Then again, he was making assumptions. This could very well be the room of another woman, and not the one in the secret passage Madame Desrosiers was trying to reassure.
He waited for some time for the room’s occupant to come back. But he couldn’t wait too long: Ideally he wanted to time his departure with the guests’, so that the guards’ attention would be on them, and not on a furtive shadow slipping out of the chapel.
As he was closing the panel, he spied a framed page of pressed flowers on the nightstand. This peephole was also set low to the ground, and the bulk of the bed concealed most of the frame, but he could see that the top flower seemed purple and vibrant, caught in the peak of its brief bloom.
He thought of Lucinda and the pressed flowers she wanted to make for her mother—and missed his children with an acute pain in his heart.
Sliding the panel closed, he went on with his task.
Fourteen
Somehow Livia had forgotten that the end of the reception did not mean the end of the evening for the staff. Hard work began anew. Everything that had been hauled up to the gallery needed to be returned to the pantries and butleries below. The tablecloths and napkins were bundled up to be sent out for laundering, but all the other service items had to be scraped, cleaned, washed up, and then put back in perfect order.
Charlotte had reviewed the dishwashing process with Livia, Charlotte who had read household management books from end to end and warned her that it would be hard work. Livia, tired from carrying heavy trays up and down, was in fact relieved to be able to stand in one spot for some time. Only to learn what hard work meant, to be stuck in place, her legs, back, and shoulders aching, up to her elbows in hot water and washing soda for hours on end.
She was near tears when they were at last allowed to leave the scullery, in the small hours of the morning. The château did not house its temporary staff, but put them on an omnibus and drove them fifteen miles to the door of the staffing agency. She didn’t even know that she’d fallen asleep with her head on Mr. Marbleton’s shoulder until he shook her awake for them to alight.
The staffing agency offered some lodging, but not enough to accommodate everyone on its roster, and certainly not its newest hires. The huddle of servants who stumbled off the omnibus shook hands with one another and dispersed amidst a chorus of “Bonne Nuit!”
Livia clutched the money she received, her work-dulled brain trying to convert it into pound sterling, scarcely believing the pittance that she’d earned for all her backbreaking labor. She didn’t have a clear idea of how much things cost in Paris, but in London she wasn’t sure this would be enough to pay for both room and board.
Her own life had never been easy. Yet it was both luxurious and carefree, compared to that of the woman she was pretending to be.
She and Mr. Marbleton walked for nearly a quarter of an hour before a carriage drove by them and came to a stop beyond the next intersection.
“There’s no one else nearby?” she asked, her voice half-hoarse.
“Everyone who got off with us has gone in different directions,” he said.
They nodded at the coachman, Lord Ingram, and got into the carriage. Lord Ingram’s ally had secured an idle farmhouse two villages over from Château Vaudrieu. Lord Ingram had driven there the previous day, so as not to make another appearance at the Mouret train station.
She was glad he was safe.
And she was asleep again within seconds.
* * *
Livia had a vague impression of being helped out of the carriage by Charlotte and Mrs. Watson and half carried into her room. She woke up late. And she, who usually had very little appetite upon rising, wolfed down the copious breakfast that had been prepared for her, leaving barely a crumb on the tray.
Breakfast was followed by a long hot bath to soak away the aches and cramps of the previous day. Even as she sighed, her muscles unknotting, her mind still remained on the woman she was pretending to be. That woman, who lacked steady employment, wouldn’t have the luxury of sitting in a deep claw-footed bath in the middle of the day. She’d have gone out at dawn to find work. And if she had anyone depending on her . . .
Livia had long rued her lack of independence. But independence without funds was like immortality without eternal youth, a proposition that became untenable over time. Was that why Charlotte always analyzed the world the way she did? Because in the end, when all the niceties were stripped away, everything was all about how many resources any given person had at her command?
Charlotte’s greatest resource was her mind. What was Livia’s?
She had just finished dressing when a knock came at the door. “May we come in, Miss Olivia?”
Mrs. Watson.
Livia flushed with the memory of her secondhand mortification, but she had no choice but to open the door. Mrs. Watson swept past in a faint cloud of attar of jasmine, followed by Charlotte, in another one of the dresses Livia had brought for her from home, an explosion of silk rosettes on green brocade that even Madame de Pompadour would have thought overwrought.
“Oh, you look much better, my dear,” said Mrs. Watson, with great empathy in her eyes. “It was terribly hard work, wasn’t it?”
“Much harder for those who must do it day after day.”
“There is that. Now shall I help you coif your hair?”
Livia allowed Mrs. Watson to lead her to the vanity table. “Is everyone waiting for me to confer about last night?”
“No,” said Charlotte, taking a seat near the door. “Last I heard, Mr. Marbleton just climbed out of his bath.”
Livia exhaled. Some people loved to make a late, grand entrance. She never could withstand the sort of attention that generated. Being the last to arrive made her want to crawl under the carpet, certain that she had inconvenienced everyone present and that they all secretly despised her.
