Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer (6 page)

I got the odd feeling that I’d somehow traveled back in time. I half-expected to see a peasant woman come out of the house carrying a heavy wooden bucket to fetch water from the well.

As I looked around the garden, the eerie sensation hanging over me like a veil, there was a sound:

Creeeeeeeak.

It sounded like something very old and very stiff being opened for the first time in a hundred years.

And turning around to look, I saw that the gate to the turret had crept open a few inches, revealing the spiral staircase inside.

The locks were obviously there for a very specific reason — to keep tourists out. This was only a fluke, caused by a change in the atmospheric pressure or something, and it wasn’t my place to explore inside the fragile old building. Feeling highly virtuous, I walked forward, intending to close it and then report the malfunction to the next employee I saw.

But as I went closer to the open doorway, the back of my neck prickled. I felt an almost magnetic pull toward the stairs inside.

It couldn’t
really
hurt to go in for a second and see the place from a different perspective … could it?

I pushed the gate another two inches and slipped inside, stopping at the base of the stairs. Shafts of sunlight, glittering with dust particles, poured in through small rectangular windows. A little round ceiling soared twenty feet above me, supported by wooden beams like the spokes of a wheel. And carved between each pair of beams was a pale-blue spike-petaled flower, almost too faint to see after centuries of existence.

Versailles was turning out to be a creepier place than I’d imagined. Feeling slightly nervous, I reached up and fidgeted with my medallion. It was cold against my hand.

I heard a footfall behind me and spun around, prepared to apologize and try to weasel my way out of the situation —

But I was alone.

And the gate had closed when my back was turned.

Figuring I’d had my extra allotment of tourism-based thrills, I stepped toward it and pulled. It wouldn’t open.

I let out a nervous laugh before wrapping my hands around the bars and yanking.

Nope.

Momentarily stunned, I gave the bars a fruitless shake before taking a step back.

I wasn’t worried that I’d starve or anything — I mean, this was a major tourist attraction. Somebody was bound to come by before too long. But what would be the consequences of having gone inside this forbidden place? Would I be kicked off the palace grounds? Banned for life?

What if I couldn’t come back for the party?

Why had the gate worked two minutes earlier and suddenly gotten stuck? The hinges seemed to be in decent shape — not rusted over or anything.

I sighed and looked around, noticing for the first time that there was a door
inside
the turret — one that led directly toward the ground floor of the building. But when I put my hand on the doorknob and tugged, it didn’t budge.

A rustling sound came from above me. I glanced up toward the ceiling and saw a sweep of movement over the banister — almost like an arm, the way you’d reach out to steady yourself as you went up stairs.

Was someone else in here with me? Had somebody else gotten stuck, too?

“Hello?” I called. “Who’s there?”

I took a few tentative steps up — testing my weight on each plank before I moved to the next. The last thing I needed was to go crashing through a French national monument.

“
Bonjour?
” I said. “Hello?”

Silence.

I could keep climbing and see if there was another way out — but if there wasn’t, and someone came by to find me in an off-limits part of the cottage, I could be in major trouble … which would seriously irritate Hannah — and possibly doom me to the social blacklist.

Peer pressure got the better of me, so I turned back.

At the bottom of the stairs, I stopped.

The barred gate was still shut tight — but the second, inside door was wide open.

Beyond it lay an expanse of small black and white tiles. It was the same room you could barely see through the dingy front window, and it looked like it hadn’t been touched by a human in a hundred years. A few pieces of broken furniture, thickly blanketed with dirt and grime, were pushed up against the walls.

I felt that same weird, magnetic urge to go inside. It was the same strange feeling I’d had since arriving in Paris — that I somehow belonged in the city. And now it was telling me I belonged inside this strange room. But taking that step seemed like it was going too far, in more than one way.

So I stopped short of the threshold. On the far side of the room was a massive hearth, the kind where you’d find a fire with a giant pot of soup boiling over it.

Painted on the wall above the hearth was yet another flower.

My heart thumping, I backed out into the stairwell and closed the door just as another sound came from above me. I glanced up, and it took me a moment to process what I saw.

The woman in the pink dress stood on the landing at the top of the stairs, looking down over the railing. Her eyes were burning-bright, and her medallion dangled from her neck.

