She patted my hand. Her hands were slender and aristocratic, and looked as if they could scarcely be strong enough to support the weight of her heavy gold rings. “You have been spending too much time in this theater,” she said soothingly. “Why don’t you come to my house for coffee tomorrow afternoon? I can tell you all the theater gossip from a generation ago. I give you my word that it will take your mind off this murder business.”
“That would be lovely,” I exclaimed.
She gave my hand another pat and rose. “Perfect. I shall send my carriage for you at three.” With that, she glided from the room to take her place in the wings.
There must have been some kind of benign spell about Helaine, for after speaking with her I found my mood lifting. And then there was the magic woven by the play itself as I became caught up in the adventures of the girl I was bringing to life.
Afterward Roderick and I stopped at the nearby Café Parthénope to talk and relax over coffee laced with liqueur. Roderick’s exhilaration from performing receded as we contemplated the extension of our enforced stay and I told him that the inspector’s suspicion now fell upon Julia as well as me.
“This is our punishment for trying to do a good deed,” he said. “You are under suspicion for murder, Ivey is blackmailing us, and Julia is an albatross about our necks.” He sighed. “If she is wrongfully convicted and I don’t try to help free her, I will never forgive myself.”
Roderick’s conscience was too fierce a creature to give him peace in such a case, I knew. Indeed, my own conscience would punish me mercilessly if we let Julia go to the gallows knowing she was innocent. The crucial thing was knowing that for certain. And behind her dramatic poses and theatrical speeches, I thought she truly was frightened.
“Even though I don’t really think she deserves our help, I feel sorry for her,” I admitted. “I remember so vividly when that dreadful embezzlement story got out last winter and how it felt to be unjustly accused.” When I was not in her presence, it was much easier to feel empathy toward her.
“Yes, of course.” He raised my hand to his lips, perhaps out of penitence for having initially believed the lie about my supposed crime. His scorn had been blistering when he first heard the story. “The difference is that you were entirely blameless, whereas Julia’s predicament is largely of her own making. Largely, or entirely.”
“You still believe she may have brought about Fournier’s death?” I could envision Julia stabbing a man in the heat of a quarrel, but not coolly plotting a murder beforehand and carrying it out in cold blood.
“I believe she’s capable of inveigling someone into doing it for her. Especially someone who believes himself to be in love with her. I intend to speak to Philippe about it the first chance I get, but even if he is in the clear, she may have talked another impressionable young chap into killing for her. If she did, I feel I have a duty to make certain she doesn’t get away with it... now or ever again.”
Although I did not feel that the responsibility fell to him, I could certainly understand how he would wish to prevent any more of Julia’s lovers from following his own path. I hoped that I was right about Philippe and that he had not destroyed his future for Julia’s sake.
“As long as we’re essentially captives here,” I said, “we may as well see what we can find out about what really happened. If we can prove who the real killer is, the inspector will have to let us leave Paris. For my part, I intend to find out more about that mysterious debt Kenton owed Fournier, and how it ties into Julia’s thievery. Perhaps Helaine will be able to tell me something useful in that regard when I see her tomorrow. She is Kenton’s closest contemporary of all the company, after all.”
He was staring somewhere beyond me, lost in his thoughts, and I gently turned his chin so that I could look him in the eyes. “We will be free to go about our lives,” I promised. “Probably even sooner than we think.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
But his eyes slid away from mine again. “What is it you keep staring at?” I asked, as strategizing gave way to sheer curiosity.
“Don’t look now,” he replied in a low voice, “but I think our Gustave is disporting himself with a woman who is not his wife.”
“His sister, perhaps?”
“His attentions to her are not what I would call fraternal. They are behind you to your left. See if you can find a way to look without being obvious.”
More curious than ever, I nudged my mantle off the back of my chair, and when I bent to pick it up I turned slightly, enough to see Gustave, with his hat on the back of his head and his necktie loosened, merrily partaking of wine with a much younger woman with hair of an unlikely color and a dress insufficient to contain her charms. They were laughing loudly, and quite oblivious to me and Roderick. I could have marched up to their table with paints and easel and taken their portrait from life, and I doubt they would have noticed.
“I see what you mean,” I said to Roderick. “I wonder if Estelle knows. It may be that she accepts his having little side interests of this nature.”
“On the other hand,” Roderick said, leaning across the table so he could lower his voice, “it may be that we have found something Gustave was being blackmailed about.”
After the rigors of the day it was very soothing to stroll back to our hotel together hand in hand. Paris was so brightly lit, so convivial with sidewalk cafés, so reassuringly patrolled by policemen that it was difficult to believe such a thing as murder could happen. But just because the Haussmann renovation had leveled many of the old slums, that did not mean Paris had no dark corners left.
Later, as I undressed for the evening and put away my pearl necklace, I caught sight of the case containing my dazzling new jewelry from Roderick. I could not resist taking a peep inside to revel once more in his generosity and their beauty.
But Paris had more tricks up its sleeve. When I unfastened the catch and raised the lid, an empty expanse of velvet met my eyes. My diamond and opal jewelry had vanished.
