Unbitten (41 page)

“I don’t find it so,” said Roland.
“To me, it is like doing a vast jigsaw puzzle.
Sometimes you get frustrated trying to find the one piece,
that one with a black corner and a sharp point on one side,
and you look and look and look, and you’re starting
to think it’s lost and you’re never going to
find it, or maybe it doesn’t even exist, when all of
a sudden one day, the clouds part and you see it gleaming,
right in front of you, and from that, the other pieces seem
to jump into your hands and the thing is finished and done,
with no dangling threads.”

Tristan chuckled. “I think you have a more optimistic
view of things than I do. Or perhaps I should say, a neater
view.”

He did not park in front of the main entrance but swung the
car around to the back, where delivery vans for the kitchen
were just pulling out after stocking Marcel’s
pantries for the day. They got out, Tristan already stiff
and needing to stretch his back, and conferred for a
moment.

“All right, as we discussed–let’s split
up, and cover as much ground as we can, as quickly as we
can. Of course, we don’t know what condition Callie
might be in, so keep your mind open and aware. I will take
the inside of the Château, and you take the grounds.
Be discreet, but don’t feel you have to sneak around
and hide if someone approaches. If anyone makes even the
slightest attempt to engage you in conversation, draw them
out. It may very well be that someone saw something, or
knows something, and is looking to get that off his chest.
Or her chest.”

Roland smirked. “Yes, chief,” he said.

“You have your stakes, just in case?”

“Yes,” said Roland. “In my backpack, easy
to get out in a hurry.”

“I do too,” said Tristan, patting his
briefcase. But I don’t expect…it’s 11:30
am, David is more than likely sleeping now."

Roland nodded. Tristan reached out and squeezed
Roland’s shoulder briefly, and then Roland took off
and disappeared immediately behind some shrubbery.

I am really not going to enjoy this day, Tristan thought to
himself, dreading the moment that Roland talked about, when
all the threads are tied up. He feared, he very much
feared, that when the narrative of Callie Armstrong was
clear in all its details, it was not going to be any cause
for celebration.

He ducked into the kitchen, giving a short wave to Marcel,
whom he had met at a wine tasting in the village several
years earlier. Marcel’s face blanched when he saw
Tristan, which made Tristan stop short.

“Good morning,” he said. “How are you,
how is everything?”

Marcel smiled, but it looked to Tristan as though it cost
him quite a lot of effort to manage it. He was devoted to
the la Mottes, his family had worked for them for
generations and both Henri and David were more than
pleasant to work for–generous, open-minded, and
appreciative. But even though Marcel was brainwiped by one
of them every night before going home to his family in the
village, Marcel had not lived among vampires for his whole
life without realizing that something was a little off. He
was a glorious cook, and no dummy. And he had seen over
Henri’s shoulder that the locked refrigerator, the
one that necessitated the generator, was full of what
looked like bags of blood, with strange labels.

In short, Marcel felt uneasy at seeing Tristan at the
Château. Marcel wasn’t sure what it was, but he
was fairly certain the la Mottes had something to hide.

“Is something the matter?” he asked, trying to
sound offhand.

“One thing about being a
gendarme
,”
said Tristan. “People are either really glad to see
you, or you make them nervous.” He chuckled.
“Marcel, you look so guilty I half expect to find the
family silver stashed in the trunk of your car!”

Marcel laughed, because he was expected to.

Tristan lowered his voice. “I am here,” he
said, sounding confidential, “to see what I can find
out about one of the Château’s guests. A Miss
Callie Armstrong. She was here about ten days ago. Did you
happen to meet her?”

“No, Tristan,” said Marcel, relieved to know
nothing about the matter. "I do not mingle with
guests–I have too much work to do in the kitchen.
Every once in a while someone wants to come back to have a
word with me, to thank me for something they especially
liked, or occasionally a person with aspirations to be a
chef wants to check out how I run my kitchen.

“I hate that,” he continued with a scowl.
“How am I supposed to get anything done with a bunch
of gawkers getting in the way, asking an endless list of
idiotic questions? And not only that, they put their
fingers into things! I had one woman, either she could not
speak a word of French or else she was pretending she
couldn’t, who swooped through my kitchen tasting
everything she could lay her hands on–with the same
spoon! Dipping it here and there! A nightmare, Tristan.
Very often, my work…a nightmare.” Marcel
passed his hand over his face, his shoulders slumped.

Tristan watched. He listened. He decided that although
Marcel appeared nervous, he didn’t have any useful
information. He didn’t seem to know who Callie even
was.

He asked for directions to a back stairway, and headed up,
as quiet as he could manage on the stone stairs. He was in
a sort of zone, putting himself in a state that allowed all
impressions to reach him–listening, sensing, and not
allowing the fear of what he might discover get in the way
of the discovering.

He decided to go all the way up to the top floor and work
his way down. Very quickly he realized that the
Château was so vast that there was no way he could do
a thorough search by himself. He could work his way down
one side, and Callie’s body could be moved back up by
another set of stairs to where he had just been, and he
would be none the wiser. If he needed to come back, he
would have to bring dogs.

But as long as he was here, he figured he’d go ahead
and do the best he could.

On the top floor was a long corridor, with windows on one
side with a spectacular view of the grounds, and rooms all
along the interior side that appeared to be used as
storage. The doors were unlocked. Tristan went in one room
after another, listening, sniffing, looking for anything
amiss. He wandered through rooms filled with antiques
covered in sheets. One room had racks holding paintings,
and a jumble of sculptures. One room was crammed to the
ceiling with broken furniture–chairs with smashed
legs, a gouged table, a Chinese screen with a gaping hole.
Tristan wanted to know the stories behind all these wounded
pieces of furniture. Did they simply wear out? Or had
someone lost his temper and thrown that chair, or punched
that screen?

