Chương 8
“Could something be inside it?” Mara asked.
“Possibly, but dismantling it risks damage. I need imaging first.”
“How long?”
“Several days.”
Adrien checked his watch. “We cannot keep improvising decisions around a sentence written twenty-two years ago.”
Mara turned on him. “Then sell the painting.”
“That is not what I said.”
“You want this to be nothing.”
“I want evidence that survives scrutiny.”
“You want evidence that doesn’t hurt your foundation.”
“Yes,” he said.
The honesty stopped her again.
Adrien looked toward the painting. “Bellavere employs eighty-three people year-round and more than two hundred seasonally. The foundation funds regional arts programs, conservation work, and scholarships. If the collection contains stolen or fraudulently sold art, claims could close the estate. People who had nothing to do with the fire will lose jobs.”
“And if the collection contains stolen art?”
“Then it must be addressed.”
“Slowly?”
“Correctly.”
Vivienne stepped between them. “Adrien.”
“No, she should know. Truth does not arrive without invoices.”
Mara folded Emil’s letter and returned it to her pocket. “He spent his life paying yours.”
Adrien’s face changed.
For a moment he looked less like an executive and more like a tired man who had been handed a family role before deciding whether he wanted it.
“My father was Henri de Marceau,” he said. “The man Lucien named.”
Vivienne closed her eyes briefly.
Mara looked from him to the countess. “You didn’t tell me.”
“It was not mine to tell,” Vivienne said.
Adrien gave a humorless laugh. “Our family discovers ethics at unusual times.”
“Is Henri alive?” Mara asked.
“Yes.”
“Can I speak to him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“He has advanced vascular dementia. Some days he recognizes me. Other days he thinks I am his brother. He cannot provide reliable testimony.”
“That doesn’t mean he knows nothing.”
“It means anything he says can be misunderstood, suggested, or used by people who do not care whether he understands the question.”
Mara heard protection in his voice.
“You believe Emil stole me,” she said.
“I believe my father was capable of harming people while persuading himself he was protecting the family. I also believe he is now a sick old man who cannot defend himself from our need for answers.”
Vivienne sat on a padded bench near the wall.
“He was not always cruel,” she said. “That made him more dangerous. Cruelty would have been easier to recognize.”
Helen continued examining the frame, pretending not to listen.
Mara looked at Adrien. “Did you leak the clinic appointment?”
“No.”
“Did Bellavere?”
“I have found no evidence of it.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the only honest answer I have.”
Her phone buzzed. The staffing agency had sent a formal suspension notice. At the bottom, in smaller print, it reminded her that temporary employees were not guaranteed hours.
Mara placed the phone facedown on a worktable.
“I need a job,” she said.
Adrien’s expression became guarded. “If you are asking Bellavere—”
“I am not asking Bellavere for charity.”
“Then what are you asking?”
She looked at the painting.
“Pay me to help organize Emil’s documents. Your lawyers will want copies. Your historians will want dates. I know his handwriting and his habits. You need me.”
Adrien hesitated.
Vivienne watched Mara with something like approval, which irritated her.
“The work would need to be supervised,” Adrien said.
“Fine.”
“You would sign confidentiality and evidence-handling agreements.”
“I’ll have my lawyer read them.”
“Good.”
“You’ll pay a normal archival assistant rate, not some ridiculous amount designed to make me grateful.”
“I would not know how to calculate a ridiculous amount designed to make you grateful.”
Vivienne said, “He would.”
Adrien glanced at her. “Thank you.”
Mara started the following Monday in Bellavere’s basement archive.
The room had no marble. Pipes crossed the ceiling. Metal shelves held acid-free boxes labeled by decade and household branch. A portable heater clicked beneath the desk, though the vents already blew warm air.
Her supervisor was Dr. Naomi Feld, a compact woman in her sixties who wore red glasses on a chain and distrusted everyone equally.
“You may be related to the family,” Naomi told Mara, “but in this room you are a contractor with limited clearance. Do not remove documents. Do not write on documents. Do not drink near documents. If you find a mouse, do not kill it on a document.”
“Has that happened?”
“Rich families keep paper for centuries. Mice become historians.”
They began with the contents of Emil’s metal box. Each item received a number, description, photograph, and storage sleeve. Mara watched strangers place her adoption papers under lights and discuss ink age.
At noon, she ate a sandwich on the loading dock because the employee cafeteria felt too exposed. Kitchen workers smoked near the dumpsters. A gardener complained about deer eating imported shrubs. Two housekeepers argued over whether the countess had actually knelt or merely stumbled.
Mara kept her hood up.
On the third day, one of the housekeepers sat beside her.
“My name is Nia,” she said. “We met when you nearly hit me with the tray.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You were busy becoming famous.”
Mara unwrapped her sandwich.
Nia opened a container of rice and beans. “People upstairs think you’re going to own the house.”
“I don’t want the house.”
“Good. The west roof leaks.”
They ate in silence for a while.
Then Nia said, “Mrs. de Marceau has come downstairs twice pretending she needs archive reports.”
“What does she actually need?”
“To look at you without asking permission.”
Mara stared toward the lake. “That’s unsettling.”
“She’s seventy-two. At that age, unsettling is sometimes all people have left.”
Vivienne did not ask Mara to call her grandmother.
She asked about Emil instead.
At first the questions came during brief visits to the archive. Did he still play chess? Had he kept the scar on his left hand? Did he remain afraid of large dogs after a mastiff chased him into the lake in 1998?
May you like
Mara answered carefully.
Then she began asking questions of her own.
