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This, Jane realizes, is part of what hurts so much about Aunt Magnolia. It’s not just that she lied and hid who she really was. It’s that she did it because she never trusted Jane enough to tell her.
* * *
Kiran, Jane thinks later, would make a good spy.
The gala is in full swing. Jane is on the second-story bridge, looking down at all the fancy people, Kiran and Jasper at her side again, except that now Kiran is wearing a strapless crimson gown that probably cost a million dollars. A diamond hangs from a fine gold chain and sits nestled in the hollow of her throat; her ears drip with diamonds. Jane has never seen so many diamonds.
Jane is wearing a gray cashmere sweater dress with long sleeves, unlike anything she’s ever worn before in her life. She borrowed it from Kiran. She’d planned to wear a sleeveless gold top over purple jeans to look like a royal gramma, a reef fish found in the Atlantic tropics, and carry the Aunt Magnolia Coat umbrella. She’d planned to keep her tattoo fully visible so people would ask about it. But if Aunt Magnolia pretended to be someone else, well then, she can too.
She’s still wearing her big black boots, though. They’re what she wears when she’s mad.
The scene below is like something out of a movie. Women in flowing gowns of every color and men in black mill about, holding drinks in crystal glasses, smiling and laughing, shifting shoulders and backs now and then to let someone new into their group or squeeze someone out. Lucy St. George is down there, wearing an understated chocolate-colored gown and talking to Phoebe Okada, who’s dazzling, actually, in turquoise. It’s funny that Lucy goes undercover sometimes as a private investigator, but has no idea about Espions Sans Frontières.
Near them, Ravi, who always looks good in black, has his arm thrown around Colin’s shoulder with a sort of affectionate possessiveness and is talking and laughing with a man and a woman Jane doesn’t recognize. Among these guests are two New York State Police officers, two FBI special agents, and one Interpol officer. They’re formally dressed, like everyone else, except, according to Kiran, who spots them instantly, they’re not dressed like everyone else.
“Like me?” Jane asks.
Kiran takes a sip of her Pimm’s and glances at Jane with an expression that startles Jane, because of the fondness it contains. “You do look like the rest of us, sweetie, except for those boots,” she says. “It’s strange to see you this way. These cops are trying to fit in, but their shoes are cheap and their clothes lack a certain tailored elegance.”
Kiran points out the state police officers, the FBI special agents, and the man from Interpol. It’s the FBI special agents, in fact, that Ravi’s flirting with.
A woman Jane doesn’t recognize comes through the front door with Ivy, who, Jane now understands, is the reason black gowns were invented. Her hair is wrapped around her head in a series of complicated twists and braids that must’ve taken someone ages, and her glasses are the perfect touch. The woman beside her is maybe fiftyish, small and plain, in a simple gray dress, carrying a dripping black umbrella. Ivy leads the woman on a winding route through the crowd, gently taking her hand or her arm, positioning her to left or right.
Jane imagines herself in the woman’s place.
“I wonder who that is with Ivy,” says Kiran. “I can’t tell anything from her clothing. But it’s interesting, isn’t it, that Ivy’s shielding her from the cops?”
“What?” Jane says in instant alarm, less because it’s probably true and more because Jane doesn’t want Kiran noticing Ivy shielding spy-type people from cops.
“She’s doing kind of an amazing job of it,” Kiran says.
“What?” Jane says. “She’s not!”
“Watch her,” Kiran says.
And so Jane watches as Ivy and her charge pass near Colin, Ravi, and the special agents. Not only does Ivy put herself between her companion and them, but she reaches a hand to Colin’s arm and gently shifts Colin, hence Ravi as well, to better block the agents’ view of the woman she’s leading. Colin glances around in absentminded annoyance, but doesn’t seem to gather what’s happened or who’s touched him. Ivy and the woman are already beyond his sight.
Next, Ivy and the woman pass through the doorway that leads into the ballroom. Then, a moment later, the Interpol officer passes primly through the same doorway. Before Jane even realizes what she’s doing, she herself is moving across the bridge, propelled by worry for Ivy.
