Chapter 22
This time, the door to Madame Blanchette’s strange rooms on Golden Square was opened by a thin servant girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen. She was a fey thing, with hair so fair it was nearly white, a pale face, and wide, childlike eyes that nevertheless seemed to possess an aura of age-old wisdom that Sebastian found disconcerting.
She said, “Madame is waiting for you in her cabinet d’études.”
“Of course.”
He followed her to the small room he’d once assumed was a bedchamber but now realized was devoted to something far different. Yards and yards of deep red cloth draped the walls, giving it a tentlike effect. There was no window, only another door that must open back onto the corridor, presumably to allow those having their fortunes read to leave unseen by anyone who might be waiting their turn in the parlor. The only illumination came from a pierced brass Moroccan lantern that hung above an inlaid table that was a larger version of the one he’d noticed in the parlor. Madame Blanchette occupied one of the two stools flanking it; the other stood empty, waiting. The air was dense with exotic scents: frankincense and myrrh and something else he couldn’t quite identify. An articulated skeleton stood grinning in one corner; stuffed bats hung on thin wires from the ceiling, and an owl sat on its perch. He assumed it was also stuffed until he saw it blink.
“Atmospheric,” he said.
A faint smile touched her lips. “Image and illusion are important in my business.”
“At least you admit that it is a business.”
She gave a Gallic shrug. “We must all live somehow.”
“True.”
She spread her hands in a gesture that took in the opposite stool. “Please. Sit.”
“I’m all wet.”
“So I see. But it was considerate of you to clean the muck and manure of Seven Dials off your boots before coming to visit me. Thank you.”
Sebastian felt a faint prickling at the back of his neck. “I tried.”
“You are angry, I take it?”
He wiped the sleeve of his secondhand coat across his dripping face and sat. “You don’t think I have a right to be?”
“Anger is sometimes useful. But more often it is a handicap.”
“How the bloody hell did you know Ashworth hired Sid Cotton to kill me two months ago?”
“Perhaps I saw it in the cards.”
“No you didn’t. It doesn’t work that way.”
“At least you acknowledge that it does sometimes work.”
He studied her smooth, calm, ageless face. “Why give me his first name but not the last?”
“I did not know it at the time.”
“But now you do?”
“Yes.”
“He says he didn’t kill Ashworth.”
“And you find him an honest and forthright fellow?”
“Sid Cotton is a conscienceless killer. I’ve no doubt he wanted to murder Ashworth. But that doesn’t mean he did.”
“Because you think a knife in the back on a dark night would be more his style?”
Sebastian found his hands clenching against his thighs and forced himself to open and press them flat on the tabletop before him. “Did you see that in your cards too?”
Rather than answer, she reached for the worn tarot deck that lay before him. “You are thirty-one?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Your favorite color?”
“Blue.”
She handed him the cards. “Coupez.”
He hesitated a moment, then cut the deck. She took the first card, laid it faceup to one side, and said, “Encore.”
Again and again he cut the deck, with her drawing the first revealed card, until she had arranged thirty-six cards in four rows of nine each across the tabletop. Sebastian had seen cartomancers at work before. Their tarot desks were typically printed in black and white on matte cardboard with the crude images then colored in. But these were exquisite individual works of art that reminded him of the strange pictures he’d seen on the walls of her parlor. All were doubtless by the same hand.
“Who did these?” he asked.
“Does it matter?” She studied the selected cards for a time, the patterns of shadow and golden light cast by the pierced lantern overhead lending a mysterious aura to her features. When she spoke, he found her accent more pronounced; at times she slipped completely into French. “You have seen this done before?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know that few cards are either all good or all bad. Their meaning alters depending on how they fall in relation to one another.”
When he remained silent, she tapped the fourth card in the first row, an image of a beautiful young woman standing on a jagged rock above a storm-tossed sea, the wind blowing her glorious long, fair hair. “If you were a woman, this card would represent you. But because you are a man, it represents a woman in your life. She is very strong, and her intentions toward you are only good. But she is . . . conflicted.”
Sebastian’s gaze met hers across the card-covered table. “Given that you know who I am, you obviously must know who she is as well. You don’t need the cards to tell you the source of her . . . conflict.”
The Frenchwoman lowered her gaze to the cards, her expression never changing as she pointed to an image of a knight, his helm held beneath one arm, a magnificent black stallion prancing at his side. “The man is you. You see the card beside it? The scythe? It is a warning that you are in danger. You must take heed and be cautious when you visit unsafe places or associate with dangerous people.”
“You mean places such as Seven Dials and the likes of Sid Cotton?”
Rather than acknowledge his sarcasm, she simply moved on to the image of a coiled snake that lay beside the scythe. “Because the snake can shed its skin, it sometimes represents change and renewal. But here the serpent signifies more danger, except this danger is hidden. Be especially wary of those you think are your friends or whom you assume are well-disposed toward you. They may not be.”
“Always wise advice in a murder investigation.”
