The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(50)
“Grand-Mère . . . well, she’s not really my grandmother. She took me in and raised me. Trained me how to be a vine witch.”
“Didn’t know my mother, neither.”
The frogs croaked again, making them jump.
Elena craned her neck to search for signs of searchlights or dogs. “Would we have a better chance if we split up?”
“Are you kidding?” Yvette rolled her tattered stockings back on and tested her feet against the soil, ready to move again. “You wouldn’t last the night without me. Come on. I know which way to go.”
Their pursuers hadn’t yet picked up their trail. And her primitive calculations of the stars confirmed they were headed in the direction of the answers she sought. With nothing to stop her, Elena quickly rubbed the mallow over her bare feet and then chased after the young woman who darted, lithe as a pixie, through the meadow grass.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jean-Paul arrived ten minutes early but knocked anyway. A servant in a black dress and white apron answered the door of the grand chateau and let him in. He waited in the foyer, hat in hand, while the servant walked to the back of the house to announce him. In her absence he stared at the floor. He could hardly do otherwise. But the black-and-white contrast of the harlequinesque marble soon gave him a bout of vertigo, so he lifted his eyes to follow the hand-carved mahogany banister leading to the upper floors. It curved in graceful sinuosity, like a woman’s back arched in the act of lovemaking. Art nouveau style at its grandest. Intrigued, his eye climbed even higher to where a gas-fed chandelier, adorned with a hundred teardrop crystals, gleamed fully bright directly above his head. He took three instinctive steps to the left in the off chance a bolt should suddenly come loose. The house, he reflected, was old and graced with envious prerevolutionary bones, yet it reeked from the scent of new money. What his mother called nouveau riche. He wondered, briefly, if the newly widowed owner was planning to sell.
The servant returned and escorted him to the rear of the house, where a domed solarium overlooked the south slope of the vineyard. The addition was typical of other well-to-do homes he’d visited, with its copper-green metalwork and arched glass. Though this one bore a distinct difference on the inside. A bureau Mazarin, carved from ebony and walnut, sat against one wall. It resembled one he’d seen in a museum, only this example was much more elaborate in scale. The ornate desk had to be hundreds of years old, yet dried herbs and dead flowers dangled by their muddy roots from a rack suspended above, raining dirt onto the bottles, tincture jars, and row of ancient-looking books arranged on top. He wished to peek inside the drawers, but the servant snuffed the impulse by offering him a seat in one of four damask chairs arranged around a mahogany table in the center of the room.
He thanked her and tossed his hat on the chair as he admired the remarkable vigor of the plants growing in pots near the windows. Exotic palm fronds arced toward the ceiling, and tiny succulents were perched under glass domes, along with containers of foxglove, belladonna, and one beautiful ornamental bush he didn’t know. Reddish leaves and spiky flowers were just coming into bloom. He saw no lilacs among them, though the air hung heavy with their heady scent. Then he remembered the scent of her perfume. He turned to his left to find Gerda du Monde standing at a potter’s bench behind one of the massive palms.
She was dressed in black mourning lace as she stood before a row of white orchids. The effect was as stark as seeing a raven in the snow. She snipped a piece of twine with her shears, then tied it around the neck of a bloom-heavy flower head, securing it to a wooden stake in the pot. “Well, well, well, Monsieur Martel,” she said without looking up. “The attorney for my husband’s murderer.”
“I hope to prove otherwise.” She laughed without humor at his claim. “Thank you for agreeing to see me,” he said. “As my telegram stated, I hope I might ask you some questions about that night.”
“You’re free to ask, though I’ve already given my statement to the police and that twaddling fool agent from the Covenants Regulation Bureau.”
“Yes, I’ve read your remarks. After discovering your husband’s body, it was you, in fact, who demanded the police contact Agent Nettles to report a supernatural crime had taken place. It’s one of the things I’m curious about. I don’t wish to make you uncomfortable, but can you tell me what it was about the scene that convinced you it was a crime involving witchcraft? Was there a mark? A scent of brimstone in the air? Some kind of aura?”
She turned the potted orchid from side to side as if deciding which angle suited it best. “Do you have much experience with the occult, monsieur?”
“No, not really.” He had even less experience with murder cases, but he wasn’t about to advertise that.
“Never sat in on a séance? Never had your palm read? Never bought a love potion at a carnival?”
“Doesn’t everyone play those games when they’re young?”
She finally turned her head and peered at him with those ice-chip-blue eyes. “You don’t consider those to be part of the supernatural arts, then? Is it possible you already understand that real magic isn’t about parlor tricks? Perhaps you’re further along than I thought.”
Jean-Paul thought back to his conversation with Brother Anselm on the night he’d seen the beast materialize in the vineyard. It pricked his palms with sweat even now to recall the image, knowing it was real. Or at least knowing the gargoyle existed in some unseen plane of existence. The experience had profoundly transformed his view of the supernatural.