Chapter 13
Zina
The next day, I trudged the more than seven kilometers back to Boulogne-sur-Seine. I swore under my breath all the while, as it took nearly an hour and a half. Thank God it was a Sunday. Baba Valya had retired to bed with her usual list of tasks for me before I left.
The mansion appeared even more haunting at night.
Darkened and hulking, its many windows were like the countless eyes of some monster from the deep.
I was surprised the electric lights hadn’t been turned on for the soiree.
Maybe Olga and Alec were having money troubles.
The gloom pressed down on my chest like a fat stone, like the tearoom air.
I clutched my bag to me tightly. It held the fortune-telling implements I usually brought on house calls and comforted me a little.
Olga opened the door with her usual sparkle, her chatter and press of the hand. But I sensed a more obvious, and lasting, change in her energy—a veiled-in-gray, skittish thing that danced out of reach and left an ashy, sulfurous smell in its wake. I wrinkled my nose, not liking it one bit.
Still chattering in her singsong French, she led me to the same crimson drawing room from the night before.
This time, it was alive with dozens of ruby-shaded lamps and a low murmur of voices.
Guests milled sleeve to puffed sleeve, bell-like evening gowns from another era rustling like mice after dark.
They were rife with holes, as if mice really had eaten through the fabric.
It felt like a ghost of a soiree, a poor imitation of the real thing.
In the crowd, I glimpsed Alec standing with a few men. His gaze slid to me, eellike. A slimy chill wrapped around my heart.
Still, I had to search for the photograph. Perhaps Olga had left it out or hung it somewhere. I swept a gaze over the séance table, a few side tables, the sideboard, the walls dotted with paintings and photographs.
“Let me make the introductions, my dear,” Olga said, coming up behind me as I was peering at a cluster of photographs hanging on the back wall.
She slid an arm into mine and led me to the nearest group of men and women, their worn suits and gowns exuding the stale scent of dead flowers and mothballs.
Their faces were haughty—definitely aristos.
Probably also former clients of Mama and Baba Valya.
A little old lady with a funny ostrich feather in her snow-white hair and a gold enameled lorgnette peered at me long and hard.
She had a practiced, viciously green gaze.
Countess Bobrinskaya, apparently, was a fellow Russian aristo and émigré—one of the many at the soiree who had been friends with the Grand Duke and his wife.
“What did you say your family name was?” Countess Bobrinskaya asked, also in French, still peering at me.
“Lenormand,” I replied.
“Lenormand…yes, it is familiar. Horribly familiar.”
A lady in an ancient House of Worth gown of heavy gold fabric embroidered with hideous palm fronds, Vera de something, eyed me with evident distaste and a scratch of her large hooked nose. “Do you have a mother, girl?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Oh, Zina, quit jesting!” Olga scraped out a laugh. “It was Svetlana, no?”
“Why, it cannot be!” exclaimed an émigré poet in an old-fashioned waistcoat and floppy bow tie. Both were as sloppy as his manners and energy, which was desert-hued and smelled of hot sand. I made a face.
“Do you have a grandmother, too, by chance?” asked the old countess.
Olga pressed my hand, in warning, I thought. “I do—Valentina Lenormand.”
Vera de something let out a little gasp.
She covered her mouth with her satin-gloved hand at a glare from Olga.
But the next second, Olga was placid, doll-like.
I withheld making a face. If not clients, these people had known Mama and Baba Valya, and they could be useful in learning about that time in their lives.
“Did you know my mother and grandmother, madame?” I asked Vera.
“Come, Zina,” Olga said, her smile too fixed and frozen upon her beautiful face, and hustled me forward.
“I would love to see the rooms where my mother stayed. You said you would—”
“Yes, yes. But not with a house full of guests. What kind of hostess do you think I am? Besides,” she added, leading me to a man standing at the edges of the soiree, “I wish for you to meet a late addition to our party.”
The man turned, and I met his intense blue gaze. It seemed to flay me open with its irritating inquisitiveness.
“This is Inspector Gabriel Allard, an up-and-coming policeman here in Paris. He is looking into my father’s disappearance.”
“We have met,” I said, shaking his hand anyway.
A spark of electricity ignited between our fingers, and I hastily pulled away, feeling the buzz of it on my skin.
