The Cocoa Conspiracy

by Andrea Penrose

  Arianna’s Special Brownies

  16 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for greasing pan

  8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, cut into ¼-inch pieces

  4 eggs

  1 cup sugar

  1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

  2 teaspoon vanilla extract

  ½ teaspoon fine salt

  1 cup flour

  1. Heat oven to 350°. Grease a 9-inch x 13-inch baking pan with butter and line with parchment paper ; grease paper. Set pan aside.

  2. Pour enough water into a 4-quart saucepan that it reaches a depth of 1 inch. Bring to a boil; reduce heat to low. Combine butter and chocolate in a medium bowl; set bowl over saucepan. Cook, stirring, until melted and smooth, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat; set aside.

  3. Whisk together eggs in a large bowl. Add sugar, brown sugar, vanilla and salt; whisk to combine. Stir in chocolate mixture; fold in flour. Pour batter into prepared pan; spread evenly. Bake until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, 30–35 minutes. Let cool on a rack. Cut and serve.

  Henning let out a low whistle as he read over the deciphered messages. “The two of you make a formidable team.”

  “It was Arianna who came up with the solution,” said Saybrook. “I merely helped her apply it to working out the second message.” He gave a wry smile. “Though I suppose that I deserve some credit for knowing she would be brilliant at this.”

  “Let us not start celebrating quite yet,” she cautioned. “We can’t forget that while we have worked out the text of the actual messages, we have yet to figure out what it all means.”

  Henning grunted in assent. “Aye, it’s still cryptic.” He pursed his lips in a wry grimace. “We had better order up a big breakfast, seeing as you claim to think better on a full stomach.”

  Arianna suddenly found herself craving a steaming cup of coffee and hot muffins studded with chunks of sweet chocolate. “I’ve a better idea. Let us go down to the kitchen, and I’ll tell Theresa that I will take charge of the cooking.” Given the need for secrecy and security concerning their activities, they had brought their own trusted household servants with them to Vienna. “The aroma of sugar and spices is an added stimulant to my brain.”

  “Far be it from me to object,” said the surgeon, patting his bony ribs. “Your shirred eggs with peppered cheese are ambrosial.”

  “I’m hungry too . . .” Saybrook gathered up the papers. “For a solution.”

  “I shall try to serve up some inspiration,” she quipped.

  A short while later, the sound of the kettle whistling on the hob punctuated the sizzling of butter in the frying pan. Platters of sausages and fresh fruit, freshly baked rolls, and steaming pots of cinnamon-scented chocolate and rich, dark coffee crowded the work table.

  “Delicious,” murmured Henning, forking up another mouthful of omelette aux champignons.

  Saybrook pushed back his plate, and cleared a place for his papers. “Try to devote an equal amount of enthusiasm to the problem at hand, Baz.”

  “I’m chewing over the possibilities, laddie,” retorted the surgeon. “Read us the messages again.”

  The earl picked up Arianna’s transcription. “The one that was hidden in the chocolate book reads, ‘K’s use to us will end in Vienna. Too risky to allow him to return to England. Removing the pawn from the board must be your first move. ’ ”

  “So Kydd’s death was planned from the start,” mused Arianna. “I confess, I feel a bit better knowing that I was not the cause. I know he was a traitor, but I’m sorry he was murdered. He wasn’t evil, merely misguided. Men far more devious than him manipulated his passions to their own advantage.”

  Saybrook’s jaw tightened for an instant and then released. “Nonetheless, he would have hanged for his betrayal.”

  “There is one thing that I’ve been wondering about the messages hidden in the chocolate book,” said Arianna. “Wouldn’t it have set off alarm bells that they didn’t reach Vienna.”

  “Not necessarily,” replied her husband. “It’s always assumed that some of the messages won’t make it through. Davilenko was likely just one of several couriers. I would imagine that copies of the document stolen from Charles, along with duplicates of the coded notes, were dispatched with other carriers. And much as I hate to give the devil his due, Grentham arranged Davilenko’s death to appear a plausible accident, so it would be unlikely to raise suspicion.”

  Henning had stopped eating. “I, too, have a question. Do you plan to expose the secret society in Scotland?”

