Before she could answer, she spied Monsieur Plantier, their host, advancing toward them. “Surely, mes amis,” he cried heartily, “you have not already tired of champagne and beauty!”
Lieutenant Atwood smiled indulgently. “The champagne is first-rate. The art, well, I will not deny that I am surrounded by beauty. But I must say, I’d hoped to be surrounded by beauty of a far greater caliber.”
Monsieur Plantier was not only not offended by his complaint, but he smiled more brilliantly and seemingly with more approval. “Monsieur Nariman is a connoisseur. Please wait a moment. Let me see what I can do.”
A few minutes later, a footman discreetly guided them behind a screen at the far end of the gallery. Beyond the screen was a door. Through the door, they were led out to a corridor and then into an ornate salle, which still didn’t contain the Van Dyck or their companions.
But it did contain the young man and his grandmaman.
Standing under a Frans Hals portrait, Charlotte murmured to Lieutenant Atwood, “Watch the guards. Who are they looking at?”
Lieutenant Atwood turned around nonchalantly to walk to a Bruegel on the opposite side of the salle. When he returned, he said, “Our thief.”
And then, “Which someone of his caliber should never allow to happen. You think he isn’t the thief I mentioned?”
“There are very faint dots of discoloration on the inside corners of his eyes. Very slightly reddish dots.”
Lieutenant Atwood’s eyes widened. He lowered his voice further. “He’s an actor?”
Stage performers painted red dots in the inside corners of their eyes to counteract the overbrightness of footlights.
If the apple of Grandmaman’s eye was an actor hired to play the part of the thief, the real thief must be walking about the reception, thus far unremarked.
This point no doubt occurred to Lieutenant Atwood. He frowned. Then he turned to Charlotte. “But you know which one he is.”
“I have a guess. The bit about visible tattoos on his left hand might be a rumor he himself deliberately spread. That way, when he shows up with a perfectly unmarked left hand, no one will suspect him of any intention toward or expertise in theft. And knowing that he had already outsmarted his quarries at the outset, he might even brandish his left hand a little more than the average person.”
“The man playing magic tricks in the gallery.”
The one Lieutenant Atwood had remarked as being too good. Who happened to have been standing directly under the David portrait.
After a quarter of an hour, during which they diligently studied all the paintings in the salle, they were brought back to the gallery.
The solicitor was still there, staring moodily at a window. The “uncle” and his “nieces” were there, all looking bored, as if they also hoped to catch Monsieur Plantier’s attention and be brought before greater artistic treasures. Grandmaman and Monsieur du Vernay were still in the other salle, but the tattoo-less thief was now at the buffet table, merrily chatting with a pair of very respectable-looking ladies.
Then the ladies screamed, a tower of glasses toppled over, and pandemonium ensued.
Thirteen
There was no danger that wasn’t made worse by dirt.
Lord Ingram, as a rule, didn’t mind dirt. He’d been excavating major, minor, and absolutely trivial archeological sites since he was a child. The careful removal of rock and soil from historical relics was one of his great pleasures in life.
But he sincerely and wholeheartedly deplored dirt, especially the wet, smelly sort, when it was not affixed to historical relics, but to whatever godforsaken task he found himself performing under the guise of archeology.
The only conclusion he could draw was that he was vain enough to want to die a clean man.
Compared to the worst mud he’d experienced, this tunnel was practically luxurious. Still, he longed feverishly for marble, stone, or even brick surfaces, anything that didn’t let earthworms wiggle through or a slug fall on his neck.
His picture had been in the papers recently, a merciful excuse to remain behind at Hôtel Papillon. But had he contented himself with a game in the warm, dry, spotless billiard room? No, he’d had to volunteer for the worst task of the night, one that no one had asked him to do.
You don’t need to do everything for everyone, Holmes had said.
One of these days he ought to listen to her.
But his wiser future self obviously dwelled too far in the future to save him tonight.
The tunnel itself, steadily climbing, didn’t have any obvious turns, but his compass indicated that he’d proceed in a semi-spiral. He’d been facing west earlier; now he was facing near south.
A few feet farther along he came to a half door set directly before him, rather than above. He listened for a long time, wary of meeting any oncoming guards as he stepped into the château. But when he opened the door, he encountered not a room or corridor, but more darkness.
After some hesitation, he let light out of his lantern and looked around.
It was not so much a passage as a narrow, rectangular well, with stones protruding an inch or two out of the walls to provide footholds. The floor, too, was stone, what he had been praying for, but he almost wished he had some more by-now familiar dank earthen passages to crawl through. In the stillness, his breaths echoed against the walls.
He took off his dirt-soiled outer layer of oversized garments. Those, along with his shoes, he stowed on the other side of the half door. In his stocking feet, the lantern again lit and clasped between his teeth, he climbed up until he reached another trapdoor.
Above the trapdoor was yet another passage. He examined the floor. There wasn’t much dust. In such an enclosed space, without ready changes of air, the supply of dust was limited. But the distribution was what one would see in a normal corridor that wasn’t cleaned frequently: a layer of encrusted dirt near the edges of the walls, the center of the passage clear from foot traffic.