Especially when I recalled myself, late at night and after a few cocktails, thinking of him as something more than a policeman.
“The inspector has visited the tearoom already. But you must have known that, Princess.”
“The accusations you make, dear Zina.” Olga belted out a laugh. “Inspector Allard and I are only recently acquainted.”
Maybe she had initially reached out to some other inspector, maybe a judge or prosecutor, but somehow I doubted it.
“It is a pleasure to see you again, Mademoiselle Lenormand.”
“I wish I could say the same, Inspector. Our tearoom isn’t free, you know.”
He had returned several times, inquiring after Baba Valya, who happened to be out, before taking more food and drink with him.
“I am sorry, have I been remiss in paying for my tea?”
“And for the sweets.” Mon Dieu, this exchange was making not just my cheeks but my entire body heat up.
One corner of his mouth tugged up, as if he saw through me. “How much do I owe you?”
I noticed Olga glancing between us. “I will tally up your bill,” I said.
“Well, you have become friendly.” Her tone was flat, decidedly unfriendly.
“It is part of my job to acquaint myself with and interview the people connected to my cases. That is why you invited me here tonight, is it not, Princess? To speak to your friends?” His voice held a note of warning.
“Of course, Inspector,” Olga hastened to say.
“You may already be aware of this, but as Valentina Lenormand’s granddaughter and as an employee in her tearoom, which also happens to be my father’s former town house—imagine the coincidence!
—I know Zina will be happy to help you with anything you wish to know.
She has become a most valuable friend to me here in Paris.
And she has a most wondrous gift. She is able to reach over to the other side, the mysterious beyond.
Her séances to contact my father have been most informative. ”
“That must be quite the gift.” His smiling skepticism filled in what wasn’t said. “The princess is quite bewitched by your talents, mademoiselle.”
“Many are, though interestingly, you haven’t asked about them. I thought you were acquainting yourself with the people connected to your cases?”
His cheeks flushed. “I would love to be acquainted with you, mademoiselle, believe me,” he stammered, “but I do not investigate the occult.”
“But it is related to the tearoom, which you are investigating…”
“Well,” cut in Olga, “I must steal Zina away to showcase more of her fortune-telling talents. A hostess’s work is never finished. Do pardon us, Inspector Allard.”
“By all means.” He gestured grandly, like a king dismissing his subjects, once more in possession of himself. “I will see you very soon, Mademoiselle Lenormand. To pay that bill and, apparently, to ask about your talents.”
“I do hope not too soon, Inspector,” I said lightly. “The bill and your questions can certainly wait.”
“And I hope just the opposite. See? We are working well already. Don’t they say opposites attract?”
All I could hear was Olga’s trilling little laugh, again reminding me of glass splintering underfoot, as she handed me a glass of fizzing champagne.
I toasted Inspector Allard, dismissing him.
I would need to charge him extra for the tea and sweets, for hanging about the tearoom waiting for my guard to slip.
I wouldn’t let his roundabout charm, his eyes, and that laughing smirk distract me.
I needed to keep looking for that photograph.
And to become acquainted with these émigré aristos—to see what they knew.
But Olga had kept me occupied, constantly chaperoning me, so I didn’t have a chance to do much of either before I had to leave.
And now I was almost to the tearoom. I would need to return for both—and for Mama’s rooms. At the memory of Olga’s ashy, skittish aura, I shuddered, and I slammed Samovar’s doors closed behind me.
I was breathing hard, having run all the way from Boulogne-sur-Seine.
The pleasant buzz from the champagne had long dissipated, and I was fearful at the prospect of returning to the mansion.
Something plopped onto my head—the needle cross—and I tensed.
For a second, nothing happened. Then the swarming and buzzing rushed in, and cold, stale air blasted at me. I threw my arms over my head to shield myself.
A whispering started, horribly harsh and grating. Blood. Tea. Police.
Over and over, until I thought it was me thinking the words.
Me going mad. But it wasn’t, and I wasn’t.
The swell of air rushed through the tearoom, setting the drapery and tablecloths flapping; the glass vases on the tables with the white tulips swaying until they began to topple; the water spilling out and trickling to the floor.
I gasped, the damp and darkness suddenly frightfully oppressive and hard to breathe through. I coughed. Was the air poisoned? Was there a gas leak?