Dangerous to Know (24 page)

“Love letters,” I said, smoothing the pages on my lap. We were all sitting on what had been Edith's bed in the small, spare hospital room, reading words so tender and sweet and true they brought tears to my eyes. Sebastian, however, was unmoved.

“He's a maudlin sense about him,” he said. “Not nearly romantic enough. I did much better by you.”

I shot him what I hoped he would recognize as a disapproving glare. “Jules. That's Vasseur,” I said. “So he knew she was here. But no one called that ever visited her?”

The nurse shook her head. “You saw me check the records again just a minute ago. No one admitting to be him was ever here.”

Sebastian sighed. “Isn't it obvious he's your mysterious Monsieur Myriel?”

“It doesn't fit with the time he was away in the Foreign Legion,” I said. “And furthermore, if he was so close, wouldn't he have spirited her away soon after she…” I didn't want to mention the baby in front of the nurse. “As soon as he realized she was here? Why would he have left her here?”

“She needed treatment, madame,” the nurse said. “There was no question. Some days she hardly knew where she was.”

“So he took rooms nearby, under an assumed name, so he could visit without drawing her family's attention. It became clear to him the doctor was at least trying to help her, so he didn't press her to leave immediately,” Sebastian suggested.

“Did her condition improve at all during her stay here?” I asked.

“I can't rightly say,” the nurse said. “Mademoiselle Prier was one of those patients whose condition changed constantly. Some days she was as normal as you, the next she was seeing ghosts. She couldn't have gone home.”

“But Monsieur Vasseur—Monsieur Myriel—might have thought otherwise,” I said. “Or perhaps…” Again I stopped myself and reset my focus. “Do you know where Dr. Girard lived? I'm wondering if he had any personal correspondence with Monsieur Myriel.”

“Wouldn't the police have found it?” she asked.

“Only if they knew to look,” I said. “Surely it would be all right for you to help us find the house? It's not as if we'd be disturbing him.”

“I suppose not,” she said, twisting the ends of her apron in her hand. “He can't be hurt any more than he's already been.”

Soon, we were banging on the door of a quaint single floor cottage, a quarter of an hour's drive down a narrow, unpaved road from Dr. Girard's asylum. Shoots of green peeked from the top of the thatched roof, and the half-timbered walls gleamed from recent whitewashing. A neat pavement of smooth, round stones led the way from the road, and as with nearly every country house I'd seen in Normandy, hydrangeas filled the garden to bursting.

As we expected, no one answered our knocks. I looked to Sebastian, confident there was not a door in the Western Hemisphere that would not bend to his will.

“You wouldn't rather wriggle through a window, then?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Such a shame,” he said. With a sigh, he pulled something out of his jacket—a thin metal strip—and within seconds the door flung open. He gestured flamboyantly, waving his arm with the grace of a courtier, and bowed. “After you, dear lady.”

Nerves filled me as I stepped into the house. What we were doing wasn't strictly unethical—although Sebastian had picked the lock, I rationalized our actions, telling myself looking for clues to find Lucy was working for the greater good. A small entryway opened into a comfortable sitting room filled with books and papers and watercolors of the Norman countryside. I started for the desk in the far left corner, but Sebastian grabbed my arm.

“Allow me, Kallista,” he said. “This is my territory.” Moving silently, he glided through the room, examining every object, every paper, every square inch of the floor, walls, and ceiling. But when I followed him as he moved into the doctor's bedroom, he stopped me.

“No,” he said. “I will help you, Kallista, but you can't expect access to the secret methods of my success. You might decide to turn to a life of crime and steal everything good that I want.”

“Sebastian—”

“No.” He silenced me with a firm hand over my mouth. “I will not have it. You're welcome to search after I'm done, but I'd be more than surprised if you turned up anything the police didn't.”

“The police weren't looking for information about Lucy.”

“Be my guest,” he said, taking an extravagant bow. “But if you do make a mess, I'm not going to follow and correct your mistakes.”

“There's no arguing with you, is there?” I asked.

“You can argue for days if you'd like,” he said. “But it will get you exactly nowhere. I'm implacable.”

“And proud of it.”

“Absolutely.”

“Fine,” I said. “I'll wait for you here.”

He closed the bedroom door behind him while I managed to stifle a sigh. Sebastian was a handful, but an amusing handful, and not without his charms. While I waited for him, I perused Dr. Girard's books. Most of them pertained to medicine. There was also a copy of John James Audubon's
Birds of America
, a Bible in Latin, and a small collection of fiction. Nearly all the novels were French. I glanced through the titles and pulled down one of the few in English, Charles Dickens'
Great Expectations.
I selected it not because it was in my native tongue, but for another reason altogether: it was the story of a young orphan with a mysterious benefactor.

A perfect place to hide information about Lucy's guardian.

By the time Sebastian came out of the bedroom, I'd read nearly three chapters of the book.

“I'm glad you're amusing yourself,” he said. “There's nothing of particular interest here. Not, that is, anything that would interest you.”

“What did you take?”

“Moi?”

“Sebastian.” I gave him a severe look.

“Some cuff links. No one will miss them.”

I closed the book and crossed my arms. “And?”

“You can't possibly think his paintings are worth my notice. They're pedestrian.”

“What else?”

“He has some fantastic eighteenth-century brass buttons.”

“Put them back,” I said.

“For what? So they can be sold to some unappreciative fool who's as likely to put them on doll's clothing as to use them for something reasonable?”

“It's not for you to decide, Sebastian.”

“And why is that? I have a good eye. I love the objects I liberate and I make sure they have good homes. What's wrong with me correcting small injustices?”

