I crossed to the window and rallied myself. Obviously, I would not be left here for long. No one was going to leave me on the island, and surely in a few minutes someone would come looking for me. Amity knew where I was. The only potential delay in my rescue could come from it taking her longer than she had hoped for her to find Augustus. Surely at any moment, Colin would burst through the door and free me.
Despite my attempts to focus on these comforting thoughts, panic began to bubble inside me, due largely, I believe, to the history contained within the walls of the cell—walls that seemed to grow closer with every passing moment. I pride myself on the ability to think rationally, and I did my best to treat the situation as an investigation of sorts. How many people had been graced with the opportunity to experience what life really had been like for the Man in the Iron Mask? Here I stood, locked in his cell, trapped, scared, cold, hungry—well, I was not hungry. The day was warm, and the cool stone of the cell no imposition on my comfort. But I was trapped, and I was scared.
I had heard the lock. Someone had deliberately incarcerated me here, if I may take the liberty of using the term. Was Margaret playing some sort of prank? I could not believe she would do such a thing. I checked my watch; it had been only a little more than a quarter of an hour. Surely they would not keep me waiting much longer.
At last, the lock clicked again, and relief washed over me. I waited for the door to open, but it did not.
“Hello?” I called out. “Is someone there?” There was no response. I pushed against the door, but it did not budge. Then, leaning against it with my entire weight while pressing my feet hard into the floor, I pushed again, and this time the door moved, only a few inches. I could not understand what was impeding my progress. The wood was not dragging on the floor—there was a gap between the bottom of the door and the tiles. With a third push, expending all the effort I could muster, I managed to move it enough so that I could slip through the opening and back into the corridor.
Once free, I saw that there now stood in the corridor a large rain barrel blocking the door. It had kept it from swinging freely on its hinges. Without pausing, I rushed out of the building—the guards had not returned to their posts—and out to the parade ground, where, so far as I could tell, my friends had not taken note of my absence.
“I do so very much appreciate you all coming to my rescue,” I said.
“Your rescue?” Jeremy asked. “Em, I was wholly unaware that you allow yourself to be rescued.”
“Sometimes, Jeremy, it is necessary.” I turned to Amity. “Did you find Augustus?”
“No, but the guard at the Royal Gate told me that he had already left and started for the dock, so I imagine we will see him on the boat. You look terrible, Emily. I do hope locating my reticule didn’t do this to you.”
“I did find it,” I said, and handed it to her.
“Your hands!” Margaret exclaimed. “What happened?”
“I went to retrieve Amity’s reticule from the Man in the Iron Mask’s cell,” I said. “While I was collecting it, someone closed the door and locked me in. I screamed for help, but no one was close enough to hear me. As you can see, my attempts to beat open the door took a greater toll on my hands than on the door.”
“Someone trapped you?” Colin asked.
“I heard the lock click after the door shut.”
“Did you hear anything else?” he asked.
“No. Eventually, I heard the lock again, but I still could not open the door.” I told him about the rain barrel, and he ran off, back into the prison. Amity insisted on bandaging my injured hands with handkerchiefs and fussed over me like I were a wounded child.
“It is quite all right,” I said. “No lasting harm done.”
“It is most unacceptable,” Cécile said. “I want to know the identity of the miscreant who played this trick on you.”
“If it was a trick,” Amity said. “What if he had left her longer? What if she had fainted in terror and struck her head as she fell? This is no lighthearted prank.”
Colin returned. “I saw no rain barrel, Emily.”
“It was there and so heavy I could barely move it.”
“It is not there any longer. I searched the other cells and the rest of the corridor as well, but found nothing.”
“How strange.”
“Were you playing a trick on us, Emily?” Amity asked, a smile spreading across her face. “You are so very! I was actually worried that some maniac was after you! And your hands—what were you thinking, injuring yourself? Did you think we would not believe you if you had no physical proof?”
“That is not what happened at all,” I said, shock racking my body. “I told you—someone locked the door. I heard it click.” The tenor of the group around me changed almost imperceptibly, but I could feel that no one believed my story to be credible. Neither Jack nor Mr. Fairchild would make eye contact with me, and Christabel had turned away from me altogether. Cécile and Margaret, upon whom I thought I could rely, remained silent. Only Colin offered support, standing close and squeezing my wrist, not wanting to further bruise my hands.
“Badly done, Em,” Jeremy said. “I was ready to go complain to the commander of the fort and insist that he interrogate all his soldiers until someone confessed.”
“You assume I have invented the story?” I asked.
“Someone could have moved the barrel,” Margaret said, but her tone was not convincing.
“So quickly?” Mr. Fairchild asked. “And without any of us noticing?”
“We were all focused on Emily,” Colin said. “Her story along with the injuries to her hands could have served as a ready distraction. It is possible that there are places in the prison I did not know to look.” With a few words, he persuaded the guards to search with him, but when they returned, he was shaking his head. “Nothing, I am afraid.”
“It is time we return to the mainland,” Cécile said. “I do not think we shall find any satisfactory answers here.”
