Swiss Vendetta (Agnes Luthi Mysteries #1)(91)

Agnes thought Sybille would choke.

“Maybe I can help you with tea and cake,” Marie-Chantal interrupted, escorting Sybille from the room. “The cake smells so good. Vanilla-flavored with orange, is it?”

“Thank you,” Agnes said to Vallotton with a nod after her mother-in-law, wondering for a moment what the Vallottons thought of her home. The atmosphere rolling off Sybille was cold, but the home itself was warm, full of dark wood and relics of distant ancestors.

“My aunt would visit, you know.” At Agnes’s expression, Vallotton shrugged. “She offered.”

“Knowing I would politely refuse and come to her instead.”

“‘Old habits die hard’ is the saying.”

“I was glad I didn’t kill him.”

“Bardy told me that if you’d meant to kill him, Estanguet would be dead. He knew you shot to disable. Nurse Brighton would have been a good hostage, or maybe he would have killed her immediately. From her account Estanguet was spiraling out of control. Of course you know that Arsov’s butler and Officer Petit recovered from their injuries, but something happened between the time Estanguet attacked them and when you arrived. Estanguet was in a rage. Honestly, it was a miracle you could aim at all. You’d lost a lot of blood.”

Agnes remembered thinking she couldn’t stand because her leg was badly cut. She thought the blood on her chest was from Arsov’s wounds, not realizing that Estanguet’s knife had found its mark, sliding into her abdomen. Later, at the hospital, they had explained that adrenaline conceals pain.

“He stabbed me and Monsieur Arsov with the same blade he used on Felicity Cowell,” she said. “To think she died because of mistaken identity. She was wearing that borrowed coat, sitting on the bench where he sat every day, and with the storm raging Estanguet couldn’t tell that she was a woman and not an old man. He’d been planning it for months. Ever since he heard the name Vladimir Arsov. He had the day picked and even the storm didn’t deter him.”

Agnes paused to catch her breath, wondering if she would ever fully recover from her wounds. “That storm,” she said. “It will be called the storm of the century, but people won’t realize that beyond the road accidents it killed in other ways. If there hadn’t been a storm Arsov would have been outside. Maybe Estanguet would have killed him there, or maybe Felicity Cowell’s presence would have saved his life. And her own.”

“Estanguet would have found another opportunity,” said Vallotton. “He was determined to have his revenge.”

Agnes shifted the blanket that covered her legs. “When we found Felicity Cowell’s body Doctor Blanchard told me she wouldn’t have felt any pain and I didn’t believe him. Now, I guess he was right. The blade was sharp.” She thought about George. Maybe he hadn’t felt anything, just a great sense of approaching emptiness. Vallotton moved to touch her arm and she shook herself.

“Just thinking about that day,” she said. “Hard to believe so much harm came from what Estanguet cobbled together as a child. If only he had known the truth. At least he might have realized that they really did what they thought was best for him. If he had, then when he found Arsov the two men might have bonded over their love for Anne-Marie and not turned it into a tragedy.”

“It’s hard to give up on the notions we have of people that come out of childhood.”

“If the Estanguets had treated him well things would have been different. Or if he had confronted Arsov. Questioned him.”

Vallotton stood to look out the front window of the chalet. “I wonder if the serendipity of the meeting made it worse. Imagine sitting in a café and hearing a name that you have harbored a grudge against your entire life. A secret name you were warned not to share. The notion of secrecy ensured a small boy would remember the name Vladimir Arsov. The man who stole his sister away.”

“It may have been serendipity at the start, but it was premeditated in the end,” said Agnes. “He spent months planning how to slip down the hill and strike. Did you know that Estanguet is a mountain climber? Bardy told me. Estanguet was careful to cover his proficiency and tell me that he was a guide on gentle walks. Instead, he’d climbed some impressive sites recently despite his age. When the storm came he knew that it would be the perfect cover. He had picked the day and made his preparations and suddenly the conditions are even better. No one would see him and he had the skills to climb back up and hide among the others in the village. Any trace was erased and no one suspected that he came from anywhere other than his car. He was enough of a regular by then to blend in. Premeditated.”

“If he’d resisted the need to find out what happened he would have gotten away with killing her. His offer to help Carnet down the hill was the only reason he was on the property. The only reason you had any reason to suspect him.”

Agnes pondered this. She wondered if she would have made the connection if they hadn’t found Anne-Marie’s bones.

Vallotton slipped his hands in his pockets. “My aunt feels responsible. She thinks she should have recognized him.”

“She almost did. I think it was on her mind, which is why she mentioned seeing Estanguet the first night I was there. We spoke about children and changes that happen over time, and loss. I think that too many thoughts were in her head, and she didn’t pinpoint that it was literally seeing Estanguet that triggered her memories. He was a mere child when she knew him. She had no reason to recognize him. I associated her thoughts with Felicity Cowell’s other name and her parents learning what had happened.”