  “Rochemont’s cohorts must be rooted out, Baz. As for the other Dragons of St. Andrew, I shall do my best to see that they escape England’s lance.”

  The surgeon nodded curtly.

  Arianna touched his sleeve. “Your nephew—”

  “It’s too late for him. I’m assuming he’s been murdered by Rochemont and his bloody bastards.” Henning fingered his knife. “Though I haven’t the heart to say so to my sister. God knows, we’ll likely never find the body.” The blade drew a tiny bead of blood, more black than crimson in the muted light. “It will add to her pain not to be able to give the lad a decent Christian burial.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  In the shifting shadows, the surgeon’s craggy face looked as bleak as a storm-swept chunk of Highland granite. “So am I, lassie. So am I.” He curled a fist. “Which is why we must crush these men before they harm anyone else.”

  Saybrook cleared his throat. “The second message is what will help us do so, Baz. The plan is spelled out here in black and white. We just have to be clever enough to read between the lines.”

  “ ‘While the Kings watch the Queens, the Knight to Bishop, Q 4,’ ” recited Arianna. She had already committed the brief message to memory. “ ‘And when the Well runs dry, the Castle will be ours and the Bee will once again rule the board. ’ ”

  Henning made a face. “It seems to indicate a chess game of sorts.” He looked at the earl. “Can you make any sense of it?”

  The earl stared up at the ceiling for a long moment, watching the thin plumes of cooking smoke snake along the age-dark beams. “Knight to Bishop Q 4 seems the clearest message. In chess, that means the knight knocks the bishop from the board.” His lashes flicked slowly up and down, like the silent swish of a raptor’s wings, and with his forefinger, he started to sketch a pattern of imaginary squares upon the scarred tabletop. “And Q 4 is one of the center squares, so it might be a metaphor for doing the deed in the middle of a gala entertainment.”

  “Yes,” agreed Henning. “That seems a reasonable guess.”

  “So, a bishop is the target,” said Arianna, feeling a little like a round peg whose contours didn’t quite fit into the hard-edged outline. “That blows all of my theories to flinders. I had assumed from the very start that a politician or a royal was the intended victim.” She broke off a piece of bread, but merely crumbled the crust between her fingers. “I’m more confused that ever. How the devil is religion linked to England’s security?”

  “Good question,” muttered Henning. “I haven’t a clue.”

  A hiss of steam swirled up from the stove. Arianna took up the kettle and silently fixed a fresh pot of coffee.

  “The bishop,” muttered Henning “The bishop. The bishop.”

  Saybrook started to refill his cup.

  “The bishop.”

  “Good God.” A splash of scalding coffee suddenly spilled over Saybrook’s fingers.

  Arianna whirled around from the stove.

  “Talleyrand,” said her husband. Shaking off the drops, he slapped his palm to the table. “Damnation, how did I not think of it before now. As a young man, Talleyrand was appointed the Bishop of Autun through his family’s influence.” A trickle of dark liquid seeped through the cracks of the oiled wood. “A notorious nonbeliever, he quickly abandoned the Church for politics, but still . . .”

  The three of them exchanged wordless looks.

  It w
as Henning who glanced away first. “You think Talleyrand is not the mastermind of all this but the target?” he asked with some skepticism.

  “Yes, actually I do,” answered the earl slowly. “Indeed, when one looks at it from that angle, the pieces of the puzzle begin to fit together.”

  “Nay, I dunna see it, laddie,” said Henning stubbornly. “The Prince is perhaps the most crafty, cunning mind in all of Europe. It’s hard to imagine him as a victim.”

  “Oh come, as I pointed out earlier, you have studied history, Baz,” countered the earl. “How often have the mighty, however brilliant they be, fallen to an assassin’s blade or bullet? Only God is omniscient—assuming He exists.”

  The surgeon scowled but had no retort. Instead he muttered, “Go ahead then—convince me.”

  “Very well, let’s start from the beginning,” said Saybrook. “Davilenko had the misfortune to meet Arianna in the bookshop, where his regular exchange of secrets was so rudely interrupted. However, he recognized Arianna at Lord Milford’s shooting party and saw a way to salvage the situation. I suspect that the Grognard was brought in to create a diversion. Whether he killed me or simply wounded me didn’t matter—in the confusion, someone could steal into our quarters and retrieve the hidden codes.”