Next morning it took only a little cajoling to induce the concierge to admit to me that Julia had a suite in our hotel. When I offered the man tickets to that night’s performance, he even gave me her suite number. It was on the same floor as mine, which went far to confirm my theory.
It had taken scant reflection to light upon Julia as the likely thief. I had suspected all along that she was in the same hotel, and it would have been easy enough for her to access my room through the shared balcony that connected all the rooms on our floor, for I did not always lock the French doors—an omission I resolved never to commit again. Perhaps Julia had stolen my jewelry on the second night of the show, either before or after retrieving her letters from Fournier’s house. It would explain why she had refused to say where else she had been that night.
In short order I was pounding at her door.
Almost at once a maid opened it. “Madame!” she whispered imploringly. She was very young. “Mademoiselle Julia is sleeping!”
“Is she? What a pity. She is going to miss my search of her rooms.” Brushing past the maid, who gave a frightened squeak and hurried after me, I sailed up to what I assumed was the bedroom door and hammered on it resoundingly before trying the handle. It was not locked, so I let myself in, humming a tune from the melodrama.
“Madame, s’il vous plait!” The poor maid was in agonies of dread. I could imagine that Julia was not a patient employer, and I gave her a quick smile of encouragement.
“I am Sybil Ingram, and you can blame this intrusion entirely on me. Mademoiselle de Lioncourt will understand where the blame lies.”
“Understand what?” came a muffled voice from beneath the pale-blue satin coverlet, and as the maid scampered away, making the best of her mistress’s distraction, Julia’s head emerged slowly.
It gave me tremendous satisfaction to have awakened her. Surprisingly, she was alone in bed. If that was her usual habit, her swains might have been surprised to see that when rudely shaken from
her slumber, Julia was as puffy of eye and tangled of hair as any normal human woman. Yanking the curtains open, I was pleased to see her shrink from the sunlight.
“Who is it?” she demanded, squinting.
“The day of reckoning,” I said briskly, glancing around the room for the most likely places to cache jewelry.
“Sybil?” She uttered a French oath. “What on earth are you doing? It is”—she squinted at the tall-case clock—“only nine in the morning! Are you mad to burst in on me like this?”
“Not mad, but very, very angry. Where are my jewels?”
There was the slightest pause. “I do not know what you are talking about.”
I began pulling out drawers in her bureau, then her dressing table. As I rifled through the contents of each one, pushing aside stockings and handkerchiefs in my search, she gave a shriek and tumbled out of bed.
“How dare you go through my things!” she cried, snatching at me.
“I might say the same thing myself.” Shaking off her hands, I continued my search. When I drew out the middle drawer of her vanity, the wink of diamonds caught my eye. My jewelry was lying in a little heap amid a tumble of ribbons and hair ornaments.
I held the necklace up before her eyes. “Tell me about your innocence now, Julia. Explain how this came to be here without your knowledge.”
She looked from the necklace to my face, wide-eyed. “But it did! This is the first time I have seen this necklace since you wore it on opening night. Someone must have planted it here—is that the term?—to make it look as if I stole it. I assure you I am quite shocked. Quite shocked indeed.”
“If you are going to insult my intelligence on top of stealing my dearest possessions, then we have nothing more to say to each other.”
Her expression of innocence vanished, and she glared at me. “Very well, then, I took your jewels. You do not deserve them, after all. I am the one whom Roderick ought to have given them to. He owes me that much, and far more.”
“He has paid whatever he owed you many times over.” After quickly bundling my jewelry into a silk kerchief, I turned to face her once more. “You have squandered every bit of sympathy I had for you,” I told her. “As far as I am concerned, you are now on your own, innocent or not. Roderick will certainly feel the same way when I tell him what you have done. Hire a lawyer or a private investigator or both, for we’re past the point of lifting a finger to help you.”
Now she was truly awake. Drawing herself up, she folded her arms. “I would advise you against any such rash declarations, Sybil,” she said in a different voice. “Think about how serious the consequences might be.”
I waved an impatient hand. “I’m not saying I’ll go to the inspector and tell him you were robbing Fournier’s house the night he was killed.” It wouldn’t help my case, for one thing.
“I should hope not. Because then I might have to tell the inspector something myself.” She sank gracefully into a tufted chair and regarded me coolly. “Such as the fact that the man who killed my husband is roaming freely around Paris.”
For a moment I could not speak. My brain went numb at this blow, and Julia’s mocking eyes seemed to transfix me.
“You don’t mean you would accuse him?”
She gave a self-satisfied smile and shook out the lace wrist ruffles of her nightdress. “Dueling is illegal here, mon chou, in case you have forgotten. And when a duel ends in a man’s death... well, the authorities tend to take it seriously.”
She was overstating things to frighten me. I knew that crimes of passion were frequently thrown out of court in France. But Roderick would still go through all the wretchedness of being arrested and tried... and there was no guarantee that he would be acquitted.
“It would be your word against his,” I said.
“Who do you think would be more sympathetic in court?” she said in a patronizing tone. “A man with a violent temper or a beautiful, soft-spoken lady in a low-cut dress?”