All through his search, Tristan kept in mind the picture of
Callie that her parents had emailed him. She was so young.
And in the photograph, beaming, a gorgeous smile, radiating
health and vitality, standing on a rocky mountaintop with a
green valley down below. It was hard for him to imagine
anyone hurting her, whether intentionally or not.

He came down a narrow spiral staircase, always trying to
make the least amount of noise, but confident that if
Callie was alive and being held somewhere nearby, she would
be able to hear him. Quiet, but not silent.

More rooms on the next floor. Some of them were bedrooms,
perhaps for family guests, as it did not look as though
they were much in use. The bed linens looked fresh, but
there was dust on the bureaux and the rooms needed an
airing. Tristan stopped, closed his eyes, and listened. He
heard a lark singing outside, and a banging radiator in the
distance. Then, a thump, followed by another thump.

He wasn’t sure what was doing the thumping. It
sounded like it was a floor below, so he went back to the
spiral stair and descended, his ear cocked all the way.
This floor had rugs scattered about the corridor, and he
crept very quietly now in the direction of the noise, until
he was standing outside a door.

Someone was pacing inside. And the thumping–was
something being dropped on the floor? Tristan could not
tell. Carefully he stepped close to the door, and then put
his ear against it.

“Fucking shit,” said David de la Motte.

Tristan guessed it was David, although they had not spoken
in years and he did not really remember the sound of his
voice. The voice sounded aristocratic, and angry,
and…self-pitying. He kept his ear pressed to the
door, holding his breath.

Meanwhile, Roland had been scouring the grounds, roaming
among the outbuildings, also, like Tristan, listening and
sniffing and looking for anything out of order. In the barn
he had a stabbing moment of anxiety when he smelled death,
but that turned out to be a dead cat, wedged so far up
under the floorboards that Thierry had not yet figured out
how to remove it.

After making a swing down behind all the cottages, checking
all clumps of shrubbery and all sheds and garages,
including the long building where
le Seigneur
used
to make wine, Roland was feeling pretty sure that he was
not going to find any evidence that day. His senses went
from high alert to a stage lower, then another stage lower
after that, barely above everyday paying attention. It
takes a lot of energy and concentration to search for
somebody, and his was flagging. He wanted some coffee.

He stopped in the sunshine, grateful for the warmth in the
chilly November air, pulled out his cell and texted
Tristan, asking if he’d found anything and could they
have a quick coffee.

Tristan texted back immediately to meet him by the kitchen
entrance where they had separated earlier, and Roland began
to stroll in that direction. He was going quickly around
the gravel path one more time, making sure he had checked
all the buildings, when he realized he had neglected one
stone building that was set a little apart from the others.
He hesitated, then decided to get it over with before
meeting up with Tristan.

He noticed an unusual device at the doorway, some kind of
security system he figured, wondering what was inside to
necessitate something so fancy. He was just about to walk
around the side of the building when Henri stepped outside,
dressed in his anti-sun suit, complete with wide-brimmed
hat and netting in front of his face. Roland moved back in
surprise.

“Marquis,” he said, nodding his head
deferentially.

“Hello,” said Henri, easily. “Is there
something I can help you with?”

“Perhaps,” said Roland. He usually left the
talking to Tristan, who was better at it, and he felt a
little nervous. “I am Roland Morel,
gendarme
of Mourency.”

“Oh, very good, I’m glad you are here,”
said Henri. “If you just step this way, I can show
you…” and Henri walked around the side of the
building and waded into the waist-high brown stems of
hydrangeas.

Roland was baffled but followed him.

“See there?” said Henri, pointing at where
Maloney had pulled the chunk of stone out of his wall.
“If you could catch whoever did this, I would be most
grateful. It’s not the only break-in I’ve had,
but it was the most disturbing because of its force. Took
that big chunk right out of my wall! Looks like the next
thing they’ll have in mind is a bulldozer,
doesn’t it?”

“When did this happen?” asked Roland.

“Close to two weeks ago,” said Henri.
“When did you hear from Angélique, it was a
week ago last Tuesday, wasn’t it?”

“We can find that out from Monsieur Durant,”
said Roland. “But actually, I am not here to
investigate your break-in. I am here about the
disappearance of one of your guests.”

Henri had emerged from the hydrangeas and he turned sharply
to face Roland.

“What did you say?”

“We have been asked by the girl’s parents, who
live in the States, to do what we can to find her. She has
been missing since last week.”

“Who? Who has been missing?” Henri’s mind
was jumping ahead, and he did not like where it was going.

“The girl’s name is Callie Armstrong. She is
from New Hampshire, not long out of college. Traveling by
herself. She was staying here, in one of your
cottages–Number 4, I believe–and now no one can
find her.” Roland watched Henri’s face
carefully. He considered himself a good judge of whether a
person was hiding something. Not that he thought he was
infallible, but the person would have to be a very good
liar to get something past him.

Roland did not think Henri knew anything about Callie, but
still, there was
something
…

“I’m afraid I don’t have much to do with
the guests,” said Henri. “I spend most of my
time at work here,” he said, gesturing at the stone
building.

“Perhaps you could direct me to someone who might
know more? We have spoken to Angélique already, and
the housemaid, Marie-Louise I believe is her name.”