* * *
The boat ride back to Cannes took only twenty minutes, but I feared this trip would feel like an eternity. Tension hung over us all, and I overheard Mr. Fairchild and Jack saying that they understood Cécile’s comment about satisfactory answers to directly imply that she believed I had orchestrated the incident. Outraged by this, I went to her, confident that they had misinterpreted her words.
“I do believe you, Kallista,” she said, “and I will tell the gentlemen as much. But it is very strange, do you not think?”
“Of course I do,” I snapped. “After all, I was the one trapped in that awful cell.”
Margaret joined us. “Do not listen to any of this rubbish,” she said. “I think we were all swept up by the mood of the island. It is a foreboding place, and our imaginations have run away with us.”
“My imagination has not been called into action,” I said.
“I was not suggesting anything of the sort,” she said. “But the rest—they are inventing stories for their own entertainment.”
“I confess I thought neither of you believed me,” I said.
“I am wounded,” Cécile said, striking her breast. “How could you think us capable of such disloyalty?”
“It is beneath me,” I said, lowering my head and tugging at the makeshift bandages on my hands.
“We should have spoken up on your behalf,” Margaret said.
“I am terribly sorry,” I said. “I should have had better faith in you both.”
“It does not merit further thought,” Margaret said.
I nodded. “You are right, of course, but it does trouble me that we have not the slightest idea of who did this. I hate to even ask the question, but did either of you actually see Augustus leave the fort?”
“Excellent question,” Margaret said. “He would have thought this a capital joke.”
“Yes,” I said, “but he was at the boat before us, and the guards did confirm his departure through the gate. Would he have had time to do
it?”
“He could have arranged it in advance,” Margaret said.
“I think, Kallista, it is best that we put the incident behind us. No harm would have come to you—despite Mademoiselle Wells’s extremely dramatic cries of horror. Anyone who knows you is well aware of the fact that you would never have fainted in the circumstances. The soldiers, perhaps, did it to amuse themselves. These military men are not always so civilized as one would hope.”
“You are quite right, and there was no lasting harm done. My hands are not badly hurt—I did not need them bandaged—and it shall make for an excellent story.” The ferry had left the island far behind, parting the choppy lapis waters of the Mediterranean before us. Other vessels crisscrossed the Rade de Cannes around us, their passengers lining up on the decks to take in the spectacular views of sea, coast, hills, and distant mountains. Before long, we could start to make out the Hotel Britannia on the shore, and I knew that we would soon be back at the Quai Laubeuf. I did not entirely regret the end of this particular adventure.
Before we arrived, Cécile soundly scolded Jack and Mr. Fairchild for their unkind interpretation of her words, and told them that they each owed her a bottle of champagne by way of apology. They agreed without argument, and Jack suggested that I should receive the same bounty. Soon we were all laughing again, the mood restored.
“I do not like that island,” Mr. Fairchild said, leaning next to me on the railing as the boat approached the dock at Cannes. “No one is going to convince me that you would have staged that stunt, Lady Emily. I am heartily sorry about what you overheard—please believe me. I was only shocked at the idea that Cécile had so little faith in you. Of course it had to be a misunderstanding. I ought never to have given the notion even the slightest credit.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fairchild.”
“And what could you have meant to accomplish by doing such a thing?” he continued. “Would it not have been more dramatic to wait for someone to come looking for you than to rescue yourself? The whole thing is very odd. It is as if the goal of the instigator was to make you look bad.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “Cécile is right—some soldiers may have done it, thinking it would be amusing.”
Jack, standing on my other side, frowned. “No. A soldier would not find that amusing. Take it from one who would know.”
* * *
Colin and I retired to our room shortly after dinner that night, neither of us in the mood for prolonged social interaction. My husband undid his tie, letting it fall loose on his white shirt, and tugged at his collar. “I am concerned about what happened on the island,” he said. “I cannot make the slightest sense of it.”
“I think it was Augustus,” I said, and detailed for him all my encounters with him.
“There is no question that he is strange,” Colin said, “malicious, even, but I do not see why he would attempt to harm you.” He opened the doors to our balcony and stepped outside. Below us, candles danced on the terrace, their light catching on the myriad diamond necklaces adorning the ladies sitting there. Lights from boats dotted the harbor, gliding along as if by magic, the vessels themselves hidden in darkness.
“A stroll through town wasn’t my only purpose the day you were all picnicking,” I said, pulling a wrought-iron chair away from the matching table and turning it so that it faced the water. I confessed to him my visits to the apothecaries.
“Are you suggesting that Augustus Wells objects to you asking questions about Neville’s suicide?” Colin asked.
“What if it wasn’t a simple suicide?”
“Neville killed himself, Emily, there is nothing more to it.” The silver smoke from his cigar gracefully snaked up to the deep navy sky. “And if there were, it would be down to the Sûreté to deal with the investigation. We are not here in any sort of official capacity, and Neville’s death is not likely to draw the palace’s attention.”