“I'd hardly call buttons falling into the wrong hands an injustice,” I said.

“I shall remember your insensitivity, Kallista, and will strike you at once from the list of people to whom I would give such exquisite objects.”

“Put them back.” I glowered at him. “And then we can go speak to Lucy's guardian.”

“If we can find him. I'll need to search the rest of the house,” he said. “And can't do that until I have some time to mourn the loss of these buttons.”

“Return the cuff links as well.”

“You're a disappointment.”

“Your kind words mean the world to me,” I said. “But you don't need to continue the search. I've found everything we need.”

“No,” he said, badly feigning breathlessness.

“Go,” I said. “And don't forget the cuff links.”

“You are so horrible to me,” he said. “Yet I adore you still. And if you have indeed found what you say, I may have to recruit you to my nefarious lair of criminals.” He disappeared into the bedroom, where I doubted he was returning anything. Still, I had to at least try to make him do the proper thing.

I flipped through
Great Expectations
, pausing again at the pages in the part of the book where Pip learns the identity of his benefactor. There, in the margins, someone had scrawled a name and address—Marie Sapin in a not too faraway town called Barentin—and it had to be that of Lucy's guardian. The context was too perfect for it to be anything else.

My deduction did not completely convince Sebastian upon his return from the bedroom, but he could not argue we had anything better to try, and agreed we should go investigate.

“It will, however, be a fruitless expedition,” he said, clearly irritated to be without the buttons. I couldn't decide whether his mood was for show, to make me believe he'd put them back, or whether his frustration was genuine.

“Why else would Dr. Girard write such a thing in that precise spot in that precise book?” I asked as our carriage sped towards Barentin.

“There are countless answers to that question, Emily,” he said. “Perhaps this Marie Sapin is a beautiful woman the doctor met while on holiday, when he was reading
Great Expectations
.”

“Perhaps Marie Sapin is a patient he had to collect from her home,” I said. “Perhaps she is a nurse he wanted to interview. Or the woman he hired to look after his elderly mother—that's the sort of name a person would certainly want to bury in a novel.”

“I'm glad to see you're getting into the spirit of things,” he said, tugging at his spotless gloves.

“But you may find, Sebastian, that I'm right. My reasoning is not without logic. That does not prove it's without flaw, but it's a lead worth pursuing. And in this line of work, not every lead pans out.”

“Don't you find that tedious? You'd be much happier treasure hunting through Europe with me. I could get the Trojan gold for you—Priam's treasure, the jewelry that cad Schleimann excavated and draped over his horrible wife. It would look far better on you. And you know, Kallista,
my
leads never fail to pan out.”

 

It felt as if the drive to Barentin spanned centuries. The roads were bumpy, and we were jostled so hard I feared my teeth would fall out. But it was not all unpleasant. Sebastian regaled me with some excessively diverting stories about the perils and pitfalls of being a Thief of Refined Taste, and by the time we reached Madame Sapin's modest but well cared for house, I was laughing so hard I couldn't immediately step out of the carriage.

Once I'd returned to a state of calm, we approached the door. We'd debated the best approach to convincing Madame Sapin that Dr. Girard condoned our expedition. Sebastian persuaded me to come around to his way of thinking which, at the time, seemed a decent option. Now that the moment was nearly upon us, my heart was pounding and our plan seemed a dismal one.

A cheerful maid opened the door, told us her mistress was home, and led us into a small room in the front of the house. The wide planks of the wooden floor had not a speck of dust on them, and the furniture was simple and spare. I looked around, hoping to see evidence of a child's presence, but there was none. In a matter of moments, a tall, sturdy woman came in, her broad face friendly, her cheeks bright pink.

“How can I help you?” she asked. “The girl says Dr. Girard sent you.”

“He did, Madame Sapin,” I said, my hand shaking as I gave her the letter Sebastian had forged before we left the doctor's house. “He's concerned about Lucy, you see.”

She shook her head and crinkled her nose. “I'm afraid I can't read.”

“I—I can read it for you if you'd like,” I said.

“If you don't mind,” she said.

I cleared my throat, nervous:

“But he knows she's not here,” Madame Sapin said. “I don't understand.”

“Well of course,” Sebastian said, rising and crossing to her. “But he's well aware of the bond between you and Lucy, and knows that if anyone could—” He stopped. “It's all been so difficult, hasn't it?”

“Oh, sir, it has,” she said. She dropped her head as her eyes showed the faintest signs of tears.

“Shall I call for some tea?” he asked. “You're upset.”

“No, I'll be able to carry on,” she said. “I thought it was the right thing to let Lucy go to her mother. Near broke my heart, it did, but how could I deny Madame Vasseur?”

Vasseur? Had Edith married her lover?

“I'm afraid we've more bad news,” I said. “Dr. Girard has been murdered as well, and there's speculation the killer might be looking for Lucy.”

“Oh this is too, too awful,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “I've never known such a kind man.”

“Could you tell me—” I took her hands. “—I know it's difficult. But the more you can tell me about Lucy and the doctor and Madame Vasseur, the more likely it is that we can help the child.”

“Dr. Girard never mentioned either of you,” she said. “I don't know—”

“Have you other letters from him?” Sebastian asked. “Did he write to you?”

“He knew I couldn't read.”

“But he must have occasionally sent you instructions, or information?” I asked.

“He did.”

“Who read it for you?”

“My girl. She's educated, you see. Her mother's blind and likes to hear stories. And the doctor didn't want anyone out of the household to know the truth about Lucy's parentage. You know how these aristocratic types are. My apologies, madame.”

“Not at all,” I said. “Where are the letters now? Did you keep them?”