Chapter 7
Sebastian left soon afterward for the northern outskirts of the city.
Rather than disturb his young groom by calling for his own carriage, he took a fiacre, the Parisian version of a London hackney. It was past midnight by now, the city’s narrow, aged streets dark and quiet in the rain, but he knew he would be unable to sleep until he’d attempted to answer at least some of the questions whirling in his head.
The woman who’d called herself Sophia Cappello lived in an impressive hôtel particulier in the rue du Champs du Repos, not far from the ruined church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. This was an area where the teeming streets of the city gave way to open countryside, where the detached houses were fronted by high-walled forecourts and boasted extensive gardens that stretched out around them. Sebastian had come here several times since his arrival in Paris to speak to the aged Frenchwoman who served Sophie as something between a companion and a chatelaine. She had answered his questions courteously and yet evasively, claiming she did not know where Sophie was and willing only to say that her return was expected in early March. Yet she had known both Sophie’s true identity and her relationship to Sebastian. And when he’d asked why Sophie called herself Dama Cappello, the Frenchwoman had simply looked at him with troubled eyes and said, “That is a question I think her ladyship should answer herself.”
He became aware of the fiacre drawing up before the maison’s heavy wrought iron gates, jerking him from the depths of his thoughts. “Wait for me,” he told the driver, thrusting open the carriage door.
“As long as you pay,” said the man in a provincial accent so heavy it took Sebastian a moment to decipher it.
He hopped down, his gaze on the house before him. “I’ll pay.”
The rain had stopped, leaving the air heavy with moisture and the lime trees along the lane dripping. Built of golden sandstone with tall, evenly spaced windows, the maison dated to the reign of Louis XIV. It was small but exquisite, of two stories plus the extensive attics tucked into its mansard-style gray slate roof. He was expecting to need to rouse the ex-soldier who served as gatekeeper, but the man must have been watching for his mistress’s return, for he appeared immediately, limping badly on a peg leg. The left sleeve of his coat hung empty at his side.
“Dama Cappello is not here,” he said, his lantern swinging wildly as he hurried forward with his awkward gait. He was thin to the point of being cadaverous, his eyes sunken and ringed by dark circles, his skin a sickly white.
“I know. I’m here to see Madame Dion.”
The gatekeeper lifted his lamp to shine the light on Sebastian’s face and peer at him intently. “Ah, ’tis you, monsieur.” He unlocked the small pedestrian gate to swing it inward. “She is up, waiting for Dama Cappello.”
“When did her ladyship return to Paris?” asked Sebastian, his gaze drifting over the maison’s classical facade. Only a few of the downstairs windows showed any light; the rest were in darkness.
“Just today, monsieur.”
Conscious of a painful tumult of emotions he had no desire to face, let alone untangle, Sebastian crossed the entry court, the gravel crunching beneath his boots. He could hear a lamb bleating somewhere in the distance, hear the rattle of harness behind him as the fiacre’s horse shook its head. Then the front door opened and golden light spilled out across the wet stretch of flagging.
“Monsieur?” said the older woman who stood there, a fine paisley shawl clutched around her shoulders with one hand, a flickering candle in the other, her face drawn and tight with worry. “What is it? What has happened?”
He paused before her, finding himself at a loss for words. Madame Geneviève Dion was somewhere in her late sixties or her seventies, silver haired and delicately boned but still fiercely upright. He knew little about her, only that she had been with Sophie for some years. Her patrician accent and manner suggested that she was from that legion of gentlewomen impoverished by the Revolution and the endless wars it had spawned, but she had never told him her story.
He was aware of her glancing beyond him to the fiacre that waited in the lane. Her worried gaze returned to him. “Where is she?”
Sebastian looked into the woman’s dark, haunted eyes and saw the fear there—a fear that turned into dawning certainty as he said, “I’m sorry, but . . .”
“Mon Dieu,” she whispered when he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it. The candle dipped dangerously as she swayed, and he put out a hand to steady her. “She’s dead, isn’t she? Sophie is dead.”
“She arrived home this afternoon,” said Madame Dion, her gaze on the fire that crackled on the hearth before them. They sat in the salon just to the left of the entrance, a small, intimate room painted a soft pastel peach with carved garlands of roses and entwined foliage picked out in white on the paneled walls. “She said the roads were good, so they made better time than she’d expected.” The Frenchwoman paused, then pushed on. “I told her you were here in Paris—that you’d said you’d been trying to trace her for years.”
“What did she say?” Sebastian asked quietly.
The chatelaine twisted the handkerchief she held around her fingers. “She didn’t say anything at first, just walked out of the house to stand in her garden, by the rose arbor. I left her alone for a time, then went to her. She didn’t look at me, just stared off across the distant fields and said, ‘I should have known he would come once the war was over.’ Then she turned to me and said, ‘This is going to be hard, Geneviève. So hard.’ ”
Her voice cracked, and it was some moments before the woman could go on. “I told her . . . I told her she was tired from the journey, that she should rest and wait until morning before going to see you. But she said, ‘No. I need to do this now before my courage fails me.’ And she called for her town carriage and left.”
“What time was this?”
“When she left? Perhaps an hour or so before sunset. I don’t recall precisely.”
So around six o’clock, thought Sebastian. “And she said she was going to the Place Dauphine?”
“Yes. I told her you’d taken a house there.”
“Do you know if she was planning to go someplace else first?”
“She didn’t say. But she sent the carriage back right away.”
“She did? From where?”
The Frenchwoman looked troubled. “I don’t know. You would need to ask Noël, the coachman. I’ve been sitting here all this time thinking she was with you.”
Sebastian was half out of his chair, intending to go to the stables and wring answers from the coachman, when the clock on the mantel began to strike the hour.
Two o’clock.
He sank back into his seat and forced himself to swallow his frustration. For the past four years, he had dedicated himself to finding justice for the victims of murder; he understood the need to approach an investigation with patience and reason. But how do you exercise patience when the victim is your own mother?
He watched the aged chatelaine bring up one hand to cover her eyes, her throat working as she swallowed. He said, “When I spoke to you before, you told me you didn’t know where Sophie was. Do you still say that?”
She let her hand fall back to her lap. “In truth, monsieur, I do not know where she went. She said it was best that way, and I didn’t press her.”
“But you have some idea?”
She was silent for a moment as if considering her answer. “I gather from one or two things her abigail, Francine, let slip that they’d come up from the south of France. But were they there all the time they were gone? I don’t know.”
Sebastian studied the woman’s tightly held features. “Why would she say it was best that you not know?”
The Frenchwoman glanced at him, then looked away again. “These are unsettled times for France,” she said simply.
It was an answer that raised a host of troubling possibilities. He wanted to ask her more, to press for the answers he suspected she knew yet was reluctant to give. But he was aware of the fatigue dragging at her aged features, of the shock and bone-deep grief that had left her shattered. He pushed to his feet and said instead, “It’s late and I know you’re tired; I’ll come back in the morning to talk to the staff and perhaps look around the house, if I may.”
Madame Dion rose with him. “But of course, monsieur. The house is yours now, after all.”
Sebastian turned from the door to stare at her. He had assumed the house belonged to Sophie’s famous lover, the marshal now negotiating for France in Vienna. “You know this for certain?”
“Mais oui. She asked me to witness her will.”
Sebastian studied the older woman’s heavily lined face and sad eyes. “Who do you think killed her?”
She looked away, her eyes swimming with unshed tears, her lips quivering before she set her jaw hard. “I have no idea. How could I?”
But he was coming to know her better now, was more able to discern truth from evasion. And he was fairly certain she was lying.