Part 5
“I can tell you now.”
Adrian looked at her. “You don’t have to.”
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
She described signing the linen delivery at one fifteen, inspecting the guest cloakroom, finding the Bellweather envelope beneath the side table in the library, and putting it into the desk. She described seeing Celeste near the library door ten minutes later.
Celeste interrupted.
“I went into the library to take a call.”
“From whom?” Ruth asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“You can check your phone.”
Victor stepped forward. “My daughter is not surrendering her phone.”
“No one asked her to surrender it.”
“You were about to.”
Ruth’s patience did not visibly change, which made the room feel colder. “I was about to suggest that she preserve her call history.”
Celeste folded her arms.
Eleanor continued. She described being sent for the shawl, returning to find Celeste beside her handbag, and hearing Celeste announce that the brooch was gone.
“Why was your bag on the terrace?” Ruth asked.
“Staff are not allowed to carry personal bags while serving. I left it behind the champagne table with Mrs. Delaney’s permission.”
“Was it closed?”
“Yes.”
“Locked?”
“It has no lock.”
“What happened before you entered the pool?”
Eleanor hesitated.
A broken champagne glass. Celeste reaching toward the handbag. A man in a tan jacket turning too quickly. The server behind Eleanor flinching as his tray struck someone’s elbow. Celeste’s hand closing briefly around Eleanor’s wrist.
She had not wanted to remember the pressure of those fingers.
“Celeste tried to take the bag,” she said. “I held on. Someone collided with me.”
Celeste shook her head. “I touched the strap.”
“You took my wrist.”
“To keep you from falling.”
“You let go before I fell.”
“That does not make me responsible.”
“No,” Eleanor said. “It does not.”
The answer seemed to surprise her.
Eleanor looked at Ruth.
“I don’t know who knocked me into the water. I will not say she did if I did not see it.”
Celeste’s shoulders loosened slightly.
“But she put the brooch in my bag.”
The tension returned.
Ruth wrote something down.
“What did the Bellweather envelope look like?”
“White. Legal size. Red confidential stamp. The courier label had a tracking number.”
“Did you open it?”
“No.”
“Did you tell anyone about it?”
“I told Mara there was something for Adrian.”
“When?” Mara asked.
“In the kitchen. You were speaking to the caterer.”
Mara frowned, searching her memory. “You said a confidential delivery had arrived.”
“Yes.”
“I told you to put it in Adrian’s office.”
“You were called away before I could explain it was in the library.”
Victor leaned against the edge of the desk. “This is all very interesting, but it proves nothing about my daughter.”
“It establishes a reason to preserve records,” Ruth said.
“A missing envelope no one opened, discovered by the same employee involved in the brooch incident.”
Adrian took one step toward him. “Say what you mean.”
Victor straightened. “I mean your housekeeper may be connecting unrelated events because she is embarrassed.”
Eleanor rose.
The blanket slipped from her shoulders onto the chair.
Her knees hurt. Her shin stung. The dry uniform felt wrong against skin still damp beneath it.
“I have worked in this house for thirty-two years,” she said. “I have been embarrassed before.”
Victor’s eyebrows lifted.
“I have broken dishes. I once served your wife tea with salt because the kitchen tins were switched. I called a governor by the wrong name and spent an entire dinner pretending I had not. I know embarrassment.”
No one smiled.
Eleanor looked at Celeste.
“This was not embarrassment.”
For the first time, Celeste dropped her gaze.
A phone vibrated on the desk.
Lydia glanced at the screen and silenced it.
“Ruth,” she said, “what happens next?”
“We secure the footage, the bag, and the brooch. We retrieve the courier tracking record. We determine who had access to the library and the security system. We notify the foundation’s audit committee that a confidential delivery may have been removed.”
Victor’s face hardened. “There is no reason to involve the committee.”
“A forensic auditor’s package addressed to the foundation has disappeared during an event attended by a trustee whose organization is under review.”
“My organization is not under review.”
“The restricted-funds transfers are.”
“A timing issue.”
“That is for Bellweather to determine.”
Victor looked at Lydia. “You know what happens if you allow this to become a spectacle.”
Lydia’s hands rested on the desk. She had not sat down.
“The rehabilitation center loses funding,” she said.
“Among other things.”
Adrian stared at his mother. “You knew the transfers were under review?”
“I knew there were questions.”
“You told me Bellweather was checking construction invoices.”
“They are.”
“And Arden Foundation transfers?”
Lydia’s silence answered him.
Victor picked up his jacket from the back of a chair.
“My daughter and I are leaving. Our attorneys will contact yours.”
Thomas moved toward the door, not blocking it but making his presence clear.
Ruth said, “Before you go, Celeste should be advised not to delete any messages, photographs, cloud files, or call records from today.”
Celeste laughed once. The sound was thin.
“You think I stole an accounting report?”
“I think evidence is missing.”
“Because a housekeeper says she saw an envelope.”
Eleanor felt the word housekeeper land exactly as Celeste intended.
Not Mrs. Mercer.
Not Eleanor.
A function. A uniform. A person whose memory could be weighed against twelve million dollars and found inconvenient.
Adrian heard it too.
“She has a name,” he said.
Celeste’s eyes flashed. “So do I.”
“Yes,” he said. “And today everyone heard it.”
Victor took his daughter’s arm.
As they passed Eleanor, Celeste paused.
Close enough, Eleanor could see the powder settled around her nose and the faint red mark where the missing brooch had pulled at the gown.
“I truly am sorry you fell,” Celeste murmured.
Eleanor looked at the white wrap around her shoulders.
May you like
“No,” she said. “You are sorry he came downstairs.”
Celeste’s face emptied.