My hands clenched in my skirts. “You’d never let things progress that far,” I said. “Your only power over Roderick is in the threat itself, and you know how he responds to threats. He’d dare you to do your worst. That’s of no help to you.”
Tranquilly she rose and went to sit at her dressing table, where she took up a brush and began to bring order to her hair. “Perhaps I am less interested in his help than in punishing him,” she said over her shoulder.
“Punishing him for what?”
The hairbrush paused. “He left me,” she said softly. “Men do not leave me.”
It took me a moment to understand what she meant, and when I did, I could hardly believe that was how she saw the aftermath of the duel she herself had engineered.
“I beg your pardon, but you left him,” I retorted. “He was injured and in shock after having taken a man’s life and did not know what he was doing. You could have helped him, looked after him when he was weak and broken. Instead you left him alone to drink himself to death in some garret. He could have died there for all the aid you gave him.”
She continued drawing the brush through her hair, so regularly that the soft susurration of it was like the inevitability of ocean waves crashing upon the shore. “He left me first,” she said.
The woman’s vanity was staggering. “Did you have someone kill Fournier for you?” I asked, unable to keep the question back.
Julia did not answer. She merely continued to brush her hair.
I would learn nothing more from her, I realized, and with my thoughts in turmoil I made for the door. Just before I crossed the threshold, I glanced back at her.
The reflection of her eyes in the mirror chilled my blood. They were not windows to her soul, but glimpses of the dark void where her soul should have been. The sight remained burned in my mind long after I left her suite.
Chapter Fifteen
Helaine Thiers lived on the so-called noble floor of a Haussmann building, the grandest apartment, over a row of shops and the entresol. The opulence of the rooms was something she wore as gracefully as her black cashmere at-home gown, and with just as little self-consciousness.
In the morning room, elaborate gilding distinguished the moldings and carved mantel, and the sunlight admitted by the tall windows struck rainbows from a massive crystal chandelier and made the highly polished floorboards glow like honey. Priceless little bibelots were everywhere—gifts from admirers, I gathered—and countless photographs and paintings offered a window into her life and career over the decades. A popular subject for artists, she appeared in many sketches and paintings, including a magnificent, massive oil depicting her as Hamlet in a controversial production from about ten years ago. Controversial not only because she was a woman playing one of the greatest male roles, nor even because of her age, but because she showed her legs in historically appropriate tights to do so. Her legs, let it be said, were quite comely, and I wondered how many men had attended the performances not so much out of an interest in patronizing the arts as out of a desire to see well-turned feminine limbs on display.
The day was so warm it was difficult to remember that autumn had nearly come upon us, but from where we sat with the French doors opened to the sunlight and breezes, I saw that some of the trees in the beautiful garden beyond were beginning to turn red and gold. Perhaps that, on top of my disturbing exchange with Julia, was why I felt a melancholy mood settling over me. Porcelain dishes of potpourri were set out on the tables and sideboards, and the fragrance of dried roses and geraniums was like the breath of the past, of days and years that had withered and died. I wondered how she could bear it.
“Have you lived here long?” I asked.
“My husband and I moved in when we married, nearly twenty years ago, when the building was brand new.” She poured out coffee for us both, then handed me my cup. The delicate china bore a design of blue and gold. “Even without him, I cannot bear to think of living anywhere else.”
“It must be very lonely sometimes. But I imagine friends
like Mr. Ivey do their best to keep you company.”
She dropped a lump of sugar into her coffee cup and stirred, her long fingers holding the spoon as if it were the scepter of a long-ago kingdom. Her eyes were distant. “Kenton has his own losses to mourn, unfortunately. But then, one does not attain our age without losing something along the way. I do not think he has ever really recovered from leaving England.”
“Why did he leave?”
“There were... unsavory rumors about a protégé of his, a brilliant young man who has since died, I am sad to say.” She sipped her coffee. “It would be indiscreet of me to say more.”
But she had certainly told me enough to make me wonder if this was the source of Fournier’s hold over him—the one that was even stronger than money. This might be the key I needed to find out whether Kenton had had reason to kill Fournier.
A framed cabinet card caught my eye. “Is that you and your husband?” I asked.
A faint smile touched her lips, and she handed it to me. “Yes, in The Merchant of Venice. My husband considered Shylock his pinnacle as an actor. We performed it one hundred nights running.”
“I remember hearing about it at the time, though sadly I never had the chance to attend a performance.” Monsieur Thiers looked as if he would have been an energetic, even slightly violent Shylock. He was tall, with broad cheekbones, an expressive mouth, and slightly prominent eyes. Though he was not handsome, that was usually not a handicap for men in the theater. Being distinctive usually served them better, and that he certainly was.
“How happy we were then!” Helaine said wistfully.
“I can see that in the photograph,” I said. “You look beautiful, and quite young enough to be Portia.”
“Well, that was one of the most flattering costumes I ever wore. It was one of Leclerc’s.”
The Last Serenade (Sybil Ingram Victorian Mysteries Book 2) Page 21
