The more Vincent thought about the girl’s lie the more his sense of paternal duty toward her strengthened. He hurried to the Hotel du Sonton where he intended to steer the girl away from the evils of mendacity and back onto the path of virtue. A footman at the servants’ entrance in the back informed him that Marie Lasourde no longer worked at the hotel. When he asked for an explanation, the man shrugged his shoulders, and said he didn’t know anything more.
Distressed by the girl’s fate, Vincent walked slowly toward the front of the house. As he was about to turn into the cobblestoned courtyard and head toward the street, he narrowly avoided being run down by a carriage. The carriage, painted an ostentatious shiny green, clattered to a stop in front of the granite steps of the impressive entrance to the hotel. Still thinking about Marie Lasourde, Vincent watched absentmindedly as liveried footmen rushed out of the hotel to open the carriage door and pull down its step.
First a dainty stockinged foot in a white high-heeled slipper with a blue bow on it emerged, then the rest of the carriage’s occupant — a powdered and painted woman cloaked in red velvet. Madame du Sonton no doubt. In a tall, powdered wig that required attention to her balance, she carefully climbed the entrance steps and disappeared inside. The front door clicked shut.
He studied the pale yellow brick facade of the hotel which was tall, wide, and many-windowed, before his eye was drawn to the green carriage again. He noticed its door was painted with a coat of arms — a swan flanked by stars, branches, and such. It seemed somehow familiar. And then it came to him. The wax seal of Marie Lasourde’s love letter had been sealed with a similar emblem, too similar to be a coincidence.
Avoiding the steaming horse dung on the cobblestones, he trotted over to the coachman about to drive the vehicle away, and asked, “Pardon, monsieur, is this the du Sonton coach?”
The coachman surveyed him from deep-socketed black eyes under bushy, black eyebrows, as he considered Vincent and his question, then he jerked his head in assent once.
“And was that Madame du Sonton herself I saw just now?”
Another jerk of the head. The nods must have loosened the man’s tongue. “Back from her country estate,” he said through thick wet lips.
Vincent tipped his tricorne to the man and walked toward the street.
So the wax, the seal, and no doubt the paper had come from the du Sonton household. Marie Lasourde, or her beau, had obtained stationery from the house. That wouldn’t do. Marie lying and stealing for the man, then most likely losing her position over it? Or had it been Marie’s beau who obtained the stationery? Did he in fact live in the house? It made no sense. Why would the young man write to his sweetheart who could not read if they saw each other frequently? Vincent would find Radnor and tell him of his discovery. Radnor would discover the truth.
Radnor thanked Vincent for the information with a coin, then sent his friend away with the promise that he’d tell him how it turned out.
If the letter had not been sent by Nicholas Keplin after all, but by someone in the house, or who had access to the house, then Radnor had work to do. He returned to his original theory. It was far more likely that the M. of the letter was Madame Marie du Sonton herself.
As a rule, Radnor avoided doing any investigating himself, relying on his informers. But sometimes he had no choice. This was just such an occasion.
Upon his arrival at the Hotel du Sonton, he asked for Madame. Instead he was shown to the office of the housekeeper, a small closet of a room furnished with a desk stacked with papers and ledgers, and two hard wooden chairs.
“Madame Vries will be with you in a moment,” the footman told him. “You’re to wait.”
Radnor glanced at the papers on the desk. Receipts and tradesmen’s bills. With a glance at the door, he opened a desk drawer. Quills and ink in the first. The next drawer held stationery, sticks of sealing wax, and a seal. The stationery was the same pale blue of the letter Marie Lasourde had brought to Vincent. Hearing the click of heels approaching along the marble tiles of the corridor outside, he quickly closed the drawer and stepped away from the desk.
The door opened, and the housekeeper entered. She was a statuesque blonde, young and attractive to be a housekeeper, though one look at her hard eyes and strong, capable hands suggested how she had risen to such a position. She took a seat at her desk across from him. She did not invite him to sit.
“What do you want with Madame?” she asked. She had a long, sinewy neck in which Radnor could see the faint pulsing of a vein.
He sat anyway. “I’d like to ask her a few questions in connection with the theft of her necklace and earrings.”
“Madame’s busy. Ask me,” she said, her lips curling slightly with scorn, completely unimpressed by him.
Usually, women were intrigued by him, and he used their reaction to his advantage. “I have reason to believe that Marie Lasourde might be connected with the theft.”
Her eyes turned flinty. “That tart. Good riddance. I sacked her yesterday for returning late from her afternoon off.”
Sacked or disappeared? Very convenient, he thought.
“If she’s responsible for the theft, I should have sacked her long before. What are you doing to find her?” she ended on an accusing note.
Radnor ignored the accusation. “Do you know where she might have gone or where her family lives?”
“No idea. I’ve better things to do than keep track of all the maidservants who come and go in this place.” She gestured at the account books lying open before her on the desk.
They glared at each other. Radnor was accustomed to unhelpful Parisians, but he sensed a wary defensiveness in her that made him suspicious. As if she had something to hide.
“Now if you’ll excuse me.” She stood to dismiss him.
He stood too, and said, making no attempt to keep the threat out of his voice, “I really must insist that I see Madame now.”
Angry resentfulness flared in her face, but she did not argue. Instead, she stood up and flounced toward the door. Out in the corridor, she flagged a young footman and told him to inform Madame she needed to speak with her urgently. She cuffed the boy on the head when he hesitated. “Move!”
She led Radnor down the corridor to a wide, marble staircase with a gilded, curved banister. On the next floor, the young footman found them and led them to Madame in her antechamber, a dressing room of white and pale green, bright with sunlight pouring through two floor-to-ceiling windows.
Though it was noon, he must have interrupted Madame’s levée. She sat in a chair having powder and paint applied to her face by two chambermaids. A sheet covered most of a voluminous blue-striped silk gown. Her hair pulled tightly back in preparation for the wig, her face half-powdered and painted, the bare skin still showing pink in spots, she looked monstrous.
When Madame saw the housekeeper with him, she exclaimed, “Nina!” the familiarity apparently slipping out in her surprise.
“My apologies, Madame,” the housekeeper curtsied. “Monsieur Radnor of the police is here about the theft.”
Madame met the housekeeper’s eyes, and the two of them held each other’s gazes for a long moment, too long, as a wordless message passed between them. Then Madame looked at him and gave him a broad, false smile of challenge. She curtly dismissed the two maids.
M. and N. Marie and Nina. The suspicions that had been growing as Radnor talked to the housekeeper took final form. The two were lovers, writing love letters to each other when they were separated. He smiled wryly, not so much with shock at the lewdness — he’d encountered far worse — but at being caught off guard. It was naiveté worthy of his friend Vincent.