  “And we know that someone did try to enter our rooms,” Arianna pointed out. “The man posing as a servant with the starched cravats.”

  “Yes, but you say Grentham’s operatives confirmed that Davilenko hadn’t told his superiors about the book’s loss,” argued Henning. “How did he arrange for the Grognard to take a shot at you? And more to the point, why would he risk shooting at Rochemont?”

  Saybrook mulled over the question for a bit. “From my experience, I know that the leader of a clandestine network keeps his identity a secret from his minions. My guess is Davilenko had a way of communicating with the network if he needed assistance, but had no idea that Rochemont was part of the group—”

  Henning snorted.

  Ignoring the interruption, Saybrook continued, “I’m assuming Davilenko was clever in his own way, so it wouldn’t have been too hard to think of a lie to cover the need to shoot at me.”

  “Then why was the Grognard murdered?” demanded the surgeon.

  “That’s the one point that puzzles me,” admitted the earl. “But wait a moment before you assume that smug smile.”

  Henning thinned his lips.

  “Do you deny that Kydd was recruited through the Scottish secret society? Which, by your own admission, was run by Rochemont.”

  Henning gave a grudging grunt.

  “You’ve also been told by your sources that the funding for these revolutionary groups came from Napoleon.”

  “Aye,” admitted the surgeon. “My old friend told me that he had made several secret trips to France for the cause, and had met with the Emperor personally.”

  “So we know the link between Rochemont and Napoleon to be fact, not conjecture.” Saybrook leaned back and steepled his fingers. “Which, as Arianna pointed out so sagely last night, raises the key question—what possible reason could Rochemont have for continuing his efforts to undermine England?”

  “The Royalists aren’t aware of his betrayal,” suggested Henning. “Now that his former master is out of power, Rochemont offers them a way to foment trouble in Scotland, and as a weak England is always in the best interest of France, the new King agrees to fund it. Voila!” A snap of his fingers punctuated the exclamation. “The comte keeps his bread buttered on both sides and ends up looking like a hero.”

  “I think that the French King is far too worried about consolidating his power at home to be funding unrest abroad,” said the earl. “No, I’d be willing to wager my entire fortune that the money is still coming from Napoleon.”

  There was a moment of utter silence, save for the drip, drip, drip of the spilled coffee, before Arianna whispered, “So you think that the Emperor is planning to seize back his crown?”

  “Yes,” said Saybrook. “That’s precisely what I think.”

  Henning shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  “The French King is weak—the real political power in France right now is Talleyrand,” insisted the earl. “And while we’ve assumed that Talleyrand is the force behind this plot, it would mean that he’s gone back to working for Napoleon, the leader he betrayed in ’08.”

  “A not unreasonable assumption, given that the Prince has switched sides more often than a lady changes her . . . hair ribbons,” said the surgeon. His voice, however, lacked conviction.

  “I know, I know,” said Saybrook impatiently. “But when I analyze the plot, nothing quite fits together with Talleyrand as part of Napoleon’s inner circle. It’s only when we see him as Napoleon’s enemy that it starts to make sense. If the most able diplomat in all of Europe is a loyal servant of the new King, he presents a formidable opponent to any plan to take back the throne.”

  Arianna watched tiny beads of condensation form on the spout of the abandoned kettle. “You make a convincing argument, Sandro. What do you think, Mr. Henning?”

  The surgeon’s chin took on a mulish jut.

  “One last point,” offered Saybrook. “The second part of the message we just decoded—‘And when the Well runs dry, the Castle will be ours and the Bee will once again rule the board’—appears to hold the key to everything, correct ?”

  “Aye, I’ll grant you that,” replied Henning guardedly.

  “You’ve been cajoling me to sharpen my old skills at cutting through conundrums, so how about this? The castle is, of course, a chess piece, and I think we can all agree that it symbolizes the bailiwick—or, if you will, the country—of the King and Queen. As for the Bee, it’s well known that Napoleon adopted it as his symbol when he became emperor. With that in mind, the meaning of the phrase seems obvious.”

