Chapter 15 #2
“Do you have acquaintances there? You and your sister have so many!”
“We do.” He relaxed with a wheezy sigh. “Well, I suppose there is no harm in telling you. I was visiting an old uncle of ours. Olga wanted me to.”
“Oh?”
Alec cleared his throat, lapsing into tight-lipped silence.
Olga had also likely told him not to speak to anybody about his visit, and I let it go. “Inspector Allard seems to really care about your family,” I said instead.
“He is a swell chap,” agreed Alec.
“But he asks too many questions, no? I saw him practically corner you earlier.” I placed a friendly hand on his arm, adding a giggle. “I wanted to rescue you, you know.”
“You should have, dearest Zina.” Alec smiled conspiratorially.
“That inspector does ask a lot of questions, doesn’t he?
That is precisely what I tell Olga. But she wants him around.
She says he is our only way to”—again, Alec cleared his throat—“well, anyway.” Before I could press him, he went on.
“I dislike remembering my father. He never did think I was good enough to be his son.” Then, in a whisper: “Bastard.”
I gave him his angry moment before asking, “When did you see him last?”
“In Russia, before he left us for Paris yet again, along with my recalcitrant sister.”
“ ‘Recalcitrant’?”
Alec gave a clipped nod. “They left, and my mother and I remained.”
I thought fast. “The tearoom must remind you of your father. You must hate it.”
“Just of what he had,” Alec said cryptically.
“You mean he had other houses?”
A lazy, evasive smile. “That must be it.”
“You know, I would love to see that photograph of your father again. I didn’t have a good look. He had a most striking face, not in a good way, not like yours at all.”
“I agree. But my sister has it. Like with Father, she never parts with it.”
Merde! I had to move on. “Did you often see my mother and grandmother when you visited?”
Alec screwed up his eyes and mouth, truly toad-like.
“Not at all. I was mostly with my mother, and she refused to see that woman—er, your mother. My apologies. She and your grandmother had always been kind to me. Always giving me little treats, lozenges, confections, candies. I have always loved things, and they would give me a nice figurine here, a clock with little birds on the face there, a little painting or sketch. A jar of preserves.”
I smiled, thinking of Baba Valya’s tasty sweets, the coffee offered to patrons and clients when least expected, the tins of tea laced with herbs to soothe this or that ailment, all often on the house. “That does sound like my grandmother.”
“You never knew your mother, did you?”
“I wish I had.”
Alec smiled; for once, not with the aim to charm or repel. “I wish you had, too. I spent the best years with mine.” The next second, his eellike gaze was back. “You resemble her, your mother. I thought her beautiful. Wild, unchecked. But beautiful.”
Pressing down my disgust, praying he wasn’t my brother, I saw my opening and crashed through it. “Did your father think so, too?”
“Everybody thought so. Mother went mad with rage when Father was with her.”
“Was there…something untoward between them?”
“My mother certainly believed so.”
I lowered my voice. “What do you think happened to him, your father?”
“I bet absolutely nothing, and he is still somewhere out in the world. Asia, maybe. Japan, probably. He had a fascination with travel, with striking out on his own, being his own man. Either way, I am an orphan. Mother was my only true parent, and she is dead.”
“You know what it’s like to miss a mother. Show me where mine lived.”
Alec glanced around, uneasy.
“Oh, please, Alec.” His name intentionally came out breathy, weak, feminine.
“Oh, all right. But do not tell Olga.” He winked at me, gaze turning slippery.
I tried not to gag but managed a simpering, appreciative smile.
Alec led me up another flight of stairs, to a landing below the one where the servants used to live. I asked him if they still had any, and he shook his head. “Not in this house.” I wondered how many houses they had.
We approached a door with tarnished golden handles and scratched-up gilding on the peeling ivory paint. Alec went to open it, waving me in majestically. “Milady.”
Inside, I beheld a large room of gilt wood and dusty pink upholstery, with a hard sofa and tea table in one corner, a writing desk in the other. It seemed outdated, too ornate and girlish for a grown woman. A dust-coated looking glass caught my eye.
I blinked, and a shadowy man and woman appeared on the surface.
Tell me, Svetlana! The Grand Duke’s deep voice, his heavily accented Russian.
I do not belong to you! Mama’s voice.
You spoke to him, I saw it! Admit it!
Gray eyes sparked in indignation. I am entitled to speak to whom I please.
You work for me.
That does not equate to belonging.
Then belong to me. Belong to me!
No.
Suddenly, the Grand Duke’s shadow grasped Mama’s shadow by the throat, pushing her body against the same looking glass.
Ah! I heard her scream, guttural, full of rage. I hate you.
And I love you. A crack formed in the glass beneath her head.
A blink, and the looking glass was empty. But the crack glinted through the dust.
“Are you all right? Do you wish to see the bedroom?” came Alec’s voice.
“No,” I stammered. “I need air.”
It was twilight by the time I burst out of the mansion through a side door, gulping the fresh air as though it were a lifeline. The rain had stopped, though the blue-tinged air and trees were soaked in it.
Another vision…What did it mean? And where was Mama?
Suddenly, the door behind me slammed open, and I whirled to face Inspector Allard. “Mademoiselle Lenormand,” he said, in what seemed genuine surprise.
