Raiders of the Lost Corset

by Ellen Byerrum

  “You never heard him barking?” Lacey asked him gently.

  “He had a very soft bark,” Jean-Claude said. His eyes teared up again. His hand closed over the dog tag. “Such a good little dog. Pardonnez-moi. We will talk later. I am sorry, mademoiselle, but I have to go now and bury my dog.”

  Chapter 15

  Who or what the hell was “Drosmis Berzins”?

  Lacey studied the torn slip of paper she had crammed into her jeans, which now lay in a heap on the floor of the hotel where they were staying a few miles from Jean-Claude Rousseau’s farmhouse, near the causeway to Mont-Saint-Michel.

  At least she thought the signature said “Drosmis Berzins.” The note wasn’t in English or French. But it was the only thing of interest she had found in the coal room—other than Jean-Claude’s little dog—so she was holding on to it. After eradicating the cobwebs and coal dust, all she really wanted to do was to crawl into bed with the covers pulled up over her head, but duty called. She had made dinner plans with Brooke and Jean-Claude. He was still distraught over the discovery of Pepe’s bones, but not so upset that he would pass up dinner at one of Mont-Saint-Michel’s chic restaurants at the expense of The Eye Street Observer. She stuck the note in her passport case and took it with her into the bathroom, which she locked while she took a shower.

  November and the disappointing day called for a somber palette, one with autumnal overtones. Lacey had brought a deceptively plain burgundy wool knit dress that slipped over her curves in a crimson wave with a skirt that flirted slightly below her knees. Simple elegant sleeves ended in cuffs that buttoned. Facing herself in the mirror, she had to admit she looked good. The dress was made from one of Aunt Mimi’s patterns dating from the late 1930s and it made her feel sophisticated. The color made her skin glow. She complemented it with the diamond earrings that Vic had given her. She wrapped a heavy black shawl embroidered with red and pink flowers around her shoulders and hoped it would be warm enough for the walk across the causeway to the Mont. In the hotel lobby she met Brooke, who was bundled up in her Burberry trench coat.

  “Do you think Griffin will be back?” Brooke asked.

  “I don’t know, but I hope we’ve seen the last of him. If he really believes it’s a Fabergé egg and not a corset, and it’s obvious we don’t have it, maybe we’ll be rid of him.”

  “Lacey, what if it isn’t a corset?” Brooke opened the front door, and they stepped into the beautiful soft twilight.

  “I don’t know. Let’s look at it this way, I’m in this for a corset. If it doesn’t exist, I may have to go buy a damn corset in Paris. And wear it to flirt with some Parisian men.”

  They came around a curve in the road. The sudden breathtaking sight of the Abbey on the rock rising out of the sea in the misty dusk mesmerized them and they fell silent. Mont-Saint-Michel rose up before them beyond the sandy bay. They walked across the causeway to the little village on the rock, listening to the wind sigh and the gulls cry. Beyond the causeway and the town gates and the clumps of slow-moving tourists taking pictures, they found the restaurant Jean-Claude had recommended, tucked into a corner off the winding Rue Principale.

  Inside, the whole restaurant was suffused with a golden glow from candles, supplementing the lamplight, which created a comfortable and timeless ambience, as if they were dining in the previous century. They found Jean-Claude Rousseau waiting for them with a glass of wine already in his hand.

  “The wine is excellent. I put it on l’addition,” he announced as he greeted them both with a kiss on each cheek. Lacey caught Jean-Claude’s appreciative glance. “A beautiful dress, Mademoiselle Smithsonian. Très belle. Did you wear it just for me?” He turned approvingly toward Brooke, sleek in her austere black suit beneath her trench coat. “Ah, oui, the très chic avocat. Très elegant, Mademoiselle Barton.”

  Lacey gazed around the dining room, holding her breath. She saw neither the omnipresent Griffin nor anyone who might be the mysterious Kepelov. She exhaled in relief. She did catch several men looking at her in frank appraisal, a dead giveaway that this wasn’t Washington, D.C. Everywhere people were doing the French double-cheek kiss, another clue. The maître d’ led them to their table, which looked out across the sands of the bay toward the causeway they had just crossed over. Lacey was briefly riveted by the view, then the maître d’ pulled out her chair for her and then Brooke’s, as Jean-Claude shambled into his chair between them.

