En Garde (Nancy Drew (All New) Girl Detective Book 17) (9 page)

DeLyn frowned. “But Damon’s still an excellent fencer.”

“Of course, honey. I was so thrilled when you both got those scholarships. I don’t know how we would have scraped together the money for college without that. But you’re Bela’s star. You’re the one he’s always asking to do public fencing demonstrations, like at the mall two weeks ago.”

“Just because he needs to attract more girls to the salle,” DeLyn said. “If they see a girl fencing, they can imagine themselves doing it. Nancy, can I get you a cold drink? Come into the kitchen.” Clearly, this line of discussion made her uncomfortable.

In the small, bright kitchen, I asked, “How’s Damon feeling?”

DeLyn sighed. “Physically, just fine. But he’s in a rotten mood. Lately it seems he’s always in a rotten mood. Especially at the salle—Bela is constantly on his case.”

“Bela can be a difficult guy,” I said, hoping to get DeLyn to open up.

DeLyn opened the refrigerator door, but she just stood there for a minute, as if she had forgotten what she was looking for. “He’s been on my case too. He’s so demanding—he expects me to win every bout I fence! And there’s Damon, sitting on the sidelines, watching me win and feeling jealous.” She leaned against the refrigerator door, lost in thought. “And that makes Damon feel even worse—he feels guilty about being jealous of me. You don’t understand what it’s like to be a twin, Nancy—we’re closer than most brothers and sisters. He’s not just my brother, he’s my best friend. Can you blame me if sometimes I lose, just to make him feel better?”

So that was it! “Have you told Bela that you’re throwing some bouts on purpose?” I asked.

She shook her head as she took out a pitcher of lemonade. “Bela wouldn’t understand. He lives and dies to compete, that old fox. You’ve seen the way he is with Paul Mourbiers—and how many years has it been since they fenced against each other? No, he’d have no sympathy for me losing on Damon’s account.” She poured two glasses of lemonade.

“But don’t those losses affect your ranking?” I asked.

She wrinkled her nose. “Yes. I try to lose only in events that aren’t sanctioned by the national organization, so it won’t be factored in. But the coach of the university team keeps track all the same. I have to play it carefully—I can’t afford to lose that scholarship.” Her eyes welled up with tears.

“I know you’re worried about Damon losing his scholarship,” I said sympathetically. “But yours, too?”

DeLyn set down the pitcher and lowered her voice. “My scholarship isn’t in the same danger. To tell you the truth, Nancy . . . Damon’s always been a borderline case with the school team. They didn’t offer him the scholarship right away—not until I was in the final stages of accepting mine. You know, I almost went to another school, where the scholarship paid even more. Then the university offered Damon a scholarship too. That sealed my decision to go there.”

“Do you think they only gave one to Damon to attract you?” I asked.

DeLyn hesitated, then nodded again. “Most days, I don’t know who I’m fencing for,” she said. “For Bela, so he can show me off as his prize pupil? For my mom, so she can believe all the sacrifices were worth it? Or for Damon, so he doesn’t feel inferior?”

She lowered her head, wiping her eyes. “I’m sure not doing it for the love of fencing anymore. It seems like my whole life has been devoted to this sport—and now it’s killing me!”

I
was still brooding
about DeLyn the next morning, as George and I got into my car and drove the twenty miles to Cutler Falls. “It would be a pain to drive this far every time you wanted to take a fencing lesson,” George remarked. “In the end, I don’t think students will defect from Salle Budapest if they have to go all the way to Salle Olympique.”

“I don’t know,” I said, thinking of how unhappy some folks at Salle Budpest were—including its brightest star. “Some people might think it was worth the drive. Especially fencers who got the impression that Bela Kovacs is a lunatic.”

“It’s too bad he didn’t let Derrick inside to do that follow-up story yesterday,” George said. “The sooner his public image is corrected, the better. Any student
who’s worked with him knows the real Bela.”

I stole a sideways glance at her. She really seemed convinced. But the Bela Kovacs she thought she knew was very different from the Bela Kovacs that Ned Nickerson knew. Different also from the Bela who was making Damon and DeLyn so miserable. So which one was the real Bela Kovacs?

I looked away, feeling a little guilty. I hadn’t told George about the conversation I had heard yesterday—about how Bela had only been puffing up her ego in order to goad DeLyn. I didn’t have the heart to tell George what he really thought of her.

