Swiss Vendetta (Agnes Luthi Mysteries #1)(33)
He stepped close, towering over her. Menace in the set of his shoulders. Blood rushed, filling her eardrums.
“Even if you made it up the hill, what then?” she said. “Sitting in the gendarmerie? They’d put you to work helping people in distress. You still couldn’t make the trip to the hospital. Focus on what we can accomplish here. Think of the dead woman. She is someone’s daughter, perhaps someone’s wife or mother, and we owe them answers. We owe her justice.”
A long moment passed. Turning swiftly, Petit left without a word and she drew a deep breath, leaning down to rest her hands on her knees like an athlete at the end of a long race. Slowly she stood upright, her emotions under control. The past locked away again.
Absently, she rummaged in her handbag for the bottle of lotion she’d taken from George’s emergency kit. The smell was soothing and distantly familiar. She leaned her face near the window, feeling sorry for Petit.
Far below, Julien Vallotton walked past the gaping patches of black earth where fallen trees had ripped roots and ice from the ground. He stopped near Carnet and sent the man with the chain saw to a distant corner of the property.
“Never trouble for him,” she murmured.
“I suspect he has more trouble than you realize.” Marie-Chantal stood in the doorway, her straight nose and elegant jaw sculpted by the jagged streaks of sunlight. Her shoulderlength blond hair glinted and she appeared smaller and more petite than Agnes remembered.
Marie-Chantal joined Agnes at the window and they watched Vallotton walk alone toward the shore. For a moment Agnes had a glimmer of comprehension about the burden of living here, the responsibility for care of a national monument.
Marie-Chantal glanced at Agnes’s wedding ring and sighed. “You’re married. You must understand regret.” She wiped the moisture caused by her breath from the cold glass. “Regret that leads to guilt so strong you hurt? Longing for what you can’t have and wondering if you only want it because of that? Emotions so confused you don’t believe them?”
Agnes gripped the edge of a shutter so hard her rings dug into her flesh. The pain kept her from crying out. How could this woman understand regret? Or longing? “No, I wanted what I had,” she said evenly.
Marie-Chantal stepped away from the window and shook her shoulders as if she had a chill. “I’m sorry. You have larger concerns. The poor dead woman.”
Just that quickly the mood in the room changed, and Agnes could believe that Julien Vallotton was jealous of his brother. Marie-Chantal had a quality that was unusual if not unique: an intersection of beauty and intensity of personality that could alternately electrify or calm the atmosphere around her. Whatever laws of physics or emotions that made it happen, Agnes was grateful.
“Last night you said you spoke to Felicity Cowell only a few times?” she asked, pleased that her voice was steady.
“Yes,” Marie-Chantal replied, “although we are about the same age. I admit that I was fascinated. She was the main topic of dinner conversation for weeks before she arrived. What she would do here, her expertise. I was jealous. To be that needed must feel … well, special. To have work that was valued.”
“Did she avoid the family?”
“That sounds sneaky. I’d just say she knew her place.” Marie-Chantal smiled apologetically. “An employee. Antoinette lends a certain atmosphere of formality.”
“No mixing with the staff?”
“It’s not a rule, but meals are served separately and it’s a large house. We don’t have any reason to interact and we have a sort of schedule for when the maids clean and things like that. We stay clear of them, let them do their work. Felicity Cowell wasn’t exactly staff, however, I wouldn’t have dreamed of bothering her while she worked. She did have dinner with us once. The night after she arrived. We had other guests and she rounded out the table.”
“Did she eat alone the other nights?”
Marie-Chantal looked surprised. “I don’t know. I never thought about it. Maybe she ate in the village since she stayed there.”
Agnes was reminded that the inhabitants of the chateau lived a very different life from anyone she knew. “You and your husband never met Felicity in London?”
“No, I would have said. Besides, I’m not often there. That’s Julien’s town. I prefer Paris and Berlin. Hong Kong.” Marie-Chantal looked around the room as if taking in the details. “Antoinette told me that Mademoiselle Cowell was here before she died. Did she run outside from here? It’s a long way down.”
“Why is this room called the fur vault?”
“There are likely furs somewhere. It’s just as likely that they stored fur pelts here a thousand years ago and the name never changed. Names tend to stick. Daniel and I share a suite of rooms called the nursery although no children have slept there since the French Revolution.”
Agnes snorted a half laugh. Since George’s death she and the boys had spent most nights at her parents-in-law’s. She slept in their guest room, which they assured her was a leftover title and not a reflection on her status in the house. She wasn’t convinced and thought Marie-Chantal might consider the suggestive notion of being made to sleep in the nursery. The marquise wasn’t a young woman and likely wanted to meet the next generation.
Marie-Chantal trailed her fingers across the boxes. “Fabulous, aren’t they? Better than most museum collections. I’ve been told there are even more in an attic somewhere. Probably two hundred years of the best clothing in the world packed away.”