ONE DAY WHEN THE INFIRMARY WAS QUIET AND EMPTY, Cherry ventured to have another look at the doll and journal. Surely Lisette would not mind.
She eased the balky drawer open and removed the towel she and Lisette had tucked on top. Cherry frowned. She felt around with both hands, then began to dig. The doll and the journal were no longer there!
“How am I ever going to break the news to Lisette? Is there somebody else who suspects the secret in this house?”
She must tell Lisette immediately. The most likely place to find her was—outside of class hours—either in the garden or in the conservatory. Yes, there she was in the conservatory, in a plain blue smock, working with the plants.
“Why, Cherry! I’m honored. Sit down. I’m adding extra soil, bringing loam in from the garden while the days are still mild. See, I’ve already transplanted our silvery spray and also I brought more of those three important kinds of roses indoors for the winter.”
“Such devotion to flowers! Quite a hobby.”
“It’s anything but a hobby,” Lisette said with uncalled-for intensity. “May I ask why you’re looking so glum?”
“I—how am I going to tell you such a terrible thing? The doll and the journal, they’re—”
“They’re gone.”
“You know?”
“Certainly. I took ’em.” Lisette tilted her head and laughed. “Poor Cherry, I’m sorry you had a scare.”
She explained that with so many people in and out of the infirmary, with sometimes only Mrs. Snyder in charge, she decided her locked overnight case in her closet would be a safer hiding place. She took them in Cherry’s absence, and then forgot to tell her.
“We have to have a talk soon,” Lisette said. “A long private talk.”
“I have time off this evening. We can meet in my room,” Cherry offered.
Cherry felt more curious about this coming interview than she was willing to admit.
Right after dinner that evening, Lisette rapped on Cherry’s outside door. This door gave entrance from the hall. She slipped in, wearing a bulky bathrobe from which she took the journal and the doll. The key was back in the doll’s purse again for safekeeping. Lisette also brought a French-English dictionary: La Petite Larousse.
“Some passages in Great grandfather’s journal are so cryptic they could mean several things. What do you make of this one, Cherry?”
Lisette opened at once to the right page, as if she knew this old diary almost by heart. First she read the passage aloud in French. Cherry did not comprehend too well, though she recognized the liquid purity of Lisette’s accent. Then Lisette read the same passage to Cherry in English:
“Is one reduced to putting one’s trust in a doll? Must a lonely old man, the last of his generation, who in his own house has not a soul to talk to, lock his secrets in his heart? Or will the very walls hold his secret? I have lived so much and experienced so much in these rooms that sometimes 1 feel the chateau itself must know my dearest ideas. Fantastic? Not at all. One is thus reduced. But I forget it is no longer my own house.”
Cherry was deeply moved. She heard the greatgrandfather’s appeal without fully understanding the sense of his message.
“Why was it no longer his own house?” Cherry asked.
“We’ll come to that in a minute.” Lisette was referring to the dictionary. “Look, he used a tricky word. This passage could mean entirely different things depending on how you translate J’ai experiencé. That could mean I have experienced so much in these rooms, or it could mean I have tried so much or so hard, or quite possibly it could mean I have experimented so much in these rooms.”
“Quite a difference. What do you think it means? You’ve read the entire journal and you know the context—”
Lisette closed the journal. “Let me tell you the whole curious story. That is, as far as the diary tells it. It was enough to bring me to this house.”
Pierre Gauthier, born in 1865, had come from France to the United States when a very young man. He came with his family, including a little sister whose doll this was. He soon married and built the chateau for his bride. He also planted the garden with its roses and some rare flowers, using seeds and shoots he had brought from France.
Pierre and his wife lived happily here and had a son, Louis, who was Lisette’s grandfather. Louis grew to maturity and married, bringing his bride to live in the Chateau Larose. They had a son and a daughter. The son was Lisette’s father. Pierre was glad of the presence of the younger people at first, because his wife had died and he missed her keenly. To fill his time he continued his business as a grain dealer, and visited his neighbors, especially those who also planted gardens. But as he aged, Pierre could no longer work nor go out every day. His son and daughter in law, who were devoted to him, urged him to find a hobby that would not tax his strength. This was how he started with his experiments.
“Experiments?” Cherry asked. “In the sense of research?”
“Well, he called it a search, and his son and daughter in law called it tinkering.”
His family never took his “tinkering” seriously, according to the journal. They considered that the elderly man was tiring himself unduly, and they admitted the heavy scents involved became rather oppressive. Pierre complained to his journal that Louis, his son, laughed a little at “Papa’s pet folly”; no one had any real comprehension of what he was trying to achieve.
