The Adventuress (29 page)

“Would you be so kind as to help me find a good spot for writing, Jack?” Amity asked, standing as well. “I am certain I, too, have correspondence waiting to be written.” Christabel gave her a look that pleaded for rescue, but Amity was not about to risk being further censured by Birdie, and did not wait for even an instant before leaving with Jack.

“Your mother seems bent on finding controversy everywhere,” he said.

“You cannot begin to understand the pathology of the woman,” Amity said, rushing him along the corridor. “She is driven by dark forces.”

Jack laughed. “I do so admire your flair for the dramatic.”

“I feel dreadful leaving Christabel and Jeremy with her, but could not bear to stay a moment longer,” she said. “I do hope they can find it in their hearts to forgive me.”

“Of course they will.”

“Do you really have letters to write, Jack?” Amity asked.

“No,” he admitted. “I just wanted to escape. You?”

“The same.”

“I am glad that we have wound up together in more or less private circumstances,” Jack said, opening the door to the games room and leading Amity to the same table he had earlier occupied with Christabel. There was a group of Italians playing cards in one corner, but other than that, the room was empty. “May I broach a subject of some delicacy with you?”

“So long as it would not horrify your brother.” Amity's eyes sparkled.

“I had thought that I was close to having an understanding with Christabel, but recently it seems that she…”

Amity did not finish the sentence for him as his voice wavered. She began returning the pieces on the chessboard between them to their starting positions, but remained silent. Finished now, she folded her hands and rested them on her lap, not removing her eyes from his.

“You are going to force me to say it?” Jack asked.

“You know, Jack, that I consider you to be one of my closest friends,” she said, “but you cannot expect that I would betray the confidence of another so dear to my heart.”

“Is Christabel in love with me?” His eyes brightened as he spoke and color rose in his cheeks. “I begin to worry that Fairchild—”

“You must take this up with Christabel. I cannot—”

“Please, Amity. I am very nearly your brother, and I only want to know if there is any hope that I can make Christabel happy. If her affections are no longer what they used to be, I shall trouble her no further.”

“Your love must not run very deep if you are so quick to abandon it,” Amity said, moving the chess pieces to random positions on the board. “Would you like me to tell that to Christabel?”

“I would not be quick to abandon it, but I would always respect her feelings, and if she is not—”

“You want me to give you private and extremely sensitive information so that you can best decide how to act without risking embarrassment.” She plopped the white queen down in the center of the board.

“Is that so wrong?”

“Love, Jack, is full of risk and embarrassment. If you do not have the stomach for it…”

“So you are telling me she does not love me?”

“I never said any such thing. It sounds to me as if you need to search your heart and decide what it is you want. We are to remain here in Cannes for several more days. I would hope that by the time we depart, you will know yourself well enough to speak to Christabel without confusing her.”

“Can you offer me no words of encouragement?” Jack's eyes bulged and he looked rather desperate.

“Do you love her only if she loves you?” Amity asked. “If so, that is a very poor sort of love. I will not betray your confidence by telling Christabel anything about it, and for that you should thank me. It would bring her nothing but disappointment.”

 

20

Cécile, noticing that I had refused her champagne, took the much-appreciated liberty of ordering for me a pot of tea. I had never quite warmed up after my time in the rain. I took the cuff links from Margaret and removed them from their box so that I might better study them. “Jeremy does not wear these with evening kit,” I said. “He always insists on his ruby and diamond quatrefoil cluster set—he goes on about them at such length it is impossible not to notice. She must have taken these from his room.”

“Which would mean that she poisoned the whisky,” Margaret said.

“Not necessarily,” Colin said, “but it does mean she was almost certainly in his room. We have nothing firm beyond that.”

“And what does that mean, Monsieur Hargreaves?” Cécile asked. “Are we to believe she was there without his knowledge?”

“I think we must,” I said. “Jeremy would have confessed if he had brought her there.” Cécile raised her hands to object, but Colin silenced her.

