Chapter Fifteen
Elizabeth’s fingers drummed against her bag, the leather-bound book inside producing a dull, hollow beat in the silence of the lobby as she watched the floors tick by above the lift doors and willed it to move faster.
She hadn’t meant to be gone all morning, but with the Ambassador, Oliver, and Miss Bembridge all away from the chancery at the same time, the opportunity to search Ashby’s office had been too good to pass up.
The lift shuddered to a halt on the ground floor. Elizabeth hauled back the cage and stepped inside.
The man was practically a ghost.
She pressed the button for the third-floor, and the lift began to rise, juddering as it climbed.
Not a ghost. A fiction.
The bare office, the dressed room on the rue de la Fontaine, the clothes that didn’t fit – none of it had been lived in. It had been built. Assembled just convincingly enough to pass a cursory inspection, and not a detail further.
Someone had constructed Mr Ashby.
Which meant someone else entirely had died on the Pont Neuf in his name.
But the question was, who?
The lift climbed past the first-floor, the gate trembling against its runners as the mechanism beneath her feet gave its familiar, reluctant groan with every foot gained.
Elizabeth glanced at her wristwatch – half-past-one. She could have walked to the Bois de Boulogne and back twice over in the five hours she’d been gone.
She’d told Sylvie she was going for a walk and would be back in time for lunch. The words tossed over her shoulder with no plan beyond getting out the door before Clemmi woke.
Clemmi was bound to ask where she’d been and what she’d done, and there was no truthful answer Elizabeth could give without bringing Oliver’s name into it, and the last thing she wanted was to tell her best friend that she suspected her husband could be a murderer … or at least complicit in murder.
Perhaps the book would tell her something Mr Ashby’s office and the wardrobe hadn’t.
The lift came to rest on the third-floor. Elizabeth dragged back the gate and crossed the landing to Clemmi’s apartment, pressing her finger to the bell.
But for now, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo would have to wait. First, there was the question of her five-hour walk to account for.
“You’re back, milady,” Sylvie said, pulling the front door wide to let her enter. “Madame Sterling was asking after you.”
“I went for a walk out towards the Bois de Boulogne and completely lost track of the time, I’m afraid.” Elizabeth stepped past her into the entrance hall, slipping off her glove.
She crossed the hall, drawing level with the salon doorway. “What beautiful flowers.” She breathed in their sweetness as she paused beside the vase of Cattleya orchids, gold marking the heart of every white bloom. “Wherever did they come from?”
“Monsieur Sterling, my lady. He brought them with him when he came home after his meeting.”
Home? At this time? “Where’s Madame Sterling now? Is she resting?”
“Non, milady, Monsieur Sterling took her to lunch at Le Pavillon Doré. Madame left word you’d be most welcome to join them. I could ask Georges to arrange a taxi for you?”
“No, it’s quite all right, Sylvie. I have some correspondence to catch up on.”
“Shall I ask Cook to prepare you something?”
“Just some tea, perhaps?”
“Of course, milady.” Sylvie inclined her head before disappearing in the direction of the kitchen.
Flowers. Lunch at Le Pavillon Doré. Did Mr Sterling have a guilty conscience, or was he deliberately trying to keep his wife and Elizabeth apart?
Elizabeth made her way along the hall to her bedroom, eager to get to work, shutting the door behind her.
“Now, Monsieur Le Comte.” She removed the book from her bag, setting it down on the dressing table. “Let’s see what secrets you’ve been keeping.”
Elizabeth settled onto the dressing table stool and drew the book towards her. Holding it up at an angle, she fanned the pages from front to back with her thumb, then turned it over and did the same from back to front.
Nothing.
The front pastedown lay flat against the board from hinge to fore-edge, smooth and flush at every edge, but the one on the back sat a fraction off-square, its lower edge not quite parallel to the tail, a faint line of dried residue marking where the adhesive had been lifted and re-laid.
She ran her thumb along the tail from the spine out towards the fore-edge, slowly, pressing a little more firmly on the return pass.
There it was again, beneath the pad of her thumb, halfway along – the faintest rise, no bigger than a folded visiting card.
Her gaze skimmed the dressing table – a glass powder jar, her mother’s pearls coiled beside the jewellery box, a silver-backed hairbrush, her favourite perfume. But nothing thin enough, nothing with an edge.
Of course.
She reached for her bag, slipped her hand inside and fished out a metal nail file – the tip filed to a narrow point at one end, a flat, rounded edge at the other.
Perfect.
Securing the book with her left hand, she worked the tip into the hairline gap at the lower edge of the pastedown, where the adhesive had already been lifted and re-laid.
