The Last Serenade (Sybil Ingram Victorian Mysteries Book 2)

by Amanda DeWees

  Gustave did not seem offended by the implication. “I’m glad I did not turn out to be a suspect. I have no desire to leave my comfortable home for a cold, lonely cell.” He patted his wife’s hand affectionately.

  Certainly he appeared to be out of the running, as did Estelle. If she was as open as this about her husband’s mistress, she would not have killed Fournier to keep the affair secret—if he even knew about Gustave’s arrangement with Delphine.

  “I don’t suppose either of you can think of any other avenue I might explore that would shed light on the murder?” I asked and took a bite of the gâteau. Its layers of pastry contained a filling of cherries, and my eyes widened in delight.

  Our host and hostess exchanged a thoughtful look. “The trouble is,” said Gustave, handing his cup back to his wife for a refill, “there are so many people who had reason to wish Fournier gone.”

  “But not many can have known where he was at the time, except for his servants,” Estelle pointed out. “I suppose that if he arrived in his own coach, his coachman might have followed him inside and dispatched him.”

  “Why would he do that?” I asked, and she gave me a wry look.

  “Can you imagine what it must have been like to be in that man’s employ?”

  I had to admit it was a good point. “Perhaps I should see if I can trace his household staff,” I said, though I couldn’t help but feel daunted at how difficult it might be to trace them. Most, if not all, would have found it necessary to find a new position at once, and they might now be scattered to the four corners.

  We continued to ponder the question over our coffee and cake, but the Valions could produce no other suggestions that had not already occurred to me. When I rose to depart, although I was relieved to cross them off my list of suspects, I was disappointed to have no stronger leads than Fournier’s servants.

  “Do come again,” Estelle said as Mrs. Vise and I took our leave. “And you needn’t wait for a murder investigation to drive you to our door!”

  Mrs. Vise plucked at my sleeve. “Ask her for the recipe for that tart, madam,” she urged in a stage whisper.

  I conveyed to our hostess the impression the gâteau Basque had made, but she shook her head. “A family recipe, I’m afraid, which I can’t share. But do take some with you.”

  Thus we left the Valions’ with few answers but laden with delicious dessert. At least the visit had not been entirely futile.

  I stopped briefly at the hotel to drop off both Mrs. Vise and the gâteau, since she had served her purpose and I anticipated no threat of violence from the next leg of my investigative journey. I intended to speak to as many of Fournier’s former servants and employees as I could find, although it emerged that I had been correct in suspecting that most of them had already departed for new employment in various places.

  For the rest of the morning and throughout the afternoon, I engaged in that wild goose chase, with nothing to show for it but a headache. My efforts to interview any of the former household seemed doomed to failure.

  Finally another angle occurred to me from which to approach the problem. Perhaps I should stop looking at suspects and start looking at the weapon. I knew little enough about rapiers. If I gained more knowledge about them, maybe it would help me reason out the type of person most likely to use one.

  When I consulted the hotel concierge about researching this subject, he instantly suggested Les Invalides. “It is no longer merely a hospital for veterans,” he explained. “It has been partially converted into a museum—a military museum.”

  That sounded promising. I had hired a fiacre for the day, and now I directed the driver to set out for Les Invalides. It was a short journey away, across the Seine but not far from the Jardin Mabille, and I marveled at how much had happened since the night we had met with Julia there. Then the coach crossed the bridge and the view of my destination seized my attention.

  It was an imposing building, a massive cream-colored stone Neoclassical structure built around a great square courtyard. A columned portico afforded entrance, over which the glorious baroque cathedral dome presided. This was Napoleon Bonaparte’s final resting place, but I would not be paying my respects to him today.

  Evening had fallen, and I had to pay a fee before the white-haired old guide who was preparing to lock up for the day would admit me. Fortunately, he was not averse to letting me walk around with him, and I followed as he limped slowly from one display to the next, telling me about his own fighting days. I asked if he would show me the rapiers, and he nodded and smiled but did not alter his pace. Either he was hard of hearing or he had his own ideas about educating me.

