“If you honestly believe this was anyone other than my ancestor,” said Armand in his quiet, measured voice, “then it would be prudent to summon the police.”
Mallory inhaled sharply. “That won’t be necessary.”
Armand’s expression turned sympathetic. “This has nothing to do with you and your sister. It’s unlikely the Comorre constable will have had any contact with those investigators.”
“Investigators?” asked the housekeeper. “What investigators?”
Mallory crossed her arms. She didn’t need any more reasons for the housekeeper—or any of the staff—to distrust her or her sister, and admitting that there might be a warrant out for their arrest was unlikely to help the situation.
“If this was done by the ghost,” she said, “then there is nothing the police can do. But if it wasn’t him, we cannot waste any time. It will take too long for help to arrive, and the killer could be destroying evidence or preparing to run even as we speak.”
“This is absurd. Of course it was Le Bleu,” muttered the housekeeper. “To suggest otherwise is despicable.”
“What of her family?” asked Anaïs. “What will you tell them?”
Yvette shook her head. “She does not… did not have any. Raised by her grandfather, who passed last spring. She’s lived here in the château ever since.”
The words hung heavy in the room. Mallory scraped herattention over Julie’s pale face again—the open eyes, the blood at the corner of her lips.
Le Bleu had chosen his victims carefully. Women with few connections, or whose families would be relieved to be rid of them.
“Anaïs,” she said, “I would ask you to gather everyone. I will conduct my interviews in the indigo salon.”
“I can do it,” said Armand. “I should be the one to inform the rest of the staff, those who don’t know yet.”
“No,” said Mallory. “Not you.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
She lifted her chin, unblinking.
Realization slowly crossed his face. Armand took an unsteady step back. “Surely you don’t think I could have done this?”
When she didn’t respond, hurt swept over his features. Then irritation. A muscle jumped in his jaw, but he inclined his head. “The indigo salon it is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
To Mallory’s consternation, the interviews were almost entirely useless.
She could admit to herself that she’d hoped itwasthe stable hand. That Gideon, when subjected to her questions, would be so unnerved he would dissolve into a blubbering, guilty confession.
No confession came.
Instead, Gideon—a ruddy-faced boy of sixteen—seemed genuinely horrified to learn what had happened to Julie, and even more genuinely horrified at Mallory’s suggestion that he might have had anything to do with it. When Mallory asked if he and Julie had a romantic relationship, he’d stammered that he was quite in love with Théo, the son of Comorre’s blacksmith. They had been courting since the Harvest Festival, as anyone in town could have told her.
Mallory believed him. It was highly unlikely that a stable handcould have saved enough money to purchase that sapphire ring, anyway.
The rest of her interviews were just as frustrating. In the hours prior to Yvette finding Julie’s body, everyone had been going about their daily business. Yvette had been cleaning the floors in the game room. Claude had been in the study, writing a letter to a local glass artisan about fixing the window in Mallory and Anaïs’s room—the one the lou carcolh had thrown the fireplace poker through. Pierre had been in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for a stew. And before he’d come up to the tower, Armand had been in the greenhouse, gathering medicinal ingredients for Mallory’s wounds. He appeared rather put-out as he told her this, still resentful that she could suspect him.
Perhaps Julie had a lover in town—a possibility that Yvette thought unlikely, given how rarely the maid left the estate. But Mallory was willing to grasp for any alternatives.
She didn’t want to suspect Armand. The very idea of it churned her stomach and left her reeling with memories of his hand outstretched to her; the way he’d softened her fall when the voirloup was after them; his soft, knowing smile as he handed her a mug of hot chocolate; the dirt that collected beneath his fingernails when he’d spent a morning in the greenhouse.
Surely he could not be a murderer. Surely.
But who else might Julie have been so smitten with? The stable hand aside, she could not picture the young maid being taken with the elderly butler or gruff chef. Only Armand was handsome, sweet, charming when he wanted to be. And wealthy. A vast estate, a wine empire, a noble title. What girl—orphanedmaid or otherwise—wouldn’t be swept up in a dreamy romance to such a man?
The more Mallory dwelt on it, the more her insides squirmed.