“Emily is correct concerning this matter. I do not believe Bainbridge brought the girl to his room.”

“So how did she get in to take the cuff links?” Margaret asked.

“I have not the slightest idea,” Colin said. “I shall see what I can find out about Marshall Cabot, however. The Sûreté in Paris may be able to help us on that count. Was there anything else of note in Hélène's room? Letters? Papers?”

“Nothing at all,” Cécile said. “Their very absence struck me as odd.”

“I quite agree,” I said. “Her mother, at least, would have written to her. The person who murdered her must have taken or destroyed all of her correspondence, which suggests that that individual may have used letters to communicate with Hélène.”

“Which, in turn, suggests that individual is the person who wanted Jeremy dead!” Margaret slammed her hand onto the table in front of her. It would have made for a more effective punctuation to her statement if the table had not been so much lower than the divan on which she was sitting, causing her to nearly topple over.

Colin and I looked at each other. “It is as viable a theory as any we have at present,” I said.

*   *   *

My husband's colleagues at the Sûreté, with whom he had worked on our case in France the year before, agreed to make inquiries about Marshall Cabot, and before noon the next day, Colin rang them to hear the results. Cabot was still in Paris, traveling with two of his friends. They had not left the city since, even to go so far as Versailles, and none of them had received any mail at the hotel, nor had they sent any telegrams.

“He could have sent a telegram from somewhere else in the city,” I said as Meg was fighting with my hair to make it respectable looking before I went downstairs for lunch. We had taken breakfast—an extremely long breakfast—in our rooms.

“Of course,” Colin said, leaning against the wall in the dressing room, his long legs crossed at the ankles. “They are going to continue to watch him, but I think it will be difficult for us to uncover any connection to Hélène. The best thing now will be for us to give them a few days to trail him.”

“Is there anything more we can do here in the meantime?” I asked. “Inquire as to whether he is known at the casino here, perhaps?”

“I will do that this afternoon,” he said.

“Will you require my assistance?”

“No, it will be easier for me to do what I need to alone.”

“Then perhaps I will organize that trip to Cimiez I have been promising Amity. I still feel a bit guilty for having lied to her about Margaret and me going to the ruins.”

It was too late to go to Nice that day, but I spoke to Amity, and we agreed that two days hence would be perfect. The gentlemen were planning a sailing excursion for tomorrow, and we did not want to conflict with that. “I only wish I had thought to write to the director of the excavations there,” I said. “He might have been able to give us a tour himself. I suppose I could send him a telegram.”

“We don't need that,” Amity said. “I'm sure he would be a fine man, but you must admit that the odds of him being anything other than, well, boring, are unlikely. I want to explore the ruins on my own, running through them and imagining what it would have been like for a Roman girl. Should we wear togas, do you think?”

“Ladies did not wear togas,” Margaret said, disgust straining the features of her face. “They wore tunics, a peplos or a chiton if they wanted sleeves. A married woman might wear a stola over another tunic, but I have always thought they look a bit frumpy. You might instead focus on a Roman hairstyle, Amity. They were quite elaborate and spectacular. The manner favored by the Flavian empresses would suit you.”

I covered my mouth with my hand and shot Margaret what I hoped she would interpret as an evil look. The Flavian ladies' coiffure consisted of a tall mass of curls heaped up on the front of the head, almost like a crown, with the rest of the hair pinned into place smoothly in the back, so that the difference of height, if viewed in profile, was astonishing. It could be described in any number of ways, but attractive was not one of them, and it was very bad of Margaret to mention it to Amity. Her motive was perfectly clear to me, and although I did, secretly, applaud it, I knew Amity wearing Flavian coiffure could be nothing but a bad idea.

“I don't suppose, Margaret, you have a book that includes an illustration of the style,” Amity said. “I have quite an idea forming.”

“Indeed, I do,” Margaret said. “I shall run upstairs and fetch it for you, but only if you first tell me your idea.”

