The Alice Network

  CHAPTER 42

  EVE

  Most country kitchens would be unlocked, at least in a time of peace. René Bordelon’s was not. Eve had anticipated that; she set down her satchel and plucked two hairpins from the knot of her hair. It had been a very long time since her lock-picking lessons in Folkestone, but it wasn’t difficult: all you needed was one pin to brace and the other to gently work at the tumblers.

  Even so, manipulating the pins with her destroyed fingers took long, agonizing minutes. If it hadn’t been a very old, very simple lock, Eve might not have managed it. When the click came, she took another moment on the threshold to steady herself, letting her breathing slow. She had only one chance at this, and she would not shoot straight with a galloping heart and an unsteady hand. At last Eve trusted herself to step inside, taking her Luger out and leaving the satchel on the threshold.

  A large country kitchen, empty. Nothing but trestle tables and hanging pots lit by moonlight. Eve padded through the shadows, turning the handle of the door at the other end of the kitchen. A tiny creak, and she froze for another agonizing moment, listening.

  Nothing.

  She eased out into a corridor lined with oil paintings, candle sconces. A strip of rich carpet made her steps noiseless, René’s lavish taste helping her on the way to kill him. A faint thread of music drifted on the air. Eve cocked her head, listening a moment, then ghosted down a branching hall to the right. The music grew louder, something lush and involved. Débussy, she thought, and smiled.

  CHAPTER 43

  CHARLIE

  No,” I whispered, “no—”

  The villa’s kitchen door gaped open. Eve’s satchel lay on the step. I rifled through it. No Luger. I was too late.

  But I heard no shots, no voices. The house was silent as an unexploded grenade.

  I wanted to rush in screaming her name, but I was in René Bordelon’s territory now, and I would not rouse that viper if he was still unaware of what had come for him. If. Perhaps he was beyond defending. Had Eve already killed him? My blood screamed in my veins, telling me to run, to protect myself and the Rosebud, not to walk any farther into this nest of danger. But my friend was here, and I kept moving.

  A dark kitchen. A door ajar. A long hall, rich and quiet. My heart thundered. The faint sound of music. Were those footsteps? The dimness seemed to pulsate. I followed the music, and as I turned a corner I saw them, framed in the broad door arch like a painting.

  Eve in silhouette, a dark shape against the brilliant light flooding from the study. It looked exactly the same as the one in Lille she’d described to me: green silk-hung walls, a gramophone spinning its music, a Tiffany lamp throwing peacock colors. René stood in his immaculate shirtsleeves before an open traveling case, oblivious, turned away from the door. Eve was raising the Luger. Too late for me to dare intervene. I froze, pulse pounding.

  Neither Eve nor I made a sound, but the lifelong instincts of a snake must have hissed a subliminal warning, because René jerked around. His sudden motion seemed to startle Eve. She squeezed her trigger before the Luger’s barrel had fully leveled. The shot ricocheted off the marble mantel, and my ears rang. René was scrabbling in his traveling case. There was no surprise on his face, no fear—only a poisonous leap of hatred as he raised something toward Eve, as Eve’s arm straightened again. It happened as slowly as if trapped in amber: two Lugers leveling, two triggers pulling, two shots firing.

  One body falling.

  Eve’s.

  After that endless moment, everything happened at once. Eve’s Luger clattered to the floor, and her gaunt body sagged against the carpet. I lunged down the corridor, but not fast enough. René had already stepped forward and kicked Eve’s pistol away, into the corner of the study. I’d meant to rush at him before he could shoot again, but he was backing away out of my reach, his own pistol leveled at me.

  “Down on your knees,” he said.

  So fast. It had all happened so fast. Eve made a faint sound at my feet, her crippled hands clamped over her left shoulder, and I knelt beside her. I felt the hot slide of blood as I gripped her fingers. “Eve, no, no—” Her eyes were open, colorless, blinking slowly.

  “Well,” she said in a high, flat voice. “Goddammit.”

  The record on the gramophone came to a hissing end. I could hear the rasping chorus of our breathing, mine in hitching gasps, Eve’s in shallow halts, René Bordelon’s fast and deep as he stared at us through a study that reeked of gunsmoke. A ribbon of dark blood coursed slowly down his pristine collar. Half his ear dangled from a shred of flesh, and a silent howl tore through me.

