs.”

  “The dogs have nothing to do with it.”

  Severine didn’t bother to reply that she’d choose her dogs over her brother every day, but she knew it was true. Instead she just waited. She hadn’t bothered to ask for coffee, and there was no one to make it anyway.

  “Peace,” Grandmére replied. “We’ve all been mourning. It’s been difficult to blend again as a family after our great loss.”

  “Especially,” Severine added easily, “given that the money that felt like yours is, in fact, all mine.”

  Grandmére sniffed. “My own dear husband did not leave me without resources.”

  “But perhaps Andre’s father hasn’t been as generous.”

  “This isn’t about money,” Grandmére lied.

  Severine rubbed her brow and she said, “Grandmére, what do you really want?”

  “I want you to give Andre his inheritance all at once.”

  “Andre tried to make me look mad—”

  “Nonsense,” Grandmére snapped.

  “He put both of us at risk,” Severine continued as though her grandmother had not cut in. “Perhaps if I died he’d inherit everything I received from my father.”

  “Your imagination is, as always, over-active. It would be good if you didn’t read novels. I understand some women can’t tell the difference between fiction and reality.”

  Again, Severine ignored her grandmother’s comment, but her eye twitched in concert with Mr. Brand’s sarcastic snort.

  “And then he, along with a criminal and another”—Severine had promised not to reveal that Amelia Grantley had been involved—“broke into my home with weapons and hurt Lisette’s mother along with Mr. Thorne.”

  “No one has heard that,” Grandmére snapped.

  “Because it suits my purposes to not speak of it.” Severine leaned back and stared at her brother. He’d paled in the face of the three large and dangerous dogs. His gaze met hers and she spoke directly to him, ignoring their grandmother. “What do you really want?”

  Perhaps there was something in her face, perhaps it was the dogs and the overt lack of trust, perhaps it was being searched, or perhaps it was because of something that was entirely outside of her control, but he answered her.

  “I want the notebook your father carried. You must remember how he always had a small notebook in his pocket.”

  “Why now? Why after all of this time? Father died years ago.”

  “What do you mean, Andre?” Grandmére hissed. The surprise in her voice warmed Severine’s heart the smallest of amounts.

  “You came back,” he said, ignoring their grandmother. “And I’ve only been in bondage to this fellow for so long.”

  “I came back, and—”

  “And suddenly Brand was doing more than just keeping things the same as they were before. Your father gave him instructions to carry on as usual until you were here. No one realized that until you came home.”

  “Early,” Severine added. “At eighteen, instead of twenty-one years old.”

  Only the corner of Andre’s mouth tilted in answer, but it was obvious.

  “Why didn’t you search for that notebook years ago?”

  “Because,” Andre snapped, “Brand lived in this house. It wasn’t worth the risk. We needed him oblivious. We also thought Lukas had the notebook at the big house. It was only when you emptied out the office there and the servants in our employ weren't able to find it that we knew he didn’t leave it there.”

  Severine stared at him, realizing they could have taken anything from what she’d found. She gla
nced at Mr. Brand, noting the red cheeks and fury in his gaze. She turned to her grandmother and saw the upset had already faded into a smooth facade. She had finally realized that Severine hadn’t lied and, Severine was almost certain, still chose Andre over Severine.

  “And what do we get if we give you that information?” Severine finally asked.

  “With continued cooperation?” Andre smiled smoothly. “Peace.”

  “And if I decide no?”

  “That’s not a choice you want to make, Sevie. As your brother—”

  “I wouldn’t suggest trying to trade on that status,” Severine told him with stark honesty.

  “You didn’t shoot me.”

  “No, I didn’t. Don’t count on that continuing.”

  “You don’t want my blood on your hands.”

  “I don’t want anyone’s blood on my hands, and yet here we are, surrounded by blood.”

  They didn’t understand, and she must seem mad to have said it that way.

  She explained. “Father came from nothing. I’ve seen how much money I’ve inherited and I’ve always known the kind of man he was—”

  “We don’t speak ill of the dead!” Grandmére’s disgust was entirely overlooked by everyone who had long since realized exactly what kind of man Lukas DuNoir had been.

  “This house, the house in the country, the money—it didn’t come from hard work, innovation, or brilliance in anything other than cheating, and because of that, we all have blood on our hands. So, no. I don’t know where that notebook is,” she lied firmly, meeting his gaze, “and I’ve looked. I’ve looked for passageways; I’ve emptied safes; I’ve been trying to find out just why they were killed and I want justice. For them and for me.”

  “You?” Andre snapped.

  “I’m drowning in sin,” she told him, “yet of us all, I’m the only one who cannot be blamed. Tell your master no. Tell him I won’t work for him, and I won’t help him, and that we’re prepared now. Killing me was in your best interest when I arrived. It isn’t now.”

  Andre’s eye was the one that twitched now.

  “And Andre’s allowance?” Grandmére inserted as though she hadn’t understood the last few minutes of the conversation.

  Severine’s dark laugh was the only answer.

  Chapter 3

  Severine returned to her office after taking the dogs out and examined the notebook again. There was a list of names about halfway through the book. The page after was a series of sums totaled together with no explanation for how the funds were used or for what intention. There were addresses with no names. Then another list of names. Further amounts with letters afterward that would only mean something to her father. Some things had been crossed out and though she had read through her father’s words twice since finding it, there was no great clue in the notebook that said what had been on her father’s mind before his death.

  Severine paced in the office and then ran up the stairs to look in on Mr. Thorne. She knocked on the door of his bedroom and found him sitting in the chair near his fireplace. It wasn’t lit and he worked on a small table that had been placed in front of him.

  “I’m just checking to see if you need anything?”

