Chapter 29
Zina
I had another meeting with the eclectic group the next night.
This time, at the Witch Rock of Montmartre.
They had been white-faced and visibly shaken.
I pressed them for an answer, given Mama’s message, but Henriette insisted that I wait until they made their decision.
Agnès had given me an encouraging nod, and I could only hope there was hope that they would help me.
Now I had another rendezvous with Inspector Allard, as he had asked to see me.
That prickle was back. I turned and scanned the street behind me.
A cold breeze blew, and my gaze snagged on a familiar face.
Once handsome, with grooves of pain and regret etched into the flesh like scars.
I could practically see Mama’s grave in our garden, the dagger hidden beneath my floorboards. But I wouldn’t be afraid.
I backtracked. The man was sitting at a half-empty café with a newspaper spread in front of him.
If not for that breeze, the momentary crumpling of his paper, I wouldn’t have noticed him.
As I had, I marched right up to him. “Are you following me?” I asked.
Perhaps it had been him watching me the entire time.
Inspector Laurent glanced up. “Ah, Mademoiselle Lenormand.” Instead of embarrassment at having been caught out, a flicker of delight, even an odd curiosity, lit in his green-flecked brown eyes.
“It is a pleasure to see you again.” He gestured to the chair opposite him.
“Would you join me for a moment, please?”
He had an aromatic cup of coffee steaming beside him that made my mouth water.
I resisted the urge to lean over and peek inside.
“Am I under some kind of surveillance?” I crossed my arms, losing any gratefulness or goodwill toward the man.
“I thought you believed that any claims against my grandmother and her tearoom are empty? What is it you want, Inspector Laurent?”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Be assured that I am only here to set you at ease and let you know I have your best interests in mind.”
“Which are? Why?”
He paused, as though debating how to best break an unpleasant piece of news. “Has Inspector Allard been troubling you?”
Kind of? I settled on, “Not really.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he hasn’t been troubling me more than your lot usually does.”
Inspector Laurent gave a laugh. “Nothing unusual, then?”
“Well,” I thought for a moment, “he did suggest a search of our tearoom.”
“He what?” came out as a bark.
“I said no, and he changed his mind. You see? There is no reason why you should spy on me or follow me or force me into talks with you. I handled it perfectly adequately myself. My grandmother has taught me well. Besides, I would think a chief inspector had better things to do with his time.” If Inspector Laurent didn’t believe in the merit of the claims against Baba Valya and Samovar, it was mind-boggling why he even bothered.
“Yes.” This time, his laugh was soft. “You certainly do remind me of someone I used to know.” He shook his head, as if to rid himself of the memory.
“We…” I fumbled, “w-will never know who killed my mother, will we?”
A shadow crossed his face. But he said, “You never know, mademoiselle,” rather kindly.
His energy was sepia-hued and fragrant with cinnamon, which indicated a nostalgia for the past, a warmth and strength.
Inspector Laurent folded his paper neatly and rose.
He hesitated, then added, “Be careful.” He looked as though he would say more, but instead, he reddened beneath his blond mustache, muttered something, and hurried on.
I looked after the man a little dumbfounded but then hurried on my own way—toward Parc Monceau and Inspector Allard.
Only, a little slower now. I wanted to believe the inspector’s desire for truth, for justice, his inherent decency, could win over his darkness, but what if it couldn’t?
Did I still want him despite it—or because of it?
Either way, I would see and judge for myself. Even if it was wrong.
“Why is it that every time I see you, you look like death?”
The words echoed Katya’s, and I almost laughed. I glanced up and there was the inspector, striding purposefully toward me.
Be careful. Laurent’s warning darted through my mind like a slippery fish.
“Thank you for meeting me,” the inspector said, once he drew closer.
I nodded, curious about what he had to say. We walked a little deeper into the park. The violet of the trees was turning charcoal, as if being sketched there by an invisible hand.
“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this…” He ground to a stop and glanced about, as though somebody was listening, maybe Lucian Laurent. The sour smell of guilt wafted from him. It was as murky as the Seine. “But I no longer care.”
I was taken aback, especially by how quickly his aura returned to his usual pale blue mist.
Inspector Allard pulled me off the path and under a copse of trees, his eyes burning blue.
“As part of my investigation, I have been looking into Olga and Alec. Since they have lived most of their lives away from France, it has been difficult to find anything. I was waiting to hear from a friend, an American, who used to live in Russia.”
Where was he going with this? “I am guessing you’ve had word.”
“I have. He told me some—interesting information.” The inspector’s voice was soft yet urgent.
“As Romanovs, the Grand Duke’s family moved into the Marble Palace in Saint Petersburg after his father died.
His mother lived on in the house until the last tsar forced them to change residences.
Evidently, he didn’t consider the Grand Duke’s wife royal, and he once more sent him into exile, the wife and children to a more modest home.
It was whispered the mama was pushy, the son a dolt, and the girl strange—witchlike. ”
Witchlike. Unnerved, I waited for more, watching the passersby, their heels click-clacking against the pavement, the ladies’ evening dresses clinking and swishing. A gurgle of laughter, a wink of a smile. A whiff of lavender or rose water.
“At the same time, I have been interviewing the siblings’ neighbors in Boulogne-sur-Seine, to see if anybody remembered them from their trips to Paris when they were young.
There was nothing, until a few families returned from wintering in the south, and I went and saw them.