  Close. Eve was so close. The thought flashed through my mind as I stared into the infinite black hole of the Luger aimed right between my eyes.

  “Move that way, girl.” The barrel gestured. “Away from the old bitch.”

  “No.” My hands were pressed on top of Eve’s, over her wound. I was no nurse, but I knew she needed bandaging, pressure. He will not let her have any of those things, he will see her dead first—but I still said, “No.”

  He fired another shot, making me scream as the doorjamb beside me splintered. “Let her go, and slide along the wall that way.”

  Eve’s voice was ragged, but clear. “Do it, Yank.”

  My fingers were clenched so tight over Eve’s I had to force them open. Her hands were gloved in blood, and more blood oozed down her torso, slow and implacable. René’s pistol followed me as I inched away and set my back against a tall bookshelf, but his eyes stayed riveted to Eve as she managed to pull herself half sitting against the door frame. Her eyes were flat stones full of agony, but I didn’t think it was the pain of her own wound. It was the pain of seeing him still on his feet.

  Failed, her gaze screamed, filled with self-loathing. Failed.

  I was the one who’d failed. I couldn’t keep her safe.

  “Hands off that wound, Marguerite.” René’s voice was rattled out of the toneless calm he’d maintained at the restaurant. “I’m going to watch you die, and I don’t want anything slowing that down.”

  “Might be a while.” Eve looked down at her own shoulder. “Nothing too v-v-vital in a shoulder for a bullet to hit.”

  “You’ll still b-b-b-bleed to death, pet. I like that better; it’s slower.”

  Eve peeled her crimson hands away from the dark, spreading stain. My throat closed as I saw it. Just a shoulder wound, and yet it was going to kill her. We were going to sit in this elegant study, the home of all Eve’s nightmares, and watch her bleed out.

  René ignored Eve’s wound, his eyes mesmerized by her knobbed, bloody hands. “You wore gloves this afternoon,” he remarked. “I wanted to see how they looked, after all this time.”

  “Not too pretty.”

  “Oh, I think they’re lovely. I made a masterpiece there.”

  “Gloat all you want.” Eve nodded toward me. “But let the girl go. She has n-nothing to do with this; she wasn’t supposed to be here—”

  “But she is here,” René cut her off. “And as I have no way of knowing what you’ve told her, and what kind of trouble she could make, she dies here too. Once you’re dead, I’ll take care of her. Do think on that as you bleed out, Marguerite. I can see she means something to you.”

  I sat in an ice-water drench of terror with my arms folded tight around my budding belly. I was not even twenty years old and I was going to die. And my Rosebud would never live at all.

  “You can’t afford to shoot her, René.” Eve’s voice was even, conversational, at what cost I couldn’t imagine. “I may be a raddled crone with no friends and f-f-family to look for me, but she’s got both, and they’ve got money. Kill her, you’ll have more trouble than even you can ooze your way out of.”

  René paused, and my heart nearly stopped in my chest. “No,” he said at last, touching a hand to his mangled ear and wincing. “You broke into my home and attempted to rob me, a frail old man living alone. I managed to fire back; naturally I had no idea in the dark t
hat you were women, much less the women who accosted me at the restaurant today. I had to sit down with heart palpitations after firing, and by the time I managed to telephone the police, both of you were sadly dead. Simple country people like those here do not look kindly on intruders.”

  My hopes crashed. I wasn’t entirely sure he’d get away with it as easily as that; the restaurant’s staff could surely testify that he’d known us . . . but he could muddle things long enough to flee if it proved necessary. He’d clearly already been preparing to run; the traveling case told that story. Eve had been right: René Bordelon always ran from consequences. He’d outrun the consequences of two wars, and with money and luck—two things he’d seemingly never been short on—he could in all probability outrun this too.

  Over my dead goddamn body, I thought, and nearly burst out in hysterical laughter because that was exactly how it would happen. Eve would die, and then I would, and then he’d step out over our bodies. He probably would have shot me already if he’d thought about it more clearly; I was young and strong and still a physical threat. But he wasn’t thinking clearly. The woman who had humiliated and outwitted him lay dying before his eyes. Until she had gone, she was his whole world and I was an afterthought. His eyes devoured her.