Not missing a beat, Kiran moves with her. “Going somewhere?” she says, too suspicious, too interested.
“Just for a walk,” Jane says, beginning to move down the stairs.
“I’ll join you,” Kiran says, which is stating the obvious, since she’s practically glued to Jane’s side.
“It’s not necessary.”
“Isn’t it?” Kiran says in a menacing voice, then plunks her Pimm’s down onto the tray of a startled serving man who tries to give her a tiny meat pie. “Beautiful party,” she tells him with a serene smile, not pausing as she and Jane fly along. The dog thuds from step to step behind them, trying to keep up.
From the ballroom, Jane and Kiran pass into the banquet hall, where guests congregate around mountains of food Jane barely notices, because she’s looking for the slightly balding head of the Interpol officer. Kiran grabs Jane’s wrist and pulls her into the kitchen, and there he is, striding past the stoves and the long wooden table. An uproar of catering people are preparing tiny English food. None of the regular house staff is present.
“Kiran?” says Jane. “What are we doing?”
The officer disappears into the kitchen’s deepest depths, where the dumbwaiter, the door to the back stairs, and the pantry are. Kiran follows him around the refrigerator and freezer, still gripping Jane’s wrist, not speaking, her heels clapping across the tile floor like gunshots. Jane feels like she’s on a Nantucket sleigh ride.
As they reach him, the Interpol officer opens the door to the dumbwaiter carriage and sticks his head in.
“That seems dangerous,” Kiran says to him cheerfully, letting Jane go. “We don’t want to be responsible for an injury to an Interpol officer. What if someone sent something down while your head was in there?”
“Up, rather,” the officer says, extracting his head from the dumbwaiter doorway, shutting the door, and peering at Kiran and Jane suspiciously. “I can see the mechanism below. What’s down there? I heard the voice of a man speaking what may have been Bengali.”
“Yes, I heard it too,” Kiran says. “That’s one of the servants, Patrick. Today’s Saturday. Saturdays are Patrick’s Bengali days.”
“Bengali days?” says the officer dubiously. He’s a pale man with puckered lips, French-sounding, and speaks English with a deliberate distinctness, as if he’s determined to convey how much he hates speaking it.
“To help him learn,” Kiran says. “Patrick has a gift for languages. On Wednesdays he speaks only German. Would you like to meet him?” she says brightly, taking hold of the handle on the back door. “We’re headed down to help him carry up some English sparkling wine.”
“English wine,” says the man, looking mildly offended.
“There’s a secret trapdoor in the wine cellar floor that leads to a genuine oubliette,” Kiran adds. “You might find that interesting, being French.”
“I’m Belgian,” says the man stiffly. “And I can think of nothing more silly than an American oubliette in a building barely one hundred years old. This house is a theme park.”
“You don’t want to see the oubliette, then?” says Kiran. “It’s super creepy.”
With one last, affronted glance at Jane’s boots, the Interpol officer releases a breath of air and stalks from the kitchen.
“Good riddance,” Kiran says once he’s gone.
“Kiran?” says Jane. “Why did you chase away the Interpol man?”
“This door is locked,” Ki
ran says, tugging at the back door. “Why would it be locked?”
“Does Patrick really speak Bengali and German?”
“He knows some bedroom Bengali,” Kiran says, distracted. The dumbwaiter is humming and squawking.
Kiran yanks its door open.
A man sits cross-legged inside, brown-skinned, with thick black hair, dressed in a fine black suit and gaping at Jane and Kiran in sheer amazement as he glides upward in the carriage.
Kiran speaks a few words to him calmly in a language Jane doesn’t understand. The dumbwaiter continues its smooth upward climb and the man disappears from sight.
“Did you know that guy?” Jane squeaks.
“Never seen him before in my life,” Kiran says, closing the dumbwaiter door, “but that was the guy the Interpol officer thought he heard speaking Bengali in the wine cellars. Because he’s an interfering Belgian ignoramus who can’t tell Bengali from Arabic even though they’re nothing alike.”
“You speak Arabic?”
“It was one of my majors.”
“What did you say to him?”
