Realizing I had gone silent, he seemed to focus on me properly for the first time. “I’m sorry, did you ask me something?”
“I can’t wait until this is all over with,” I said, watching his face. “I’m so looking forward to putting Paris behind us and getting married.”
“Well,” he said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” I must have looked at him strangely, for he explained, “First we have to convince the police I’m not a murderer.”
But was that what he had really meant?
“Mademoiselle!” Hortense was calling me. It was past time to get dressed and made up.
“Roderick,” I began, “is there something—”
“Mademoiselle, dépêchez-vous!”
“You’d best hurry,” Roderick said.
I nodded, suppressing a sigh as he returned to his seat in the orchestra and took up his violin. Hortense gestured furiously to me, and I dutifully followed her back to my dressing room.
I found myself wishing that Clarette had stayed long enough to look into Roderick’s mind tonight and tell me what he was thinking. Was he cooling on the prospect of marriage?
Because of my distracted state, what happened that night during the performance might have been the result of my own carelessness.
During the climactic swordfight between the hero and villain in the second act, I had to quickly move from the set of the castle banquet hall to the balcony of my character’s room. This required me to navigate between moving scenery flats as the banquet hall set descended through the stage, revealing the upper levels of the castle, with Kenton and Philippe ascending moving stairs, so that they seemed to be fighting their way up through the castle until they attained the roof, where the fight was concluded amid “rain” shaken from troughs overhead, “lightning” from the arc lamp, thunder sound effects, and general awe and admiration from the audience. I would appear at the balcony of my room to urge on the hero and contribute helpful suggestions like “Be brave, my dearest! Know that the strength of justice lies in your sword!” The fight concluded when the young hero forced the villain up onto the castle tower, from which he fell with a bloodcurdling scream onto a hidden cushion.
It was ambitious but skillfully designed, and on the nights when everything worked correctly it must have looked very impressive indeed. So far we had experienced flats jamming instead of moving smoothly through their grooves, the artificial rain descending in a sudden torrent instead of delicate drops, and Philippe putting his foot wrong on the moving staircase one night and nearly falling off the parapet. On opening night, the only time I had seen it from the audience, the flats and stairs descended as designed, but very, very slowly, something evidently having gone wrong with the machinery. Thus, Kenton and Philippe had had to fight for twice as long as usual, which they did quite capably.
Tonight the flats seemed to be lowering at the proper speed, and the hum and buzz of the machinery sounded normal—that is, just quiet enough so that vigorous playing from the orchestra nearly drowned it out. I drew my voluminous skirts close as I crab-walked between flats, for it would be all too easy for a bit of fabric to be drawn down into one of the grooves along with the scenery, trapping and possibly injuring me.
Because I was watching the flats, however, I might not have been paying sufficient attention to where I was placing my feet. And with my next step, the world suddenly gave way beneath me with a sickening plunge. I was falling into space.
Chapter Seventeen
I shrieked in surprise as much as fear. My fall was brief, however. The pocket hoops that supported my skirts prevented me from dropping all the way through what I now saw to be a trap door. Usually this trap was securely bolted from beneath during act two, but tonight it had given way at a most inconvenient time.
Muttering a colorful epithet, I struggled to extricate myself. I could not get any purchase, though. My feet churned against empty air, and I was wedged firmly into the opening.
For the moment, at least. If my panniers broke or became untied, I could still go plunging down into the abyss of machinery. And the more firmly I became lodged in the opening, the more pressure was exerted on my ribs, squeezing the air from my lungs.
“Help!” I called, trying to make myself heard over the music.
“Sybil!” someone exclaimed.
When I looked around, Gustave and two of the stagehands were making their way toward me. I could hear the sounds of the swordfight continuing, and when an awkward pause came during which I was supposed to have spoken dialogue, Helaine took it upon herself to improvise encouragement to the hero since I was not present to provide it.
“Help me, please!” I felt myself slip lower.