Cherry broke in, in impatience. “Heavy scents of what? Chemicals? Cooking?”
“Not exactly. You’ve noticed the garden—his garden—and how fragrant and unusual the flowers are? Well, he was making perfume. Or at least trying to, for several years. According to what Great-grandfather wrote in the journal, he believed he came close to creating an exquisite and rare scent. Thought he had it almost perfected.”
Only, his son and daughter-in-law did not believe in the seriousness of his efforts. They meant well, but they were concerned about his long hours of work in his bedroom. Their good intentions led to unhappy results, quite accidentally.
One day Pierre had gone out, despite the rain, to obtain a few additional fawn roses from a distant neighbor’s garden. That week the chateau was being repainted, plastered, and papered, and Pierre’s absence for the day provided a convenient time to work in his room. Both Louis and his wife were at home to oversee the job, but since they had never taken old Pierre’s experiment very seriously, they were careless or ignorant in regard to his precious ingredients, bottles, and tools. He had set these up in a niche in the wall which, with shelves built in, served as a medicine cupboard. Louis and his wife thought this old wall cupboard ugly, so they told the workmen to plaster it over, apparently forgetting about the contents. When old Pierre arrived home that evening, with the roses for his final experiments, he found that his precious work had been walled in. All he had left, because he always kept it in his pocket, was the filigree key. But the cupboard with its valuable contents was now lost behind a thick wall of rapidly hardening plaster. The son and daughter in law were truly sorry about the accident. The great grandfather pleaded with them to rip out the new plaster. But they regarded that as an old man’s nonsense.
Pierre was old, weak, alone, and thus unable to tear out the plaster himself. Besides, he had deeded the chateau over to the younger people, so that it was no longer his house to do with as he pleased. He was dependent on his son. He tried to resign himself to the loss of his little homemade laboratory, to the stoppage of his experiments. All of this Pierre confided to his journal.
“Poor man! Did he write down parts of the formula, too?” Cherry asked.
“Very little. Great grandfather’s notes are hard to decipher at times, but vague references hint that the formula must be in the walled up cupboard,” Lisette replied. She went on to tell about the other entries in the journal.
For some time the old man had been supposed to make a sea voyage to France. The journal was not clear as to whether this was entirely at his doctor’s recommendation to aid his health or whether he had some other reason—perhaps connected with his perfume discovery—for traveling to France. By this time transatlantic travel was popular, and the great liners were booked far in advance. Shortly after the incident of the walled up cupboard, Pierre received a telegram that the reservation for his steamship passage was now available.
The old man, bewildered by the speed of events, hoping still to reopen the sealed cupboard somehow when he returned, took the best precautions he could. He hastily secreted the key in the doll’s purse, and hid the doll. Then he recorded the hiding place in his journal as a reminder to himself, but in cryptic language so that no one else could intrude on his work a second time, and cautiously took this personal journal with him.
“Poor old fellow!” Cherry exclaimed. “So he sailed to France in a sad frame of mind. How did things go when he returned?”
“He never returned,” said Lisette. “He never even reached France. He died during the voyage out. See how the diary breaks off short. The very last words he wrote are—”
Lisette showed Cherry the last page of delicate script, and translated: “I still hope. So lovely, so joyful a fragrance!”
“Imagine,” Cherry said softly, “for him to put his heart into it like that. If the perfume resembled this garden, it might have been as lovely as he believed. I hope so.”
“I’m so glad to hear you say that!” Lisette’s white face glowed. “That’s exactly how I feel! Just think, everything has been waiting here in this house for two decades or more, exactly as Great grandfather left it on that rainy day. The doll has been waiting all these years behind the stuck drawer. His formula, and possibly even his ingredients if they were tightly corked, are waiting somewhere in this house—waiting for us to find them!”
Cherry could not help smiling at Lisette’s excitement. First she suggested they talk more quietly, or the whole inquisitive school would come knocking on Cherry’s door. Then, reluctant but practical, Cherry asked Lisette what she hoped to gain by recovering the perfume. Was it to vindicate Pierre and fulfill his long hope? Or did Lisette think, if they could find and figure out his formula and if they could make up a sample, that his perfume might have some market value?
“Yes, to both reasons!” Lisette exclaimed, then clapped her hands over her mouth. “Ssh. Wouldn’t you want to right the wrong done to an innocent person? And if you could, wouldn’t you save a lovely perfume from being lost forever? I’m convinced it’s good, and I’ll bet you the formula could be developed and sold to a perfume manufacturer. Imagine! With that money we could—”
“You’re daydreaming.” Cherry laughed.