  “I’m so sorry about your dog,” Lacey said to Jean-Claude.

  He grunted and made a dismissive gesture, clearly trying to be stoic and unemotional. “This is the last time I let Americans go into my cellar,” he said with a little smile.

  “Very wise.” Afraid of what else you might find buried there? Lacey wondered. An efficient waiter wearing a black vest and a long white apron appeared and inquired in good English about their wine choices.

  “Do you make a habit of letting Americans into your cellar?” Brooke asked. She ordered a Chardonnay that made the waiter frown. Lacey asked the waiter to make a suggestion, which prompted a much happier response.

  “No, no, never, but that is beside of the point,” Jean-Claude said to Brooke. He had no hesitation in ordering an expensive vintage for himself. He obviously thought all Americans had money to burn. Fortunately, Lacey thought, in Brooke’s case this was true, but it was The Eye that would pick up this dinner tab.

  While they looked over the menu, heavy on poisson and fruits de mer and large numbers next to euro symbols, Brooke and Lacey debated reporting the attack on her to the local police. Lacey opposed it and Jean-Claude agreed with her vigorously. This wasn’t Paris, he said, with its sophisticated police department, and even there, Lacey would be a foreigner, a headache from outside. Lacey pointed out that she wasn’t popular with the cops in D.C., and some of them even spoke English. She very much doubted she would find her popularity improved with their French counterparts.

  “Then what about alerting the American Embassy?” Brooke had friends there.

  “And turn it into an international incident?”

  “It already is an international incident,” Brooke protested. “Two Americans looking for a Romanov artifact, a Russian spy, a British jewel thief, and a violent incident on French soil. And a dead dog with a Spanish name,” she added under her breath.

  “It sounds even worse when you put it that way,” Lacey said. Besides, if Brooke brought in the police or the embassy, it would get back to the newspaper and her editor Mac, Mac with his “I told you so’s” and his spiking blood pressure, which he blamed on her. Not to mention the specter of headlines on that accursed DeadFed dot com, which would put the entire World Wide Web on notice that a hunt for a legendary Romanov corset was underway, inviting all kinds of murderous nuts to seek out Lacey Smithsonian for details.

  “No more talk of police,” Jean-Claude said. “I am trying to have a civilized dinner and you mademoiselles are ruining it. The gendarmes are the enemy of fine cuisine.” He picked up his menu and studied it intently.

  “There’s always Damon’s SWAT team,” Brooke suggested, taking a piece of bread.

  “Don’t even begin to go there,” Lacey whispered. The waiter arrived with their bottle and she gratefully accepted a glass of wine.

  “May we stop mentioning the police, s’il vous plaît?” Jean-Claude set his menu down and used his wineglass for punctuation. “It affects my digestion.” The waiter inquired about their choice of appetizers and Jean-Claude ordered for them all with great gusto.

  “See?” Lacey said. “It affects Jean-Claude’s digestion.”

  Brooke tossed her braid. “We’ll talk later.”

  After their excellent dinner, Lacey waited until the dining room had emptied a little. Once she was sure no other patrons were watching them suspiciously, she extracted the small torn piece of paper from her passport case and handed it to Jean-Claude. “This was in the box in the coal room. Can you read it for me?”

  He set his wineglass down and too
k the scrap of paper. “It is torn.”

  “That’s the way I found it. It’s all I found in the cellar. Except for—Well, you know.”

  He pulled a pair of reading glasses out of the pocket of his well-tailored but rather worn navy blazer and perched them on his nose. He studied the paper for a moment.

  “But this is not in French. This is written in Latvian.”

  “Can you read it?” Brooke asked. “Your grandparents were Latvian, weren’t they?”

  “Oui, they make us all learn le Letton, the Latvian, but it is a very long time. My crazy old cousin Magda, she loved it, she wanted always to speak the Latvian with me. It was very annoying.” He waved a hand. “Give me a moment.” He cleared his throat, then read haltingly. “‘Old friend, old enemy, you think you could hide this from me? Your turn. Seek, Juris, and you shall find. Genesis 3:19, Drosmis Berzins.’ There is also an address on the Rue Dauphine,” Jean-Claude said. “Paris, you know, the Rive Gauche. A line under the word ‘Rue.’ As for the Genesis—” He shrugged.

