I'll See You in Paris (10 page)

“Banbury Road?” she said, taking a few laps around the sign. “Where did you go?”

The bird chirping intensified and soon Annie realized these were not geese but a flock of middle-aged women walking hurriedly in her direction.

“Excuse me!” she called to the fast-walkers. Annie jogged toward them, wheeling her bike alongside. “Pardon! Sorry to bother you!”

They didn't slow, not a hitch in their pace.

“If I could have just a minute of your time!”

The women halted in unison. They each raised a left brow, the seamless choreography of a tight-knit and determined group.

“Hi!” Annie said brightly. “I'm a researcher. From out of town. Do you know where I might find the Grange?”

The women stared vacantly.

“The Grange?” Annie repeated, squinting in the sun. “At number four, Banbury Road. Next door to ‘Patricia'?”

It was possible one of them knew her. It was possible one of them
was
her. Perhaps Annie could name-drop bookstore Trudy next.

“You passed it already,” a woman told her.

“Yes, I know I passed the road. That's the problem, I can't figure out how to pick it back up again.”

“No,” another said. “You passed the Grange. A few lengths back.”

“What?” Annie turned toward the path from which she'd come. “That can't be right.”

They were in Chacombe proper. The George & Dragon was within a few blocks' distance. The buildings around her all looked the same: limestone, each one rolling into the next as naturally as the grass and trees and boxwood surrounding them. There wasn't a haunted house in sight.

“I'm trying to find the
Grange,
” Annie said, enunciating. Maybe they had trouble with the accent Gus accused her of having. “The estate where the Duchess of Marlborough once lived? Mrs. Spencer?”

“That's the spot,” one confirmed, pointing. “Four Banbury Road. You can see the front gate from here.”

They spun around and continued on their speedy way.

Winded, and with a stitch in her side, Annie checked the address she'd written down. Four Banbury Road, just as the women said. Why hadn't Gus told her the Grange was only a few blocks from the pub?

“What a pain in the ass he is,” she groused, and leaned her bike against a tree.

Hands on hips, she studied the building at 4 Banbury Road, along with the ones beside it. Annie understood why everyone had been in Mrs. Spencer's business. Her neighbors had had no choice. They probably saw her crawling into bed with Pru.

Annie hadn't imagined the Grange to be in the thick of things. The property itself was sprawling, but the main home was not the ever-growing behemoth Pru saw when she first walked through its halls. Even Goose Creek Hill was bigger.

Well, this shouldn't take long,
Annie thought.

Stepping gingerly toward the front gate, she could almost feel Mrs. Spencer—and Pru—on the other side of it. Annie shook her head. It'd been thirty years. Those people were long gone.

At the gate she paused. There was a note tacked onto it, dated a few days before.

Application for Grade II building: House. Early 18th century. Coursed limestone and ironstone rubble, missing roof, brick stacks, two stories plus attic, three bays. Main doorway in second bay from right and has wood lintel and plank door. Four-light window to right has wood lintel, wood mullions, and iron casement. Similar three-light window to left. Doorway in second bay from left has wood lintel and four-panel door, part glazed. Two-light window to left with wood lintel, wood mullions, and iron casement. Similar window on first floor. Left gable end is coped with kneelers.

Annie slipped it into her pocket. So much for her promise not to touch anything.

With a deep breath, she nudged the gate. It creaked open. Annie glanced around for prying neighbors, or another crop of speed-walkers. She wouldn't have to contend with whizzing bullets or screaming harpies but Annie was trespassing. She was committing a crime.

With not another soul in sight, Annie ventured farther onto the property, crunching across thick blankets of rebellious roses and weeds. She stepped over cement statues and upended lawn furniture as she made her way to the north side of the home, and a partially hidden door. It didn't face the street, but Annie remained at the mercy of any Chacombe busybodies nonetheless.

Peering over her shoulder, Annie turned the knob. So this was it. She was going inside.

The door stuck.

She tried again, jiggling and pulling. Despite the effort—and the cursing—the door remained firmly locked. So did the next one, and all of the doors after that. It was a lot of security for a home with so many broken windows.