  The accoutrements of war were impressive and varied. There were suits of armor for men and horses, dating back centuries yet with as high a polish as if they had just been created. The fragile remnants of banners and tabards, faded and threadbare in some cases but offering a glimpse of the colorful coats of arms they had borne. The weapons, though—what an assortment of grisly instruments. Spiked maces. Massive swords nearly as tall as a man. And then—at last—rapiers.

  “These are rather beautiful,” I said. “Are they still used in combat?”

  “No longer, mademoiselle. Sabers, to be sure, but otherwise it is all pistols and rifles nowadays. This, now—this is part of a noble tradition.”

  I didn’t tell him that I could see little that was noble in the tradition of killing people. Perhaps that was lost on me as a woman. “They do seem to be finely crafted,” I offered, observing the ornamental chasing on some of the guards.

  “Works of art, they are.” He unfastened the case and lifted one out. “See the engraving here? And feel how beautifully balanced it is.” He offered it to me, hilt first, but I hesitated.

  “Is it safe?”

  “Quite safe, mademoiselle. See, the tip has been blunted. It will not even poke a hole in a piece of paper.”

  Reassured, I took it by the hilt. “It’s so light,” I said in surprise. “I expected it to be heavier.”

  “Oh, it’s quite light enough for a woman to carry.” He chuckled. “However, using it is a different matter from holding it. Rare is the woman trained in swordplay.”

  I nodded glumly. It was as I thought. A woman could not be the killer. Merely being able to lift the rapier would not be enough. I tried to envision a woman learning to use a rapier, practicing, facing an opponent. What possible circumstances—

  Realization struck me with such force that my hands went limp and the rapier fell to the floor with a jarring clatter. Clucking reproachfully, my guide bent stiffly to retrieve it, and he murmured reproaches as he replaced it in its case.

  I did not hear a single thing he said. I was standing again in Helaine’s parlor before the painting depicting her as Hamlet. As the doomed Danish prince, Helaine would have had to know how to handle a rapier, for in the final act of the play Hamlet engages in a fencing match with Laertes and meets his doom at the point of the poisoned, unblunted weapon. The point envenom’d too? Then, venom, to thy work!

  Part of my brain protested that it was impossible. Not only that, but illogical. What earthly reason would she have had to kill Fournier? But I could see her in my mind’s eye as if I had been watching that night as she concealed the weapon in the folds of her costume skirt, attracting no attention at all as she moved to and from the prop room.

  My guide had stopped scolding me long enough to strike a match and hold it to the bowl of his pipe, and something likewise ignited in my mind. Philippe burning his fingers on the match as he thought back on the Commune’s defeat and the informer, what was his name, who had been responsible for some of the deaths... the Fanner of the Flames, that was it.

  There had been another flame, of course. The one at the opening-night reception that had so impossibly floated out of the gas bracket over to Fournier and alighted on his shoulder, like a badge, like a beacon. Not a premonition of his death, not marking him for the grave, but signaling: This is the Fanner of the Flames.
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  Even his name fit—“Fournier” had something to do with a furnace, did it not? And the clue had been set before me, but before I had any means of understanding it.

  No, that was wrong. The clue had been for Helaine, the widow of the man who was executed unfairly. The man who had been silenced when I ended the séance and had sought other means of communicating with her, of indicating the guilty party.

  Showing her how to avenge him.

  I drew a shaky breath. To think of that splendid woman killing for her husband made me sick and faint. Had she been in her right mind—her own mind? Or had his spirit guided her hand to pick up the rapier, forced her feet to walk to the prop room where Fournier was imprisoned? Perhaps she did not even know herself. What I did know was that she was probably onstage even now, pretending that she had no part in the murder, and every second of her continued silence meant that Roderick remained under suspicion.