At that she did look up. “You make light of what I tell you. You should not.” She turned her attention to the last row, to an image of an ancient illuminated manuscript resting half open at the entrance to an enchanted grotto. “The book represents a secret of great importance.” Her eyes narrowed as if she were seeing something unexpected. “A secret that relates not to the murder of Ashworth but to you, monsieur le vicomte. It is an old secret that has long lain hidden despite your attempts to unveil it. But the unmasking of deceptions can be dangerous. You must understand well the perils of this personal quest upon which you have embarked.”
Sebastian felt his face grow hot with what he knew was an old, old shame. It mattered not that the originating sin was of others’ making; the resultant shame was still his to bear, and it always would be. He told himself she didn’t know—she could not know. He told himself that all men have secrets. Easy enough to hint at one, watch for a betraying reaction, and then move in closer for the killing thrust.
He schooled his features into a mask of calm insouciance. And yet he knew by the flare of awareness in her eyes that she saw right through him. She might not grasp the ugly details of the deepest, darkest secret of his existence, but she now knew he hid a torment with the power to drive him from his bed in the darkest hours of night in search of an elusive peace that never came.
For one intense moment, she held his gaze. Then she dropped her attention again to the cards, her fingertips skimming over an image of a Spanish galleon in full sail, the winds billowing its sun-struck canvas as it cut through a raging sea. She frowned but kept going, her hand coming to rest on an image of two soaring birds, their dark wings silhouetted against a stormy sky. “Birds were once considered messengers from the gods to mankind,” she said softly. “They can represent wisdom and freedom of the spirit. But as with so many cards, their meaning can alter depending on where they fall. Here they mean . . . adversity. Your life is approaching a period of great strife that will test you. Whether you survive without permanent loss or damage is up to you.” She leaned back on her stool, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at him.
He had to fight a powerful urge to ask whether the looming “adversity” came from his attempts to reveal Ashworth’s murderer or arose in some way from his quest to unravel the secret to which she had just alluded. He wanted to ask her if he would ever know the truths now hidden from him. Except of course he did no such thing because she was a charlatan, a fraud, a trickster, and he believed in none of this.
None of it.
She said, “I don’t know if you will discover the truth you seek. But I can warn you that you must be certain you can accept whatever you will learn. Otherwise you must not seek it.”
He stared at her. “Why are you doing this?”
She gave a small shake of her head, as if not understanding the question. “Doing what?”
He wafted one hand over the cards on the table. “This.”
“Perhaps for the same reason you seek justice for those deprived of their lives through murder. We feel driven, you and I, to help those who need it most.” She nodded toward the skeleton that stood in one corner of the red-shrouded room. “Much of what I do is for show—for the amusement and titillation of bored, wealthy men and women who like to play at touching the mysterious unknown from the safety of their drawing rooms.” Again, that little shrug. “Francesca and I must eat and have a roof over our heads.”
“Francesca?”
“The girl who met you at the door.” She paused, and he thought she meant to say something more about the strange child. Instead, she said, “You have a gift for discerning patterns, for understanding motives and piercing deceptions.” She began collecting her cards. “My gift is for this. When I can help, I do.”
“You think it helps? Foretelling the future? It seems to me it could have unintended consequences.”
“It can. I try to be careful with what I relay. What I see is only a possibility. Unfortunate outcomes can sometimes be averted if one is forewarned and wise.”
“But not always.”
For one brief instant her hands trembled, and he found himself thinking of an innocent young woman desperate enough to throw herself and her unborn child into the Thames. All the knowledge and foresight Madame Blanchette claimed to find in her cards hadn’t been enough to save her own daughter.
He said, “Where did you learn to use the cards?”
She assembled the deck into a neat stack and set it aside. “My father was a minor government functionary in the Rouergue. When I was twelve, my parents sent me to a convent in Conques where the nuns were perhaps not as vigilant as they should have been. I befriended an old Gypsy woman. It was she who introduced me to the tarot.”
He found himself wondering about the years in between, all the dangerous years of revolution and war that had taken a young girl from a convent on the Dourdou to the gilded halls of the Tuileries and then exile. Had the cards helped her navigate those treacherous times? Or had they provided her with only an illusion of control?
“Sometimes even illusions are helpful,” she said, and he felt a chill pass over him that had nothing to do with his wet clothes.
He pushed to his feet, not surprised to realize that Francesca had silently appeared in the doorway, ready to show him out. But at the entrance, he looked back at the woman, who remained seated on her stool. He said, “You still haven’t told me everything you know.”
For a moment her gaze met his. And he saw in the dark depths of her eyes a lifetime of pain and fear and sorrow without end. “If the tarot has taught me anything,” she said quietly, “it is the dangerous limitations of what I think I know.”
He was tempted to pay a visit next to Vincent’s, the Bond Street jeweler in whose shop Ashworth was said to have raped Giselle Blanchette. But it was Sunday, and raining, and he remembered he was still dressed to blend in with the riffraff of Seven Dials rather than the exalted residents of Mayfair.
He hailed a hackney and headed home.