“Good grief,” Annie muttered, clearing the glass from a nearby dormer with her backpack, speed-walkers be damned.
“New study finds majoring in literature may result in nefarious behavior.”

Annie tossed her bag over the casement and hoisted herself into the frame. Her years spent as a cut-rate gymnast were finally paying off. Laurel would be proud that all those participant ribbons could so nicely lead to a life of crime.

Holding her breath, Annie pushed aside the heavy black drapes which, according to the book, the duchess doused in oil four times per year. No surprise there, Annie thought. They smelled of something old and faraway.

“Yuck.” She coughed, and then covered her mouth.

Once all the way inside, Annie rested on the sill and assessed the room. Below her were scattered papers, a few books, and what appeared to be a collection of rib cages from small animals. No one could really die in the haunted house from some old book, right?

As her stomach seesawed, Annie jumped down.

She was in a dining room, judging from the long oak table that dominated the space. The chairs were gone. On the walls, rectangles marked the places artwork once hung. Annie treaded down the hallway. As she walked up the stairs, the wood made not a clonking sound but something squishier, like moss. Annie caught her breath at the top step, grateful that her mom wouldn't have to suffer the stigma of a death-by-burgling obituary.

“All right, Grange,” she said. “Whatcha got for me?”

In the first bedroom, Annie found a bare mattress on the floor, beside it a collapsed bed frame filled with books. Hardy. Proust. Wharton. She was reaching toward one of the Hardys,
Tess of the d'Urbervilles,
when her hand brushed against something cold.

Annie leaped back. It was a revolver.

Choking and wheezing, she sprinted into the neighboring bedroom. Annie lived in hunt country but she'd never touched a gun.

“It's just an old piece of metal,” she told herself, heart punching the inside of her chest. “It's not like it can go off on its own.”

Or maybe it could. What did Annie know about firearms? What did she know about old lady ghosts who liked to shoot them while alive?

“Good grief, get a hold of yourself,” she said. “Ghost stories. Nothing more.”

Annie looped around the room four times in an effort to calm herself down.

“Annie,” she said. “Don't be such a wuss.”

Inhaling, she surveyed the room. In it sat another bed, its frame intact. Beside the bed was a desk. On the desk, a typewriter. Annie craned her neck to more closely scrutinize the walls. Yep, those were bullet holes.

Aside from its one-inch frosting of dust, not to mention a healthy mountain of black soot accumulated in the fireplace, the room was relatively neat. A bed. A desk. A few pieces of paper. Annie's dorm rooms were far worse. Where was all the clutter Gus promised? The old lady hoarding? This was starting to look like a waste of a misdemeanor.

Sighing, Annie crouched to inspect beneath the bed. That's where the good stuff usually was. Even she had had incriminating evidence under hers back in the day. A roommate's skirt borrowed without asking. A mostly empty vodka bottle. A pack of cigarettes, only one used.

“What, no guns?” Annie said. “Mrs. Spencer. I'm disappointed.”

Aside from dirt and grime and dead spiders, all that was under there was scattered paper, typewritten from the looks of it. With a gnash of her teeth, Annie stretched as far under the bed as she could muster and made contact with a few sheets. After dragging them out, she sat back on her heels, her knees gray from the dust.

“Transcripts?” she said, her eyes scanning the page.

The author's notes? An interview? Annie flicked through the pages.

Surely you'd encountered the duke at some point.

You met at Blenheim, you said?

Come, Mrs. Spencer. Please sit back down.

She didn't know if the pages had value or if they'd matter to anyone still alive. But ace researcher that she was, Annie did understand one thing. She was looking at the very start of the story, the place where
The Missing Duchess
began.

 

Fourteen

 

WS: You tell me you're not the duchess.

GD: Because I'm not.

WS: But you ran in celebrated circles. Surely you'd encountered the duke at some point.

GD: Of course I met the duke.

WS: Because you were married to him.

GD: I'm sorry you think a lady must marry every man she meets.

WS: But his family reported, multiple times, that his missing wife is here, at the Grange. Mugnier the priest made similar statements.

