Agnes didn’t respond. She mumbled an excuse and left the room, knowing where she needed to go. Sitting again in the dead woman’s workroom, surrounded by paintings and little else, she wondered if it was possible for a room to feel emptier than empty. Only a half hour before, she had felt Felicity Cowell’s presence. It had spoken of her personality: orderly, efficient, and confident about her business. Someone who had worked to achieve everything she had. Now the room felt abandoned like a stage set with props not yet used. The woman was a kaleidoscope of fiction: lower-class dropout with a brilliant mind; a stripper with a posh fiancé. She was everything and nothing.
They had doused the candles earlier and Agnes didn’t want the light now. Blowing on her fingers to stimulate circulation, she flipped through the book of English manor houses. Despite everything she had learned, she wanted Felicity Cowell to be an innocent victim. A good girl, not from a wealthy family, but one who worked hard and made a life for herself with a loving fiancé. She wanted the murderer to have committed the crime, not in reaction to something Felicity had done, but in reaction to something in his or her own life. Agnes wanted her to be an innocent victim who would never have the chance to live in her English manor house.
Sitting in the dead woman’s desk chair, Agnes admitted the picture she painted was most likely fiction. She knew that except in rare cases of random violence the victim was usually involved, somehow. Not culpable, but involved: domestic violence, jealousy or rage between work colleagues, a party to a love triangle. In this one case she hoped for a difference; she didn’t want Felicity Cowell, outsider among the chateau’s inhabitants, to be linked to the cause of the violence.
Thomason would need time before she could question him. This she knew from her own experience. She closed her eyes and tried to picture her husband, but the image was difficult to conjure. He was a memory, not a corpus.
“Am I disturbing you?”
Agnes rose, startled to see the marquise in the door frame, a candle in her hand.
“No, I’m just—”
“Remembering?”
“Yes,” Agnes said, surprised. “More accurately, trying not to forget.” Long shadows flickered between them.
“Be careful what you struggle to recall. In my experience the result is suspect. A filter across the truth and the haze of time. The desire to remember plays tricks.”
“It’s my husband, I have trouble recalling his face.”
The marquise blew her candle out, plunging the room back into near darkness. “Be thankful. That is all I remember of mine. His face the last time I saw him.”
Agnes waited for her to continue but the woman was gone. She sat in silence, listening. Then heels tapped. They were brisk, not those of the elderly marquise. A moment later Marie-Chantal hesitated at the threshold, framed by the reflection of her flashlight beam.
“I stayed here once—in the bedroom next door I mean,” she said. “Years ago. A house party Julien organized when we were all at Le Rosay. I was sorry she didn’t sleep there. It’s such a pretty room. I didn’t think to ask why she didn’t.” Marie-Chantal was beautifully dressed in a dark knee-length cashmere sweater dress over tall high-heeled boots. Agnes wondered how it was possible that such a woman could be unhappy.
Marie-Chantal started to remove her scarf, then stopped as if realizing that the room was exceptionally cold. “It seems neglectful now that I didn’t even know she was engaged. She didn’t wear a ring.” Unconsciously Marie-Chantal glanced to her own left hand and enormous diamond.
“Apparently they were waiting to get the ring from his family.” That much Harry had mumbled to Agnes.
Marie-Chantal moved to the front of the desk and flipped the catalogue open, aiming her light across the pages. “The few times we spoke, she talked about her work. The art here, and the sale. She loved what she did.”
She moved toward the paintings and leaned against the wall, aiming her flashlight beam over them. “Wonderful pieces, but here they are the leftovers. Have they told you I paint?” She stepped back as if studying the canvases carefully. “Are you familiar with Morandi? There is one here. Or maybe Julien has it with him in London. Morandi painted only one thing his entire life. Bottles. He was a great favorite of my studio instructor in Paris. One thing, he would say. Paint one thing over and over and you have to infuse it with yourself, you can’t simply go through the motions.” She stepped away from the canvases. “I painted Julien. Sketches, careful studies in oil. Extravagant period pieces. Over and over. Interest. Infatuation. Obsession. You heard us earlier?”
Agnes nodded carefully. Wondering why it had never occurred to her that George might be having an affair. This beautiful woman suspected her husband, and yet that had never been her fear. Perhaps it should have been. Something about the smell of lotion jogged her memory. Had she simply not suspected?