He turned in to Brook Street to find a gentleman in a caped greatcoat and fashionable beaver hat standing at the base of the front steps of Sebastian’s house. The slowing hackney briefly drew the man’s attention. But he evidently failed to recognize the scruffy individual paying off the jarvey, because he started to turn away, only to stop, swing back toward the front steps, and hesitate again.
“Looking for me?” said Sebastian.
“Devlin. Good heavens.” Russell Firth blinked against the rain. “Why are you dressed like that?”
“It’s complicated.” Sebastian squinted up at the weeping sky. “Shall we go inside? Or did you plan to keep pacing back and forth on the flagway all afternoon?”
A faint flush crept into the architect’s cheeks. “I was trying to decide precisely what to say to you.”
“You’ve seen Stephanie, I take it?”
Firth nodded.
“Then please, let’s continue this conversation over a brandy in my library. I don’t know about you, but I’m damnedably wet.”
Sebastian led the way into the house and poured two generous measures of brandy. “Have a seat,” he said as he turned to throw more coal on the fire. “I appreciate your coming, and I’ll give you credit for being more honest than my niece. Or perhaps you’re simply clever enough to realize that the jig is up.”
Firth perched uncomfortably on the edge of one of the chairs facing the hearth. “It’s not what you think.”
“Oh?” Sebastian stood and turned to look at him. “Then tell me what it is.”
Firth thrust up from the chair and went to gaze out the front window at the rain. “It happened much as I told you: I met her when she came to a presentation I gave on Sounion. For some reason, the temple captured her imagination in a way that I think caught even her by surprise. She came up to speak to me afterward, and—” He broke off and shook his head. “I knew it was hopeless from the beginning. We both did. But we were helpless to stop what was happening.”
“Hopeless because of the disparity in your stations, you mean?”
Firth blew out a long breath. “That probably should have made a difference, but it didn’t. The thing is, my wife was still alive then.”
Sebastian stared at him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were married.”
“To my cousin, Elizabeth. She . . . she found herself in difficulty several years ago. We’d always been close, ever since we were children—more like brother and sister, actually. I couldn’t simply leave her to suffer alone the consequences of what she’d done.”
“She was with child?”
Firth nodded. “The father was long gone by the time she realized she was in trouble. Her own father, my aunt’s husband, disowned her. She had no one else to turn to. So I married her.”
He paused for a moment, and Sebastian waited until the Welshman was ready to continue. “Elizabeth was never well, and the emotional turmoil combined with bearing the child took a terrible toll on her. The little boy died within hours of birth, and she never really recovered. The doctors said sea air might do her good, so I hired a house for her down in Brighton and engaged a companion to keep her company and take care of her while I continued with my work here in London.”
“When did she die?”
“Last October.” Firth drew a crooked elbow across his rain-soaked face. “I don’t mean to imply that the circumstances of my marriage excuse my allowing my affections to stray elsewhere, because they do not. But it may perhaps explain it. Elizabeth and I were never more than dear friends.”
“When did you and Stephanie become lovers?”
“We didn’t. Never.”
Sebastian took a slow sip of his brandy. Firth might be marginally more honest than Stephanie, Sebastian decided, but it was still only a matter of degree. “A man like Ashworth wouldn’t take it lightly if he found out his wife was in love with another man—even if he could somehow be convinced that the affair remained unconsummated.”
Firth shook his head. “He didn’t love her. He never did. He only married her because his father refused to give him another groat until he set about providing a legitimate heir for the succession.”
“Perhaps. Except that even if he didn’t care for her, she was still his wife. And as far as most men are concerned, that makes a woman his possession. Something meant for him and him alone.”
Firth started to say something, then simply raised his glass to his lips with an unsteady hand and drank deeply.
Sebastian said, “You realize the damage it will do if knowledge of the friendship between you gets out? People are already speculating that she might have killed him.”
“But she didn’t do it!”
So, what about you? thought Sebastian, his gaze hard on the younger man’s face. Did you kill Ashworth for her? Ashworth, or at least Digby? He didn’t voice the accusation aloud, but then, he didn’t need to. It hung there in the tense atmosphere between them.
Firth swung away to look out the window again at the gray, wet street. “Ashworth made her existence a living hell. You . . . You’ve no idea what he was like.”
“Actually, I have a pretty good idea. I’m not surprised she refused to live with him.”
“He didn’t want her there. He was always bringing home women, everything from titled ladies to whores hired off the street. If you ask me, that’s who killed him—some poor woman who didn’t understand the abuse she was letting herself in for and fought back.”
“Except that Ashworth was the one tied to the bed.”
Firth turned to stare at him for a long, unblinking moment. Then he set his drink aside unfinished. “The inquest is tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps something will come out then.”
“I doubt it. But I suppose it’s always possible.”
For one intense moment, the two men’s gazes met. “She didn’t do it,” said the architect again, his jaw set at a stubborn angle.
Sebastian drained his own glass and gave an unexpected shudder. I hope to God you’re right, he thought.
But he remained unconvinced.