  “You th-th-think you can shoot a strange girl between the eyes as she stares at you, René?” Eve was still arguing, still staring him down, but the pulse of blood from her shoulder was coming faster. “The only time you ever pulled a trigger, it was to shoot a man in the back—”

  I had no doubt at all that he would be able to kill me in cold blood. None. He might have been too fastidious to do his own dirty work when Eve first met him, but he was a different man now. “Eve, don’t talk.” My voice came out tinny. “Save your strength—”

  “For what?” René looked contemptuous. “Rescue? I assure you, no one heard our shots. The nearest neighbor is at least three miles away.”

  Rescue. My thoughts leaped another way, toward Finn for whom I’d left a hasty message at the hotel desk telling him where we’d gone and why, in case things went wrong. Well, things had certainly gone wrong. I had a brief delirious image of him roaring out of the night to rescue us, but I didn’t think fate would be so helpful.

  “I assure you, I have no qualms about shooting your little American here.” René fished a handkerchief one-handed from his breast pocket, clapping it to his shredded ear. “My study is already ruined. A trifle more blood on the walls makes no difference to me—”

  Rose, I thought in a stab of anguish, Rose, what do I do? I didn’t know if I was asking my cousin or my daughter. My eyes hunted everywhere for a weapon, but Eve’s pistol lay halfway across the room. My gaze traveled up the bookcase behind me—a pair of silver candlesticks on top, too far away, he’d shoot me before I could get to my feet. But closer, on the middle shelf—

  “Leave her alive, René. I am begging you.”

  I barely heard Eve pleading. On the middle shelf above my head was a white shape. A miniature bust staring blank eyed across the room. I’d never seen that bust before, but I was fairly sure I recognized it.

  Baudelaire.

  “I confess I didn’t think you’d be this quick to find my home.” René paced, moving stiffly, as if his age was settling back into his stalky bones after this jolt of action. “Who gave you my address, Marguerite?”

  “I can wheedle information out of anyone, René. Didn’t I p-prove that with you?”

  The ripple of rage across his face was instantaneous. How ridiculous he was, eaten up with fury over a decades-old mistake. But his rage was useful. It could be turned against him. I gave the bust over my seated head a last measuring glance. One lunge, one good swipe, and I could get a hand on it.

  “‘The hidden Enemy who chews at our hearts grows by taking strength from the blood we lose,’” René quoted. “Turns out the hidden enemy isn’t as dangerous as she thought she was.”

  “Yes, she is,” I said. “Your hidden enemy isn’t Eve, you old bastard. The hidden enemy is me.”

  His eyes snapped to me, and he looked surprised. As though he’d forgotten I was even in the room. Part of me wanted to shriek and cower from his eyes, from the pistol that jerked in my direction, but I set my chin at its most contemptuous I don’t care angle. Never had I cared so much.

  “Shut up, Yank,” Eve growled. She was sweating, color gone from her face. How long did she have? I had no idea.

  Get him closer. Eve had once said René planned brilliantly, but improvised badly. I had to goad him into something rash, and I knew I could. I might never have met the man before today, but I knew him through Eve. Knew him right down to the bone.

  I gave him the most scornful look I could manage. “The enemy here is me,” I said again. “I’m the one who found your restaurant in Limoges. I’m the one who hunted Eve up. I’m the one who dragged her all the way from London. Me. You thought you were so clever, starting a new life, and all it took to find you was a college girl making a few telephone calls.”

  His voice was arctic. “Shut up.”

  Oh, I wanted to. But that wouldn’t save me or the Rosebud. It was either take a chance and provoke him now, or wait passively to die right after Eve. “I don’t take orders from an idiot like you,” I said, feeling sweat slide down my spine. “This Baudelaire obsession of yours, it isn’t just really, really boring, it makes you easy to find. You’re not clever, you’re predictable. If you hadn’t named your restaurant after the same damn poem twice in a row, you’d still be sipping champagne over dinner right now, not packing a bag and running. For the third time in your miserable cliché of a life.”

  “I said, shut up.”

