The Grumpy Count, page 15
We pass through the rest of the showroom without stopping. Giselle unlocks a door to a back room that smells of musty paper and dust. She flicks on the lights and walks to a large cabinet, which she unlocks as well. I tread on her heels.
After a moment of nerve-racking silence, she spins around. “It’s gone.”
“What?” I ask like an idiot.
“The box with the extra keys. It should be here in this cabinet but it’s not.”
“Someone on your staff may have misplaced it,” I say.
“I’m the only one who has a key to this room and to this cabinet.”
This is not good.
A crease forms between her eyebrows. “My flat is two floors above. Last night, after I got home, I came down here and checked on all the keys, including the missing box, because you’d said you were into keys…”
We look at each other, no doubt, arriving at the same conclusion.
How? I ask myself. How did he know?
With all the precautions we took, how did Kurt Ozzi figure out that Giselle was the Key to the Key? Had his men managed to decipher the coded message I sent Von Dietz last night? But even if they had, it wasn’t terribly informative. All I’d written was that I’d secured an approach for this afternoon.
“There must’ve been a break-in during the night,” Giselle says, her frown deepening. “I just don’t get it… Nothing else is missing, including the more valuable items. The only thing they stole was that box.”
I do my darnedest to look as perplexed as she is. “You need to report the theft to the police.”
Except they’ll never find the culprits, because Kurt Ozzi’s men are too well trained to leave any evidence behind. And even with the evidence, so many police chiefs and prefects across Europe are on Kurt’s payroll that I wouldn’t expect results from any investigation that has to do with Kurt.
Concealing my despair as best I can, I ask, “Did you have any copies made?”
“No, not for those in the box.”
That’s it, then. Game over. The fourth key seeker will be the first one to botch up his mission and return home without a key. I failed my country and the Crown. I screwed up my chance to recover the d’Alenq honor.
Could the outcome of this quest have been any worse?
Too crushed to exit with a semblance of elegance, I tell Giselle to call the cops without delay, plead sudden fatigue, and leave.
The second shockwave hits me as I step into the inner courtyard.
Leo.
He turned up in London unscheduled, managed to get tickets to the final performance—the one with Giselle—watched me take an interest in her beyond the roles we played, stuck around after the talkback, and saw Giselle and me exchanging glances as she waited for me… He connected the dots, established Giselle’s identity, and told his psychopath uncle to look into her.
I step out onto the street, reeling from my best friend’s betrayal. Four MESS agents join me as I cross Mint Street Park toward the underground station. The agents’ faces are eager, and their eyes are bright with anticipation. Shaking my head, I explain what went down.
“We can drive you to your house,” one of them offers. “You don’t need to hide in the Tube anymore.”
Even as I’m nodding, a sudden urge overcomes me.
I turn to the agent who seems to be the boss. “Do you happen to have the addresses of everyone on the show’s cast?”
“Yes. You think you may have another lead?”
“I wish!” My sneer is so bitter I can taste it in my mouth. “No, it has nothing to do with the mission. Just a private call.”
“Whose address do you need?”
“Margot Nolan’s.”
The agent queries a file on his phone and gives me an address in Blackfriars. “Shall we drive you there?”
“It’s an easy walk. Besides, I need to clear my head.”
They nod in understanding and let me be.
When I buzz Margot’s flat twenty minutes later, I have no idea what to say to her if she’s at home. I don’t know why I came here, what I’ll do if she tells me to fuck off, and why I’m adding another potential disaster to my already catastrophic day.
She’s home.
Inexplicably, she lets me in.
CHAPTER 30
JONAS
Margot opens the door, and I step in.
She’s wearing a plain gray sweatshirt and jeans. Her long dark hair arranged in a casual knot at the top of her head. She smells of lavender soap. Despite her unassuming outfit, she looks even lovelier to me than before.
Her flat begins from the front door after a hint at an entryway. It’s tiny. A big shoebox, really, not much bigger than my bedroom in Bloomsbury. The space is uncluttered with potted plants that line the windowsill and a charming oakwood bookcase against one wall, filled with hardbacks and paperbacks side by side. I spy a kitchenette tucked away in the opposite corner, complete with a vintage stove and an array of mismatched dishes and cups on an open shelf above it.
