Part 2
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And now you’re giving me orders?”
“I’m preserving the table.”
“You’re preserving your position.”
For the first time, Martin’s mouth tightened. “My position has never required me to watch Mr. Vale drink from a contaminated decanter.”
“You do not know it was contaminated.”
“No,” he said. “That is why no one should touch it.”
Conrad lowered himself into a chair at the far end of the table, away from the spill. He stared at the white floral centerpiece as though it had become a complicated object. Candlelight moved across the planes of his face. Outside the glass walls, the blackness over the Atlantic pressed close enough to resemble another room.
“Evelyn,” he said. “Tell me from the beginning.”
Her pulse struck hard beneath the small brass name badge pinned to her vest.
She began with the champagne.
The anniversary dinner had been planned for two weeks, though Celeste changed the menu three times and the wine pairings twice. She rejected the vintage grower champagne Evelyn first suggested because the label looked insufficiently celebratory. She rejected the second because Conrad had served it at his first wedding. On Tuesday, she chose a 2008 prestige cuvée from a large house and instructed Evelyn to decant it before dinner.
Champagne was rarely decanted at Blackwater Point. Conrad liked the ceremony of opening bottles at the table, and Evelyn had gently mentioned that the decanter would soften the wine’s energy. Celeste told her to do it anyway.
“I thought she wanted the crystal,” Evelyn said. “The old Baccarat set. For the photographs.”
“What photographs?” Conrad asked.
Celeste gave him a tired look. “I had planned one private picture.”
“There’s no photographer here.”
“I changed my mind.”
Evelyn continued.
At seven forty-three, she opened the bottle in the butler’s pantry and poured it into the decanter. She had left the room briefly because Celeste asked her to retrieve a box of cigars from the library humidor. Halfway down the corridor, Evelyn remembered that Conrad had stopped smoking cigars four years earlier after a cardiac scare.
She returned.
From the service passage she saw Celeste beside the drinks table with something silver in her hand.
“Why did you film instead of stopping her?” Conrad asked.
The question landed harder than the slap.
Evelyn looked at the floor between them. “I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I know.”
“Conrad,” Martin said quietly.
“No, I need to understand.” He turned back to Evelyn. “You suspected someone was putting something in my drink, and your first thought was to take out your phone?”
“My first thought was that it might be one of those mineral packets. Or sweetener. Or something your doctor approved. Then she looked toward the door before she opened it.”
Celeste folded her arms.
Evelyn swallowed. “I knew that if I walked in, she could say I imagined it. I recorded seven seconds. Then one of the kitchen timers went off, and she heard it. She put the empty packet in her hand and walked away.”
“And you said nothing.”
“I checked the decanter.”
“How?”
“I smelled it. I poured a few drops into a spoon. There was no color change. Nothing I could identify without tasting it.”
Conrad stared at her.
“I didn’t taste it,” Evelyn added.
“That is not what concerns me.”
“I know.”
“Then why was the champagne served?”
Her eyes burned now, but she refused to blink quickly because she knew what Celeste would make of tears.
“Because when I came back with a clean decanter, Mrs. Vale was standing in the pantry. She asked what I was doing. I told her the first one had a flaw near the base. She said the flaw had been there for years and ordered me to bring it out.”
“You could have dropped it.”
“I thought about it.”
“You could have poured it away.”
“I thought about that too.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I didn’t know if I was about to accuse your wife of trying to harm you or of adding a vitamin supplement to champagne.”
Celeste’s laugh held no humor. “There. At last.”
Evelyn looked at Conrad. “So I kept the phone ready. I watched the glass. I was going to stop you before you drank.”
“You waited until it reached my face.”
“I needed to be certain which glass was yours.”
The words were weak compared with the question. She could hear it herself.
She had been afraid. That was the part she did not want to say in front of Celeste.
She had been afraid of losing the first stable position she had held since her father’s death. Afraid of being dismissed without a reference. Afraid that the small apartment above the carriage house would be taken from her before the next morning. Afraid that the Vales’ influence would follow her to every serious restaurant between Portland and Boston.
She had been afraid, and the fear had cost several seconds.
Conrad looked away.
Martin approached the table and placed the pouch near an unlit candle without letting it touch the linen.
“Where did you find that?” Conrad asked.
“In the small drawer beneath the drinks table.”
Celeste turned. “That drawer contains cocktail picks.”
“It did,” Martin said. “The packet was behind the removable tray.”
“You opened a drawer and immediately put trash into an evidence bag?”
“I saw Mrs. Vale place her hand near it after Evelyn knocked over the glass.”
Evelyn had not seen that. Her attention had been on the slap and the pain spreading across her cheek.
Martin continued. “When Mrs. Vale moved toward the telephone, I checked the drawer. I used a clean food-storage pouch from the pantry. I have not opened it.”
“A food-storage pouch,” Celeste repeated. “How forensic.”
“It was preferable to leaving it where someone might remove it.”
May you like
Conrad closed his eyes for a moment.
The pavilion smelled of wax, white roses, and the yeasty sweetness of spilled champagne. A drop reached the edge of the tablecloth and struck the floor.
