Chapter 25
BOGDAN
“Beatrice's mask was turned backward when she was found,” Alison says. “We haven't released that detail.”
The chair's wooden arm digs into my palm. Across the table, Tessa reaches for Peggy, who keeps looking at the closed folder on Alison's knees.
I brought both women back to The Brass Camellia yesterday after Alison's team removed the display from my club. The coffin has been out of their reach all night. Now Alison has brought its meaning into the room.
Tessa's hand stops halfway across the cushion. Peggy catches it before she can draw it back.
“The replica was tied the same way?” I ask.
“The position matches. Someone could copy Beatrice's costume from the launch photographs. This detail wasn't in them.” Alison looks at the women. “That's why I wanted to speak to you in person.”
The hotel has closed its small ground-floor lounge to other guests for our meeting.
Through the courtyard glass, Monday's pale light falls over the sheltered tables and their dark candle cups.
Inside, a vase holds black paper flowers beside a tray of coffee nobody has poured.
The room smelled faintly of orange peel when I arrived.
A dish of dried slices sits beneath the flowers, ordinary autumn decoration that now seems cruelly cheerful.
Tessa wears a blue sweater with sleeves pulled over the base of her hands. Her hair is loose, falling forward when she bends toward Peggy. I can see only part of her face. I want to move around the table and bring her against me, but she has a question ready before I can stand.
“You think Ethan knew how she was left?”
Alison keeps her voice level. “I'm treating him as a suspect in her murder. The display's delivery record matters, and we're checking his account against the launch recording. I'm seeking permission to search his studio.”
Peggy lets go of Tessa's hand. She folds her arms over her middle, pressing herself into the sofa as though she needs its back to hold her upright. The small movement makes my own breathing feel too loud.
Ethan kissed her in my corridor. He walked through my doors with a camera, beside men I paid to keep danger out. I knew he was taking money from Luka's side before either woman knew to fear him.
I could tear the wooden arm from this chair and still leave every one of those facts intact.
Alison opens her folder and takes out a printed portrait, laying it faceup on the table between us.
“This is Flora, the woman I asked you about last month. The agency used this crop in its promotion. I'm still looking for the original.”
Flora wears a dark dress with gold leaves along one shoulder.
Her face is turned toward someone just beyond the camera, her mouth open in the beginning of a smile.
Behind her, a narrow crescent of pale wooden chair back rises beside the fabric before the edge of the picture cuts it off.
The print shows almost nothing of the room.
Tessa leans forward. On the sofa beside her, Peggy's arms loosen enough for one hand to reach the table, but she stops short of the paper.
Tessa smiled for Ethan's camera at the ball too. I remember her beside the stairs, holding her mask away from her face while I stood with my hand at her waist. I was right there, pleased to have our picture taken.
Alison asks whether either woman recognizes Flora or the costume. Tessa shakes her head. Peggy studies the gold leaves, then says the dress isn't one of theirs. She has no name to give Alison for the woman wearing it.
I look at the clipped edge again. Whoever made the advertisement wanted a face and a pretty shoulder. Everything beyond them has been discarded.
“You haven't placed Ethan behind that camera yet,” I say.
“No. The old agency credit doesn't identify the photographer. I'm following that work separately.”
Alison leaves the portrait where the women can see it while she takes out her phone. She asks about any contact since Peggy's breakup, making clear that the question includes messages Peggy hasn't answered. Peggy says there's been nothing new. Her voice is flat with the effort of keeping it steady.
I watch her stare at the portrait instead of reaching for her own phone. On Thursday, she'd ended the call to Ethan with all of us standing around my desk. I remember how she'd waited afterward, as though the screen might offer an explanation he hadn't.
Alison asks her to preserve anything that arrives and refuse any meeting. Then she turns to me.
“I need the complete payment material. Any replies since Thursday, too.”
The folder beside my chair has been pressing against my ankle since we sat down. I bring it onto the table, opening it toward Tessa and Peggy before I give Alison the copies beneath.
They've already seen the photograph and invoice.
The complete request Devon forwarded is with them, along with Klim's dated notes and his current account of the checks.
I send the complete file to both women from my phone while Alison reads.
Peggy opens the message, then sets her phone beside the folder.
Nothing in the updated material proves what the cash bought.
The unanswered questions are there with everything we know.
Alison checks that the forwarded messages are included. Klim is outside with Matvei, and she says she'll speak to him directly before leaving. Her attention returns to the women as she gathers the portrait.
“I'll send you this copy. If you recognize anything later, tell me. You don't need to work it out yourselves.” Alison taps her screen, and Tessa checks the incoming portrait before setting her phone beside Peggy's.
Peggy nods. When Alison stands, Tessa gets up too, asking whether she needs them to stay at the hotel all day. They can keep to their escorted work arrangements, Alison says, and she has both their numbers.
At the door, I tell Alison that Klim will give her anything relevant as soon as it reaches us. She looks back at the open payment folder.
“Make sure he can.”
I hold the door until she passes through, then leave it ajar. Klim moves with her toward the entrance. Matvei remains in view beside the stairs, with the corridor between him and this room clear.
When I turn back, Peggy has picked up Klim's notes. Tessa stands at the end of the sofa, pulling her sleeves farther over her hands.
I want to get the papers out of their way. Take them upstairs, give the women lunch, call men who can put their hands on Ethan. My body wants a task with weight and resistance, something that will yield if I apply enough force.
Instead I sit opposite Peggy.
“Klim wanted to tell you on Tuesday,” I say. “He asked me to bring both of you upstairs. I stopped him.”
The paper makes a soft crackle in her hands. Tessa stays standing.
“I gave myself forty-eight hours to get an answer. You were still dating Ethan, and I knew that. The guards knew his name while you were waiting for his calls.”
Peggy looks up. I've been watched by men waiting to see whether I'll bleed or beg, and I've never wanted to leave a chair more than I want to leave this one.
“I should've warned you that afternoon. I was wrong. I'm sorry.”
The apology leaves my mouth without making the room easier to sit in. I hear Matvei's radio briefly through the open door, a low burst that stops before I can make out the words. Nobody comes to interrupt us.
Peggy lays the page across the others. “I was making plans with him.”
“I know.”
“You don't know what I was hoping for.”
I stop myself from answering. She has every right to keep that from me. Whatever she'd imagined for herself, I let her go on imagining it while men who answered to me knew what I'd kept from her.
Tessa sits beside her. Peggy moves closer until their shoulders touch, and neither looks toward the doorway for an escape. I stay where I am while she wipes beneath one eye with the folded edge of a tissue.
“I told Tessa the extra men made it safe,” I say. “They couldn't make those two days harmless.”
Tessa looks at me then. The movement is small, but I feel it across the table. On Thursday, she'd cried while I explained the protection I'd arranged. Every explanation asked her to put the tears aside and admire the arrangement.
I wish I'd understood that before she packed.
Peggy takes another tissue, holding it beneath her nose. After a while she asks Tessa for a few minutes upstairs. Tessa starts to rise with her, but Peggy touches her sleeve and says she'd like to wash her face alone.
I stand to let her pass. She carries her phone, leaving the payment material on the table. Matvei comes forward when she reaches the door, and she follows him toward the stairs without looking back at me.
Tessa remains on the sofa. I don't sit until she turns toward the cushion Peggy has left empty.
It gives under my weight. Beside me, she draws one foot back beneath the edge of her skirt. There's a narrow space between our knees that I could close by moving an inch. I keep noticing it while I wait for her to speak.
“That's what I needed you to understand,” she says.
I look at her hands, then make myself look at her face. “You asked me on Tuesday whether we had a name. I let you believe there was nothing to tell you. Then I went home with you.”
Her eyelids lower. When she opens them again, tears have gathered along the lashes.
“I was happy you came home.”
The words hurt more than if she'd raised her voice. I remember the taste of the apple pastry she'd brought me, the waistcoat folded over her arm, her turning at my office door to tell me to eat. She'd made room for an ordinary evening with me inside a day I was already hiding from her.
“I'm sorry, Tessa.”
She nods once, taking the apology without reaching for me. The coffee tray is within reach. I pour a cup because my throat has become difficult to swallow around, then set the pot down before the lid can rattle against it again.
The first mouthful is bitter and barely warm. I hold it for a moment before swallowing. When I return the cup to its saucer, Tessa is watching my hand.
“I believe you,” she says. “I know you mean it.”
I want her to finish with a request to come home. The words almost leave my own mouth. Her clothes could be back beside mine before evening, her shoes under the bench, all those small signs of her that I had begun to expect without earning the right to expect them forever.
Tessa rubs beneath her eye. “I'm still hurt.”
“I know.”
The answer holds nothing I can use to hurry her. I put the cup aside and let my empty hand rest on the cushion between us. Her gaze follows it, then rises to my face.
“You look tired.”
“I haven't been sleeping well.”
She breathes out through her nose, almost a laugh. “The hotel pillows are ridiculous. There are six. I keep putting five on the chair.”
For a moment I can picture her doing it, gathering an armful of pillows in the blue sweater. The picture hurts with how much I want to be there. I've paid for the room, but I don't know where she puts her glass of water or which side of the curtains she opens in the morning.
“I'll have the extras taken away,” I say.
Her mouth curves. “I can defeat a cushion, Bogdan.”
I smile, and some of the ache around my eyes eases.
She settles farther back against the sofa.
The neckline of her sweater has slipped a little to one side, showing the bare slope between her neck and shoulder.
I want to brush her hair away and kiss the place where her neck meets her shoulder, slow enough to feel her shiver.
My fingers curl into the cushion to keep from reaching.
I miss touching her without making her decide what it means.
Tessa's fingers rest beside mine on the cushion. I turn my hand, leaving the palm open, and she lays hers in it. Her skin is cool. I hold her hand while she looks toward the courtyard, where the hanging lanterns are unlit in the afternoon.
“Will you still come on Saturday?” she asks.
I know which appointment she means. The morning has stayed empty in my calendar since we booked the first scan together.
“Yes.”
She turns back. “I want you there when we see the baby.”
My grip tightens before I can stop it. I ease it again, bringing our joined hands onto my knee. For days I've been thinking about how to get her home, and now she's asking me to be beside her in a room neither of us has entered yet.
“I'll be there,” I tell her.
She stays beside me for another minute, her thumb moving once over my fingers. I let the quiet remain until she says she should check on Peggy. At the stairs, Matvei is coming back down. He stops when he sees Tessa rise, waiting to go up with her.
I stand too, but her hand slips from mine before we reach the door.
She looks back from the threshold. “Saturday, then.”
“I'll be downstairs,” I tell her.