“Of course. Just hold on.” Gustave gestured urgently to the stagehands. A qualm sprang into my heart as I realized that any of these men could choose to push me down through the trap rather than pulling me out. My fate was out of my hands—a feeling I detested.
Then one of the stagehands took firm hold of me just above my waist. With a nod to the other, he said, “Allez-oup!” and gave a great heave. I flew out of the trap like a cork out of a bottle, and the other man caught me around the knees and helped my legs clear the trap, flowing skirts and all.
I gulped for breath, feeling my heartbeat begin to slow back to its normal rate.
“Are you all right?” Gustave asked.
“I think so,” I said. Though a bit battered and sore, now that I was on my feet I seemed to be intact. My costume was not even torn. I could hear the ring of steel on steel and Kenton’s taunts to Philippe, and in my relief I felt a surge of energy. “I’d better hurry or I’ll miss the end,” I whispered. “Thank you a thousand times for your help, gentlemen!”
Fortunately there remained very little of the play, for with every minute that passed as I congratulated the hero, welcomed my father back from exile, and sang about how satisfactory these events were, I was increasingly aware that my ribs ached and one shin was throbbing where it had been badly scraped.
Nor had my accident escaped the notice of those around me. As soon as the curtain came down I was surrounded by my concerned castmates, and Roderick advanced from the wings.
“Are you all right?” he demanded, taking me by the shoulders, but gently. “I thought I heard you cry out, and then when you were late for your cue—”
“I’m fine, darling, but it’s time for our bows—do go.”
“I’m not leaving you,” he said briefly, and thus when the curtain rose again the star violinist took his bows along with the cast.
Afterward, when I explained it all to him in my dressing room, his response was immediate: “You won’t appear in this show any longer.”
I touched my shin gingerly. My skirt and petticoats had shielded it somewhat during my fall, but I suspected it would bruise badly. Perhaps Mrs. Vise could prepare a tincture of arnica for me to apply. “What?” I said absently.
He was pacing as usual, although the small dimensions of the dressing room made that difficult. “I said, this was your last night in this benighted production. It’s too dangerous.”
I frowned. “Roderick, you know I don’t like being told what to do.”
Surprise touched his hazel eyes. “I didn’t think that was what I was doing,” he said. “I thought I was just stating the conclusion both of us had logically reached.” He knelt by me where I sat at the dressing table and gently touched my leg. “Does it hurt very much?”
“A little. But as the price of absentmindedness, it is pretty minor.”
“Absentmindedness?” he demanded. “This was deliberate. Someone felt threatened by the possibility of your contacting Fournier’s spirit and tried to get rid of you.”
“We don’t know that for certain.”
“Sybil, dear God.” Still kneeling, he wrapped his arms around my waist and buried his face against my neck. “When I think what could have happened—the drop, and then the machinery—”
“It’s all right.” The horrifying pos
sibility that he spoke of seemed remote now that I was safe in his arms. I stroked his curly hair, relieved that the earlier distance between us had gone. “Perhaps someone just forgot to bolt the trap. It might not have been aimed at me at all.” But when he raised his head to look at me his face was so pale that I added to comfort him, “Tomorrow is Julia’s night to perform, so I don’t have to be here for almost forty-eight hours. That gives us plenty of time to find out whether anyone really is a threat to me.”
“This is my fault,” he said. “I dragged you into this. You’re in danger because of me.”
“Stop that,” I said firmly. “I go where I want and will not be dragged. If I am in danger, which is far from certain, it is because some wretched villain is desperate to hide his crime and save himself from the gallows. That is hardly your fault.”
Smiling slightly at my vehemence, he gazed into my eyes with something of his normal spirit. “Sweet Sybil,” he said, and his voice was husky and intimate. “Strident, scolding—”
“I beg your—!”
But then he was kissing me, and my other remarks fell by the wayside.
When I woke in the morning, Roderick was by my side.
