“Where did you get this?” I demanded of Mrs. Reynolds. When she did not answer, I looked at them all, my voice rising. “Where did you get these?”
“Whatever is the matter, Miss Tulman?” said the brown-frizzed Miss Mortimer at the same time her cousin was saying, “The little silver animals, you mean?”
I pounced on her question. “Yes, the animals! Where did you get them?”
Mrs. Reynolds’s gaze on my face was a thing that could cut flesh. “Those works of art were made by Jean-Michel, Miss Tulman.”
“Who?”
“The protégé!” cried the blonde Miss Mortimer. “Don’t you remember? We told you all about the …”
The protégé. The artist who painted with clever fingers. The man who had not returned home.
I dashed from the room, throwing open the drawing-room doors to run up Mrs. Reynolds’s stairwell, my mind moving much faster than my legs could. I was remembering my search through the house that first night in Paris, the room with the easels and cloth-covered canvases, on the top floor, second door to the right. I burst through the door, panting, the fish still clutched in my hand, slamming it behind me and turning the lock before I ran to the first easel and yanked off the cloth.
It was a painting of Stranwyne, the northeast side of the house, the brown stones blushing rose and orange in a dawn rising up from the moor hills. I pulled off the second cloth, and it was the village church with the graveyard beside it. The third painting was stones and rocky hills, a ruin I recognized at the top of the tallest one, but in the foreground of this picture stood a woman, her back to the painter, skirts and curling auburn hair blown wild by a strong north wind. The woman in the painting was me.
I raised the fish to my mouth, clutching it hard as I closed my eyes. Mrs. Reynolds’s protégé had been Lane Moreau.
19
I heard feet on the stairs but I ignored them. Instead I ransacked the drawers, also choosing to ignore the knocks, calls, shouts, and then thudding bangs that accompanied my search. There were shirts here I recognized, and the red cap, and the smell, I knew it. It made my heart quicken, both in recognition and fear. Wherever Lane had gone, he could not have taken much with him. I stripped the bed, where I found nothing but blankets and sheets, and then got on my knees to look underneath. A box with odds and ends, mostly painting supplies, and in the back corner, hiding from the maid’s broom, a scrap of paper. I got two fingers on it before the door splintered around its lock. I caught a glimpse of four female faces peeking in before Henri stepped inside and casually shut the broken door behind him. It would not latch. He observed me in my position on the floor.
“Did you know it is very painful to do that?” he asked, rubbing his shoulder.
“It took you twelve times,” I commented.
“I must practice, I think.”
I remained on my knees, staring at the scrap of paper in my hand. It was torn and dirty, only part of a scrawled word visible, but the handwriting belonged to Lane. It said Tuiler and that was all. The paper was torn, the rest missing.
“So, who is he?” Henri Marchand asked, strolling across the floor to examine the paintings. He stopped before the third canvas, the one of me with my hair down and said, “Ah,” as if I had answered his question.
I stood, eyeing the room. Other than the paintings, there was nothing else to look at, no other things to go through. I held out the scrap of paper to Henri.
“The Tuileries, perhaps?” he said after a glance. “That is the imperial palace. Or one of them.”
He handed the paper back to me as the door creaked, and then Mrs. Reynolds was standing in the room with us, hands clasped in front of her. She opened her thin mouth to speak, but I spoke first.
“When was he last here? What day, exactly?”
“Ten days before you came to dinner, Miss Tulman. We had notified the police exactly one week before that.”
Ten days before I came to dinner, so almost two weeks ago now. And only three days before the Frenchmen tried to kidnap Uncle Tully. “And what did the police say?”
“Nothing at all. They were of very little help, though he was a Frenchman.”
“Half French,” I said absently. “His mother was English.”
“I think not, Miss Tulman,” Mrs. Reynolds replied, voice taking on a wintry frost. “Jean-Michel barely spoke passable English.”
“He was born in England, Mrs. Reynolds, and had never set foot in France until last year.” She stared at me a moment, then her eyes roved about the room, as if seeing it anew. “How did you meet him?”
She put her gaze back on me. “He was working in a silver shop, not very far from here, around the corner from the Opera. I had already bought several small pieces. He was leaving his position. …”
“Leaving? What do you mean?”
Mrs. Reynolds frowned, but after a glance at Mr. Marchand, she said, “I mean that he no longer wanted to work in a shop, of course. Jean-Michel wished to pursue his talent rather than waste his time with trays and spoons. When he showed me his paintings, I offered to support his work.”
“And he lived here how long, Mrs. Reynolds?”
“About seven weeks,” she replied. “Only seven weeks.”
The wistfulness in her voice made me almost like her. “Thank you, Mrs. Reynolds.” I glanced about the wrecked room. “I do apologize for the … consternation I caused, and for the state of your door. I will arrange to have it repaired. Would you …” I hesitated, then held up the silver fish, the replica of the “toy” that had caused Uncle Tully, Lane, myself, and two governments no end of trouble. “Would you allow me to keep this?”
I think she heard my thinly veiled plea. After a long moment, she inclined her head and I left the room, stepping around the gaping Miss Mortimers, curtsied to Mrs. Hardcastle, and then turned and walked right back in again. I marched past Mrs. Reynolds, snatched up the red cap, this time without asking, and took to the stairs. I was halfway down before I realized that Henri was with me.
“I wonder if you would tell me, Miss Tulman,” he said quietly, “if Mrs. Reynolds’s Jean-Michel was ever a servant of your house?”
I would not dignify the question with a response. But my lack of answer must have been the same as an affirmative, for he replied once again with an “ah.”
“And I think, perhaps,” he continued, “that this Jean-Michel was also a young man with dark hair, yes?”
I did not answer this either.
“Well. Then I think that this time you will come with me, Miss Tulman, and let us see if we cannot continue the work of the morning.”
He took me by the arm, bringing me down Mrs. Reynolds’s stairs at a trot and out the front door.
The day was growing warm and fine, but instead of turning left to the red doors, Henri let go of my arm, stepped into the street, skirted around a slow-moving carriage and made a beeline for the opposite sidewalk. The slouching man straightened when he saw him coming, his unshaven face registering the danger rather late, as he had only taken one step away before Henri had him by the arm. I felt my mouth open slightly.
The man struggled once, but Henri was larger and his grip must have been strong, because the slouching man went limp and decided to go without a fight. He allowed himself to be led back across the street, and I hurried down the sidewalk, just in time to follow them both through the red doors and into my foyer.
Mrs. DuPont was there when we entered, watching, cadaver-like, as Henri pulled the man inside the house.