“Oh no.” The words are barely audible as they wisp from my lips.
With clenched teeth, Saber kneels to lift my mother’s head, revealing a blood-caked cheek, shards of glass, and the unmistakable glimmer of Sonoman-Versailles’s favorite cosmetic additive. The remains of a vial of raw Glitter.
Automatically, I estimate the loss in production and profit, and though I haven’t loved this woman in a very long time, I’m ashamed at the reflex.
“Go get a washcloth. Damp, not wet. Hurry.”
“What?” Saber’s calm but firm words sound like a different language.
“We have to fix this—go get a washcloth. Please,” he adds, and strangely, that’s what gets me moving. I jog down the hall—cursing my clicking slippers—and wet a washcloth from my father’s bathroom. At the last second, I poke my head into his boudoir but am relieved to see him sleeping. For a moment I panic and wonder if he’s dead too, but I hear a light snuffling snore, so I hurry back to Saber.
“We’ll clean up the Glitter and reposition her body,” Saber says with a calm I can’t even begin to feel. How have I become the person who covers up two deaths in six months?
“I don’t understand, what happened?”
“I can only guess,” Saber says as he dabs at the blood on her cheek, trying to remove the sparkling drug. “She probably got suspicious and came back to snoop when she saw you had that party on your schedule. She knew you’d be out of the way. Looks like she got into the desk somehow. If she tried to taste the Glitter, or sniff it, and got like ten doses at once, she’d have collapsed and—” He gestures at her fallen form.
Saber’s doing everything, and I’m feeling so queasy, I just let him. Part of my brain reminds me that he’s been working with Reginald for…I don’t even know how long. This probably isn’t the first death he’s tidied up. For all I know, he’s caused a few. I wouldn’t presume to know just how dark Reginald’s underworld gets.
“If she didn’t overdose immediately, it’s possible she just tripped and landed on the vial. Then when the glass cut into her cheek…” He shakes his head. “Who knows how much got into her bloodstream? With it delivered that way, her heart and lungs would have quit within seconds.”
I close my eyes against the horror. This is my fault. “An overdose, then. Either way.”
“Massive. But if we can make it look like an accident…here,” he says, handing me the bloodied washcloth. “Put it into your pannier pockets. I’ll get rid of it in Paris later.”
I’m hiding evidence. Bloody evidence.
“Be careful,” he adds. “Don’t handle it without your gloves.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask as he wrestles Mother’s unwieldy form up against his chest.
“Better you don’t even ask,” he mutters. “All the cosmetics need to go in your pannier pockets. Clean out all those drawers, then make sure they’re locked,” he adds, dragging her around to the front of the desk.
I remove my supplies from the desk and place them in my panniers alongside the washcloth and makeup pots before locking the drawer. I’ve just shoved the key down the front of my dress when a sickening thud startles my attention back to Saber.
He’s standing over my mother’s body, having apparently let her fall, and I’m glad I didn’t see her head crack against the corner of the desk. My stomach curdles at the eight-or nine-centimeter gash he’s made in her forehead, which is oozing blood onto the carpet.
“What did…why…?” But the urge to retch overwhelms me, and I have to hold my hand over my mouth while my stomach heaves.
“Actually, if you’re going to puke, you should do it over here,” Saber says, pulling me toward him. I’m forced to remove one hand from my mouth to lift my skirts and step over my mother’s body.
I don’t understand any of this.
Saber takes me by both shoulders and shakes me gently. “We found her on the floor,” he says. His voice is quiet and gentle, and yet somehow steely, and all I can do is nod. “It looked like she tripped on the carpet and fell, hitting her head on the desk,” he says very deliberately. “When you couldn’t rouse her, you ran to get help. Do you understand?”
“She tripped,” I repeat.
“Yes. You have a dozen high-ranking ladies of the court to verify that you were nowhere near this apartment.”
I nod, the seriousness of needing an alibi making the situation crystallize in my mind.
“Can you rumple up the carpet near her foot so it looks plausible? I’m going…I’m going to use gravity to make her head bleed a bit more, to corroborate our story. Maybe don’t look.”
But I can’t just look away, after a pronouncement such as that. I flip up the corner of the beautiful Indian rug in front of my father’s desk while keeping Saber in my peripheral vision. Carefully working around my mother’s bulky skirts, he lifts her lower body, and I have to turn away again at the unnatural angles her limbs fall into.