  His lovely eyes moved to hers and he said, “I heard that your grandmother and brother arrived.”

  She winced, rubbing her chest as she took a slow breath in. “Well, yes.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  The question returned to her gave her pause. She’d known him such a short time and she’d trust him in a moment over her brother or grandmother. She stepped into his room, leaving the door open as she crossed to him, and gestured to the chair. “May I?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “What are you working on?”

  “Just going over Jane’s letters trying—once again—to find any clue as to what happened to her.” He kept his tone even though Severine guessed that not knowing what had happened to his sister must be a never-ending hurt.

  It was with no small measure of guilt that she was relieved to talk of someone else’s problems, however. “Why did she come here?”

  “Our grandmother,” he said simply, but there was a crack of emotion in his voice that added so much more than that. His tone was full of nuance and pain, and she could tell by his expression that he had no desire to speak further regarding his painful history.

  Severine could certainly understand that feeling. Her head was pounding with the force of not wanting to have the problems and family that life had given her. Instead she said, “Now that you are recovering, will you and Mr. Oliver be leaving to follow that lead towards your Jane?”

  Mr. Thorne nodded. “Things seem to have quieted down and this may be our best chance.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  “Luck,” Mr. Thorne said darkly and without hope.

  “If that were something I could give you, I would give you all that I have.”

  He nodded and said, “Be careful. We’ll come back as soon as we can. Just don’t do anything dangerous.”

  Like throwing down a challenge on Andre and whoever he worked for? She didn’t bother to explain to Greyson Thorne that she’d already done that. Instead she just said, “Be careful, Mr. Thorne. Whatever happened to your sister wasn’t something that was done by nuns and Salvation Army missionaries. Whoever hurt her or kidnapped her or whatever happened—that wasn’t done by good men.”

  “I’m well aware,” he replied with a brisk, frustrated tone. “We’ve been blocked too many times to have it be anything other than someone actively trying to prevent us from finding what happened to her.”

  Severine nodded and rose. What else was there to say to him about such a thing? He wasn’t dim, and he didn’t need her help. “Good luck, Greyson.”

  * * *

  Severine paced in her father’s room late that night, his notebook in her hand. Back and forth she moved, reading the pages of the notebook aloud again. She was trying to channel him like some fraudulent medium pretending at a power she didn’t have. What would Severine give to speak to her father again? Almost anything.

  She rubbed her chest as she considered the idea. What would she say to him if she could speak to him? Would she throw herself into his arms and get that last hug? Would she tell him about herself and hope he would be proud of her?

  If she’d been one of those blessed souls who had been confident in her relationship with her dead, maybe she would focus on what had happened to him. As much as she’d like to think she would focus on justice if she could ask him who killed him, she knew she wouldn’t.

  Her questions would be far more self-interested. She’d ask why he’d built his business the way he had. Why had he married her mother? Had he loved Severine? Was he resigned to the child he’d had with his wife? Had he wished that he could exchange Severine for one of his illegitimate children?

  Severine shut down those thoughts and read the names once again.

  Alphonse DuNoir

  Henry DuNoir Sr.

  Andre Charpentier

  Charles Brand

  Antoine Grantley

  John Bostick

  Harland Ruggles

  Nathaniel Sidney

  Jarrod Van Ausdell

  Why those names? Severine wondered as she read them aloud for almost the hundredth time, refusing to imagine that conversation with her father any longer. What did these men have in common? It was obvious, she thought, to him it had been obvious. Father had known his purpose, but it wasn’t obvious to her. The first three were family. Charles Brand, of course, had been his most trusted associate, since he named Mr. Brand guardian of the trust. The next names were associated with Father’s business, and even though Severine hadn’t seen most of them since she’d been back, she knew their names. She had a vague memory of Jarrod Van Ausdell but the other name, Nathaniel Sidney, was entirely foreign to her.

  If only she could remove Andre and Charles Brand from the list, the rest might all be business related
, but Father hadn’t liked Andre all that much. They certainly hadn’t done business together. And Mr. Brand hadn’t been involved with Father’s businesses either. They’d been friendly, but Mr. Brand had said that he’d spent much of his early days after Father’s death just trying to keep above water with all of Father’s business dabblings. He’d had his fingers in so many pies.

  She rubbed her brow and then she told herself, “Just be focused. Start with one thing and start peeling back layers of Father’s life.”

  An idea occurred like a ray of sun from the heavens and she looked at the two names that didn’t make sense to her: Jarrod Van Ausdell and Nathaniel Sidney. Just why were they on this list? They must be the place to start. If she could learn more about them and how they were connected to her father, she might understand more. She carried that hope to bed and was finally able to sleep.

  The next morning, however, she hurried downstairs and found Edmée just opening the door again.

  Severine gaped when she saw the butler and housekeeper from Mrs. Theodosia Grantley’s home. All of the sudden, Severine remembered offering them a position. Their appearance, however, was quite a bit later than she’d expected and she examined them with a healthy dose of skepticism.

  “We’re here for that position, miss,” the butler said.

  “No,” Severine replied.

  He looked startled, and then his eyes narrowed. “You promised.”

  “I did,” Severine agreed. “Your arrival, however, is inauspicious.”

  “But you promised,” his wife cried.

  “I’ll keep my promise of a retirement,” Severine told them. “We’ve been attacked once, but no, I cannot allow anyone unknown into the household.”

  “No?” the butler asked.

  “Don’t be dim,” Edmée snapped. “She just offered to pay you for work you don’t have to do.”

  “So you gave the work you promised us to an ancient black woman?” The housekeeper’s gaze was filled with inexplicable hatred.

  Severine snapped. “Enough!”

  “Enough?” the butler repeated. “You promised we wouldn’t have to take charity.”