Page 50 of The Art of Theft
“Miss Charlotte’s opinion was that they all went into the chapel,” said Lord Ingram. “I don’t dispute that as a possibility. What I want to know is why. Why come running so urgently, in the middle of a wet, freezing night, to a chapel?
“Miss Charlotte then told me what she thought of when she studied the architectural plans for the château. That it did not show another exit, which she believes must be there, as the château had been constructed atop the foundation of a fort.
“She wondered whether, if such an exit indeed existed, it didn’t lead out via the chapel. I found the idea plausible, but it still didn’t give a reason for the chase. Then she said, what if, since the door of the chapel faced away from us, what we did not see that night was someone running out of the chapel toward the fence? In other words, the dogs weren’t chasing an intruder, but someone trying to escape from inside the château.”
Eleven
Livia had suggested that Mr. Marbleton dress up as a woman for his interview with the staffing company—that way, if they were both hired, they’d be able to work side by side. But he declined.
“Alas, my disguise is good but too casual. For a stroll on a busy street, where everyone’s attention is elsewhere, or for an encounter that would only last a few seconds, it might serve. But it wouldn’t survive close scrutiny, and I don’t know that we won’t face such before we are let into the château.”
His words proved prescient.
Livia, Mrs. Watson, and Mr. Marbleton all passed the initial round of selection. Livia was surprised, although they looked convincing enough. Mrs. Watson was an expert at staging characters and a quick trip to a less affluent arrondissement’s secondhand shops had supplied her with enough clothes and other accoutrements to attire and style them at the correct level of impoverishment: needy enough to stoop to menial labor, but not so destitute as to lack all respectability.
And they sounded convincing enough, Livia with her Alsatian accent, Mr. Marbleton with his slightly throaty inflections of Provence, and Mrs. Watson, the chameleon, now speaking French with a Spanish accent, pretending to be an unhappy widow stranded in Paris.
Still, Livia hadn’t believed that they would all make it through to the next round. It would be too much luck, and she, not being accustomed to too much luck, found it unsettling.
But bits of conversation between those who worked at the staffing agency, with the opening and closing of doors, drifted to her ears. And even though they were speaking too fast for her to make out every word, she grasped enough of what they were saying—and of the urgency and franticness of their tone—to realize that the agency was far more short-staffed than they’d let on.
Apparently they had been losing people from their roster either to other agencies or to permanent employment. With the foreign dignitary taking up most of what remained of their personnel, they were scrambling to find suitable servants for the Château Vaudrieu ball. And now, at the very last minute, Château Vaudrieu decided to ask for temporary staff for the reception the next evening, when the agency already had two other functions to man.
But this state of chaos calmed Livia’s jitters: It wasn’t that they were too lucky, but that the agency was too desperate.
At about eleven in the morning, two hours after they first arrived, those who had been selected for the first round were herded into a room to be looked over by representatives from Château Vaudrieu.
Three men entered and walked among ranks of candidates.
Livia had always thought herself not particularly well respected. And she still believed she was correct in that assessment. But the slights and veiled disdain a not especially popular, not especially agreeable, and not especially solvent woman received on the marriage mart was nothing compared to the open rudeness she’d experienced this morning.
The sense of absolutely replaceability she’d felt, when she’d been interviewed by the staffing agency, along with eleven other women in the room, proved to be again nothing when compared to the humiliation of being stared at by the three men.
Thank goodness that their attention wasn’t—as of yet—prurient. All the same, to be looked over as a mere object, unable to tell the men to stop, and instead needing to school her face so as not to betray any discomfort or indignation—this was powerlessness of a sort she’d never tasted.
And to think, she was only playacting. For others this must be an endlessly recurring theme, dignity and self-respect trampled underfoot for the sake of bread and a roof overhead.
Even so, she almost marched over to give the men what for when one of them sneered to a staffing agent, “Why this old hag? You think anyone wants to look atthat?”
The “old hag” was the beautiful Mrs. Watson!
Livia’s nails dug into her palms. She’d often heard the underclass described as prone to violence and had never questioned that assessment. But as her hand itched to grab the nearest umbrella and whack the man, she found herself suddenly understanding that the poor were prone to violence because it was the only tool remaining to them.
She seethed with an impotent rage as the inspection continued.
In the end, she and Mr. Marbleton were among those selected for the reception the next evening. And she could only be grateful, as they remained to listen to their instructions, that Mrs. Watson had already left.
Even though Livia couldn’t possibly have tossed aside her pretense to defend her friend, she still felt deeply ashamed that she’d allowed it to happen in front of her, in front of so many strangers, that she couldn’t have in any way spared Mrs. Watson this very real humiliation.
?Lord Ingram looked up at the woman on the other side of the desk. Leighton Atwood had gone to take possession of a house near but not too near Château Vaudrieu, so he accompanied Holmes to the archives ofLe Temps—the work proceeded faster with two people,one searching the indexes and locating the articles, the other reading and taking notes.
She worked with a concentration so pure it seemed to form a faint halo around her. She read each article twice in succession, then made her notes without referring back to it again. The notes were in shorthand, not her own modified version but the Pitman system that she learned a year or so after they started corresponding.
One day a letter from her arrived and the only line in normal script was,I learned shorthand. Rather useful. Can you read this?It had not been a challenge—he’d understood her enough by then to know that she didn’t think in those terms. Rather, she had not yet outgrown the assumption that most others were able to do as she did: pick up a book on the Pitman system and write a letter in perfect shorthand the next day.
It took him longer than usual to reply, also in shorthand, even though she’d never asked him to. As it turned out, shorthand had proved far more useful to him in his various endeavors than it had to her. Still, it didn’t change the fact that he first learned it because his pride had been too delicate to withstand the thought that she could now do something he couldn’t. Even knowing, a priori, that he was dealing with one of the sharpest and most competent individuals he—or anyone, for that matter—would ever meet.
“Is something the matter?” she asked, without lifting her eyes from her notes.
