Chapter Eighteen
Elizabeth rested her head against the wooden recess of the dining-room window, cradling her teacup between her hands; the tea long since grown cold. The slice of toast she’d buttered half an hour ago lay abandoned on her plate.
“I’ve brought some fresh tea, milady.” Sylvie set the tray down on the table and reached for the plate. “And this toast, it has gone cold. I will ask Cook to make more, oui?”
“Thank you, Sylvie, but there’s really no need.” Elizabeth turned from the window. “I’m not very hungry.”
“Très bien, milady.” Sylvie gathered the untouched place setting from the head of the table onto the tray, the napkin still in its ring, and carried it out.
Elizabeth crossed to the table and poured herself a fresh cup, her mind turning over the events of the previous evening.
Her absence from Lady Davenport’s drawing room last night had gone all but unnoticed in the end.
She’d returned to find Dr Lawson pressing a sleeping draught on the widow, and the excuse she’d concocted with Oliver on the back stairs about getting lost had earned little more than a distracted nod from Clemmi.
It had been close to ten when Oliver made an appearance, staying long enough to exchange a few words with Lady Davenport and check on Clemmi before leaving with Dr Lawson.
They’d arrived back at Clemmi’s apartment shortly after eleven o’clock, though it had been long past one before either of them had turned in.
Clemmi’s concern had begun with Cecily, how she would cope, whether she would still return to England, before turning, as Elizabeth had feared it might, to Oliver.
Two of his colleagues dead within days of each other. What if something was going on at the chancery? What if Oliver was in some kind of danger?
Elizabeth had listened, soothing where she could, assuring her friend it was nothing more than a terrible coincidence, all the while knowing it was nothing of the sort. She hated keeping things from Clemmi, but that was all she’d done since her arrival.
Even after retiring, she’d lain awake for hours, her mind replaying the scene in Sir Conrad’s study over and over: the Webley beneath his hand, the note squared on the blotter.
And when it wasn’t the study, it was the hidden room, where one minute she’d been convinced they intended to kill her, and the next they were calmly laying out their plan to expose the traitor.
Mr Julian Arbuthnot, Sir Conrad’s number two.
brRRING! brRRING!
Sylvie rushed past the dining room, muttering something under her breath about the noise waking Madame Sterling.
“It’s for you, milady.” Sylvie hovered in the doorway. “A Mademoiselle Hughes.”
“Thank you, Sylvie.”
Had Cybil heard about Sir Conrad? Elizabeth turned it over as she made her way through to the entrance hall. Maggie would already be at work by now and would have told Cybil the moment she’d found out about it.
And if Cybil asked, what then? The death wasn’t public, and everything behind it was bound up in the promise she’d given Oliver.
Her eye fell on the morning’s Figaro, still folded on the hall table, as she reached for the receiver. The Dawes loan. The franc. Not a single line about Sir Conrad. Oliver’s doing, no doubt. Just how far did his reach extend?
“Cybil?” Elizabeth pressed the receiver to her ear.
“Elizabeth. Forgive the early call, but have you seen this morning’s Figaro?”
Had the story about Sir Conrad broken after all?
“No, why?”
“Listen to this.” A rustle of paper came down the line before Cybil continued.
“The salons are simply humming with talk of a certain English lady whose devotion to her charitable committees is matched only by her devotion to the baize. Alas, the tables have not returned the lady’s affection, and whether her long-suffering husband will continue to settle what fortune declines to is anyone’s guess.
You know who they’re talking about, don’t you? ”
Gambling debts? Thank goodness.
“I don’t, no.”
“It’s Lady Davenport. It has to be. An English lady, and everyone knows how devoted she is to her charities.”
Lady Davenport! Oliver might have kept Sir Conrad’s death out of the papers, but he wouldn’t have seen this one coming.
“As are half the diplomatic wives in Paris.”
“But most don’t bear the title of Lady.”
She had a point. And Cybil’s instincts were seldom wrong.
“Do you think Clemmi might have heard anything, since they move in the same circles?”
Clemmi had spent half the night fretting over Cecily. There was no way Elizabeth could ask her whether there was any truth in it.
“As far as I’m aware, they sit on a couple of committees together, but I’d say it’s more duty than friendship.” She tried to downplay Clemmi’s relationship with Lady Davenport. “But leave it with me; I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Meanwhile, I’ll call in at Le Figaro and do a little digging, see if I can find out who their source is. Shall we say Café Colette, around two?”
“Two o’clock will be perfect.” She had one or two things to attend to herself.
Elizabeth replaced the receiver in its cradle and crossed the hall to her bedroom. She retrieved the matchbook from her handbag and turned it over between her fingers.
Deep matte black, with a velvety finish, its cover entirely unmarked save for a single blind-embossed moth at the centre; the delicate pattern of its wings visible only when she tilted it to catch the light.
There was no name, no address, no hint of its origin, but whatever the establishment was, it had no need to advertise.
So why had she seen three of them almost in as many days? First in Pippin’s hand at Le Figaro. With Oriane de Massenet at Le Jardin Suspendu. And then, last night, in Lady Davenport’s drawing room.
What did a chevalier servant, a minister’s wife, and the wife of the late British Ambassador all have in common?
Whatever it was, this matchbook had the answer.