  “I must go,” I said to my guide, and the quick wounded expression that came into his eyes then impelled me to place my hands on his shoulders and kiss him on each bristled cheek. “I cannot thank you enough for your help,” I exclaimed. “You have saved an innocent life. I shall be eternally grateful to you!”

  With that, I picked up my skirts and ran from the place.

  Twilight was painting the sky in salmon striped with hyacinth, and the city’s pale buildings glowed eerily in the dying light, but no considerations of beauty mattered now; what I needed was to get to the theater. My fiacre was waiting, and the driver leapt down to open the door for me when he saw me running toward him.

  “Théâtre Caprice,” I commanded. “At once!”

  Soon we were clattering away over smooth asphaltum roads to the theater. Lamp lighters were busy at the street lamps, giving the City of Light its name.

  Thankful that we were not forced to take the slower unpaved roads, I hung out the window all the way, urging the driver to go faster. “I’ll double your fare,” I shouted. “I’ll triple it!”

  And then, by heaven, we began to move. I saw pedestrians and passers-by stop to gawk at the speed of our progress, and soon, blessedly soon, we were drawing up before the theater and I was heaping coins into the driver’s hand.

  To my relief, there were policemen nearby. They approached when I gesticulated at them. “I need to speak with Inspector Girard of the Sûreté,” I told them. “It is urgent. Tell him that Miss Sybil Ingram knows who murdered Monsieur Fournier, and the killer is in the theater now.”

  They exchanged skeptical looks, and I could all too easily imagine them questioning me in a leisurely way for a quarter of an hour before consenting to summon the inspector. “Please hurry!” I cried. “Dépêchez-vous!”

  Before either of them could object or question me, I was running up the steps of the theater. “Mademoiselle...” I heard one call after me, but I dared not delay. I flung open a door and ran into the lobby.

  It was hushed and quiet, and I received a few looks askance from the staff before they recognized me. One of them opened a door to the auditorium, and I darted through it.

  Halting to let my eyes adjust to the darkness, I was struck by the scene on stage. Helaine was delivering the speech that had moved the audience so much on my first night that she had had to give an encore before the play could proceed. Her voice, so richly warm and plaintive, cast its own spell.

  “It is not given to me to protect you any longer, my darling. Yes, though I bore you and raised you, though I taught your infant lips to lisp their first words, though I was always here to wipe your tears away, today that sweet idyll ends!”

  Tears pricked my eyes. If Roderick’s future had not been at stake, I might have turned then to depart, to tell the officers I had been mistaken. But I could not afford to be merciful, not for Roderick’s sake. Making his innocence known was paramount.

  As I stood transfixed, another source of light began to distract me from the scene unfolding on the stage. At one of the auditorium exits closest to the proscenium, a strange glow was forming. As it brightened, it began to coalesce into the shape of a man. He had a distinctive face with prominent eyes and broad cheekbones, and he was dressed in the skullcap and long robe of Shylock. He was as white as marble, yet not quite solid, wavering faintly as if his ephemeral form was rippling in currents of air.

  It was Monsieur Thiers. But there was no murmur of interest or fear from the audience. They could not see him.

  Invisible footlights glowed impossibly at his feet, where there was no source for light, sending bright beams into the folds of his robe. His face grew brighter, almost hurting my eyes, as if someone were directing a limelight on him where none existed.

  A cold, hollow pit formed in my chest. He had not seen me, not that I could tell. But that might change at any moment. I tried to put up my armor, to shield myself from his anger. Was he here to protect his wife, or to punish me for interfering?

  Or did he intend for Helaine to carry out more violence on his behalf?

  Helaine was concluding her monologue. “My child, compose yourself with patience; be brave, be steadfast in your faith, for our mortal lives are fleeting, and soon you shall be reunited in heaven with your dear father!”

  Then, at the moment when she and Julia should have struck their tableau, she gave a stricken little cry. She had seen her husband’s ghost.

  She stared at him with a face nearly as white as his dead one.

  Julia struck her pose for the tableau, but Helaine stood frozen to the spot, one hand slowly going to her heart. The audience sat silent, unsure of what would happen next. Helaine and I were the only ones who could see the spirit. That much was clear.

