Suspects(49)
Mike was still in constant touch with Robert Richmond at MI6, and they were both in touch with Guy Thomas. Mike had an uneasy feeling about the vague, intermittent rumors Robert was hearing from Moscow. There was no specific threat to Theo. But Matthieu’s disgruntled Russian investor, Dmitri Aleksandr, had reared his ugly head again, complaining about how much money he had lost when Matthieu did an about-face and refused to open the two stores in Russia. He came within a hair of calling Matthieu a crook, according to one informant, and said he still hadn’t recouped his losses or recovered from it, which Robert was sure wasn’t true. He was one of the richest men in Russia, with countless illegal businesses and a few legal ones that were highly profitable. Both men had been able to afford to lose the money, and Theo knew Matthieu had never regretted backing out on the deal when he saw the degree of corruption he had to contend with in Russia. Theo had been relieved when he got out of it. She had never liked the smell of it, or the people she saw him meeting with, and she hadn’t even known about the young actress then, but he was in Moscow constantly while trying to get the stores finished, which never happened.
It would have taken several more years and a lot more bribes to do it than he was willing to put up with. His angry partner in the deal had come to meet with him at the chateau several times and he had made Theo’s skin crawl. He looked like a gangster and the men with him looked like thugs. And worse than the money Matthieu had lost, he had lost his life and their son’s. Too high a price to pay for any deal.
The memories came back to her in a rush when she got to the chateau to begin packing her belongings. When she arrived, Theo took a long quiet walk through the chateau, making note of the paintings she was keeping and taking photos with her phone for reference. There were several paintings she was going to sell at Sotheby’s. They were too valuable to include in a house sale. She felt somewhat guilty now, knowing how much Matthieu had loved the place and how hard he had worked to earn the money to buy it back. It had been in terrible shape when he got it, long before she met him, and he had so lovingly restored it. But the heartbreak was woven into its history now for her. Just being there took her breath away, remembering the day he and Axel had been kidnapped, and the day they had been found buried nearby.
Her eyes filled with tears as she walked through the house, trying to be practical about it. She clung to thoughts of Mike to give her strength. She wanted to call him, but felt too emotional to do so. She had decided not to bring an assistant with her. She wanted to be alone in her final hours in the house and not have to talk to anyone. She had brought her driver and one of her bodyguards to help her carry things that were too heavy for her. The DGSE agent assigned to her had followed them in a chase car, as they always did now, since Mike had convinced Guy Thomas to provide protection for her. The poisoning had proven him right. There was no question about it now. It made her wonder again what had happened to Pierre de Vaumont and where he was hiding, and from whom. He had been noticeably absent from the Paris social scene for over a month now. Guy Thomas had said several times that he could be dead, and Robert Richmond didn’t disagree with him, but Theo thought it unlikely. He was probably just hiding somewhere, maybe afraid he’d be blamed for poisoning her, and he was waiting for the storm to blow over.
The movers arrived an hour after she got there. She got them started, and told them which paintings to take down. She scolded them immediately when they began doing it without gloves. They were professional movers and she told them they should have known better. One of them rolled his eyes, and the others did as they were told. She was removing nineteen paintings from the walls, and got her bodyguard to rehang some others, so the rooms didn’t look odd with empty spaces on the walls. The paintings she was taking were on a list as “excluded from the sale.” She wanted everything to look perfect when the new owner showed it to his wife for the first time. She had even bought new kitchen towels and a few things to replace the old ones. She had tried to think of everything, to help prepare the gift.
She had marked with stickers and colored dots each of the paintings that were going, and the movers began putting them into wooden crates, as she walked slowly up the stairs to the bedrooms. That would be the hardest part for her.
She walked into her dressing room. The piles of sweaters and the coats she had left when she had first felt the effects of the poison were still sitting on the bed with her two valises standing by. Nothing had been touched since then. She called her bodyguard and asked the movers to bring her wardrobe boxes, which they did a few minutes later and set them up for her. Her bodyguard helped her unload her closets into them. She had fifteen years of country clothes there, and she was going to give some of it away. This was where she kept old, comfortable things to wear on their weekends in the country, a few summer dresses, and bathing suits. She had a stack of summer hats, most of them fairly tired and nothing fashionable. It took eight wardrobe boxes, half a dozen suitcases, and a big box of rough boots, to empty her closets.
It actually took her less time than expected. The bodyguard emptied the contents of her bathroom cupboards into boxes, and then did the same in Matthieu’s bathroom. She stopped when she walked into his closet. Everything was there as though he was coming home to dress or was about to arrive from the city any minute. She could still smell the faint pungent smell of the cologne he wore, which brought tears to her eyes. She wondered if he had worn it with the Russian girl too. But it didn’t matter now. She was dead, and so was he. She knew he had loved her in his own way, even if fidelity wasn’t his strong suit. She was his wife and the mother of his only child, which was a revered position to him, and he treated her accordingly, and had always been very kind and generous with her.