Mrs. Watson combed Livia’s hair, her hands sure but gentle.
“You are an expert,” marveled Livia.
“In my younger days, I traded on my appearance. I was conversant with just about every skill and trick there existed to make a woman more beautiful. And my hair, of course, was never neglected.”
“I can only imagine how stunning you were,” said Livia sincerely.
And of course, at the peak of her beauty, no one would have denigrated her.
“Oh, I rather thought so myself—I was always a cheeky one.” Mrs. Watson started plaiting Livia’s hair. “But not everyone agreed. You should have heard men passing opinions on my looks. One day someone would think my arms lacked all voluptuousness. The next day a different someone would opine that my waist was too thick. I’ve heard my nose called too large, my eyes too close-set, my hands too knobby, and my neck nowhere near swanlike enough. And when I was twenty-five I was already called too old by gentlemen who liked their companions barely grown.”
“I— That’s—”
“Since I always intended to profit from my physical appeal, I grew a thick skin early. But I came to realize that most women, even respectable ones who would never think of taking a protector in exchange for money, have their appearance judged the same way, except perhaps less overtly. Everyone is imperfect to someone. And even the impossibly beautiful ones grow old and are pitied for not being as beautiful as they once were.”
Satisfied with the plaits to either side of Livia’s ears, Mrs. Watson formed the rest of her hair into a chignon. “For that reason, I learned to heed my own opinion of myself more than anyone else’s,” she said, sliding pins into the chignon with such smoothness that Livia barely felt any pressure on her scalp. “A woman who allows the disdain and casual callousness of strangers to make her feel less worthy can have nothing but a difficult time, and I am well past that phase in my life.”
This was Mrs. Watson letting Livia know, without saying it in so many words, that the comment of the stupid man from t
he other day had not affected her—or at least hadn’t affected her anywhere to the extent that it had affected Livia.
She would be more embarrassed at having been so overwrought that Mrs. Watson felt the need to console her, if she didn’t feel such relief. And such overwhelming admiration for the indomitable Mrs. Watson.
Charlotte, sitting to the side, was reading a French newspaper, seemingly absorbed in its contents. Livia waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, Livia asked, “What do you think, Charlotte?”
“Of course Mrs. Watson is right,” said her sister, her head still bent toward the paper. “But fundamentally, this is about the imbalance of power between the sexes. As long as women’s primary access to power is via access to men, and as long as men value women primarily as either carriers of their bloodline or vessels for their carnal desires, both men and women will be commenting on women’s youth and beauty—or the lack thereof—ad nauseum, the former group as they would appraise any other interchangeable commodity, and the latter as assessment of competitive advantages and disadvantages.
“Certainly it’s admirable for any given woman to learn to appreciate her own worth, despite all the countervailing forces. But it cannot be enough for those who are treated as lesser to feel better about themselves. That they are treated as lesser is an injustice. And that injustice itself must be rooted out and eradicated.”
* * *
Instead of the library, the company met in the dining room. The dishes for luncheon were served à la française, everything placed on the table at the same time. The servants filed out and the diners helped themselves.
Livia, still full from her late breakfast, only took some carrot salad and a few mussels that had been steamed in white wine.
“Before we begin our discussion,” said Mrs. Watson from the head of the table, “please allow me to thank each and every one of you. And know that I will never be able to thank you enough.”
Lord Ingram, seated to her left, briefly placed his hand over hers. Livia, Charlotte, and Mr. Marbleton all inclined their heads.
Mrs. Watson gave Lord Ingram a tremulous smile. Then she turned to her right and said, “Miss Charlotte, will you summarize your findings?”
“Certainly,” said Charlotte, looking up from her soup. “The longer we have been at this task, the more our situation strikes me as odd. Let me begin with the staffing agency.
“Ever since I heard that the roster at the staffing agency had been stretched to the breaking point because some foreign dignitary needed a large house manned, I’ve wondered whether we were the only party trying to get into Château Vaudrieu for illicit reasons. Recall also that Mrs. Watson’s friend mentioned that her contacts in Paris couldn’t find any French thieves both able and willing to take on the project.
“At the time I thought that implied some sort of criminal underbelly to Château Vaudrieu—it very well still could. But the unavailability of professional burglars could also serve as further evidence that Mrs. Watson’s friend isn’t the only one being pressured to steal art from the yuletide masquerade ball. That she, coming from abroad, had a later start than everyone else and therefore could only resort to English thieves, after all the good French ones had been pledged elsewhere.”
Livia hadn’t thought of it at all. She glanced at Mr. Marbleton. He winked at her and touched a hand to his hair. He’d sent her a lovely bouquet to thank her for caring for him after his near-brush with hypothermia. And today, before leaving her room, she’d tucked a single stephanotis blossom from the bouquet into her coiffure.
She hesitated a moment and winked back.
“Last night Mrs. Watson called on her friend and obtained the actual blackmail letter her friend received,” Charlotte went on, and passed a photograph to Livia, who sat next to her.
A photograph?