The file caught, then slid, and she eased it in a fraction further, tilting the angle just enough to lift rather than tear.
She pressed the blade flat, working it along the tail until she felt the seal give and release the pastedown.
Beneath it, flush against the board, lay a folded slip of paper.
She set the file down and eased the paper free with two fingers before unfolding it to reveal two columns of figures, neatly lined up in rows. Right then, Mr Ashby. Let’s see if we can work out what you’ve been up to, shall we?
Elizabeth ran her eye over the figures. Each group held three numbers … the first in the hundreds, the next never more than thirty, the last never more than twenty. But hundreds of what, though? Francs? House numbers? Her gaze slid from the slip to the book and back again.
Or pages?
She turned to page two hundred and thirty-one and counted down to the twelfth line, working her fingertip along it to the fourth word. Cheval, she knew, was horse.
She worked through the remaining groups one by one.
Remords. Chandelle. Colère.
Chandelle, she knew – candle. And remords sat close enough to remorse to chance it. Colère, however, was a mystery.
Horse, remorse, candle. No matter which way she arranged them, nothing made sense.
“Madame?” Sylvie gave a light tap on the bedroom door.
“Come in.” Elizabeth snapped the book shut.
“Your tea, milady.” Sylvie entered, a silver tray balanced between her hands. She set it down on the dressing table, easing the powder jar aside to make room. She filled the cup and set the pot back on its stand. “Will there be anything else, milady?”
“Actually, Sylvie, before you go, would you mind translating something for me?”
“I can try.”
“What does colère mean?”
“Colère? It is anger, milady.”
“And remords?”
“Remorse. When you are sorry for something you have done.”
“And if I were to put them together – cheval, remords, chandelle, colère – would that mean anything to you? A saying, perhaps?”
Sylvie shrugged, the crease between her brows deepening as she repeated them. “Non, milady. Together, they are nothing. Just words.”
“That’s rather what I feared.”
“You are studying French?”
“I thought it was time I brushed up on it; being here has reminded me just how much I’ve let my language skills slip.”
“Your French is good.”
“That’s very kind of you to say, Sylvie, but I’m well aware of mes petites faiblesses.”
“Très bien, milady.” Sylvie dipped her head with a smile and drew the door closed behind her.
Elizabeth waited until her footsteps faded before opening the book. Horse, remorse, candle, anger. She tried them with the anger first, then the remorse, then as two pairs, and each arrangement made no more sense than the last.
Four words that meant nothing in either French nor English.
A code within a code, perhaps?
Elizabeth slid the book towards the mirror, the words beginning to blur on the page. She lifted the teacup to her lips, eyes closing as she savoured the first sip.
She’d counted and recounted the lines and words, double-checked the page numbers, and still nothing made sense.
So what was she missing?
Opening her eyes, she set the teacup back on the saucer.
“No rest for the wicked, as they say.” She reached for the book, her gaze snagging on its reflection. In the glass, the two hundred and thirty-one at the corner of the page read one, three, two.
Of course.
She inverted the numbers, flipping through the pages before coming to rest on page one-hundred-thirty-two.
Why hadn’t she thought of it before?
Placing her finger at the top of the page, she counted down twenty-one lines to the fourth word along.
Curtain.
Elizabeth read the word twice, not sure what to make of it. Her eyes skimmed the page, looking for any other English words, but found none. Was it a printing error, had they missed an accent?
Her shoulders dropped. If this didn’t work, then she was out of options.
She worked through the others, reversing each group in turn until she had curtain, taxi, paradise and Marne.
Curtain, taxi, paradise, Marne.
She turned the words over in her mind.
Marne, she knew at once – Gallieni commandeering six hundred taxis to hold off the German advance on the city on the seventh of September 1914. That accounted for Marne and taxi, but what was their significance?
The date, perhaps?
Paradise proved harder to place. Paradis in French carried the same meaning as its English counterpart. She hung her head in her hands, her fingers sliding through her hair. What sprang to mind when she thought of paradise?
The Garden of Eden. Heaven. Elysium. Les Champs-élysées.
That’s it. Her head snapped up. The élysée Palace.
She had a date and a location now. Surely curtain had to refer to the time.
Think, Elizabeth, think.
She twisted in her seat.
Curtain call … it had to be. Come nine o’clock, every theatre in Paris raised its curtain without exception.
The élysée Palace. The seventh of September. Nine o’clock.
She rose from the stool and crossed to the window and began pacing as she turned it over in her mind as if it were on some bizarre loop.