It’s clear, though, that she wasn’t expecting any visitors today. Two piles of unfolded laundry sit at the foot of a sofa bed, no doubt from her fortnight at my house.
Instead of the comfy-looking sofa, Margot gestures to one of the chairs at the small table on the opposite wall.
“Sorry about the mess,” she says, grabbing another chair.
“Thank you for letting me in despite… everything.”
“I wasn’t going to, but curiosity won.”
My response is a humorless smile.
We sit like that for a few long moments, our silence anything but companionable. Margot is hot under the collar. I can see it from the way she looks at me and talks to me, from her body language, from the fact she didn’t offer any refreshments, not even a glass of water.
Who can blame her? She has every right to be mad.
“So,” she finally says, “did you come here to grovel?”
I give her another smile that doesn’t reach my eyes. “I just wanted to see you before I decamp tomorrow. One last time.”
“No.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “What do you mean?”
“If you’re hoping for another fuck—you know, one for the road—it won’t happen.”
“I wasn’t hoping—”
“For you,” she says, “this was always just about sex. I get it. I don’t blame you. Well, I do, but not for that.”
“You blame me for the way I treated you yesterday.”
“Yes, I do.”
“And so you should,” I say. “It was shabby, even for a loser like me.”
My self-characterization gives her a start. “You’re many things, not all of them palatable, but you’re hardly a loser.”
“My dear, you’re looking at the ultimate loser.”
She leans back and folds her arms over her chest. “OK, explain.”
And I do. Obviously, I redact the sensitive details, but I convey to her the gist of my big fail. I was after an antique key that I believed Giselle Fisher had in her possession. Getting my hands on it meant the world to me. It was the single most important mission of my entire life. But a rival collector broke into her museum last night and stole the key from under my nose.
As I relate my tale, an incomprehensible relief washes over me. I realize why I came here. It wasn’t for sex, or to see her face one last time. If those motives were present, they were secondary. I came here to talk to Margot, to confide my distress, to seek solace.
What a strange, novel urge!
But instead of a sympathetic pat, I get a narrow look. “Is that why you flirted with Giselle yesterday? To get to her key?”
“Yes.”
“It is kind of low.”
“I’m not denying it.”
She looks me up and down. “Now I see why you described yourself as a loser.”
So much for solace…
“What was so special about that key?” she asks. “Precious stones? Gold? Unique craftsmanship?”
“None of the above. Its value lay in its story, in the history associated with it.”
But, mostly, in its potential to get us a step closer to opening that damn vault.
“History, huh?” Margot says. And then she bursts out laughing.
I watch her, mystified, until she wipes her eyes. “Fate can be so fucking ironic sometimes!”
“How do you mean?”
“If you’d stuck with me instead of banking on Giselle, you would’ve found a key exactly like that. No need to sell your soul or behave like a dick.”
I stare at her, confused.
“Now, it’s possible that Giselle’s key has a better story than mine,” Margot says. “But mine is pretty cool, too.”
Oh, I see. Margot owns an antique key with an interesting history. Seeing as I have an entire evening to kill, I’d rather spend it with Margot, listening to her.
“Let’s hear your story,” I say archly, “and then I’ll decide whose key is cooler.”
“It is a little-known fact outside of the Nolan family,” she begins, “but on my father’s side we descend from Jane Austen’s favorite brother, Henry Thomas Austen.”
Despite my lousy mood, I find myself grinning. “Not bad as a start! Let’s see if the rest lives up to it.”
“My paternal grandfather had inherited Jane Austen’s portable writing desk that her father—my sixth great grandfather—had had made for her,” Margot continues. “It was more of a box than an actual desk, and a very nifty one at that!”
“Was?”
“My grandparents donated it to the British Library.”
“How very selfless of them!”
“They got some perks out of it, including a plate with their names.”
I consider it. “Still.”
“Also, Grandpa held on to a small part of that desk at my request.”
“The key, I presume?”
“It was Grandpa’s and my little secret,” she says with a smile. “The desk had a lockable drawer when it was in our family. That drawer is unlockable now.”
“That’s a very nice story—” I begin.
She flashes a palm. “I’m not done yet! The really interesting part is the circumstances in which that desk was made. Henry Thomas married his first cousin Eliza.”
“Ew.”