“What do you think was the deal with Damon’s mask yesterday?” George asked, changing the subject.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ve got to figure Damon lied, though. He said he used cleaning fluid on his mask, right? But I was holding that mask he wore—it was DeLyn’s mask, George. It had her name all over it.”

George’s eyes grew round. “Wow. So does that mean somebody was trying to hurt DeLyn?”

“It looks like it to me,” I said. “After all, she is the salle’s most prominent fencer, isn’t she? If someone wanted to make the salle look bad, it would be logical to go after DeLyn. She had one of the tampered foils in her bag. The incident at the tournament the other day occurred in DeLyn’s bout too.”

“It’s got to be Paul Mourbiers,” George said. “He’s the one who hates Bela. He’s the one who has most to gain if Salle Budapest goes under.”

I shook my head. “I wish it were that simple. Paul Mourbiers might have had access to Una’s gauntlet at the meet the other day, but how would he have gotten into Salle Budapest to damage so many foils? And DeLyn’s mask? It was in her bag when she was at your house yesterday. You had more opportunity to tamper with it than Mourbiers did.”

George frowned. “What are you saying, Nancy?”

“Don’t worry, George,” I said, smiling. “You’re not on my suspect list. I’m just saying that I don’t see Salle Olympique as our chief suspect anymore.”

George looked out the window. “So Mourbiers must have sent spies. That’s why we’re going to Cutler Falls now—to find them, right?”

“Perhaps,” I said. “We have to check out that possibility, but there’s no guarantee that yesterday’s students have anything to do with Salle Olympique.”

“What about that scruffy-looking guy you were telling me about?” George asked. “You know for sure he was at Salle Budapest a couple of times, plus he was at the meet. Maybe
he’s
working for Mourbiers.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “But it’s hard to believe that Mourbiers would hire somebody who so obviously stands out to do his undercover dirty work. If that
guy went inside Salle Budapest, they’d throw him out before he had a chance to tamper with any equipment.”

“You have a point,” George admitted.

I paused, reluctant to bring up my next line of reasoning. “George . . . do you think Bela Kovacs himself could be responsible?”

“No way!” George replied hotly. “He wouldn’t sabotage his own salle! It’s not just his business—it’s his life.”

I hesitated. I knew George wasn’t exactly impartial. And I needed an impartial ear right now. But I also knew that George was just as determined to get to the bottom of this case as I was. She wouldn’t be able to ignore the facts of the case, no matter how closely she was involved with the suspects. “Maybe it isn’t the salle he’s trying to sabotage,” I suggested gently. “Maybe it’s just one person at the salle.”

George sat up straight. “You mean DeLyn? Oh, no, Nancy, you’re way off base. DeLyn is his star student, everybody knows that. Bela made her the champion fencer she is today. If she looks bad, he looks bad. He can’t afford that.”

“But DeLyn says he’s been so critical of her lately,” I pointed out. “He says rude things to her all the time, and she hasn’t been winning the way he expects her to. Look, George, all I know is that Damon was
lying about his mask yesterday. Clearly he’s covering up for someone. And he’s very loyal to Bela Kovacs—more loyal than DeLyn is. If Damon suspected Bela was after his sister . . .”

“I don’t buy it, Nancy,” George replied with a stubborn look. “Damon is devoted to Bela, but he’s even more devoted to DeLyn. If Damon knew someone was out to hurt his twin, he certainly wouldn’t sit back and let it happen.”

I sighed. “Too true. That’s why this case is so mind-boggling.”

Salle Olympique looked amazingly like Salle Budapest. It was located in the same kind of commercial lot, with a similar blacktop parking lot and nondescript weedy borders. It was the same type of one-story cinder-block building, with a tan brick front wall and a large front window. Paul Mourbiers had even painted the name of his salle in the same curlicue red and black letters. “It looks like an exact clone of Salle Budapest,” I said, astonished.

George grinned wryly. “Well, to tell you the truth, it’s the other way around—Salle Budapest is an exact clone of Salle Olympique. Remember, Mourbiers opened his studio six years ago. Back then, Bela Kovacs was in a run-down space downtown. He borrowed tons of money to build a new facility to compete with Mourbiers, and he made it look exactly
like the rival salle. Sort of a dig at Mourbiers, I guess.”