“
Bonjour
,” I said. “Where did you come from?”

She didn’t reply.

She just kept staring at me.

“Je suis …”
I mentally searched my meager French vocabulary to find the words to express my stuckness.
“Je suis ici?”

I am here?

Nice, Colette.

Her expression didn’t change.

And next to me, the interior door opened again. By the time I glanced into the tiled room and then back up at the landing, the woman was gone.

Was I supposed to follow her?

I almost stepped over the threshold — but once again something held me back. Instead of going in, I reached for the doorknob and closed it.

Suddenly, I was interrupted by a flurry of voices and turned to see a tour group outside the turret, looking in at me.

“What are you doing?” the tour guide asked me in English, horrified.

“I’m stuck,” I said. “I can’t get out!”

The guide stepped forward, a deep frown on her face. “How did you get
in
? That area is absolutely unauthorized.”

“The gate was open,” I said. “I thought it was part of the tour.”

“This gate? Impossible. It is never unlocked.” She grabbed the bars and tried to push the gate but had no luck.

Finally, I tried one last time.

It swung open easily.

I darted out and slammed it shut with a
CLANK!

After giving me a dirty look, the guide went on with her tour as if it had never been interrupted by a juvenile delinquent like myself.

“This was Marie Antoinette’s private cottage,” she said. “To get away from the pressures of court life, she would put on a simple dress and come here, tend her garden, play with her children, and spend time with her closest friends.”

One of the people in the group, a teenage boy, walked up to the gate by the stairwell. I held my breath as he pulled on it.

It didn’t budge.

“You can’t go inside,” the guide said, shooting me a death glare. “You’ll have to try to peek through the windows. That’s as close as anyone gets anymore.”

“Anyone but the ghosts,” the boy’s mother said, winking.

“Oh, yes,” the guide said, sounding tired. “I forgot about the ghosts. They can come and go as they please.”

Still jittery, I left Le Hameau, passing a little farm with baby goats playing in their small paddock. The afternoon was quiet, the paths deserted. The dirt crunched beneath my boots as I walked. A light, cool wind lifted the hair on my arms and chilled my skin, until I pulled my sleeves down over my palms.

I walked all the way back to the main château, stood in the center of the courtyard, and turned in a slow circle. I felt out of it, almost dizzy.

Soon the group started to gather. Miraculously, Hannah and Peely showed up on time.

“Where have you been, Colette?” Hannah asked.

It was an innocent question, but the answer was complicated. Should I admit that I went off by myself? Should I tell them about getting locked in the turret? I couldn’t tell if getting stuck in a two-hundred-year-old stairwell was cool or uncool.

“Just around.”

“Did you go to the gift shop? I spent like fifty euros!” Pilar reached into her bag and handed me a black beret, a tin of candies with a picture of the palace on it, a silk scarf, and a postcard.

I passed the other items back to her and stared at the postcard, a portrait of an alabaster-skinned woman wearing a square-necked ball gown and high, powdered wig, surrounded by her children. I flipped it over and read the caption.

LA REINE MARIE-ANTOINETTE ET SES ENFANTS

Then I flipped it back over and looked at the picture once more.

Pilar was babbling on about the beret, but I wasn’t listening to her.

I kept looking at the postcard until Peely lifted the card from my hands and put it back in the bag.

I could still feel the cardstock against my fingers. Most of all, I could still see the face — that unmistakable face: long, narrow, with a prominent chin and dark, piercing eyes.

I could picture it as well as if I’d spent hours looking at her.

Because I kind of had.

The woman on the postcard was the same woman I’d been seeing all day —

Marie Antoinette. The dead queen of France.

I DON’T BELIEVE in ghosts. I don’t.

I don’t, I don’t, I don’t.

But I also couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen one.

As we boarded the train back to the city, all I could think about was the woman in the dress. Her silence, her medallion —
my
medallion — around her neck. And that piercingly intense look in her eyes … as if she had something she wanted to say to me.

Hannah and Pilar were sitting together, a few rows up. When I plunked into my seat, I’d been too distracted to notice how far away they were.

I didn’t even notice when someone sat down beside me.

“You are very thoughtful,” Jules said. “Did you like Versailles?”

“Yes,” I said, blinking back to reality. “It’s beautiful.”

