“Yes.” None of the three Carvalho girls had managed to find a husband yet, despite their father’s best efforts. Duilio only hoped his mother’s attendance at the ball—her first outing in years—wouldn’t be misinterpreted as interest in Carvalho’s eldest daughter on Duilio’s part. “Miss Paredes and I need to speak to someone there. A police matter. Would you be willing to go, Mother, as a favor to me?”
His mother sighed. “Am I out of mourning now?”
His mother hadn’t attended a social function of any sort for three years, but mourning wasn’t the reason behind it. “You’re in half mourning, Mother. It shouldn’t cause too much comment as long as you don’t dance,” he said, “or run off into the gardens with some young swain.”
His mother didn’t respond to his joke, but the preposterous comment drew a dry glance from Miss Paredes. He rather enjoyed seeing that expression on her solemn face.
“If it will help,” his mother said, “I’ll manage, Duilinho.”
Despite being made to feel about eight years old in front of Miss Paredes, Duilio couldn’t help smiling at his mother’s long-suffering tone. She had never enjoyed the fripperies and gossip of the social set. “So, Miss Paredes,” he asked, “you and my mother have two days to prepare for a ball. Is that feasible?”
Miss Paredes cast a glance at his mother, but nodded shortly. The paper apparently captured her attention after that, for she said nothing else to him. She began reading one of the articles to his mother instead, something about steam trawlers, a type of fishing boat banned from the area. A portion of the family’s money—his mother’s money—was invested in the boatbuilding industry. Apparently Miss Paredes already knew of his mother’s interests there.
Duilio would give anything to have his father and brother back. Among other things, then he wouldn’t have to oversee the family’s investments. While his grandfather had amassed a decent fortune buying up fabric mills in the north of the country and building a shipping fleet to get those goods to markets, Duilio didn’t know a great deal about either; he’d always believed Alessio would inherit. His father had shifted his funds to investment in those industries rather than active participation, removing some of the stench of trade from their hands. Fortunately his man of business kept him apprised of the pertinent news, saving Duilio from reading the trade papers every morning.
After breakfast, Duilio asked Felis to join them in the front sitting room to read to his mother. He hoped that eschewing privacy would stem any gossip about himself and Miss Paredes in the household, so he directed Felis and his mother to two ivory-brocade armchairs set by the window. A few minutes later he was ensconced on the pale leather sofa before the hearth. On the low table before him he laid out the timeline, a sheet of foolscap on which Joaquim had drawn a long dateline across the top, with each pertinent event written perpendicular to that in his tidy hand.
Miss Paredes nodded toward it. “What is this?”
Duilio pulled the sheet of foolscap closer. “We’ve done our best to put together a chronological chart of every event pertaining to The City Under the Sea.”
She nodded her head slowly, eyes still downcast. “I found much of this information in the newspapers. I just didn’t think to lay it out this way. It’s clever.”
Duilio shifted closer to her on the couch. “This starts just over a year ago, when the first house, the Duarte mansion, was discovered in the water. And this,” he said, pointing, “in early September, was when we put together the reports of missing servants with the timing of the appearance of the houses in the water. Then we were ordered to close the investigation.”
“And then it was the Amaral house,” Miss Paredes said softly.
Duilio sat back. “Espinoza is the only person we definitely have connected to this,” he said, “so several of these entries pertain to our efforts to find him.”
She touched a date shortly after the fifth house was placed. “Espinoza stopped giving interviews about this time. The papers said he tired of being hounded by the writers.”
“Yes,” he said. “That sounds right.”
“He lived in Matosinhos before he became famous,” she said, naming a town only a few miles north of the Golden City. It was on the Leça River, the site of the unfinished port of Leixões. “He must have come to the Golden City about two or three years ago, I think, but I didn’t find anything about where he lives or works now.”
“He was renting a flat in Massarelos parish,” Duilio said, “but moved out about a year before the first house was placed. We’ve not been able to trace where he went from there. Not so far. He had to have had space to build the houses and a way to get supplies. But he’s essentially building small boats, and there are dozens of boatbuilders in this city and the neighboring ones. He could be hiding among those.”
“They’re not boats,” she pointed out. “The house continued to float after it filled with water. The newspapers say there’s a charm on the top of each that keeps them floating. Could you hunt for the person who made those?”
Duilio frowned. “The charms are of questionable effectiveness. They do nothing more than make sailors feel safer. And anyone can put together a charm, I’m afraid, Miss Paredes.”
“Oh.” She looked back down to the timeline. “How many people do you think it takes to build these . . . things and submerge them? The newspaper articles said there must be dozens.”
“I don’t think so. Keeping a secret with that many people is nearly impossible, and Espinoza has managed. I think we’re talking about one dozen at most. Unless there’s some cause they’re espousing,” Duilio added. “If they have a cause, they’re more likely to keep their mouths shut.”
“What cause could this possibly serve?” Miss Paredes’ lips thinned, her eyes taking on the same hurt look he’d seen in the submersible. She’d shifted away from him, her black-clad hands clenched tightly in her lap. “What is the point of killing so many, and in such a manner?”
She, more than anyone else alive, had the right to ask that question. Duilio just wished he had an answer. “Perhaps your meeting tomorrow night will give us that information. Did you not tell me that you had a sketch of the table?”
“It’s not much,” she said. “I couldn’t remember any of the symbols in the inner ring, so what I have may not be useful.”
“It’s more than we had yesterday morning,” Duilio assured her. He wanted to set her at ease, talk about something trivial, but he suspected this was better done swiftly. So he asked her questions about the coachman who’d accosted her and drugged her, about the man who’d drawn her into the boat with Silva, about the voices she’d heard from inside the replica, and even the rattling of the chains she’d heard. He tried to recall everything she’d said the day before in the bathroom, so as not to make her repeat herself.
“How did you get out of the replica?” he asked. “Was there a door?”
“No,” she said. “I kicked at the upper corner of the roof—well, the floor, since it was upside down—and it gave eventually. I managed to squeeze out. The damage wasn’t visible from the submersible, just a line of light from inside. From the table.”
He hadn’t seen that damage, but he hadn’t known where to look either. “And you were wearing the housemaid’s costume.” That would be the “black and white” that Aga had reported.
She nodded jerkily. “I’d lost the cap but I still had the apron on. I tore up the apron to bandage my hand once I was on the quay.”
Bandage her hand? “Then what did you do?”
“I don’t know how long I stood there.” She was being careful not to look at him, he noted, perhaps trying to keep her words impersonal. “Eventually I made my way to the Amaral house. I went in through the back. The butler found me there and sent for Lady Amaral. I told her that Isabel had been grabbed by someone, but I couldn’t tell her what had actually happened.”