“Different times, different mores.” She gives a small shrug. “Eliza had been married once before to a French nobleman named Jean Capot, Count of Feuillide.”
“What happened to him?”
She mimes slashing her throat. “The revolutionaries executed him at the guillotine in 1794.”
I shudder theatrically.
“Aww,” she goes. “Did any of your ancestors meet a similar fate?”
“No, but it was touch and go. They seriously feared for their lives during those bloody years.” That is why the Montevor royals gave the keys to the vault for safekeeping to various trusted individuals. The general plan was to get them all to England, a country considered much safer than Mount Evor from the revolutionary contagion, and then recover them when the red plague was squashed. But things didn’t go to plan.
“That’s revolutions for you,” Margot says. “They start with freeing political prisoners and end with executing political opponents.”
I nod. “So, back to your story. Eliza becomes widowed in 1794…”
“Yes, and she inherits from her martyred husband an unpretentious key, which he had cherished greatly.”
“Any special reason?”
“He never told her, or maybe he did but the message got lost somewhere along the intergenerational telephone.” She opens and spreads her hands. “Whatever the reason, we do know he asked her to keep his key concealed.”
And suddenly, Margot’s story goes from “nice” to intriguing. I await the rest of it expectantly.
“Ready for the twist?” she asks.
“Hit me.”
“Eliza went to her uncle George, who was Jane’s and Henry Thomas’s father, which also made him Eliza’s father-in-law because she married Henry Thomas—” She interrupts herself. “Still with me?”
“One hundred percent!”
“Good. So, Eliza asked her uncle George to have a portable desk made for Jane, and to fit a keyhole in its drawer to match Jean Capot’s key.”
“In other words, she hid it in plain sight,” I say.
“Exactly!” Margot turns up her chin in triumph. “Quite a story, huh? Was Giselle’s better?”
“Do you have that key here in your flat? May I see it?”
“Sure.”
While she’s fetching it from a box on the top shelf of her bookcase, I try to calm myself. This is too wild. Coincidences like this don’t occur in nature. There is no way Margot’s key is one of the nine Montevor keys. No way.
Margot sets a small key on the table.
It resembles the other three recovered by the previous key seekers like a pea from the same pod. There is no doubt, I’m looking at key number four.
How can this be?
Our oracle, Princess Felicia, must’ve received a messed-up vision, or maybe she misinterpreted it. She was close, very close, sending me to London and getting me involved in Sandra’s production. But, for the first time, she got the Key to the Key wrong. It wasn’t the blonde Giselle, but the dark-haired Margot. It had always been Margot!
An attention-worthy thought stirs in the back of my mind, and I close my eyes to focus so I can catch it. There! The oracle saw only a part of the Key to the Key’s face, and never her name. It was MESS that deduced it.
“Are you a natural brunette?” I ask Margot.
She blinks at me. “Why do you need to know?”
“Just humor me, please.”
“I’m not,” she admits. “My natural hair is blond. When I landed Caroline’s part, Sandra told me to dye my hair auburn, because that’s how she pictured Caroline Bingley.”
Wow. I gaze at Margot and let my mind process everything and adjust to the realization that I did it. I completed the mission. I found the key.
“Your story is better than Giselle’s,” I say. “It wins with both eyes closed and hands tied behind its back.”
She bangs the table. “I knew it!”
“May I buy this key from you?”
My question seems to give her pause, even though it should be expected from a “collector” as I told her I was.
“It’s not for sale.”
Her reply both surprises me and doesn’t.
“Name your price, Margot.” I take out my checkbook. “And don’t worry, no matter how large the amount, my check will clear within twenty-four hours.”
She stares at me.
“Think big!” I sweep a hand around us. “You’ll be able to swap this minuscule flat on the noisy Blackfriars Road for a townhouse in a much nicer part of your hood, on one of those charming little streets between Roupell and Stamford.”
She says nothing.
“Or, you could buy yourself a villa with ancient olive trees and a pool in Tuscany,” I go on, calling on my imagination to entice her. “Or a nice apartment with a rooftop terrace in Paris, or a loft in New York, or a yacht with a crew so you can sail anywhere you want.”
“I don’t understand…”
OK, I believe I owe her a bit more honesty. “That key of yours, it isn’t just a cool object with a cool story that goes with it. My interest in it is more than a collector’s.”