He bent his face almost to the floor. Too clear. The passage had been used recently. Within days.
Now the choice of whether to keep his small, dim lantern lit. In the end, he did not close the front panel, though he did close it as much as possible, while still letting out a sliver of light. He was counting on being the only intruder in this space tonight. Hoping that even if someone else came in, it would be a customary user, walking with a bright light and heavy footfalls, who would give him enough notice to darken his lantern and get away.
Twenty feet out he was glad he’d left the lantern on, or he might have knocked over the item placed directly in his path, even if he’d been feeling his way with his hands. The lantern emitted so little light that at first he thought he’d encountered a barrier. Only when he opened the lantern’s front panel a little more could he make it out as a tripod. A surveyor’s tripod, the sort that could easily support the weight of a theodolite, or some other optical instrument.
As an archeologist, he’d done his share of land surveys and always shipped a few such tripods in crates as part of his equipment. But what was a surveyor’s tripod doing in a secret passage concealed inside the walls of a château?
Of course.
He lifted the tripod carefully, moved it eighteen inches out of the way, and took its place. But the spot where a camera would have aimed was nothing but wall. He pushed, tapped, and even ran his fingers up and down lines of mortar, but nothing at all happened.
Unless . . . the one he thought to be the inner wall was actually the outer wall?
He turned around 180 degrees and pressed and prodded the opposite wall—and almost leaped back when a panel slid open. Beyond the panel was a pane of something cool and smooth.
Glass.
And beyond the glass, darkness.
His fingertips tingling, he shut the panel. Had the light from his lantern been seen? His heart pounding
, he stood and listened, but heard nothing. After a while he dimmed the lantern and slid open the panel again.
The same unrelieved darkness beyond the glass pane. Seconds ticked by. A minute. The darkness didn’t change at all. He set his ear against the cold, slick glass: still nothing, except for a faint din that could be either reverberations from the reception or merely blood pumping through his own veins.
He drew back and wiped a handkerchief across the glass pane, removing any trace of oil or dirt his skin might have left behind. Then he closed the panel, put the tripod back, and walked on.
About twenty-five feet out, he encountered another such tripod—and another hidden panel in the wall, with another glass pane behind it.
Another twenty feet or so, yet another tripod. Altogether he counted five tripods before the tunnel ended. He felt around but couldn’t get any part of the wall to move or even recess. He retraced his steps.
The trapdoor he’d come through was somewhere in the middle of the long passage. The five tripods he’d encountered were all west of it. There were more tripods on the other side of the trapdoor.
The process had become familiar to him by now: Move aside the tripod, peer behind the wall panel, see nothing, and move on. He fully expected the same result to keep repeating, but the second wall panel east of the trapdoor opened to reveal an illuminated room beyond.
Not only illuminated, occupied: Two women were walking out of the luxuriously appointed bedroom. Instinctively he moved to the side, afraid that there might be others in the room and his silhouette would be seen.
When he risked another peek, however, the room was empty, though the door was left open to the passage outside. The peephole was oddly placed, perhaps two feet from the floor, implying that the secret passage itself straddled two floors. Which made sense. Walls were punctuated with windows, and the passage must be placed higher than the tops of the windows below and lower than the sills of the windows above.
Other than its rather low vantage point, the peephole gave a clear panorama of the room, as if the furnishing had been placed just so to avoid obstructing the view.
He was about to pull out Mr. Marbleton’s detective camera and take a picture when a grinding sound came from the middle of the passage: a secret door being opened.
There wasn’t enough time for him to reach the trapdoor, get through, and put it back in place behind himself. He broke out in a cold sweat, shoved back the detective camera, and moved toward the eastern end of the passage, holding out an unsteady hand to feel for any more tripods.
His fingers touched one. He took care to go around it without making any sounds and continued his retreat. Light—too much light—spilled in from the secret door. He moved faster, praying that he would not pay for his speed by bumping into the next tripod.
But there were no more tripods; only the end of the tunnel. And luckily, there was a protuberance, built to accommodate either pipes or a chimney flue, with just enough space behind for him to hide.
He flattened himself against the wall as a bright lantern swung. His heart raced. He’d come to this level in clean clothes and his stockinged feet and shouldn’t have left any traces of dirt that would cause suspicion.
But one never knew in these situations.
The lantern swung a few more times before a woman said, in lilting French, “This way, please.”
Footsteps. The slight scrape of the tripod being lifted out of the way.
Then the woman spoke again. “You see, Madame, it is not that we are not treating you as an esteemed guest, it is only that the rooms in this château that qualify as estimable all have such peepholes. I do not know your preferences, but me, I cannot abide such intrusion into my privacy. Even if I cover up the peephole I will still know it’s there.”
The other woman—if those two were the same two people who had walked out of the room he was peeking into earlier—did not say anything.
But the first woman appeared satisfied. “Let us go,” she said. “I have something that will prove my sincerity much better.”