“I agree,” he said. “Although, of course, it’s hard to admire it so much when you think about the difficulties of building it and the peasants who were basically treated like slaves.”

“But living there must have been amazing.”

Jules cocked his head. “Actually, for anyone but royalty and the very top noble families, it wasn’t all that wonderful. Conditions for the rest were often very humble.”

“Why did they stay, then?” I asked.

“Because the king required it,” he said. “He wanted to keep them close by to ensure that they weren’t plotting against him. They came to the palace and tried to seek the king’s favor when they could, and then spent the rest of their time in elaborate court ceremonies designed to keep them bored and quiet.”

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” I said.

“Exactly,” Jules replied.

We rode for a few minutes without speaking, but the silence wasn’t nearly as awkward as I would have expected it to be. With nothing to distract me, my thoughts turned back to the ghost.

“What do you know about Marie Antoinette?” I asked.

Jules looked surprised. “Well, all of the things I explained this morning, to start.”

I felt a warm flush creep up my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you.”

He shrugged. “She was born in Austria, married the dauphin — Louis the Sixteenth — at fourteen years old … became queen when her husband rose to the throne after the death of his grandfather … known for being frivolous and wasteful, out of touch with the people of France …”

“And then they killed her, right?”

“She was tried and executed during the Revolution,” he said. “She was sent to the guillotine and beheaded. It is said that she maintained great dignity in the face of death.”

At the sound of the word
beheaded
, I tugged my sweater a little tighter around my shoulders. “What about the little village?”

“Le Hameau? It was like a playhouse for her. She and her friends would go there and pretend to be peasants. They would tend the gardens, milk the cows … of course, the cows had to be scrubbed clean before the queen could touch them.”

“Well, naturally,” I said. “Who would touch an unscrubbed cow?”

Jules looked at me then, and the moment lingered — as if, for the first time, he was really seeing me as an individual and not just one of the pack.

“What about the flowers?” I asked. “The spiky ones all over the place?”

He looked confused. Then he handed me his notebook. “Can you show me?”

As I took his pen, our hands brushed lightly against one another, and I didn’t dare look up — I was afraid he’d be able to see me blushing.

After I drew the flower, with its forked, spiky petals, Jules looked at it and smiled.

“Ah,
le bleuet
,” he said. “The cornflower. Marie Antoinette’s favorite.”

That sent a torrent of thoughts through my mind. Could it just be a coincidence that I had a medallion with the queen’s favorite flower carved as part of the design — and that I’d seen her ghost?

I’d
maybe
seen her ghost.

I probably did not see her ghost
, said the rational part of my brain.

“Why do you ask?” Jules asked.

“Colette!” I looked up to see Hannah standing in the aisle. “I found you a seat next to us.”

The interested expression on Jules’s face disappeared like a bird taking flight. He glanced up at Hannah. “No need to switch seats. Our station is the next one. Don’t forget your camera.”

He was gone before I had a chance to say good-bye.

Hannah slipped into the seat he’d vacated. “It figures,” she said. “First we get the only French nerd as our guide, and then we waste our whole first day a million miles from the city. It’s like they’re
trying
to make us have a terrible time.”

“We have seven more days,” I said, not bothering to say that I didn’t consider Versailles a waste at all.

Hannah sighed. “You’re a hopeless optimist.”

“I’m just a realist,” I said, wondering if a realist would ever believe in ghosts. “We have to stay with the group, right? I mean, what else are we going to do?”

Hannah’s eyes flashed wickedly, and her mouth curled into a smile that seemed to change the whole shape of her face into something sharp and dangerous. “What are we going to do? We’re going to find our own good times, that’s what.”

Sneaking out of the hotel that night proved ridiculously easy; there was a private exit through one of the penthouse bedrooms, and Hannah had tipped the desk clerk fifty euros not to mention it to Madame Mitchell. Once we were all dressed and ready to go, we simply waltzed out the secret door and down the stairs, and left through the back door of the café.

Hannah’s plan included taking a taxi across town and slinking into a dim, smoky café called La Dominique. It was crowded to the point that you could hardly push your way through.

“Where did you hear about this?” I asked Hannah, trying to sound cool but feeling my stomach going
flippity-flop, flippity-flop
. My fingers nervously toyed with the medallion around my neck.