  “Hmm.” Henning made a rueful face. “I concede that the Castle and Bee reference seems to indicate that Napoleon is planning to escape from Elba and reseize the throne of France. But you still haven’t completely convinced me that Talleyrand isn’t part of the plot.” His jaw took on a pugnacious tilt. “Can you explain to me what the devil ‘Well’ means?”

  The earl’s mouth quirked up. “As a matter of fact, I think I can.”

  But before he could go on, Arianna suddenly straightened. “Well—Water! The serving maid mentioned that a secret guest is coming for the Carrousel. A general.”

  “A general,” repeated Henning. All of a sudden, his eyes widened.

  “Yes, and I ask you, who is the only general whose military genius rivals that of the former Emperor?” said Saybrook. “Who is the only man Napoleon might fear on the field of battle?”

  “Wellington,” whispered Arianna.

  “Wellington,” repeated the earl, a note of grim satisfaction shading his voice. “Napoleon has beaten every Allied commander he’s faced—only the Russian winter put his army in retreat. But Wellington has bested the crème de la crème of the French generals. He, too, is undefeated on the battlefield.” His fingers began to drum a martial tattoo on the tabletop. “It would be a clash of Titans. And if I were Napoleon, it would not be an opponent I would want to face.”

  The surgeon’s low whistle took on a tinny tone as it echoed off the hanging pots.

  It had not yet died away when Saybrook delivered his coup de grace. “At the moment, the duke is serving as our government’s ambassador in Paris. But according to a comment I overheard Castlereagh make this afternoon, he is coming to Vienna for a private meeting with Talleyrand and Metternich to discuss France and the future balance of power in Europe.”

  Arianna’s palms began to prickle.

  “For now, it’s being kept a secret so the Tsar of Russia can’t stir up any opposition among the other delegates,” Saybrook went on. “Alexander and the Prussians will be invited to attend, but as the talks are not part of the official Conference agenda, Wellington will avoid all the regular balls and banquets. His only public appeara
nce will be at the Carrousel, where he will watch the display of medieval martial skills from Talleyrand’s box.”

  “ ‘When the Well runs dry,’ ” recited Arianna. “You think Rochemont means to assassinate Talleyrand and Wellington.”

  “I do,” replied the earl. “Europe’s greatest statesman and Europe’s greatest soldier—it would eliminate the two most dangerous obstacles in Napoleon’s path to recapturing his past glory.”

  “By the bones of St. Andrew, you just might be right, laddie.” Henning blew out his cheeks. “So, how do we checkmate the Bee and his murderous bastards?”

  “Chess is all about strategy, Baz. Knowing what moves our opponent is planning gives us an advantage but we shall have to play our pieces very carefully to turn that edge into outright victory.”

  “Ye needn’t lecture me about the importance of strategy,” groused the surgeon. “I am well aware that chess is considered a metaphor for war. But tell me, what game are we playing with this so-called Carrousel? I take it the event is to feature real-life knights, but what are the details?”

  The earl crooked a rueful grimace. “The Festival Committee has been planning the evening for months, and from what I’ve gathered, it’s meant to be the crown jewel of the Conference entertainments. Several aides have spent days in the Imperial Library poring over the accounts of past tournaments, so we can assume that the pageantry will be a dazzling spectacle.”

  “Which will only make things more difficult for us,” grumbled Henning.

  “Perhaps,” said the earl. “And yet, it may also work in our favor. Rochemont is likely counting on the blaring trumpets, the flapping banners and the colorful procession of champions to cover his dastardly preparations. We can take advantage of the same confusion.”

  The surgeon chuffed a noncommittal grunt.

  “It’s to be held in the Spanish Riding School, which has a large indoor arena designed for equestrian maneuvers. All the surrounding columns will be decorated with armor and various weapons from the Imperial Armory’s collection,” continued Saybrook. “At one end, they are building a grandstand for all the sovereigns—complete with gilded armchairs, I might add. At the other end will be a balcony for the twenty-four Belles d’Amour—the Queens of Love.”