GD: Yes, yes, I can see why a priest who died thirty years ago would know who lives in Oxfordshire today. Tell me, Seton, how long do you plan to go round and round like this? I've told you. I never loved the Duke of Marlborough.

WS: But you were married to him.

GD: We had no kind of marriage.

WS: But you knew him.

GD: Didn't I just say that? Yes, of course I knew him! I have a crumb of social standing, for the love of Christ.

WS: How did you meet?

GD: The duke? Blenheim, I suppose. It's hard to recall. It was his wife Coon who brought me round. She was my closest girl.

WS: Note to manuscript. Coon is Consuelo Vanderbilt, the prior Duchess of Marlborough.

GD: Note to manuscript. This author is a tosser. Who needs to be reminded of Coon?

WS: Okay, then. Tell me about your friendship with Consuelo. How did you meet?

GD: Actually, now that I think about it, I met her through the duke, instead of the other way around. Yes. That's right. I encountered him at a London soiree when I was sixteen. Coon wasn't there. She was recuperating from the birth of their first child. Wretched child, that.

WS: Your future stepson?

GD: You'll never hear me claiming that wanker as part of my family. Anyhow, old Marlborough thought his wife and I would get along famously. He took me to Blenheim to meet her. Coon was in the doldrums and he wanted me to perk her up.

WS: You were sixteen when this happened?

GD: Yes. Why do I feel like I'm repeating myself?

WS: Very well. So the year was 1897.

GD: Yes. Wait! No! No. That's just silly. It couldn't have been 1897 as I would've only been two years old! [Laughs] A mere toddler!

WS: But instead you were sixteen?

GD: Yes. As I've mentioned. Repeatedly.

WS: Well, you've just implied you were born in 1895, and 1895 plus sixteen is 1911.

GD: Oh, the writer is good with numbers, is he?

WS: By 1911, the duke and duchess had been separated four years. She wasn't recuperating from childbirth and in fact she'd already moved out of Blenheim and was living on her own.

GD: Well, perhaps I was younger. Maybe the year was … 1909? I would've been—

WS: Fourteen. By your math. But I saw your name in the guest registries at the palace, written in 1901.

GD: Ever hear of a transposition error? Sakes alive, do you fancy yourself a bloody mathematician or a writer? The year is not the point. The point is that Coon and Sunny—

WS: Note to manuscript. Sunny—

GD: Was the Duke of Marlborough. Earl of Sunderland. Ergo, Sunny. Jesus. Are you going to do this for our entire interview?

WS: I just might.

 

Fifteen

 

GD: She was beautiful, Coon was. Dark, exotic. She had these slightly slanting eyes.

WS: Note to manuscript. Mrs. Spencer is pushing at the corners of her eyelids, as if to demonstrate the slant. Now she's rolling her eyes.

GD: [Snort] Coon had a touch of the Japanese about her.

WS: In contrast to your fair skin and those wide, haunting blue peepers of yours.

GD: Well, I wouldn't call them haunting. But yes. The contrast made us stand out when jaunting about Paris. Italy and Germany, too.

WS: It must've been startling; the differences Sunny saw when he watched the two of you together.

GD: Forget Sunny. We enchanted half of Europe with our differences. Black and white. Dark and light. Though, of course, we were both beautiful. I can say that now that I'm as old as Methuselah.

WS: You're still beautiful, Mrs. Spencer.

GD: Full of bollocks, but I appreciate the favor of your compliment. In any event, our personalities were as different as our visages. She was so shy, sweet Coon. Most didn't know she was also hard of hearing. Her reputation for being snobbish was mostly due to this.

WS: “A black swan aloof in soundless waters.”

GD: Yes, that was my Coon. Poor thing, so depressed in that cumbersome palace. I tried to buoy her. Brighten her marriage, that home, her life. It was all so utterly, heartbreakingly without an ounce of cheer.

WS: Reports have you cheering multiple members of the home.

GD: Well, I tried. Hold on. Surely you're not referring to Sunny?

WS: Why would I be referring to the duke?

GD: Let me tell you. I was a WELCOME distraction to Sunny and Coon.

WS: Note to manuscript. Mrs. Spencer smacked the table when she said the word “welcome.”