Chapter Thirty-five
“It was probably Madame Deniau,” Olivia snorts. “Of course it was Madame Vous. Creepy old wraith.”
My iPhone rang before my eyes were even open.
I look at the clock.
“It’s only ten in Los Angeles. Shouldn’t you be at some fabulous party flirting with tomorrow’s next A-lister?”
“I am not in Los Angeles.”
“You’re not?”
She hesitates. “I meant to say I am in Malibu. Nathan let me use his beach house for the weekend.”
“That was nice of him.”
Olivia makes a rude noise with her mouth. “His commission for the sale of A Quaint Milieu probably paid half of his mortgage. Letting me use it for a weekend is the least he could do.” A loud noise, like the roar of a jet engine, can be head in the background. “Ooh, the tide is coming in. Gotta go. Love.”
The line goes dead.
She calls back as I am about to eat a late lunch, her name and picture popping up on my screen.
“Bonjour, Olivia,” I say, holding the phone to my ear. “What’s the matter? Can’t sleep?”
“I will sleep just fine once you open your golden gates, Rapunzel, and let me sleep in one of your tower rooms.”
“What?”
“I am at your front gates. You have sounded so depressed this last week I wanted to surprise you with a visit. So, surprise!”
I laugh.
I tell her how to open the gates and where to park, then hurry to meet her near the stables. She pulls up in a rented Peugeot, hops out, and we are hugging as if we haven’t seen each other in years.
“Are you happy to see me?”
“Yes.” I say, hugging her again. “You can’t begin to know how happy I am to see you.”
“Just a minute,” she says, hurrying back to the car. “I come bearing gifts.”
She opens the passenger door and returns with a bottle of champagne and a pair of socks.
“Here,” she says, handing the gifts to me. “The champagne is for me and the socks are for Monsieur X. I figure you have probably pilfered most of his by now.”
“Funny.”
“I thought so.”
She pulls her suitcase out of the trunk and we enter the château via an entrance to the private apartments, a narrow wooden stairway.
“Where are all of your burly footmen to lug my traveling trunks?”
“As luck would have it, Xavier’s staff are gone for their annual summer holidays. It’s just Madame Deniau, a gardener, and a part-time housekeeper who comes in from the village.”
We spend the rest of the evening watching Beaches and drinking one of the bottles of wine we find in the liquor cabinet. When we have drained the last drop from the bottle and the credits are rolling up the screen, I show Olivia the boxes in the unfinished room. Marine’s boxes.
“What do you think?” I say, pulling the Marchesa wedding gown out of its box and holding it up for her to see.
“What do I think?” she cries. “What do I think? I’ll tell you what I think. Your Monsieur X murdered the first Madame de Maloret and buried her bones somewhere in this château.”
“Be serious.”
“I am serious,” she says, snatching the dress from my hands and flinging it back in the box as if it is cursed. “It all adds up: his reluctance to talk about Marine, the abandoned pooch, the boxes, the angry villagers.”
“You have spent too much time in La-La Land. People don’t get away with murder in the real world.”
“They do if they have a creepy, soul-sucking housekeeper to help them hide the body.”
“So now you think Madame Vous . . . Madame Deniau is a murderer, too?”
“Madame?”
Olivia screams and I startle at the sound of Madame Deniau’s papery voice behind us. My cheeks flush with heat as I turn to face her.
“Oui.”
She gestures to the hallway and says something in French, but I can’t understand her.
“She said you received a package and that she left it on the chest in the foyer of your apartment.”
In my embarrassment I forgot Olivia speaks fluent French.
“Merci, Madame Deniau.”
The woman nods her gray head and disappears as silently as she appeared. I look at Olivia.
“I didn’t even hear her.”
“Of course you didn’t hear her. Stealth is a prerequisite to be a truly efficient murderer.”
We return to the apartment.
The package, it turns out, is a jasmine bush in what looks to be an antique Sèvres pot, a wedding gift from Thierry Lambert. The message written on the attached card reads, When you toured my fields you wisely said, “Scents can transport you to another time and place and evoke emotions hidden somewhere deep down.” I hope this plant—grafted from a jasmine bush once used to make scents for Marie Antoinette—transports you to that day, when you were in the first blush of love for Xavier.
I read the card to Xavier when he calls that night, but he sounds drawn and distracted. I try not to read too much into his tepid response, though it is beginning to feel as if we are separated by more than miles.