The words of the letter that had been photographed were clear and readable. But still, how odd. She studied it a bit longer, then handed it to Mr. Marbleton across the table from her. Their fingers brushed at the moment of transition, a lovely sensation.
When the photograph reached Lord Ingram, Charlotte said, “I believe that this photograph was sent, rather than the letter in the photograph, because that letter had not been handwritten, but produced via a Cyclostyle.”
“What’s that?” Livia and Mrs. Watson asked at the same time.
“A stencil duplicator. You write with a special stylus on wax-coated paper. The tip of the stylus breaks through the wax coating and leaves you with a stencil of the text you want. And then you can push an ink roller over the stencil and end up with a decent copy of the original. It’s very useful for businesses. Suppose you need ten copies of something. It’s too small a run to take to a printer, yet it’s tedious work copying by hand, not to mention prone to errors.”
Livia didn’t know about the Cyclostyle because she had never worked in an office, nor needed ten exact copies of anything. She supposed that must be the case for Mrs. Watson also. Charlotte, likewise, had never worked in an office. But Charlotte read Patent Office catalogues and was conversant with any number of new inventions she’d never used or even seen in her life.
“If you’ll notice,” said Charlotte, “in this photographed letter, where the artist and the title of the artwork are mentioned, these words, ‘Deposition by Van Dyck,’ are noticeably more stretched out than the others, and still there seems to be extra space before and after that particular phrase.”
Livia hadn’t noticed that particular detail at all. The photograph was still going around the table, and when it came back to her, she saw that Charlotte was right.
She glanced up at Charlotte. “So . . . you’re saying that the extortionist came up with a general template of a blackmail letter, made a number of exact copies via a Cyclostyle, and specified a different painting on each copy.”
Charlotte nodded. “Precisely. Each copy would have the exact same amount of space reserved for that purpose but ‘Deposition by Van Dyck’ needs a great deal less room than, for example, ‘Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy by Caravaggio.’
“And of course all of these deductions would be pure speculation if at Château Vaudrieu I hadn’t come across multiple unrelated parties who seemed to have ulterior purposes similar to ours. I believe it is a member of one of those parties who released the ferrets that caused the chaos in the first gallery.”
Livia sucked in a breath. She looked again at Mr. Marbleton. His face had become grave.
“So you believe, Miss Charlotte,” he said slowly, “that although the various parties at the château were unrelated, they were all, including us, there because of a common mastermind.”
Livia had arrived at the same conclusion. But hearing those words spoken aloud felt as if someone had kicked her chair.
Unhurriedly, Charlotte took a spoonful of her soup. “At the moment, that is my interpretation of the evidence. Here’s something else: When our ally went to steal a copy of Château Vaudrieu’s architectural plans, there was some extra room in the drawer in which the architectural plans were located. That by itself might not mean anything, but if I may make so bold a conjecture, what if this mastermind had placed multiple copies of the plans at the architectural firm? And that the other parties, arriving earlier on the scene, took most of the copies, resulting in the space in the drawer our ally noticed?”
Livia barely had a moment to chew over this idea before Charlotte said, “Lord Ingram, will you speak of your discoveries?”
Lord Ingram gave a concise account of his evening, in particular the two branching tunnels that led to secret passages, with tripods set before spy holes that peered into bedrooms.
“It’s my opinion that the tripods are meant to support cameras. And the cameras are meant to photograph unsuspecting guests in private moments. The ball at Château Vaudrieu is a masquerade ball. Such occasions are not necessarily less than respectable, but att
endees, believing in their anonymity for the night, might feel a little bolder in indulging in conduct they normally wouldn’t engage in.”
Livia didn’t know where to look—certainly not at Mr. Marbleton this time. They were verging on topics that, in polite society at least, did not come up in mixed company, certainly not when there were unmarried young women present.
“Quite so,” said Charlotte, who appeared to feel none of Livia’s discomfort. She was finished with her soup and served herself some carrot salad. “I mentioned at our previous conference that the art dealer I visited, Monsieur Sauveterre, seemed wary of Château Vaudrieu. We met again before the reception, and this time his warning was unambiguous. He said if I was determined to see the château for myself, then I must be ‘wary and prudent.’ In light of what Lord Ingram discovered, M. Sauveterre’s strenuous advice makes much more sense. Those who are unwary and imprudent have their unwise acts photographed.
“Artworks have been known to exchange hands at Château Vaudrieu, on the night of the ball, for twice as much as similar pieces fetch elsewhere. What if this is how Château Vaudrieu profits from the evidence it has in stock? A gentleman caught in the embrace of another gentleman last December? Well, this December he must pay double what a painting is worth on the open market.
“And even with those paintings available for sale, we don’t know whether they come from willing sellers—some owners could very well be forced to give up family heirlooms to avoid scandalous photographs surfacing.” Charlotte looked around the table. “The beauty of this scheme is that there are most likely legitimate transactions at Château Vaudrieu as well, and the market for art is known for its occasional outliers, both of which help to disguise the irregularities.”
The Art of Theft Page 19