I shook my head as I parked the car. “I swear, from everything I hear about their rivalry, I don’t know which of them acts worse.”

“Let’s hope no one recognizes us from before,” George said, climbing out of the car.

“I’d thought of that, too—but we’ve got to take the chance. We’ll just lay low.”

Paul Mourbiers himself was sitting at the front desk when we walked into the all-too-familiar-looking studio. “Do you have to be registered ahead if you want to take a class?” George asked. “We’ve never fenced before, but we’d like to try it out.”

“We saw something on the TV news a couple of nights ago that made us curious,” I added.

Mourbiers’s face lit up at the mention of the TV news report. “Yes, yes, walk-ins are always welcome,” he declared. “Just sign in here.” He pushed a clipboard toward us. “We are always happy to introduce new students to the honorable and ancient art of fencing.”

“Yeah—honorable,” George said, barely hiding her sarcastic tone. The way she was studying Paul Mourbiers, I felt sure he’d guess we weren’t just innocent beginners. But Mourbiers seemed oblivious to her hostility—he was just glad to have some new
students. And when I wrote down my address on his sign-in sheet, he beamed even more.

“You are from River Heights!” he exclaimed.

“Yes,” I said, busily scanning the rest of the sign-in sheet for the names Bela had given me. “I know there’s a fencing school in our town, but we heard better things about yours. That’s why we drove over to try you out.”

Mourbiers rubbed his hands together. “Excellent,” he crooned. “We can lend you the necessary equipment for today, of course. Why don’t you step over this way?” He gestured toward the equipment closet, which lined the side wall, just like at Salle Budapest. “Anton, get these new students suited up. I personally will handle their instruction—just to make sure they begin on the best possible foot.”

“Were those names there?” George muttered in my ear as we followed Mourbiers’s assistant instructor, Anton.

“Nope,” I said. “But they may have written down false names on the sheet at Salle Budapest, like we just did. As far as Salle Olympique knows, my name is Daphne Gherkin.”

George grinned. “I saw. And I’m Phoebe Karabell.”

“Nice to meet you, Phoebe.”

“Nice to meet you, Daph.”

On the fencing floor, I quickly realized that it was going to be hard to tell if the “spies” were here. Most fencers had their masks on, covering their faces. Bela had told me that one of the suspicious new students was a sixteen-year-old guy with bright red hair, and I couldn’t see any redheads among Mourbiers’s students this morning. The other fencer Bela suspected was a tall, broad-shouldered girl of about fourteen, with a brown ponytail. I tried to maneuver around the studio to check out the other fencers’ hair, while George kept Mourbiers distracted by asking lots of questions. “Why do fencers say ‘On guard’?” she asked.

“It’s a French phrase—
en garde
,” he said, dramatically rolling the
r
. “France, you know, is the country where fencing reached its highest flower. When a fencer says,
En garde
, it is to warn his or her opponent to prepare to fight. You hold your sword straight up like this and crouch down in a fighting posture. No, no, bend your knees more, and angle your body like so. You are exposing too much of your front toward me. Come at me with your shoulder only.”

“But if you’re trying to win, why give them a warning?” George asked.

“Because fencing is a sport of chivalry,” Mourbiers replied, sounding offended. “It would not be proper to fight someone who was not ready to parry your blade.”

“Parry?”

“Yes, a parry is a move to knock your opponent’s blade aside. Like so.” He swiftly flicked up the foil he was holding and fended off George’s loosely dangling foil.

I sidled down the studio, noticing a bulletin board at the far end. I figured there was a good chance that Mourbiers’s “spies” weren’t here this morning—but they might be enrolled in other classes at other times. Now, if George could only keep Mourbiers busy, I’d have a chance to examine the lists. Behind me I could hear George clanging her borrowed sword against the master’s.
“Touché!”
Mourbiers called out.

“I’ve heard that in cartoons and stuff,” said George. “What does that mean?”

“It simply means that you have been touched by your opponent’s sword. That is a point for me. If we were scoring, I would be ahead.”

“Well,
touché
yourself!” I heard George’s foot stomp as she lunged toward Mourbiers. But there was an answering ring of metal on metal. “That move is called a feint,” Mourbiers explained. “I look like I’m going to move one way, but instead I move another—”

Just then, across the studio, a heavy saber clattered to the floor.