Perhaps the other woman made a questioning face. The first one went on to say, “Let’s just say it involves a syringe and a choice of injectable solutions.”
* * *
If it weren’t for Mr. Marbleton’s steadying presence, and the Van Dyck that hung directly opposite her station, Livia would have gone completely out of her mind.
Well, maybe the Van Dyck was also a reason she was partly out of her mind. It was much bigger than she had thought it would be. Not the sort of painting that took up an entire wall, but still, much, much too big to carry. Much too big to even cut out of the frame without a solid five minutes, unless one wished to lessen its value considerably.
And how would anyone get five minutes alone with it, when there were at least twenty-five people in the gallery, guards, waiters, and maids combined, even without a single guest?
Where were the guests? The servants had been told to take their stations at least an hour and a half ago. And not a single person had come through the still-closed doors.
Not even one who wandered in by mistake looking for the cloakroom.
What was everyone doing here, then? Why had they carried up all the heavy plates and glasses? Why had Livia bothered to crush so much ice—her back still hurt—for the oysters and the mousses? Were all those platters upon platters of hors d’oeuvres to be carted off at the end of the night, without even having been looked over?
And the worst part was that she couldn’t say anything or ask any questions. She could only stand quietly, as did everyone else, the gallery silent except for an occasional shuffle of feet and a clearing of throat—and even those got warning looks from the members of the permanent staff.
When the screams came she almost screamed, too, out of relief, if nothing else. At least now someone had to come and explain why the château sounded like an abattoir.
Still nothing happened. The temporary staff glanced at one another. The permanent staff seemed to have turned entirely mute.
Then screams subsided and footsteps approached. The doors were thrown open and guests poured in. They marveled at the pristine spread of food and rushed to be the first in line for wine and champagne. There was excitement, loud chatter, and even trills of overwrought laughter.
Livia at last saw Charlotte, in a masculine disguise reminiscent of the one she had deployed at Stern Hollow, but pared down and without unnecessary flourishes. They did not exchange any communication, not even a nod. Still, she was so happy to see her sister.
And to glean from the sometimes-incoherent conversations that the guests had been at the other gallery in the manor and that a trio of ferrets—though some insisted they were huge sewer rats—had sprung out of nowhere and run amok among the guests, causing many of the ladies to shriek and a cross section of the gentlemen to match them in both pitch and volume.
Guests shoved one another to get out of the way. Plates and champagne flutes shattered. Entire tables overturned, dumping ice and foie gras all over the marble floor. All of a sudden, like a herd of wildebeests that had caught the scent of a lion, everyone rushed toward the door in a near stampede.
But at just the right moment, the double doors were thrown wide, the guests drained out, and in the cordoned corridor, they were corralled by a smiling but firm Monsieur Plantier, along with a phalanx of footmen.
Monsieur Plantier extended his deep apologies to the guests but reminded them that his sister was indisposed and needed her rest. Would mesdames and messieurs please take a second to collect themselves and follow him?
And now here they were, thirsty for champagne and oh, why not have a few éclairs and petits fours to calm the jitters? Livia didn’t know how the atmosphere had been in the other gallery, but the gobbling, guzzling guests in front of her were becoming more convivial by the moment, and there was, whether natural or intentional, a risi
ng sense of fellowship, of having experienced and survived a remarkable event together, even if that event was only an attack of rats.
Or ferrets.
Charlotte, as Mr. Hurst, flitted from group to group, talking to everyone, laughing merrily. But she seldom looked in Livia’s or Mr. Marbleton’s direction and most certainly never at the prominently displayed Van Dyck.
* * *
Lord Ingram cursed himself.
He should be out of the tunnels, over the fence, and far away from Château Vaudrieu—by any measure he’d made enough discoveries this night.
But no, because the woman, who was most likely Madame Desrosiers, said that all the rooms that served as dignified accommodation had spy holes, after he returned to the main tunnel, the one that was locked on either end, he’d looked for yet another trapdoor overhead, and unfortunately he’d found it, too.
So here he was crawling out of another branch tunnel, scaling another well, and hauling himself through yet another trapdoor, praying fervently that nobody would think to step into this one.
No one did.
Alas, when he thought there was nothing else left to explore, at the far end of this passage he discovered more footholds on the wall, which led up through yet another trapdoor, into a tunnel that was only four feet high.
Here he encountered no tripods, but he did find spy ports. Ten of them, far closer together than the ones on the level below.
The fourth one he opened gave onto a room lit by a single lamp, a much smaller, less opulent room than the one he’d peeped into earlier. There was no one inside, but a battered trunk sat against one wall. The trunk had been unlocked but not too many items taken out. A few unremarkable dresses hung in the wardrobe, a book and a notebook sat on the table, an indifferent watercolor hung over it.
The room of a governess, if he had to take his guess. But apparently whoever had been placed here had complained, and had been taken seriously enough to be shown the secret passage. To be assured that she was important enough to merit privacy at least, except there was no true privacy here either.
The Art of Theft Page 18