They told me they would regularly have contact with the Grand Duke’s family, even attend dinners and soirees at the Boulogne-sur-Seine mansion.
When his family was in town, that is. Otherwise, during his wife’s and children’s lengthy absences, he stayed in his town house. ”
The tearoom. I avoided Inspector Allard’s gaze.
“One neighbor caught Olga sleepwalking in her house more than once. Another found her wandering the streets in a daze, totally lost to the world. Yet another heard screaming from the mansion’s upper floors on multiple visits.
He recalls jokingly asking the Grand Duke if he kept young ladies locked up in the towers of his castle like a veritable Bluebeard, to which the Grand Duke had replied stiffly, ‘My daughter is not well.’ All the neighbors mentioned the daughter would disappear for weeks at a time.
Where she went, no one knew. The Grand Duke and his wife were tight-lipped, saying their daughter was visiting relatives or friends.
The brother was then seen alone, always alone, never with friends or acquaintances, his sister seemingly his only companion.
When asked where she was, he would shrug and say evasively, ‘at that place where they are supposed to make her feel better.’ ”
“An asylum,” I whispered, recalling Olga in her Snow Queen costume, her energy cold as frost. Where else would an upper-class royal family send a daughter with screaming fits and a proneness to sleepwalking?
Inspector Allard gave a nod. “That is what I assumed, too. I am checking the hospitals in and around Paris. Presumably, she would have been placed there under a different name. Remember when I told you I thought there was something more to these cases? Well, I am starting to think there is truth to what you said about Olga, her lying her way into your grandmother’s tearoom, whether the inheritance was an excuse or not. ”
I nearly rolled my eyes. “She has designs not only on the tearoom but against my family, my grandmother.” Me, I wanted to add but held it in. “Why tell me all this?”
An awkward shrug. “I, well, believe you. And I have come to care for you. I…have this urge to make sure you are safe. Are you—safe, Zina? Are you all right?” His gaze was cornflower blue.
Not one bit. “Why wouldn’t I be, Inspector?” But my heart beat a little faster.
He watched me, too closely. Then he scrubbed the back of his neck, shook his head. “Still ‘Inspector,’ eh?”
“Oh, all right—Gabriel.” I tested it out on my tongue.
“So will you go back to Katya’s now, Zina?”
I glanced about, saw no one, Inspector Laurent nowhere in sight. My exhaustion, the events of that night, crashed into me. “I should go back, yes.”
“Because if you didn’t…maybe we could walk awhile?”
I thought of Mama, convinced that I should be doing something to help her.
But as my meeting with the 40 rue de Paradis group wasn’t until the next night, there wasn’t much I could do until then.
It was a warm evening, the first traces of the coming summer glimmering in the fragrant air like a promise.
I wanted to swim around in it, feel it settle on my skin like moonlight.
Ignoring my tired head and aching limbs, the dark feeling that had slipped inside at the memory of Mama’s message, I nodded.
“All right, Gabriel,” I said. “We could walk awhile.”
Maybe we were done pretending, the warnings and any fear peeling away. Our togetherness might not have been meant to be, but it did happen. It was an anomaly and a conundrum, but what if it worked regardless of that?
We left the park, walking past shuttered pastry shops and bright cafés exploding with laughter and chatter, the clinking of glasses and silverware, the aromas of succulent meals, ones I hungered for yet knew would be too much for my still-sensitive stomach.
Somewhere around the Arc de Triomphe, our hands tangled.
But it wasn’t shocking, or strange. It was all right.
The night wrapped us in its starry darkness.
It hid us from view, even from each other.
As though he weren’t an inspector and I weren’t me.
We knew our destination, yet we didn’t voice it.
We went on, along the wider, more expansive boulevards like avenue George V.
The buildings on either side were statelier and more expensive, filled with upscale hotels and restaurants that practically bubbled with costly champagne.
We passed some trees bursting into green bloom, then the even now busy intersection and long bridge over the Seine.
We made it past the Cathédrale de la Sainte-Trinité and down several streets before coming upon the lighted Eiffel Tower, gleaming like a golden beacon to the midnight-blue cityscape.
Some French considered the tower ugly. I found it Paris’s most meaningful sight.
It stood for my identity, that I was French before I was Russian.
It gave me assurance in this life and city and country that I had been born in like a weed, by chance, on somebody else’s whim.
It told me, Yes, you belong. You are meant to be here.
After a few more streets, we came to a modest apartment building. A shared, lingering smile before we climbed up to the fifth floor, concealed by shifting shadows and blinking electric lights that made space for us, secreted us away, like the night.
As soon as the door shut behind us, I felt his arms come around me, all of me.
His mouth was suddenly hot on my neck, on my collarbone, grazing the tops of my breasts.
His hands left little burning fires on my skin, stirring up the hunger inside, the want.
It was so different from what I had previously experienced with other men.
The feeling snarled with the illicitness, the darkness, the strange guilt festering beneath the pale blue mist of his aura.
Maybe it was his darkness calling to mine.
Maybe I wanted something a little bad. The thought snagged at me until my desire for the inspector, for Gabriel, spiraled through my body in a hot rush that set me aflame, flesh to insides, head to feet.
He pulled away with a deceptively simple yet intimate kiss of my hand.
His eyes held a question that burned into me like a glowing flame at one of my séances. Before being snuffed out. I knew then we weren’t leaving his apartment for the rest of the night. My instinct told me this was all we had, and I gave in.
Oh, but I was a fool. A damn fool.