“I’m not! You think I’m a mere dreamer like my father? Please note I actually got to the chateau, I actually studied French, and the chemistry of flower
oils and of perfume making—”
“I take it back,” Cherry said good humoredly.
“Well, if the formula is salable, a lovely ‘new’ perfume would provide a living for my mother and future schooling for me. Also, Cherry, it could give the school some measure of financial help. Not that it would be enough to put the school on its feet financially. But since Mrs. Harrison owns this house, and the formula is in it, she’d be entitled to some compensation.”
“Yes, those are all worthwhile reasons.” Cherry sat thinking for a few minutes. “So this is why you’ve transplanted the garden flowers—why you’ve brought them indoors into the conservatory for the coming winter.”
“Certain flowers. The ones the journal mentions as being ingredients of the perfume. By distillation, that is—”
“You really have been studying up on perfume making! Where? And when?”
Lisette said she had been fortunate enough last year to attend a high school which gave a thorough elementary course in chemistry. It was a laboratory course, and she had really learned a great deal. Cherry understood, as she had had extension laboratory studies during her nurse’s training course.
“But ordinary chemistry doesn’t have much to do with perfume scents.”
Lisette grinned. “Remember that big library book I’ve covered with plain paper? Well, its title is The Preparation of Perfumes. It’s practically a textbook, a technical handbook. Fascinating, too. I’ve been checking against it the portions of the formula mentioned in the journal.”
“You have! Does it sound promising?”
The girl nodded.
“What was the basis or secret of your great grandfather’s perfume?”
“Distinctive flowers. What made it so special, as far as I can tell, was certain flowers whose seeds he brought from France. So far, I’m only guessing which flowers, and of course some chemicals are needed, too. But in the journal he named his perfume Fleurs Blanches et Rouges or Flowers White and Red, so I thought of white rose, the silvery spray—”
“The fawn rose sometimes is nearly white, or streaked with white.”
“Yes, and for red flowers, foremost is the big stunning Provence rose. It originally came from France, where it’s used a great deal in making perfume.”
“By the way, what’s the name of the silver spray?” Cherry inquired.
“I believe it’s called silver lace in France. Though, really, the silver spray is more like stalks of lily of the valley or bluebell. We could almost call it silver bells.”
The biggest question was one Cherry felt reluctant to ask. In listening to the story, it had become clear to Cherry that the great grandfather had been interrupted with his perfume before he could either fail or fully succeed. He had thought his perfume to be “lovely and joyful,” but was that true? How could Lisette know this was a delightful fragrance?
In the most tactful words she could find, Cherry hinted at this question. Had Lisette, by some happy chance, ever smelled the perfume? Had some breath of it miraculously clung in the chateau over the years?
“No, I’ve never smelled it. Even if it hadn’t been lost, the perfume wouldn’t have a clear cut scent any longer. But I have faith in Pierre’s formula! It’s only a blind belief—but you know how haunting the garden smells at night! So that using those flowers most surely, surely would yield a lovely perfume. Of course there’s a great difference between the living fragrance of a garden and a bottle of scent—”
Lisette broke off and retired within herself. Cherry reassured her that she was not casting doubts. Although not as convinced as Lisette, still she was willing to give Pierre Gauthier the benefit of the doubt. She was more than willing—eager!—to see what the two of them could rescue from the lost formula.
“First step, of course, is to find the sealed over cupboard,” Cherry thought aloud. “I suppose the key unlocks the wall cupboard?”
“Not sure. Listen to this.” Lisette read from the journal: “The door which protects the cupboard in the wall has been plastered over today … Protects. Does that mean a small door, like the door of a wall niche? Or does it mean a full sized panel with a knob and all?”
“Let’s have another look at the key.”
It was elongated and narrow, but that was no indication of what type of door it opened.
“Well, then, Lisette, where is the cupboard located?”
“In a master bedroom, I think. But there were two upstairs, and one downstairs—old houses like this one had huge rooms. One master bedroom might be what is now the infirmary. Or it might be the faculty sitting room.”
“Yes, but where in these rooms?”
Lisette shrugged. “The diary doesn’t say. Remember when I was sick and you found me sounding out the infirmary walls? I was listening for a hollow sound, to find a place that had been plastered over.”
“I caught you tapping the library wall, too.”
“The library is paneled, and it was his own library. This journal is so awfully cryptic! I s’pose Great-grandfather knew what his own notes meant, even if I don’t!” Lisette sighed. “The only way we’ll find the cupboard is to tap the walls and listen.”
“We may be tapping the chateau all winter,” Cherry murmured. “Have you found anything so far?”
“Not a thing. But we will.”