Sophia stared at Mrs. Rathbone. Then Tom reached into his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper, much folded, the seal of the Sunken City showing through from the other side. He held it out to Sophia and let her read. It was the denouncement of the Bonnards, the real one. Sophia looked up again. “But …”
“Let me guess,” René said to Mrs. Rathbone. “Your name before marriage was Jacques.”
Sophia’s eyes widened at the name on the paper. Mrs. Rathbone smiled. “Yes, indeed. I was born in the Sunken City. I helped Mr. Rathbone set up his trade there. Until Ministre Bonnard taxed the daylights out of imported scrap and put him out of business. I was never very fond of Ministre Bonnard after that.”
“And so you sent them to their deaths. And their children! For a law you did not like,” said René. Enzo was translating quickly into Benoit’s ear.
“LeBlanc was going to pay someone to do it, and it was lucky for me that Bonnard didn’t have the sense to take an oath when he needed to. Vengeance is sweet, young man, and money no small matter. As you should well know. Now, about Bellamy House …”
“You denounced them,” Tom said. His expression was something Mrs. Rathbone should have been frightened of, if she’d had the sense to be frightened. “Then you took them in, pretended to help them, turned them in again, and collected. Again!” René’s uncles were a row of solemn faces.
“But why?” Sophia asked.
“Because she wants the house,” Tom said.
“Well, that is presumptuous, Tom Bellamy,” replied Mrs. Rathbone. “Your father broke it off with me long before I met Mr. Rathbone, and while I must say I agree that it should have been my girls spending their summers in the Sunken City and betrothing themselves to handsome Parisian heirs at their Banns ball—an event they would not have failed to appreciate, I am sure—none of that is to the point. The Bellamys have mucked up the entire coast for at least a century too long now, left the whole countryside empty and the property worthless, and it’s high time someone else had the power to steer the ship, young man. Now, as glad as I am that we’ve had this honest chat …”
Every head turned as the vase on its stand beside the door tumbled, smashed to the floor in a powder of porcelain. Madame Hasard stood reeling against the doorjamb, her hair half falling onto one shoulder, bag clutched in her hand. Sophia blinked. She’d nearly forgotten about Madame. The woman must have been wandering the corridors ever since she left the north wing.
“Is this the dining room?” Madame said. “Finally …”
“Maman, are you drunk?”
“Nope!” Madame replied.
“Excuse me!” said Mrs. Rathbone loudly. “I absolutely insist …”
René cut her off and put his eyes on Sophia. “She had the hotelier try to kill me.”
Sophia looked sharply at Madame Hasard.
“No! Her!” René pointed at Mrs. Rathbone. “Not to keep me from the Sunken City, but to keep me from paying your family a marriage fee. She could not have the Bellamys’ debt paid. She was the one informing LeBlanc, before I ever came …”
Sophia ran both hands through her hair. And René had thought it was Spear, and Spear had thought it was René. What a ruddy muddle all this was.
“Who tried to kill you, cher?” Madame was saying from the doorway. Benoit tried to coax her away from the broken shards of porcelain. And what would have happened, Sophia wondered, if she’d gone with Mrs. Rathbone on that trip to the Midlands?
Mrs. Rathbone clutched her purse. “And since our dear hotelier has not been seen since, I assume you all did away with him. Am I right? It took ages for him to realize you’d only gone down the road, and then he bungled the whole thing. I don’t think his heart was in it. But really, you are all so intent on the details that you’re missing the big picture. Sheriff Burn is on his way to arrest Tom. Who wants to keep Tom from going straight back to a prison when you’ve just taken so much trouble to get him out of one?”
“Was it this one, cher?” Madame slurred, passing behind Mrs. Rathbone and still on the subject of who had tried to kill her son. “Yes? Oh, well then …” She grabbed the back of Mrs. Rathbone’s chair and gave it a violent yank. Mrs. Rathbone went over backward, crashing to the floor with her stockinged legs protruding from a confection of white underskirts.
Sophia woke up. “Émile,” she said sharply, “lock the door. Tom, get that woman upright and keep her quiet.” She came to the table and put a finger on the documents she’d brought to the dining room in the first place. “And one of you should explain these,” she demanded in Parisian.
“What is happening?” René yelled, throwing his hands up in the air.
Benoit had just gotten Madame safely seated. “May I, Mademoiselle?” he asked Sophia. She lifted her hand and let him slide the documents toward himself. Madame watched this movement with interest, then lifted her eyes.
“Did you … drug me, Miss Bellamy?”
That got the attention of the room, though there was some sort of commotion going on behind her, possibly Tom restraining Mrs. Rathbone. Sophia straightened. “Yes. But not very successfully.”
She sneaked a peek at René, who seemed mildly surprised, and then at the uncles, who ran the gamut from shock to amusement. But it was Madame’s reaction that made her raise her brows. Madame’s mouth twitched once, twice, and then she laughed, uproariously, as if she’d never heard anything so funny in her life.
“Oh,” Madame said, eyeing the documents Benoit was so carefully reading while she laughed. “And I suppose you cut those out of my bodice?” Another round of astonishment from the uncles. Sophia lifted her chin.
“Of course.”
Madame slapped the table and laughed more, her red hair falling all about her head. “Well, it took you … long enough, Miss Bellamy. But it is a good thing for you I threw the rest of that soup … out the window!” She waggled a finger at her. “You do not have servants that speak Parisian.”
René’s jaw was beginning to clench. “Someone tell me what is happening.”
“Should I tell him?” Sophia asked. Madame extended her hand in a gracious wave. Sophia turned to René. “You mother didn’t sign away your fortune. Or she did, but what she signed away was worthless. She’s been moving the money, and the business, to the Commonwealth for some time.”
Benoit looked up from his document. “It is so, René. This is an account of deposits made to a bank in Kent, starting nearly two years ago.”
“Your cousin was a maniac!” said Madame, as if this explained everything.
René sat heavily at the table, looking at the document that Benoit slid over to him. He read it without touching it, fingers tented over his nose.
“Adèle,” said Émile, “why did you tell René his inheritance was lost?”
“That,” she said, “was his father’s fault.”
René untented his fingers as Benoit slid over another document. “Your father left a stipulation that you could not inherit. Not until you were married.”
“Well, that would make a mess,” commented Enzo.
“Idiot,” said Andre, shaking his head. He didn’t look all that surprised.
“Sentimental,” Madame added, “that’s what he was.”
Benoit scratched through his wispy hair. “Could you not have stopped him, Adèle?”
“He did not tell me! He wanted his son to have what we had, working the … business, together.”
“Richard never was one for thinking with his head,” said Peter.
“That was my job,” said Madame, giggling. “We did make a wonderful team …”
René’s voice maintained only a thin veil of calm. “Will someone please explain to me why I have never been told this? And will someone help Tom restrain that woman?”
Sophia realized they’d all been ignoring the sounds of struggle coming from beyond the table, where Mrs. Rathbone had been set upright, her hat and purse on the floor, Tom behind her chair, his walking stick braced across her middle. Francois slid out from the table, crossed the room, and suddenly Tom’s stick had been replaced with a knife. Mrs. Rathbone went instantly still. And then the door latch to the dining room rattled, the lock held, and someone knocked. Silence descended.