“We have chosen to pursue cases on our own before, and we could now,” I said. “Amity sobbed through the funeral. What if she considered him more than just her fiancé’s friend? And what if Mr. Neville poisoned the entire bottle because he expected Jeremy would find his body and then steel his nerves with a fortifying drink? What if he intentionally left the rest of the whisky where he knew Jeremy would drink it, ensuring that neither of them would have the woman they both loved?”
“We have exactly no evidence to support this theory,” Colin said. “Suppose it is true—Neville failed to do anything but take his own life. Would you have his reputation so slandered? And for what?”
“It is important to know the truth.”
“If Neville fancied himself in love with Amity and we expose that now, it will only serve to make Amity feel culpable for his death.”
“Maybe she was culpable,” I said. “She might have encouraged—”
“Stop.” He rose from his seat and stood behind me, putting his hands firmly on my shoulders. “Even if she begged him to elope with her and then changed her mind and refused to ever see him again, she is not responsible for his death. No one bears that blame but the man himself.”
“You are right.” I sighed, removed the cigar from his hand, took a long drag before returning it to him, and went back inside, where I flopped onto the bed. “I do not know why I am having such difficulties accepting what happened.”
“Let us analyze what is troubling you,” Colin said, lying next to me. “First, we have an entire bottle of poisoned whisky rather than a glass.”
“Second, we have the use of strychnine, a poison not readily available in Cannes, which suggests it was purchased before the start of this holiday.”
“And you believe Neville would not have deliberately planned his suicide to coincide with an engagement celebration?” Colin asked.
I stared at the ceiling. “Not necessarily. Let us imagine that he and Jeremy had some sort of spectacular falling out, and that it left Mr. Neville furious. Jeremy, with his carefree attitudes, did not so much as notice how deeply his friend took their argument, and invited him to this party.”
“Neville, outraged, decides to show Bainbridge once and for all that his disregard for everyone around him is unacceptable,” Colin said. “He decides to take his own life, not only because of the argument, but because of other things in his life that may have been catalyzed by it—the inability to pay debts, that sort of thing—and to do so in his friend’s room, by poisoning his friend’s favorite whisky.”
“No one who has spent more than half an hour with Jeremy would ever believe him capable of understanding the meaning of such a gesture unless it were accompanied by a very detailed explanation,” I said, rolling onto my side to face my husband.
“What if Neville did leave a note?” Colin asked. “And someone removed it from the room before the maid found him.”
“A moment. A maid found him?” I asked, sitting up.
“Yes. She had been sent up with extra pillows.”
“At five o’clock in the morning?” I asked.
“Not by Neville. He had already been dead for at least an hour.”
“Who requested the pillows?”
“The desk clerk said Bainbridge did, on his way into the hotel.”
“Jeremy didn’t arrive until we were down for breakfast,” I said. “Are we to believe that he returned to the hotel, requested pillows, and went out straightaway?”
“Evidently he did,” Colin said. “I asked him about it.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He said that he was planning to walk along the beach and was afraid that Augustus might be lurking about somewhere—he does have a way of popping up at the most inconvenient times—and he wanted to see if he was in the hotel. He inquired at the desk, where he was told that the younger Mr. Wells had already retired to his room, and threw in the request for pillows as an attempt to make his question less memorable.”
This differed from the account of the evening he had given me. He had not mentioned pil
lows. “Why would he care if Augustus saw him on the beach?”
“That, my dear girl, is a question I am not at liberty to answer.”
“So he was with someone—presumably one of the dancers—and did not want to be discovered. The maid would have known that the duke was not in his room, and would have been instructed to go in and leave the pillows. If Jeremy had not asked for them, he would have found Mr. Neville upon his return.”
“Precisely.”
“Pillows? Really?” I looked at him in disbelief.
“I agree. It is inane, and wholly superfluous. The desk clerk would never have thought it odd for him to inquire after another guest.”
“Yet by acting as he did, Jeremy may have saved his own life. Had he found Mr. Neville, he almost certainly would have poured a glass of the tainted whisky for himself,” I said. “Our friend is most fortunate.”
Amity
Cannes, present
Chauncey Neville. Amity hated the man. Despised him. Wished she could shake him until his teeth chattered. That, of course, was not possible now that he was dead, and it was not—not at all—that Amity did not feel deeply sorry that the man had ended his own life. That was a horrible, unspeakable tragedy. She had, after all, liked Chauncey. He was handsome and sweet, always ready with a witty, though quiet, observation if one was able to coax him past his shyness. He even, on occasion, had ribbed Emily about her love of ancient Greece. Kindly, of course. He had been so downright kind it was nothing short of irritating.
It did boggle the mind that a lady—no matter how beautiful and how well-dressed—who spent most of her time buried in the study of ancient texts could attract the attention and admiration of so many gentlemen. Amity credited Earl Bromley for that—his rank ensured that everyone would adore his daughter, no matter what awkward interests she chose to pursue. Still, Jeremy? Amity would never understand their friendship—they seemed to have very little in common—but she accepted it, and although it was proving somewhat more difficult than she had anticipated, she was confident she would soon count Emily among her own closest friends. She only hoped she could do so without being forced to read The Iliad or some other wretched poem.
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