Not in bed with me, I should note, although I still looked forward with great anticipation to that development. Rather, he had drawn an armchair up to my bed so that he could keep an eye on me during the night.
At the moment I was the one with my eye on him, and a very handsome sight he was, despite—or possibly because of—his need for a shave. I pondered the lithe contour of his jaw and throat emerging from his crumpled white shirt and thought of Romantic poets in swoons. He would be even more suited to the role if another shirt stud or two happened to come unfastened. I was considering making this emendation when he stirred, his dark eyelashes flickered, and he opened his remarkable eyes.
“Good morning,” I said, and there followed an interval in which our dialogue was notable mostly for its lack of originality.
Some time later, when he was more awake and the time seemed better for serious discussion, I said, “Yesterday I felt as if you were trying to put distance between us, and it worried me.”
He did not withdraw his arms from my waist, but he went still.
I sat up—by this time I was curled up on his lap in the armchair—so that I could look into his eyes. “I need to know,” I said, “that when crises come we will face them together, that you won’t pull away from me. Doing that makes problems even harder.”
He nodded, but his eyes evaded mine. “I felt so damned guilty, though, Sybil. You’ll remind me, I know, that I didn’t deliberately get us into this, but I did kill a man. Sometimes I wonder if you’d be better off with—”
“That’s enough!” I cried. “You told me of your past before I proposed to you.” That made him smile, I was glad to see. More mildly I continued, “I took you on with my eyes wide open, and I have not a single regret.”
He stroked his thumb over my cheekbone. “What if that should change?”
That was a bit of a poser, for one can never know what the future will hold. For that reason I knew he did not want a pat reassurance. Finally I said, “If I should ever have cause to wish things were different between us, I shall tell you myself instead of making you wait and wonder. Is that fair?”
“Fair,” he said, his brow clearing. “And for my part, I will stop brooding over things that worry me instead of discussing them with you.”
“And so clap hands and a bargain,” I said, resorting to Shakespeare. But, like Henry V wooing the French princess Katharine, he did better than shake my hand. He sealed our pact with the sweetest of kisses, and conversation lagged for a time.
“So,” he said at length, twining a ringlet of my hair around his index finger, “what are you doing today while I am running errands?”
More mysterious errands? Hmm. I would let it go for now, however. “I intend to speak to Kenton and Philippe again, as well as Gustave,” I began, only to see the thunderclouds gather on his brow.
“It’s too dangerous,” he said. “We have no way of knowing that Kenton or Gustave isn’t the killer.”
“As to that, I think it highly unlikely. But I shall take Mrs. Vise with me and arrange for the coachman to summon police assistance if the two of us have not safely emerged in an agreed-upon interval. Will that satisfy you?”
He considered it. “Mrs. Vise isn’t much protection,” he pointed out. “Even against a somewhat elderly gentleman like Ivey.”
“Ah, but she doesn’t have to subdue him with brute force. Simply by being with me she makes it difficult for anyone to murder me and go undetected. While the killer is hacking me up with a hatchet, she shall run screaming into the streets for help.”
My word picture somehow failed to cheer him. “As much as I adore your sense of humor,” he said, “just now I’d appreciate it if you would not make jests about your grisly dismemberment.”
I tousled his hair. “Sentimentalist,” I said. “Would you mind terribly if I didn’t come to the performance tonight?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Wearied of my sawing so soon? I am crushed, fair cruelty.”
“It is for your sake, you oaf. I am doing everything I can to clear your name in the eyes of the Sûreté.”
He grinned, and seeing him so like his normal, roguish self filled me with delight. “Far be it from me to stand in the way of Justice and her shining sword... particularly when she is blindfolded.”
“Now, that is no way to speak of your future wife and the woman who is going to solve this murder.”
“Oh, is that what you are going to do?”
The indulgence in his voice only stiffened my resolve. “I certainly am,” I declared. “And what’s more, I shall do it in the next twenty-four hours.”