  “Why, so you can talk? You do love to talk. All those things you told Eve, just because she looked at you with her big doe eyes. You’re a big talker, René.” I’d never called an old man by his first name in my life, not without a Mr. or Monsieur attached, but I thought we were on first-name terms by now. Bullets plus blood plus threats of imminent death equaled a certain intimacy. “Don’t even think about shooting me,” I added as his mouth tightened and the Luger twitched. “My husband’s back in Grasse right now, and if you kill me he’ll bury you alive. I left him a note; he’s on his way already. You might get away with letting Eve die here, but you can’t murder me in cold blood.”

  Of course he could. I was just trying to muddy the water, get him flustered. His pistol twitched again, and fear froze me until I realized he was looking at my wedding ring, searching my face. Trying to see if I was telling the truth.

  “It’s true,” Eve said, and bleeding out or not, she could still lie like a rug. “Her husband’s a Scotsman with a temper, a solicitor with colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic—”

  “This is getting out of hand,” I pressed. “Look at you standing there like you’ve won the game. You’ve lost. You can’t control all of this. Let me go, let me bandage Eve—”

  His eyes slid back to her. “I’ve waited thirty years to watch her die, you little American cow. I’m not passing that pleasure up for any price on earth. When she’s dead I’ll drink champagne over the corpse and take my time remembering how she wept on my carpet after spilling her secrets—”

  “She didn’t spill any secrets, you filthy liar.”

  “You know nothing,” René Bordelon said coolly. “That sniveling bitch was a tattling coward.”

  From the corner of my eye I saw Eve’s chin jerk. The oldest, deepest wound: her betrayal of Lili. I felt Violette’s telegram burning in my pocket. If only it had arrived a day earlier, perhaps I could have averted all of this.

  She might be bleeding out, but it wasn’t too late for her to know the truth.

  “You lied to her,” I said. “Eve never gave you anything, not even under the opium. The convicting information about Louise de Bettignies came from another source, a Mademoiselle Tellier.” Violette’s search of the trial records, the portions unheard by the defendants at the time, must have uncovered that. Who k
new who this Mlle. Tellier was—if we survived this night, we could find out. “You learned from your German friends that they already had what they needed for a conviction against Louise de Bettignies, so you knew there was no point in torturing Eve further. But before you turned her in, you made sure she thought she was the informer.” I took a deep breath. “Admit it, René. Eve beat you. She won. You lied to make her think she’d lost.”

  His drilling gaze flickered. Under my shrieking fear, I was pierced by a flash of silver-bright triumph. Eve was struggling to sit up straighter against the wall. I couldn’t tell how much my words had sunk in. René’s Luger moved back in her direction. No, no. Me, you look at me.

  “How does it feel?” I taunted. “You tried to break her, and it didn’t work. Nothing has worked for you since the day she outsmarted you. She ended up a decorated war heroine, and you ended up restarting your life twice because you were too goddamn dumb to pick the right side in two successive wars—”

  He broke. Too angry to shoot me from a safe distance, he came at me: the man who killed Rose, raising the Luger as he advanced. But I was lunging up from the floor, my hand sweeping the shelf above me, and the seconds stretched agonizingly as I fumbled—fumbled—and finally seized hold of the bust of Baudelaire. I brought it around in a wild swing, knocking René’s arm away before he could fire. He stumbled back, off balance, toward the desk, and my heart lodged in my throat. Drop the pistol, drop it—but though he fell back on one elbow beside the lamp, that aged hand on the edge of the desk still stubbornly gripped the Luger.

  “Charlie,” Eve said, clear and crisp. I knew what she wanted and I was already surging forward with a howl of hatred, swinging the marble bust in a brutal descending arc. He raised his other arm, protecting his head, but I wasn’t aiming for his head. The bust of Baudelaire came down with a sickening crunch on those long spider-thin fingers clenched around the Luger. I heard bones shatter under the marble, and he screamed—screamed like Eve had screamed when he crushed her knuckles one by one, screamed like Lili had screamed on a surgeon’s table in Siegburg, screamed like Rose had screamed when the first German bullets came ripping through her baby’s body into her own. I screamed too as I hammered the bust down again, hearing another crunch of bones as I flattened those long, long fingers into red ruin.