“Madame, I will require your assistance.” The inspector’s voice was muffled against the thrashing of her heart. “I’ll need you to identify them for me.”
Remi shot a glance at Ben, whose face had lost an immeasurable amount of color. Confusion and fear gripped her. “What bodies?”
Ben pressed his lips into a tight line, refusing to answer her.
“This way, Madame,” Marceau said gently, guiding her through the darkness toward a back room.
“What is this?” It had never crossed her mind to go below the manor’s first floor. Its secrets had been undiscovered until the moment the backroom door opened; the pungent odor of death and decay made her eyes water.
Two bodies covered in white sheets lay on the floor among shelves that had been meant for wine and other storage. It appeared as though the cellar’s contents had long since been emptied, the space unused for its intended purpose.
“The young man who drowned. His body was reported missing,” Marceau snapped his fingers, and one of the men near Remi knelt beside a body and lifted back the sheet. “When we spoke, you said the two of you were close. Is this him, Madame?”
Remi shriveled against the wall behind her, startling the inspector.
“Leith,” she choked. Pain clamped down on her heart, and she found it harder and harder to breathe. “Why is—why is he here?”
“Madame?” The inspector’s concern was genuine as he held out his hand for her. She did not take it, too fixated on Leith’s body. He’d been there the entire time, and she hadn’t known. “Madame Leone, I’m terribly sorry, but I need your eyes. Just one more, please.”
Remi tried to stand on her own and peered around the inspector as he lifted the sheet from the second body. She breathed gasps of air between words. “Edgar. My late husband.”
The inspector gave his men a subtle nod. “Thank you.”
Remi hurried back through the cellar on weak legs, falling to her knees with a hard thump at the top of the stairs. Her mind felt miles away from her body. The tingling in her limbs ceded to numbness as if she’d been dipped into a frozen lake and left out to dry in a snowstorm.
“Madame...” Marceau’s voice was warm, but what he said was harsh. “We have reason to believe that your late husband’s son is guilty of the charges presented before him.”
Elise drifted into view with a pinched face resembling her mother’s. “What bodies did my cousin need to identify?”
“Edgar’s,” Remi mumbled. “Edgar’s and Leith’s.”
Elise held back her own shock.
“It is unfortunate but true. I wish it wasn’t.” Marceau hung his head, aggrieved by the admittance. “We’ll need to take him for further questioning.”
Remi’s eyes snapped open wide as Ben emerged from the parlor, a doleful expression worn heavily upon his brow like a crown made of sorrow and guilt. The gens d’armes beside him were like two vices and, for all of his height, Ben appeared small between them. Her feet moved beneath her, nearly tripping on the skirt of her gown, and closed the space that lay between them.
“I know it wasn’t you,” she said, reaching for his face with shaking hands. “Someone… Someone else must have brought them here to frame you. To make you look guilty.”
Ben’s dark eyes crinkled around the edges. Behind him, Jacques lingered in the doorway, the other two guards that had escorted Remi and the inspector to the cellar flanking him. Both of them were prisoners.
“No.” Ben swallowed. “I—we—did it.”
Remi’s throat tightened.
“I thought I… I thought I could remedy the situation.” He looked as though he wanted to say more, but his eyes flicked to the inspector. “It was an error in judgment.”
“But Leith…” Her voice was a whisper.
“I know.”
A raw, guttural cry like a wounded animal tore from her breast. “Why?”
Ben did not flinch.
“Madame”—the inspector tapped her shoulder—“I apologize, but we must be on our way. My men will return for the bodies once we have secured these two.”
Ben wrapped his fingers around Remi’s wrists and pulled them gently away from his face. There were shadows under his eyes where there had been none before. It was as if he’d aged considerably since she’d found him asleep on the floor in the bedroom. The moments they’d shared felt distant now; the further out the door he walked, the more blurred the edges of her memory became. He disappeared inside a carriage.
“Remi, you’re shaking,” Elise said.
And she was. Remi trembled with rage and sorrow. She wrapped her arms around herself, digging her blunt nails into the fabric of her dress until she could feel the bite of them against her flesh. Questions taunted her, bereft of the answers that would ease her mind. All she could do to keep from spiraling was speculate on the unknown with every scenario in her arsenal.
NOT GUILTY
BEN
Ben tortured himself the entire way to the carriage.
Hands bound and body aching, he played through every moment since he’d come home. He agonized over his pig-headedness. Had he just let Sylvie flee, he might not be in a carriage with the inspector. No. I should have left their bodies alone.
“For the record, I don’t believe you to be guilty.” Inspector Marceau cleared his throat. “But the evidence is heavily against you.”
“Overwhelmingly.” Ben scoffed.
Jacques had been separated from him and escorted to a second carriage. A parade through town to the gaol on its outskirts would be a welcome sight to the island’s residents after the events of the day before. Their villain was caught, and they were no doubt relieved.
“Perhaps too much, don’t you agree?”