  Silently, he raised one arm. The insubstantial sleeve of his robe wavered as he pointed a long finger—at me.

  She had not noticed me until that moment, but now her eyes widened and her face grew so ashen that I feared she might faint. She fell back a step, and her eyes flew back to the phantom.

  Now, with both hands, he beckoned to her. A sweeping gesture, the motion of an actor making his meaning unmistakable. Come to me.

  And Helaine obeyed the summons.

  In an instant she ran to the side of the stage and down the steps at the edge of the proscenium. Before her fellow actors could react, before I could even move, she had run to the phantom and vanished through the door where he had stationed himself. Instantly he winked out of existence like the pinched flame of a candle.

  “Wait!” I shouted, too late, and ran to follow. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Roderick turn and direct a startled look at me. “Come quickly!” I called to him, and he was hot on my heels by the time we gained the alley on the other side of the door.

  It was fortunate that Roderick caught up so quickly, for all too soon I found that I could not catch my breath sufficiently to keep up the pursuit at my present pace. Gasping for air, I was forced to slow my steps.

  “What has happened?” Roderick asked as he drew abreast.

  Helaine was running in the direction of the Seine. Soon she would reach the bridge called the Petit Porte.

  “She is the killer,” I gasped. “You must catch her, Roderick. I dread to think what she might do.”

  With a short nod he quickened his speed and soon far outpaced me, closing the distance between him and Helaine. My lungs straining against my stays, I followed as fast as I could, cursing the iron grip of my corset. Panic must have given Helaine a speed that I could not attain. I had not yet caught up with them when she looked back, saw Roderick advancing, and without hesitation darted to the stone balustrade of the bridge.

  My blood seemed to turn to ice. She meant to throw herself into the Seine.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “No!” I cried, but I doubt she heard me. Roderick was almost there; he needed only a few seconds more, but she knew it as well as I. Bracing herself on her palms, she jumped up in an attempt to clear the balustrade. She was not strong enough to manage in one attempt, but her body was already halfway over when Rode
rick reached her and seized her around the waist.

  Even then she might have struggled, but a nearby policeman shouted “Arrêtez! Stop!” and she went limp. She made no protest as Roderick eased her down, suddenly becoming as docile as a small child.

  “Come now, you mustn’t do that,” he was saying gently as I caught up to them.

  The policeman who had shouted at her to stop was not one of the men I had spoken to earlier. “Qu’est-ce que c’est? A suicide?” he demanded, and made to take hold of Helaine, but Roderick interposed.

  “This is Madame Helaine Thiers, the distinguished actress,” he told the officer firmly. “Please show her due respect. She has been through a great ordeal, is that not so, madame?”

  She nodded listlessly. Then her eyes fell on me. “Sybil,” she said in a weak voice. “I am sorry about your accident. I... I was afraid of what you might learn, you see...”

  “I understand.”

  “I do not understand,” the officer said, as the tall, gangling figure of Kenton Ivey raced up to us.

  “I saw what almost happened,” he said breathlessly. “My dear Helaine, are you all right?”

  She gave him a helpless look but did not respond.

  “We need to get her to some quiet place where she can think,” I said. It no longer seemed of paramount importance to turn her over to the police. Indeed, in her fragile state, it would have been cruel. “May we use your office, Kenton?”

  “Of course,” he said at once. “I shall cancel the performance as soon as we return. Then we may talk at leisure.” He offered Helaine his arm with a courtly courtesy that touched me. “Will you allow me to escort you, madame?”

  Such was her dazed state that I was uncertain how much she understood of what had passed, but she accepted his arm and allowed him to lead her slowly back to the theater.

  “Officer, thank you for your help,” I said. “We can carry on without you now.”

  “But, mademoiselle, I must make a report.”

  “No, you mustn’t,” Roderick said crisply. “This was a misunderstanding, that is all. Let us go about our business, if you please.”