“Go on.”
“I’ll be giving away a part of a state secret, but I’ll say this. Before Jean Capot, it belonged to my ancestors. They gave it to him, likely because he had an English wife. They no doubt hoped Jean and Eliza would get it to England and keep it safe.”
“What?” She stares at me openmouthed. “Really?”
“Yes, really. Together with eight other keys, it opens a vault. In that vault, we hope to find a legal document that could literally save my family from ruin.”
“How?”
“I can’t tell you that, but I hope you understand now why this key is so valuable to me.”
She nods once.
I detach a check, write down Margot’s name, place and date, and sign it. “Name your price, or I’ll name one for you.”
She picks up the key and sets it in front of me. “Take it. I’m giving it to you for free.”
“You can’t,” I say. “It isn’t fair.”
“The key isn’t objectively very valuable,” she says. “It’s only valuable to you because you need it really badly. I won’t have you pay for it.”
“Oh, but I’m paying, sweetheart! By the way, I’m paying from a shared fund, so it’s no biggie. Definitely not a sacrifice.”
“No.”
“Don’t be silly!” I explode. “What will your parents say?”
“They don’t even know I have this key. Like I said, it was a secret between Grandpa and me.”
I expel a frustrated breath. “Margot, why refuse to take my money in exchange for a possession of yours?”
She lowers her gaze to her hands. “Can’t you see?”
“Honestly? No!”
Her beautiful eyes glisten in the electric light, welling up.
What the hell?
She nudges the key closer to me. “Please take it and go.”
“I refuse to take advantage of your momentary lapse of judgment, which you’ll regret soon enough.”
Margot thrusts the key into my hand. “Take it. And go!”
She turns away to press the heels of her palms to her eyes.
“Thank you! And… goodbye.” I drop the key into the inside pocket of my jacket, pack my checkbook, and head out the door.
CHAPTER 31
MARGOT
I get off the train at Cambridge and walk to my parents’ house on Coleridge Road, across from the Coleridge Recreation Ground. It’s a lovely, airy park that makes for a fantastic view and a great place to jog or walk the exuberant and affectionate Papatte the spaniel, Mom’s favorite creature in the world after her children and husband.
Nah, before.
Mom and Dad used to live in Southwark in London, but now that Dad’s business is done mostly digitally, they were able to afford a house here in Cambridge, a town Dad has been enamored with ever since he studied law at its famed university decades ago. Incidentally, if you want him to despise you for the rest of your life, just tell him Oxford beats Cambridge. You’ll see.
After a moment of nerve-racking silence, she spins around. “It’s gone.”
“What?” I ask like an idiot.
“The box with the extra keys. It should be here in this cabinet but it’s not.”
“Someone on your staff may have misplaced it,” I say.
“I’m the only one who has a key to this room and to this cabinet.”
This is not good.
A crease forms between her eyebrows. “My flat is two floors above. Last night, after I got home, I came down here and checked on all the keys, including the missing box, because you’d said you were into keys…”
We look at each other, no doubt, arriving at the same conclusion.
How? I ask myself. How did he know?
With all the precautions we took, how did Kurt Ozzi figure out that Giselle was the Key to the Key? Had his men managed to decipher the coded message I sent Von Dietz last night? But even if they had, it wasn’t terribly informative. All I’d written was that I’d secured an approach for this afternoon.
“There must’ve been a break-in during the night,” Giselle says, her frown deepening. “I just don’t get it… Nothing else is missing, including the more valuable items. The only thing they stole was that box.”
I do my darnedest to look as perplexed as she is. “You need to report the theft to the police.”
Except they’ll never find the culprits, because Kurt Ozzi’s men are too well trained to leave any evidence behind. And even with the evidence, so many police chiefs and prefects across Europe are on Kurt’s payroll that I wouldn’t expect results from any investigation that has to do with Kurt.
Concealing my despair as best I can, I ask, “Did you have any copies made?”
“No, not for those in the box.”
That’s it, then. Game over. The fourth key seeker will be the first one to botch up his mission and return home without a key. I failed my country and the Crown. I screwed up my chance to recover the d’Alenq honor.
Could the outcome of this quest have been any worse?
Too crushed to exit with a semblance of elegance, I tell Giselle to call the cops without delay, plead sudden fatigue, and leave.