“I read about it in
Vogue
,” she said, leading us to a table wedged into a tight corner. “Apparently a ton of models and photographers hang out here.”

I almost pointed out that our coming to a café that was crawling with internationally acknowledged beauties might have demonstrated a tiny bit of overconfidence, but I bit my tongue. Then I thought about the young model who’d been murdered — what was her name again? Had she come here? I tried to shake off the morbid thought.

Hannah ordered us three coffees, and then we people-watched — Hannah looking right at home, Pilar trying desperately not to look like she was trying desperately to look cool, and me, squinting against the din and the crowds. When the waitress brought our drinks, we all stared — there were three tiny coffee cups, each on its own saucer with three sugar cubes and an itty-bitty spoon. They could have been straight out of
Alice in Wonderland
.

“Um … what exactly did you order?” Pilar asked, taking one and peering down into it. The coffee was dark brown and smelled like a whole Starbucks shoved into one large sip.

“Café noir,” Hannah said, trying to look snooty but faltering for a moment. “Because it’s dark outside.”

Then, because she’d rather stab herself in the eye with a stick than admit she was less than perfectly in control 100 percent of the time, she dropped her sugar cubes in, stirred it up, and drank the whole thing in one gulp.

Her eyes popped open for the briefest moment — but then she narrowed them in triumph and looked at me and Peely.

We obediently followed her example. It was like getting a shot of coffee straight into your artery. My head had already been reeling from the noise and the bustling crowd — adding a jolt of caffeine made everything twice as bad.

“Are you okay?” Pilar asked, tugging on my hand.

My heart beat like a snare drum, and my breath felt like it was snagging on something in my chest. And the people seemed to be one big wall, closing in around me —

“Colette, if you sit there looking like you’re about to vomit all over yourself, you’re really going to hurt our chances of meeting cute boys,” Hannah said.

Her voice was like rusty razor blades in my ears.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Um … I’ll be back in a minute.”

Clutching my purse to my chest, I took a deep breath and plunged through the crowd as if I were diving into a poisonous swamp. I muttered, “
Pardon
,
pardon
,
pardon
,” as I went, but I didn’t dare slow down to let anyone actually move out of my way. I must have bumped into a dozen French fashionistas. The music and conversation swelled into a single force that pushed in on my ears, and the smoke and dirty looks stung my eyes.

To my left was a door under a glowing green sign that read
SORTIE
. That meant “exit,” right? I turned sharply, smashing into a pair of models, who swore at me in French as I passed.

The door slammed shut behind me, leaving me in instant stillness. Off in the distance, a plaintive car horn cut through the clear, chilly air.

I paced back and forth, trying to clear my head and catch my breath.

I was in an alley — not really very different from the regular streets we’d walked earlier in the day, only it was too narrow for cars to pass and its edges were dotted with trash bins and empty wooden crates. About fifty feet to my right was the road where the taxi had dropped us off; to my left, the alley curved away out of sight.

I cast a wary look at the door through which I’d exited. The mere sight of it made the hair on my arms stand up.

I can’t go back in there.

But what was I going to do, wait outside all night?

I leaned against one of the stone walls. The night air seeped through my pale-gray cashmere sweater, and my royal-blue faux-fur shrug was definitely more for looks than for warmth.

There was no getting around it — I had to go inside.

I started one last round of pacing, complete with lots of deep breaths, as though I could store fresh air in preparation for the suffocating smallness awaiting me in the café. But just before turning for the door, I heard a sound.

It’s amazing how fast your brain can tell you that something is very wrong.

My brain, for instance, immediately told me:
GHOST!

I hurried away from the sound, farther down the alley. I figured that as I rounded the curve I’d find myself on another brightly lit street, surrounded by people out to have a good time.

Only I didn’t. I found myself staring at more of the same — a dark, narrow alley.

Now the sound was so close I could easily tell that it was footsteps.

I broke into a run. I’m a decent runner, so I probably would have been fine — if I hadn’t tripped. In my defense, I was running blindly down centuries-old uneven cobblestones wearing a pair of Hannah-approved shoes with three-inch heels.

Just as I started to vault to my feet, someone grabbed my shoulder.