“Is everything alright?” Feeling uneasy, she gripped her skirt.
Ben glanced up, and seeing how she white-knuckled her dress, he sat the papers to one side and stood. He brought her hands to his lips. “Would you believe me if I said yes?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I struggle to believe you, especially when I almost tripped over you. Why were you sleeping on the floor?”
“Later,” he said, kissing her fingers again. “I’ll explain later. First I need to change.”
“He’s in the parlor,” Elise said from the doorway. “I offered him tea.”
Ben nodded and took off for his bedroom, a flash of dark hair and wrinkled clothes.
Remi chanced a look at the papers he’d forgotten but decided to leave them behind. Her nerves had been too tightly wound since they’d been woken by the raucous pounding at the door. She and Elise had had precious little time to ready themselves before being shocked by the sight of gens d’armes at the door.
“Ben is upstairs changing,” Remi told the inspector as she entered the parlor. “He’ll be down in a moment.” She took the seat across from him. “Might I ask what this is about?”
“Well, you see,” he started, putting away his teacup, “there was a fire last night.”
A fire? Remi’s memory flashed with the image of the raging fireplace from last night. Could it be?
“There was a casualty,” he continued. “I believe you know the victim in question.”
The burning specter had shared his countenance, but it couldn’t have been him. Please, not Lamotte.
“I’m here.” Ben appeared in the doorway before the inspector could finish.
Remi noticed his grim expression, and made to ask after him, but noticed her tante and oncle following close behind.
“Get rid of them, Arnaud. It’s much too early for this.” Remi heard her tante hiss to her oncle. Arnaud was watching the inspector, though, uninterested in what Beline had to say.
Marceau’s eyes followed Ben as he rounded Remi’s chair, stopping beside her. “Monsieur Benoît Leone.”
From the corner of her eye, Remi saw the gens d’armes enter the room one at a time. They blended into the wall, their expressions unreadable. The atmosphere in the room shifted drastically. Between the space in which they stood, packed with her onlooking family and the austere gens d’armes, Remi almost felt sick. Her stomach turned as the ominous silence dragged on.
“Welcome,” Marceau said, not a note about him having changed. He remained calm. “We were just discussing the fire.”
Ben paled.
“So it has been made known to you?” Marceau asked.
“I saw it last night.”
Remi’s throat compressed and she grasped at her collar.
“What’s this about?” Ben asked.
“The home belonged to Lamotte, your father’s lawyer.” Marceau waved his hand and the gens d’armes against the wall marched to Ben’s side. “I was told that you had been spotted in the area before the fire. A witness puts you at the scene.”
“What?” Ben and Remi said in unison.
Elise shot her a look of warning.
“Yes,” Marceau paused, producing a small notebook from his breast pocket. He flipped through it and stopped on a few pages. “Leading up to this event, people in town described you as hysterical and unhinged. You were searching for a young woman named Sylvie. Did you know she was going to see your father’s lawyer last night?”
Ben looked conflicted, but he said, “Yes, I knew.”
“Well, it seems that whoever was after her set the house on fire.” Marceau leaned back in his chair. “They ended up killing an unintended target. Monsieur Lamotte is dead, and the young woman in question is still missing.”
Remi gasped and covered her mouth with both hands. The specter she’d seen, what thing she’d seen in the study—it had been real. The fire had been Lamotte the whole time, and he’d appeared to her the same way that Leith and Edgar had.
“That is unfortunate news,” Ben said.
“Yes, it is.” Marceau tucked the booklet away and narrowed his light eyes at Ben. “Was Lamotte an intended target then? Or was it just the maid?”
“Excuse me?” Ben licked his lips. “What are you implying, Inspector?”
“As I said, you have been placed at the scene before the fire, and we later learned that Lamotte’s office had been broken into with items missing—the same witness places you there as well.”
Remi thought of the papers again in the bedroom. Lamotte had mentioned important documents to her the last time they'd crossed paths. Had Ben taken them?
“Say it plainly, sir.” Ben pulled back his lips like a snarl. “Are you accusing me of something?”
A moment of tense silence passed before footsteps outside hurried in a thrush of motion against the hardwood. The other two gens d’armes that had come with the inspector had Jacques with them. He appeared beaten and bruised, as if he’d tried to run and they’d stopped him in time. Remi rose from her seat.
“Did you find them?” the inspector asked.
“Oui. The bodies are in the cellar,” one of them said.
“Bodies?” Remi felt as if someone had pummeled into her chest with their bare fists. Her breathing came out sharp and haggard. She would have spiraled had it not been for the very sharp scream that came from Tante Beline as she fainted.