“I am going to throw a real Roman banquet for us in Nice, and you all shall have to dress accordingly. No more House of Worth for you, Emily.”

“I am confident the messieurs Worth could produce a worthy costume, but not in so little time,” I said. “What a marvelous idea, Amity.” Colin might not agree, but I thought he would look rather well in a toga.

By the end of the day, our plans were firm. Rather than attempt to get to the ruins and back in a single day, we would go to Nice tomorrow after lunch, taking a train that would get us there in plenty of time for Amity to set into motion plans for her Roman banquet. She would have the remainder of the afternoon to solidify the arrangements, and the following day, after a leisurely tour of the ruins at Cimiez, we would dine as
nobilitas Romana
. We would leave the bulk of our luggage in our rooms in Cannes, taking only what we would need for this short trip.

“She cannot be serious about this,” Cécile said. She, Margaret, and I had sequestered ourselves in a private train compartment for the trip. Colin, wisely, had gone with Jeremy, Jack, and Mr. Fairchild, leaving the Wells family and Christabel together. Mrs. Wells, in particular, approved of the arrangements.

“Margaret bears all the responsibility,” I said. “It was she who put the idea into Amity's head.”

“I admit it is my fault entirely, and was due to a misguided attempt to convince her to adopt the Flavian coiffure,” Margaret said. “I pointed how out exotically beautiful she would look reclining on a dining couch, her hair jutting up far above the top of her head…”

“A dreamy image to be sure,” I said.

“I am not, reclining or otherwise, dining on a couch,” Cécile said.

“
Jutting
was a poor choice of word,” Margaret said. “Fortunately, it did not seem to put off Amity.”

“You are evil, Margaret,” I said. “She is going to wear it and will know the instant she sees how everyone responds that you have tricked her into looking like a fool.”

“Then you shall owe me thanks, Emily,” Margaret said. “It will distract her from going back to being angry with you.”

*   *   *

Because it was so late in the season, it had not been a simple matter to find a sufficient quantity of available hotel rooms in Nice. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on one's point of view—Queen Victoria was there, having taken rooms at the Hôtel Excelsior Regina, which had opened only the year before after having been built with the royal party in mind. Colin, a longstanding favorite of the queen's, had sent a telegram, requesting assistance, and with a wave of the royal hand (I speak figuratively, of course), rooms were made available for us. The hotel was only a short walk from the ruins, situated on a hill overlooking the city. Soon after we had all checked in and gone upstairs to freshen up, Meg stepped away from the thankless task of attempting to tame my hair to answer a knock a the door and returned to announce that a Monsieur Guérin had arrived in the hopes of seeing me.

“How exciting,” I said, urging her to hurry with my hair. “He is the director of the excavations at Cimiez. I did not expect to have the opportunity to see him.”

Monsieur Guérin, a broad affable man whose tanned face bore evidence of one who spent much time digging in the sun, was perhaps more coarse than I expected to find him, but he apologized profusely for having descended upon me without a formal introduction. “I hoped you would not object, despite the fact that I am unable to accommodate the request you made in your telegram. As I said, I am leaving town tomorrow, and cannot take you and your friends through the ruins. However, my wife and I are hosting a small dinner party this evening. Regrettably, one of our guests has just sent word that his wife is indisposed and unable to attend. You are aware, I am sure, of how this would have sent my own dear spouse into a flurry of concern. She is afraid her table will now be unbalanced. Our gathering is not a fashionable one. We are all scholars of ancient Rome, but I do hope I can entice you to join us. You would be doing my wife a kindness, and I could take you for a quick turn around the ruins before the other guests arrive.”

“What a delightful invitation,” I said. “I should love to accept. Thank you so much for thinking of me.”

“You have made her happier than you can imagine,” Colin said. “Now she will not only have had a superior tour of the site, she will be able to lecture all of us on what she learned when she takes us there in the morning.”