“What are you doing here?” I said, feeling prickly, brambly.
“I only wanted to…get away for a little while.”
I instantly regretted my rudeness. “Me, too.”
He pulled a box out of his pocket and offered me a cigarette. “Care for a smoke?”
I really didn’t want to say yes, but the draw of a cigarette was strong. “Fine.”
He lit our cigarettes and immediately took a drag of his, not watching me for once.
His eyes were following a swallow, whose wing had caught on a tree branch that dangled at a broken angle.
Before I realized it, he was walking toward the tree and the broken branch.
He took one last drag of his cigarette and tossed it away in a flicker of vanishing orange, then removed his coat.
“If I fall, do you promise to call for help?”
I couldn’t help the twitch of my lips. “What kind of monster do you think I am?”
The inspector strode away with a shrug, and I watched him climb onto the first branch with enviable ease and dexterity.
He had pulled back his shirtsleeves, and my eyes wandered to the strain of the muscles in his arms. I brought the cigarette to my lips, berating myself for noticing.
I inhaled sharply and held the smoke in for a moment.
He climbed up a little more, still as easily as ever, and pulled back the broken branch to the panicked flapping of wings, until with one violent jerk, the bird freed herself.
Her snow-white belly was reduced to but a speck in the darkening sky as it careened away like a shooting star, tumbling through the clouds.
Patches of sweat showed through his white shirt as the inspector strode back to me, his coat slung casually over one shoulder.
I wanted to sweep those curls from his glistening forehead. Stupid, I berated myself some more. So he saved a bird. He was still an inspector with too many questions.
“How did I do?” The coat stayed off, the shirtsleeves pulled back and revealing too much of his arms. They were toned, with a light dusting of freckles.
I glanced away, but not before his eyes snagged mine, catching me in the act. One side of his mouth lifted, and I thought I would die of humiliation. “You like birds, Chagall, orange tea, chocolate,” I found myself saying. “Is there anything else I should know, Inspector Allard?”
“That I’d like for you to call me Gabriel.”
He was standing too close, and I stepped away. “I prefer Inspector Allard.”
He lit another cigarette, his blue eyes settling on me. “And you, Mademoiselle Lenormand, read mysterious auras, tell damnably good fortunes, grow herb gardens, entertain famous artists, hate making chocolate cake. May I call you Zina?”
“No, you may not.”
He gave a hearty laugh, finally pushing those irritating curls from his face. “You are impossible.”
“As are you.”
“Will you tell me why you are excluding me from your séance?”
“I don’t hold séances with nonbelievers. I cannot afford the disruption.”
“Then make a believer out of me.”
I turned to face him. “I am answering all your questions—ridiculous questions—and now you wish for me to convince you of the truth of what I do, Inspector Allard?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “And anyway, you cannot tell me I cannot be somewhere. It naturally makes the inspector in me suspicious.”
“Fine. You may be on the premises, but not in the room. You are unbelievable, you know that?”
“As are you.”
I couldn’t help but share a smile with him.
“Thank you,” he said suddenly, those blue eyes once more riveted on me, “for answering my questions. I know it cannot have been easy.”
“It wasn’t. It’s not.” A beat. “May I ask you a question?”
“Yes, though I’m afraid I cannot promise an answer.”
I ignored that. “What is your theory?”
The inspector took a slow, thoughtful inhale of his cigarette, flicking ash.
I didn’t think he would reply, but he said, “This is only a theory, but I don’t believe your mother was killed by a random lover.
I…don’t think she had many lovers at all.
From what I’ve heard, she was working too closely, too intimately, with the Grand Duke. ”
My talk with Alec flickered by, the latest vision—another violent scene. “You think they were involved?”
Inspector Allard shrugged. “Maybe. Either way, he was interested in her, his wife mad with jealousy, and their friends were noticing.”
“You think he killed her?”
“I think he may have, or somebody close to him.”
“But if that is true, what happened to him?”
The inspector eyed me warily. “The princess claims you’ve seen his ghost.”
Did she now. “Strange, as she told me she didn’t believe me. Neither do you.”
“No, I am not a believer of the occult. But I thought she was. At least, that is what she told me.” He waved it away. “I think he could have disappeared.”
I stared at Inspector Allard, stunned. “You believe he is alive?”
“It is just one theory.”
The inspector was wrong, of course, but I wouldn’t correct him.
The alternative pointed the finger at my family, the tearoom, its garden.
Though I wanted to help him with Mama’s case and help deter him from going after the tearoom, his liking me its own kind of protection, I had to protect Baba Valya and Samovar.
The ash in my mouth turned against me, turned my stomach.
I took one last drag of the cigarette and tossed it aside.
“Well, as much as I would love to stay, I need to return to the tearoom and my grandmother.”
I had started to walk away, when I heard his voice behind me, low and husky. “So long, Zina.”
I didn’t turn, or correct him. I hid my smile, even as I felt his gaze burn right through me, like the smoldering end of his cigarette through the quickly descending night.
The mansion loomed dark and forbidding behind me.
My last thought as it disappeared from view was that the inspector’s aura was clean, a fine, fresh pale blue mist not polluted with ulterior motives. My smile slipped. But he did have them.