  “Genesis. In the Bible,” Lacey said. “I don’t know that verse offhand.”

  “Ah. This explains why I do not know it,” he laughed, lifting his wineglass in salute.

  “Is that all?” Lacey pulled her little Moleskine notebook out of her purse and wrote down his translation and the address. “Torn in half. I wonder if the rest of it said anything.”

  “Who knows?” Jean-Claude said, pointing out the obvious. “We do not have the rest.”

  Lacey read it back to him. “That’s it exactly? Any words you’re uncertain about?”

  “No, no, it is that exactly. I learn Latvian well as a child; you never forget it. My grandmother,” he said, shaking his head. “Hard old woman. Sometimes it slips away in the memory. But then it comes back.” He sipped his wine thoughtfully. “You know, mademoiselles, if you find this thing, this Fabergé egg, this Romanov corset, this whatever it is, it belongs to me. My family. I am the last of my family. You understand?”

  Oh, yes, Lacey thought. Jean-Claude Rousseau reminded her a lot of Magda Rousseau.

  “Whatever it is,” Lacey said, “it’s not where Magda thought it was. Who knows what it really is or was, or if it will ever be found?” Lacey smiled. She had no idea who the rightful owner would be. Jean-Claude Rousseau, because his grandfather had stolen it? The remaining Romanov descendants? The Russian government? The French government? Or whoever had the biggest stick and the best lawyers and the corset in hand? But none of that mattered to her at that moment. Lacey felt ill-used by Magda, who had obviously left out some salient details, like who else might be on the trail of a legendary Fabergé egg. And she felt assaulted and abused by a faceless stranger in the coal room.

  Jean-Claude sniffed. “The farmhouse is mine, it was inherited to me, I should have been told of this maybe very valuable thing, this whatever, in my own cellar. Why was I not told?” Lacey refrained from pointing out that Magda had apparently been telling him for years that a Fabergé egg was buried in his cellar, and he had dismissed her as a crazy old woman. But clearly something had been there; someone had been in the coal room and left this cryptic torn note in the box. To top it all off, someone withdrew the item without his knowledge.

  “Who is Drosmis Berzins?” Lacey asked. “Is that a Latvian name?”

  Jean-Claude stared at the paper, then poured another glass of Merlot. “Drosmis Berzins. The other Latvian soldier who was with my grandfather in Ekaterinburg with the Romanovs.”

  “You knew about him?” Brooke asked. “Did you ever meet him?”

  Jean-Claude shrugged again. “When I was a child. I know what my grandfather, Juris Akmentins, said to his grandchildren: Two Latvians refused to shoot the Romanov children. Juris and Drosmis. ‘Be proud to be Latvians,’ he said, ‘Latvians do not murder children.’ He did not tuck us into bed at night and say, ‘By the way, boys and girls, we stole a corset full of jewels from a dead girl and hid it in the cellar.’”

  “So Drosmis Berzins apparently wrote this note to your grandfather. What do you think the message means?” Lacey asked.

  “Why ask me? I am not the nosy American newspaper reporter who goes looking for things that do not belong to her in other people’s cellars.” He sounded brusque, but he seemed to be enjoying himself. He had certainly enjoyed the dinner. The waiter returned with their desserts.

  If Drosmis Berzins had helped steal the corset in Ekaterinburg, or had been trying to steal it from Juris, this had somehow gotten lost in Magda’s version of the story. Did she not know about him? And why would others, like Griffin and Kepelov, be looking for something at the Rousseau farmhouse if this Drosmis had already taken it long ago? Were they simply following Lacey and Brooke, who were themselves following Magda’s only lead, her grandfather’s diary? Juris Akmentins had not mentioned a Drosmis Berzins by name in his diary—at least not in the pages Magda had translated into English. Were there pages missing from the Latvian original, she wondered, or had Magda simply not considered Drosmis worthy of mention? Who might Drosmis have told about all this, and if he had the corset, what had he done with it? Among all these questions, one thing struck her with some urgency.

  “If those men were to come back to your house, Jean-Claude, you could be in danger.”

  “Ha! Danger. I sneer at danger.” He swirled the wine in his glass before sipping it, rolling it around in his mouth, and then swallowing with satisfaction. “You, Mademoiselle Smithsonian and Mademoiselle Barton, may dance cheek to cheek with danger. Moi? I am leaving town.”