The second shockwave hits me as I step into the inner courtyard.
Leo.
He turned up in London unscheduled, managed to get tickets to the final performance—the one with Giselle—watched me take an interest in her beyond the roles we played, stuck around after the talkback, and saw Giselle and me exchanging glances as she waited for me… He connected the dots, established Giselle’s identity, and told his psychopath uncle to look into her.
I step out onto the street, reeling from my best friend’s betrayal. Four MESS agents join me as I cross Mint Street Park toward the underground station. The agents’ faces are eager, and their eyes are bright with anticipation. Shaking my head, I explain what went down.
“We can drive you to your house,” one of them offers. “You don’t need to hide in the Tube anymore.”
Even as I’m nodding, a sudden urge overcomes me.
I turn to the agent who seems to be the boss. “Do you happen to have the addresses of everyone on the show’s cast?”
“Yes. You think you may have another lead?”
“I wish!” My sneer is so bitter I can taste it in my mouth. “No, it has nothing to do with the mission. Just a private call.”
“Whose address do you need?”
“Margot Nolan’s.”
The agent queries a file on his phone and gives me an address in Blackfriars. “Shall we drive you there?”
“It’s an easy walk. Besides, I need to clear my head.”
They nod in understanding and let me be.
When I buzz Margot’s flat twenty minutes later, I have no idea what to say to her if she’s at home. I don’t know why I came here, what I’ll do if she tells me to fuck off, and why I’m adding another potential disaster to my already catastrophic day.
She’s home.
Inexplicably, she lets me in.
CHAPTER 30
JONAS
Margot opens the door, and I step in.
She’s wearing a plain gray sweatshirt and jeans. Her long dark hair arranged in a casual knot at the top of her head. She smells of lavender soap. Despite her unassuming outfit, she looks even lovelier to me than before.
Her flat begins from the front door after a hint at an entryway. It’s tiny. A big shoebox, really, not much bigger than my bedroom in Bloomsbury. The space is uncluttered with potted plants that line the windowsill and a charming oakwood bookcase against one wall, filled with hardbacks and paperbacks side by side. I spy a kitchenette tucked away in the opposite corner, complete with a vintage stove and an array of mismatched dishes and cups on an open shelf above it.
It’s clear, though, that she wasn’t expecting any visitors today. Two piles of unfolded laundry sit at the foot of a sofa bed, no doubt from her fortnight at my house.
Instead of the comfy-looking sofa, Margot gestures to one of the chairs at the small table on the opposite wall.
“Sorry about the mess,” she says, grabbing another chair.
“Thank you for letting me in despite… everything.”
“I wasn’t going to, but curiosity won.”
My response is a humorless smile.
We sit like that for a few long moments, our silence anything but companionable. Margot is hot under the collar. I can see it from the way she looks at me and talks to me, from her body language, from the fact she didn’t offer any refreshments, not even a glass of water.
Who can blame her? She has every right to be mad.
“So,” she finally says, “did you come here to grovel?”
I give her another smile that doesn’t reach my eyes. “I just wanted to see you before I decamp tomorrow. One last time.”
“No.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “What do you mean?”
“If you’re hoping for another fuck—you know, one for the road—it won’t happen.”
“I wasn’t hoping—”
“For you,” she says, “this was always just about sex. I get it. I don’t blame you. Well, I do, but not for that.”
“You blame me for the way I treated you yesterday.”
“Yes, I do.”
“And so you should,” I say. “It was shabby, even for a loser like me.”
My self-characterization gives her a start. “You’re many things, not all of them palatable, but you’re hardly a loser.”
“My dear, you’re looking at the ultimate loser.”
She leans back and folds her arms over her chest. “OK, explain.”
And I do. Obviously, I redact the sensitive details, but I convey to her the gist of my big fail. I was after an antique key that I believed Giselle Fisher had in her possession. Getting my hands on it meant the world to me. It was the single most important mission of my entire life. But a rival collector broke into her museum last night and stole the key from under my nose.
As I relate my tale, an incomprehensible relief washes over me. I realize why I came here. It wasn’t for sex, or to see her face one last time. If those motives were present, they were secondary. I came here to talk to Margot, to confide my distress, to seek solace.