In saying that, I was of course exaggerating a tiny bit for dramatic effect. That is, after all, something to which actors are prone.
Nevertheless, as Mrs. Vise and I approached the address I had been given for Philippe, I felt optimistic that I should soon have a solution.
The modest little rooming house was situated in an old neighborhood that had not yet been razed and rebuilt according to the new city plan. It was a narrow, down-at-heels building that reminded me of my own earliest days in the theater. This was the residence of a young actor who was still not making a great deal of money at his craft.
“The Charbonneaus are on the third floor, rear apartment,” said the thin-lipped landlady in response to my inquiry. The plural confused me, but I had interrupted her in the midst of scolding the scullery maid, so perhaps she had spoken absentmindedly.
Mrs. Vise grumbled under her breath as we mounted the stairs. We had both become spoiled, living in a hotel with a hydraulic elevator.
“Entrez!” said a cheerful masculine voice in response to my knock. Mrs. Vise and I entered to find Philippe in shirtsleeves and sock feet, reading the newspaper and smoking a Turkish cigarette. He started up in surprise the moment he saw us and thrust his feet into carpet slippers.
“I thought you were the baker’s boy,” he exclaimed, stubbing his cigarette out in a reflex of courtesy.
Before I could respond, a feminine voice called, “Is that our order at last? I’m famished!” Then a young woman walked in from another room, tying on an apron as she spoke, and stopped short at the sight of us. Then she began to laugh. “I suppose our secret is out,” said Marianne.
Now that I looked around I noticed the signs of feminine occupation: the sewing basket, the vase of flowers. I had heard it said that Frenchwomen would go without food before fresh flowers. This was clearly not a one-time overnight visit.
“The two of you are living together?” I asked.
They exchanged smiles. “Well, yes,” Philippe said. “We are married.”
“Good heavens, when? Just recently? Congratulations!” I quickly translated for Mrs. Vise’s benefit and saw her dart a sharp look at the bride’s waistline.
Marianne went to sta
nd by her husband’s chair, resting a hand on his shoulder, and he covered it with his. “It’s seven months now, isn’t it?” he asked, looking up into her face with such openhearted affection and pride that I felt my throat tighten unexpectedly.
“Eight months, foolish man. You see, this is why Philippe needs a wife—he needs a second brain.” But her indulgent smile revealed her true feelings.
I sat down, uninvited, for I felt too bewildered to support the weight of all of the frantic cogitation I was doing. “But—forgive me—I thought that Philippe was—that Julia—how shall I put this—”
“Oh, he has been Julia’s lover for this fortnight and more,” Marianne said with what I thought was astonishing calm.
“Julia said she could give me a step up in the theater,” he explained without a jot of embarrassment. “When it became clear that her interest in me was not a passing one, Marianne and I had a discussion about what to do.”
“That is when I started acting jealous,” his wife said. “Julia is far more pleased with a conquest when she believes another woman wants him for herself. If I say so myself, we were rather clever.”
“But... weren’t you jealous in earnest? I would have been, if it had been my husband.” Jealous would hardly begin to describe it, in fact.
Marianne’s bright expression dimmed just a bit. “I did not enjoy sending my husband off to be with her, certainly,” she said. “But let us be honest—Julia is quite spiteful enough to have destroyed both our careers if she had felt thwarted. This way, she was pleased with herself—and therefore much less dangerous.”
“And it won’t be for much longer,” Philippe added. “Her interest has begun to wane. She is restless for a new conquest, and a wealthier one. All I need to do now is ensure that we part on cordial terms.”
Thank goodness Mrs. Vise did not understand enough French to follow this conversation; otherwise she would have died of a heart attack by this point. “Why have you kept your marriage secret?” I asked. “That wasn’t merely for Julia’s benefit.”
The Last Serenade (Sybil Ingram Victorian Mysteries Book 2) Page 25