  Brooke nearly snorted her wine. “At least they don’t know about the note,” she said, recovering her composure. “So as far as they know, we found nothing.”

  “As far as I know, you found nothing but my Pepe, and for that—” Jean-Claude looked away as his eyes grew moist—“for that, I am very grateful. Tomorrow I will leave.”

  “How can you be sure you won’t be followed?” Brooke interjected. “Or attacked tonight?” Lacey kicked her under the table.

  Jean-Claude gestured philosophically with his wineglass. “How can you be sure of the same, mademoiselle? How can any of us?”

  “Where are you going?” Lacey inquired.

  “I will go to Spain. Until the heat blows off, how they say in the movies? Besides, the women of Spain are beautiful this time of year. I will paint them.” The wine was mellowing him. “But will you not pose for me, Lacey Smithsonian? Tonight?” A wicked smile lifted his lips. “To soothe our anxiety from this traumatic attack of yours in my coal room? To create art from this powerful emotion is such a very great, how you say, release?”

  “Sorry, Jean-Claude.” Lacey was immune to his Gallic charms, whatever they might be.

  He turned his attention to Brooke. “Or perhaps you, Mademoiselle Barton, you of the beautiful blond tresses? Such a beautiful color. I have just the pigment for you.”

  She sneezed and he gallantly produced his handkerchief. “I’m allergic to paint,” Brooke said. “Gee, it’s a pity.”

  He turned back to Lacey. “Mademoiselle Lacey, perhaps you could wear something, you need not be in the nude en total. Americans, such prudes, you know? A little something. A corset perhaps,” he smiled. “I will fill in your so lovely nudity with an artist’s imagination.” Lacey rolled her eyes. “So many women are even more beautiful in the mind than in the nudity.”

  “In your mind is where my nudity will have to stay, Jean-Claude.”

  Jean-Claude sighed. He coolly retrieved his handkerchief from Brooke. “So. An empty cellar. An excellent meal. Good wine. But no posing, eh? I will paint in Spain. And you, mademoiselles, you will pursue the great chase, the lost corset?”

  Lacey shook her head. “See the sights,” she said. “Go back home. Write my story.”

  He frowned. “You will hunt no more for the corset, the last unknown object of the Romanovs?” He gestured grandly. “But it will be worth millions, more than a Fabergé egg! It of course belongs to me, if it still exists, but
there would be perhaps a reward for someone who returns it to its rightful owner, the last of the Rousseaus.”

  “There isn’t much to go on,” Lacey replied. “An address where Drosmis Berzins may have lived decades ago? A verse from the Bible?” She had every intention of finding that address in Paris, but he didn’t need to know that. The fewer people who knew their plans now, she thought, the better.

  “Where is your American frontier spirit, Lacey Smithsonian, the spirit of the cowboy?”

  “I’m afraid I left it in your cellar, Jean-Claude.”

  Chapter 16

  The moon winked at them from behind a bank of clouds. The stars were glittering diamonds against the black velvet sky. And Mont-Saint-Michel was a jewel box ablaze with lights behind them as they walked briskly back across the causeway to their hotel in the cold crystal air.

  “You weren’t serious when you said you were giving up, were you?” Brooke’s breath came out in small puffs of fog.

  “Perhaps I exaggerated a little.”

  “Good. I don’t see what’s wrong with calling in Damon and a few of his buddies to help.”

  “First of all,” Lacey sighed, “there would be a huge cost.”

  “Don’t worry about that.” Brooke grinned. “DeadFed has a contingency fund for emergencies, recently set up by its loyal supporters.”

  This was news to Lacey. “No doubt supplied by Barton, Barton & Barton?” The night air was causing her eyes to tear up, not the idea that Brooke’s law firm was subsidizing Damon’s fringe adventures in Web journalism.

  “Daddy loves Conspiracy Clearinghouse almost as much as I do. But we are not the only donors who believe in Damon’s mission of truth-seeking.”

  “Nevertheless, bringing in Damon and his sweet band of loonies is not a good idea, Brooke. And remember, nobody really wants to find out what the inside of a French jail is like, and Damon is the most likely person to receive that honor if he gets involved.”