What a strange, novel urge!
But instead of a sympathetic pat, I get a narrow look. “Is that why you flirted with Giselle yesterday? To get to her key?”
“Yes.”
“It is kind of low.”
“I’m not denying it.”
She looks me up and down. “Now I see why you described yourself as a loser.”
So much for solace…
“What was so special about that key?” she asks. “Precious stones? Gold? Unique craftsmanship?”
“None of the above. Its value lay in its story, in the history associated with it.”
But, mostly, in its potential to get us a step closer to opening that damn vault.
“History, huh?” Margot says. And then she bursts out laughing.
I watch her, mystified, until she wipes her eyes. “Fate can be so fucking ironic sometimes!”
“How do you mean?”
“If you’d stuck with me instead of banking on Giselle, you would’ve found a key exactly like that. No need to sell your soul or behave like a dick.”
I stare at her, confused.
“Now, it’s possible that Giselle’s key has a better story than mine,” Margot says. “But mine is pretty cool, too.”
Oh, I see. Margot owns an antique key with an interesting history. Seeing as I have an entire evening to kill, I’d rather spend it with Margot, listening to her.
“Let’s hear your story,” I say archly, “and then I’ll decide whose key is cooler.”
“It is a little-known fact outside of the Nolan family,” she begins, “but on my father’s side we descend from Jane Austen’s favorite brother, Henry Thomas Austen.”
Despite my lousy mood, I find myself grinning. “Not bad as a start! Let’s see if the rest lives up to it.”
“My paternal grandfather had inherited Jane Austen’s portable writing desk that her father—my sixth great grandfather—had had made for her,” Margot continues. “It was more of a box than an actual desk, and a very nifty one at that!”
“Was?”
“My grandparents donated it to the British Library.”
“How very selfless of them!”
“They got some perks out of it, including a plate with their names.”
I consider it. “Still.”
“Also, Grandpa held on to a small part of that desk at my request.”
“The key, I presume?”
“It was Grandpa’s and my little secret,” she says with a smile. “The desk had a lockable drawer when it was in our family. That drawer is unlockable now.”
“That’s a very nice story—” I begin.
She flashes a palm. “I’m not done yet! The really interesting part is the circumstances in which that desk was made. Henry Thomas married his first cousin Eliza.”
“Ew.”
“Different times, different mores.” She gives a small shrug. “Eliza had been married once before to a French nobleman named Jean Capot, Count of Feuillide.”
“What happened to him?”
She mimes slashing her throat. “The revolutionaries executed him at the guillotine in 1794.”
I shudder theatrically.
“Aww,” she goes. “Did any of your ancestors meet a similar fate?”
“No, but it was touch and go. They seriously feared for their lives during those bloody years.” That is why the Montevor royals gave the keys to the vault for safekeeping to various trusted individuals. The general plan was to get them all to England, a country considered much safer than Mount Evor from the revolutionary contagion, and then recover them when the red plague was squashed. But things didn’t go to plan.
“That’s revolutions for you,” Margot says. “They start with freeing political prisoners and end with executing political opponents.”
I nod. “So, back to your story. Eliza becomes widowed in 1794…”
“Yes, and she inherits from her martyred husband an unpretentious key, which he had cherished greatly.”
“Any special reason?”
“He never told her, or maybe he did but the message got lost somewhere along the intergenerational telephone.” She opens and spreads her hands. “Whatever the reason, we do know he asked her to keep his key concealed.”
And suddenly, Margot’s story goes from “nice” to intriguing. I await the rest of it expectantly.
“Ready for the twist?” she asks.
“Hit me.”
“Eliza went to her uncle George, who was Jane’s and Henry Thomas’s father, which also made him Eliza’s father-in-law because she married Henry Thomas—” She interrupts herself. “Still with me?”
“One hundred percent!”
“Good. So, Eliza asked her uncle George to have a portable desk made for Jane, and to fit a keyhole in its drawer to match Jean Capot’s key.”
“In other words, she hid it in plain sight,” I say.
“Exactly!” Margot turns up her chin in triumph. “Quite a story, huh? Was Giselle’s better?”
“Do you have that key here in your flat? May I see it?”
“Sure.”
While she’s fetching it from a box on the top shelf of her bookcase, I try to calm myself. This is too wild. