Chapter 11 #2
"No," he allowed. "That one stung. I won't pretend it didn't. But I've had two years to sit with it, and I've come to a conclusion that I imagine will disappoint you, given the company you keep.
" He glanced toward the window, toward Hollis's side of the hedge.
"Evelyn Carrington was wrong about that portico.
She will remain wrong about it for the next century, and everyone who looks at Belle Rêve's East Wing will believe she was right, because she said so with enough conviction that nobody bothered to check.
That's not a motive. That's just a woman I stopped working for. "
"You still sound angry."
"I sound like someone who takes historical accuracy seriously in a city that mostly prefers its history decorative.
There's a difference between anger and standards, even if the two can look similar from the outside.
" He picked his newspaper back up, which I understood to be his version ending the conversation, the same way Dorothy Perrault had reached for her shears.
"If you want a suspect with a grudge, I'd suggest looking somewhere that grudge actually required opportunity.
I was on a lawn discussing bousillage for twenty minutes.
I have witnesses. I have, apparently, a great deal of professional restraint.
It's the only thing that's kept me employed. "
It was a very tidy answer. Almost too tidy, the kind of answer a man gives when he's said it enough times to himself in the mirror that it's stopped sounding rehearsed even to him.
I filed it away next to the word authenticity, next to a documented historical record, next to the strange, specific heat in his voice when he talked about a portico that had apparently occupied a great deal of real estate in his head.
Teddy chose that moment to reappear from under my chair and plant himself directly in front of Reginald's shoe, staring up with the same unblinking judgment he'd once leveled at Allison.
"He does this," Reginald said, looking down at him with something that might have been the beginning of fondness. "Sits in front of whoever's talking. Like he's grading the performance.”
“Performance?”
“Conversation.”
"Maybe he's just guarding you from a fly," I said.
"Or maybe your skunk has better instincts than the entire Garden District Historical Board," Reginald said, and went back to his newspaper, and I couldn't tell if that had been a joke.
Allison had gone quiet on the other end of the table, working her way through a beignet with the studied concentration of a woman trying very hard to look occupied.
I let her sit a minute longer while I refilled Vivienne's coffee and complimented Taylor's tie for no reason other than to buy myself thirty more seconds.
Then I turned my attention down the table.
"You've been picking at that same beignet for ten minutes," I said gently. "Are you okay this morning, Allison?"
"I keep thinking about the cease and desist," Allison said, not looking up.
"You asked me about it the other night, and I told you it was about the book resembling the Carringtons too closely.
Which was true. But it wasn't the whole truth, and I've been sitting here for ten minutes trying to decide if that matters. "
The table went very still. Even Taylor stopped chewing.
"It matters," I said.
Allison exhaled, set the beignet down, and finally looked up.
"The chapter that set her off wasn't really about the family.
Not directly. It was about the house. Fictionalized, obviously.
I changed the name, changed the address, gave it a different architect entirely on paper.
But I'd based some of the details on things I'd picked up doing research, records I'd pulled at the historical society, old renovation permits, that kind of thing.
There were gaps. Dates that didn't line up the way you'd expect.
A renovation logged one year that referenced materials that weren't supposed to exist yet, according to the timeline everyone always tells about the house.
I thought it was an interesting detail. Historical fiction loves a good discrepancy, gives you something to build a subplot around.
I wrote maybe four pages about it, entirely fictional framing, nothing that named real names. "
"And Evelyn cared about four fictional pages of framing," I said slowly.
"Evelyn cared enormously," Allison said, and there was something almost bewildered in the way she said it.
"Not annoyed. Not embarrassed. Disproportionately upset, in a way that didn't match fiction about a house that wasn't even tied to her. She doesn’t own that damn house. Or didn’t, anyway.
Yet she had her lawyer call within the week.
Not about the family resemblance, not at first. That came later, in the actual letter.
The first call was specifically about the chapter with the renovation records.
I remember because the lawyer used the word speculative about six times, like he was trying to talk himself into believing it too. "
"Did you ever figure out why it bothered her so much?"
"No." Allison shook her head. "I didn't understand it then, and I still don't. It was such a small thing. A handful of dates that didn't add up in a novel nobody outside of my agent had even read yet. But she reacted like I'd printed something true."
Reginald hadn't turned a page of his newspaper.
I noticed. He was listening.
"Renovation records," I repeated, keeping my voice as light as I could manage, which took more effort than it should have. "Belle Rêve's."
"I never said," Allison said. "In the manuscript, I mean.
I kept it vague on purpose, gave the fictional house its own history so nobody could point to a real address and sue me over it.
But the dates I used, the gaps, all of that came from research I did on three or four different Garden District properties.
Belle Rêve was one of them. I don't actually know which house Evelyn thought I was writing about.
Maybe she didn't either. Maybe she just saw the words “renovation records” and “don't line up” sitting next to each other and panicked before she even got to the part where I'd changed everything. "
"Panic seems like a strong reaction to research," Vivienne said, and there was nothing performative in her voice now, no documentarian distance. She sounded, for once, genuinely interested rather than merely observant.
"That's what I thought too," Allison said.
"At the time I figured it was just Evelyn being Evelyn, protective of her legacy, precious about her image.
I didn't think much more of it. But sitting here now, knowing what we know, it feels different.
It feels like maybe I wrote something true by accident and didn't realize what I was holding. "
Nobody said anything for a moment. Teddy had abandoned Reginald's shoe and installed himself instead beneath Allison's chair, which felt like a small, furry vote of confidence.
"Well," Reginald said finally, folding his newspaper with force.
“Historical societies are full of paperwork nobody's bothered to reconcile in decades.
Dates get transcribed incorrectly. Permits get filed under the wrong year.
It happens more than people realize. I wouldn't read too much into four pages of a novel. "
It was a reasonable thing to say. It was also, I noticed, the first time all morning Reginald had volunteered an opinion nobody had asked him for.
"You'd know," I said, mildly, reaching for the coffee pot again. "Better than any of us, probably."
"I would," he agreed, and smiled, thin and composed, without elaborating.
I poured the coffee. I passed the beignets. Underneath the table, out of sight of everyone but me, I reached down and scratched behind Teddy's ears.
“What do you think happened?” I asked Vivienne, genuinely curious. She had a sharp mind.
“I think that someone tried too hard,” she said. “It was very…symbolic. Ritualistic. Always like they knew it had little chance of success in killing Evelyn.”
“Poppycock,” Taylor said. “Why bother then?
“They just wanted an amusement,” Vivienne replied, with a shrug.
She was holding her champagne flute by the upper portion of the glass, not the stem.
I knew there was a reason I liked her.