Chương 10
She apologized to Adrien for accusing him.
“I did not hear an apology,” he said.
“I’m working up to it.”
“Take your time. The novelty may kill me.”
She threw a pencil at him. It struck his sleeve and fell beneath a cabinet.
Naomi looked over her red glasses. “No dueling in the archive.”
The imaging report on The Painted Lake arrived that afternoon.
X-rays showed a narrow foreign object inside the lower frame rail.
The conservator scheduled removal under video documentation with attorneys present. Mara found the ceremony absurd until Helen explained that if the object became evidence, every hand and movement would be questioned.
The lower frame rail contained a rolled strip of waxed linen.
Inside the linen were twelve pages from an inventory catalogue and a small brass key.
The pages listed paintings, sculptures, and decorative works removed from Bellavere between 1996 and 2004. Beside several entries, Lucien had written REPLACED, FALSE SALE, or H.D.M. AUTHORIZED.
H.D.M. was Henri de Marceau.
Two works listed as privately sold had appeared in museum collections under different provenance histories. Three others remained at Bellavere but were identified in Lucien’s notes as copies.
The final page contained a handwritten account.
Henri has used the foundation’s restoration transfers to move originals through Halden Fine Arts. Father knows enough to stop this and refuses because loans depend on valuations. Sofia says we leave after the gala. I will take the catalogue to the state attorney general’s office tomorrow.
Beneath that, in darker ink:
Henri knows.
The discovery changed the fire investigation from a family tragedy with unanswered questions into a possible act connected to financial fraud.
The state attorney general’s office requested the records. The sheriff’s cold-case unit reopened its file. Museums contacted Bellavere about provenance. The insurer that had covered the 2004 losses sent a litigation hold demanding preservation of every document related to the fire.
Adrien stopped sleeping altogether.
Mara found him one evening in the archive break room eating crackers from a vending machine.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“Go home.”
“I live here.”
“You know what I mean.”
He turned the cracker between his fingers. “If Lucien’s notes are correct, my father stole from the foundation for years. My uncle covered the losses with loans. Some of the works may have been sold using fabricated records. The current board signed statements based on those records.”
“Did you know?”
“No.”
“Did you suspect?”
Adrien did not answer immediately.
“That’s not the same question,” Mara said.
“I knew the books were disorderly. I knew my father had private arrangements no one could reconstruct. I believed it was vanity and incompetence.”
“Because fraud would have been harder.”
“Yes.”
Mara sat across from him.
The vending machine’s cooling unit rattled.
“What happens to the employees?” she asked.
“If claims are successful, we may sell property, suspend programs, or close parts of the estate. The auction was intended to cover operating debt.”
“You said the foundation helped people.”
“It does.”
“And it was built partly on stolen art.”
“Possibly.”
“You keep choosing words that leave doors open.”
“It is my job to keep doors open until facts close them.”
Mara thought of Emil moving from town to town, closing every door behind him.
“Take me to Henri,” she said.
Adrien’s expression hardened. “No.”
“I’m not asking him to sign a confession.”
“You believe you can stand in front of a man with dementia and ask whether he tried to kill your parents without influencing his response?”
“I believe he might recognize the pendant.”
“That is not evidence.”
“It might be something.”
“For you, perhaps. Not for him.”
Mara leaned back. “You’re protecting him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he is my father.”
The words carried no apology.
Mara touched the stone at her throat.
“So was Emil.”
Adrien looked down at the cracker in his hand. “I know.”
Vivienne took Mara to the north shore the following Sunday.
The ruins had been removed, but the foundation stones remained beneath grass and snow. A path led from the main estate through bare woods to a clearing above the lake. The boathouse visible in old photographs was gone. Only two stone steps descended toward frozen water.
Vivienne wore boots beneath a long wool coat. Without marble floors and chandeliers around her, she seemed smaller.
“The nursery was there,” she said, pointing toward a rectangle of low stone. “Sofia wanted it on the ground floor so she could push the carriage outside without using stairs.”
Mara stood where one wall had been.
“Did I have a room?”
“Blue walls. Yellow curtains. A painted wooden moon above the crib.”
“Emil never mentioned it.”
“He may have thought you needed fewer ghosts.”
They walked toward the lake.
Vivienne stopped near a blackened maple that had survived the fire. The trunk had grown around an old scar.
“I heard Sofia screaming,” she said.
Mara waited.
“I told myself for years that it was wind through a broken window. It was not.”
“Did you try to go in?”
“My husband held me back.”
“That may have saved you.”
“Yes.”
Vivienne looked across the ice. “I resented him for it.”
Mara had no answer.
After a while, she asked, “Why was Lucien afraid of his father?”
Vivienne rubbed her bare thumb against the seam of one glove.
“Armand believed love was expressed through protection. Protection meant control. He chose schools, friends, investments, even the length of Lucien’s hair when he was a boy. Lucien learned to resist dramatically and obey privately.”
“Did Armand know about the stolen art?”
“Lucien believed he did.”
“What do you believe?”
“That my husband knew enough to be guilty of choosing not to know more.”
Mara looked toward Bellavere’s distant roofline through the trees.
“That sounds familiar.”
“Yes,” Vivienne said. “It should.”
The countess did not ask forgiveness.
Mara respected her more for that and disliked the respect.
On their way back, Vivienne stopped near the path.
May you like
“Your father’s remains may have been found,” she said.
Mara turned.