The élysée Palace. The seventh of September. Nine o’clock.
Whatever was planned for the seventh, was Mr Ashby even aware of it, since the slip had still been sealed inside the pastedown?
Was Ashby the recipient or the messenger?
Had he died before he’d had the chance to deliver?
Was that the reason he’d been murdered?
So many questions and only five days to find the answers, she continued pacing in front of the window.
The front door closed at the far end of the hall, and Clemmi’s voice carried, brighter than Elizabeth had heard it in days.
Elizabeth darted back to the dressing table and slipped the paper between the pages of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, settling the book at the back of the drawer and easing it shut.
She checked her reflection in the mirror, running a brush through her hair before crossing to the door, rehearsing her apology as she went.
Clemmi was bent over the vase of cattleya orchids, her head dipped low among the blooms.
“There you are!” She lifted her head at Elizabeth’s approach. “Aren’t they heavenly?”
“They are indeed.” Elizabeth couldn’t disagree. Whatever her personal opinions on Oliver Sterling, the flowers truly were exquisite. And they’d brought a bloom back to Clemmi’s cheeks she hadn’t seen since arriving in Paris.
“I’ve had the most wonderful afternoon, Elizabeth. Oliver has spoilt me rotten.” She caught Elizabeth’s hands, drawing her towards the sofa. “I can’t believe I doubted him, even for a second.”
“Clemmi, about this morn–”
“You’ll never guess where Oliver took me for lunch.
” Clemmi sank onto the sofa, pulling Elizabeth down beside her.
“Le Pavillon Doré. I’ve been begging him to take me since forever, and he’d reserved one of the little curtained alcoves, so it was just the two of us, as if the rest of Paris didn’t exist.”
“How lovely.” Curtained alcove. Had his seating arrangements really been about spending time with his wife, or was there something more calculated behind his choice?
“It was divine, Elizabeth. Suprême de volaille, then crêpes Suzette, which they flame right there at the table with so much ceremony you’d think we were royalty.
” Clemmi pressed a hand to her cheek, laughing.
“And the whole time, Oliver never once looked at his watch. You know how he is, always half in the room and half at the chancery, but today he was … he was my Oliver again.”
Elizabeth squeezed her friend’s hand. “I’m so pleased, truly. And speaking of this morning–”
“And to think I’d actually convinced myself he was seeing someone else.” Clemmi threw her eyes heavenward. “Another woman. What was I thinking? A man doesn’t bring his wife orchids and take her to Le Pavillon Doré if he’s … well, he simply doesn’t, does he?”
Elizabeth held her tongue. If Oliver had set out to buy his wife’s forgiveness, then he’d succeeded.
“And that’s not even the best part.” Clemmi twisted in her seat to face her.
“After lunch he had to go back to the Chancery, some business he had to take care of, and just as I was working up a good sulk about it, he told me he’d arranged one last surprise by way of an apology.
An afternoon at Maison Arden, on the rue de la Paix. ”
Any other time and Elizabeth would have been impressed by the lengths Oliver had gone to to make her dearest friend so happy. But were they really the actions of a devoted husband with a guilty conscience, or simply a distraction?
“He must have booked it all well in advance, the sly thing.” Clemmi turned her head from side to side. “They re-waved my hair, can you tell? And the sweetest girl gave me a facial and a manicure.” She spread her fingers for Elizabeth’s inspection. “I feel like a new woman.”
“You look it.” Elizabeth admired the rose-coloured polish on Clemmi’s nails.
“You should have seen the woman at the next basin,” Clemmi went on, curling her feet beneath her. “She had one of those little griffon dogs sitting on her lap through her entire treatment, wearing a bow to match her manicure, I promise you, and every time the girl came near with the–”
brRRING! brRRING!
“Perhaps it’s Oliver?”
A moment later Sylvie appeared in the doorway, her hands clasped at her waist. “Madame, it’s Lady Davenport on the telephone for you. She sounds … very upset, madame.”
“Cecily?” Clemmi uncurled her feet and pushed herself up from the sofa and made her way to the hall.
Elizabeth watched through the open doorway as Clemmi’s smile faded.
“Cecily, whatever’s the–”
Clemmi’s spine straightened, her free hand rising to the base of her throat.
“When? …
Yes … yes, of course.
No, we’ll be there at once, Cecily.”
She set the receiver back in its cradle and turned; the bloom drained from her cheeks.
“Clemmi?” Something cold settled in the pit of Elizabeth’s stomach. “Whatever’s happened?”
“It’s Sir Conrad. He’s … he’s dead.”