“You said as much, though I recall my father and Leith were present as well.” He remembered her words as they walked through the tunnel. Perhaps she’d been half-asleep when she spoke, not that he could blame her. Running away from a madman intent on killing her would have been tiring, if not altogether terrifying.
“They were.” Remi bobbed her head. “How curious that they were all there when I needed them.”
“Perhaps they knew you were in trouble.”
“I think so.” Remi leaned into his side and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Your father’s fascination with moths helped a little, too. Though I could have done without his cryptic messages.”
“Moths, you say?” Ben asked curiously. He recalled the display, toppled over on the floor where it once stood above the tunnel’s entrance. “Is that how you found the trap door?”
“Partly,” she admitted. “But it was your ancestors and those papers you had that brought me there. You teased about tunnels, and as it happens, you were right.”
“Of course I was.” Ben teased.
“There was a floor plan from the 1600s included in the documents.” Remi nodded. “Arthur had built an extra room—the tunnel beneath the study.”
“Mystery solved.”
“Elise would have been thrilled.” Remi smiled to herself, though the sadness that followed was painful to bear. With a few mournful tears, they parted from Elise’s coffin as it was moved below. Remi embraced Guillaume and Beline one last time, and then she and Ben waved them off from the docks.
They withdrew to the carriage once again, followed by the somber emptiness that buried itself in Remi’s heart.
Her family had been torn apart again.
“We can help them,” Ben said to break the silence, “now that the family’s fortune has been found.”
When the carriage rolled into the cemetery and drifted past headstones, crawling back toward the Leone mausoleum, Remi found herself seated on the edge. It cheered her a little to know that a small part of Ben’s family had been recovered. Passing through the tunnel in the dead of night would be different in the daylight, and she was eager to see it all with fresh eyes.
BEN
Ben studied the portraits and the sculptures as they were carried out of the passage through the mausoleum floor. It still astounded him that there was a moving contraption below, but he enjoyed the cleverness nonetheless. His sister would have found it amusing, too.
“The real work,” Jacques grunted, hauling a large crate of silver goblets, “will be finding a way to get rid of all this junk.”
“Junk?” Remi chirped, unveiling herself from behind a portrait resting against another pile of crates and chests. “It’s all treasure.”
“Of course it is.” Jacques set the crate down, wincing at the sound of his back cracking.
It was the three of them, plus Paul and Martin, left to clean out the valuables. The latter had left with the carriage, hauling a second round of portraits and other odds and ends. It was too much of a task to take them through the tunnel and up the ladder into the study. Besides that, there was no light to guide them. It did work out, though. Martin would be bringing them lunch upon his return, and Ben was grateful for it.
They would be in the cemetery until well after supper, he suspected. It was a task they needed to complete by day’s end so that his father’s body could be returned and left undisturbed.
“We have our work cut out for us.” Ben gestured toward the collecting items.
Remi touched his arm and shared a sweet smile. “We certainly do.”
“We’ll have to catalog and label everything,” he said.
Jacques groaned.
Remi seemed excited by the idea. “Then we certainly won’t be bored.”
Ben nodded his agreement.
After everything, they wanted to make certain that the “treasure” his relatives had stolen and collected, would find their rightful homes. It would not hurt to have a pretty penny as some form of reward. In fact, it was almost necessary if they were to restore the family home.
“That reminds me,” Ben reached into the breast pocket of his vest and produced the envelope that Lamotte first gave him, “I have a letter to read.”
“You found it?” Jacques asked, shocked.
“Marceau returned it.” Ben unfolded it carefully. “Our clever friend Sylvie stole this out from under me, it seems. May she rest in peace.”
Remi sucked in a breath. “I wonder why.”
“She must have been under instruction to take anything she noted of import,” he said. “I can only imagine that she would have eventually handed it over to Arnaud.”
Remi quieted. He did not have to guess at what she must have been thinking. If only Sylvie had opened up to them, they could have helped her escape her fate.
“Go on then,” Remi whispered with a gentle touch on his arm.
Ben turned it over in his hands, once again, and for the final time, acknowledging his father’s signature. Jacques and Remi waited as he broke the seal, practically on edge as he produced two pieces of paper.
“Is that a check?” Jacques asked.
Ben nodded wordlessly. His jaw nearly dropped. It was a check made out to Remi, with a sum that caught him completely by surprise. He passed it to her.
She was instantly worried. “What could this be for?”
Behind the check was a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it to a sea of sprawling words written in his father’s unique hand.
