“Has she lived with the Vallottons long?” Agnes asked. “You mentioned they’re her guardians.”
“Her parents died and old Monsieur Vallotton brought her to live with them. He died a year later.” Agnes hid a smile at Arsov calling anyone old. “She is their legal responsibly but I am leaving my estate to her. They look after her, but she’s not one of them.” He removed a hand-rolled cigarette from a silver box and sucked on it like it was the next course of his meal.
“Isn’t that a little unusual if the Vallottons are her legal guardians?” she asked.
“No one objects to more money,” said Mulholland. “Especially guardians.”
Agnes recalled that his parents had died when he was young.
“You are right,” Arsov said. “I’ll make her independent, plus I’m giving my collection of Russian objets d’art to them, as a token. A thank-you.” Vaguely, he waved a hand toward the collections strewn across the nearby tables and cabinets: Fabergé eggs, enameled and bejeweled frames, silver-faced icons. “It is the least I can do. Might even be known as the Arsov collection someday, but that’s not necessary. I’m not prideful.”
Agnes smothered another smile. In the light of day the room looked like someone had ransacked a Romanov palace prior to the revolution.
Arsov glanced around as if sizing up the real estate. “This is very special place to me and Mimi would be happy here. I have asked Julien Vallotton to deed use of the house to her, just for her lifetime.” Arsov plucked a speck of tobacco from his lips. “It is a bond between us, this place.”
Agnes listened to his account of their time together, noting that neither Estanguet nor Mulholland ate much, despite the excellent food. Judging from the expression on Estanguet’s face he was as intrigued as she was at the inclinations of the truly rich. At Arsov’s age it was likely Mimi would still be a young girl when he died. She wouldn’t need her own mansion. On the other hand Mulholland looked surly. Perhaps this was what she could expect from her own boys when they reached their midtwenties. Surly boy-men. Agnes changed the subject.
“I don’t know who the marquise suspects, but I’m sure she is unhappy. Not only a murder but the dress worn by Mademoiselle Cowell was valuable and it’s ruined now.”
“My dragon nurse told me. A dress worn to Napoleon’s coronation. The marquise will think it good riddance. Her husband was part of the old French nobility, not the upstart emperor’s. The emperor may have created modern Switzerland but the Vallottons didn’t need him. The dead woman couldn’t have chosen better.”
“The dress has value, a history,” said Agnes.
“You don’t see value the way they do. The marquise values honor and Napoleon is not her idea of honor.” Arsov sucked on a cigarette. “I may collect history but the Vallottons don’t, they live it.”
Mulholland set his wineglass on the table with a thump and called to the butler for more. Agnes considered dragging him outside and giving him a short lesson in manners. A weekend with her mother-in-law would be good for him.
“You’ve surely lived your share of history,” she directed at Arsov.
“You think being born in Russia means Doctor Zhivago. Your generation thinks that is war. Julie Christie and Omar Sharif in fur, with tales of love and ice palaces.”
“I think Doctor Zhivago was an earlier generation than mine and an earlier war than yours.”
“Zhivago should have left Russia. I did. No one cared who died there. My family, my friends, my comrades-in-arms were killed as fodder for the egos of our leaders. When I decided to abandon my home country it took me weeks traveling at night along the Volga to find a way out. And that was by accident. Literally I ran smack—you say smack—into a man during the worst snowstorm of my life. It is fortunate that after my family was killed I had traveled to Stalingrad. I told you my brothers were there? In Stalingrad?”
Agnes shook her head.
“Well, they were. In the Red Army. And I found them. They were killed a few months later in the siege. That is another reason I left. There was no one for me.” He puffed a ring of smoke, watching it dissipate. “Before they died, my battle instincts were honed. In Stalingrad the enemy could be around any corner. We occupied sections of buildings, ran past each other in parallel tunnels, risked meeting a sniper at every opening, and lived because of our instincts. You will not believe me, you think I must have had a sign that night during the blizzard—a military emblem on his collar, the feel of his hat, his cologne, his stink, something that told me this man who had his back to me was a Nazi. This, like heroism, you cannot understand until you see it for yourself. I know that my subconscious acted before I had chance to think. I slipped my knife into his side and ripped up, lucky that I struck soft tissue, fortunate that I had done this before.”
Estanguet moaned and Agnes turned toward him, fighting her own sense of revulsion.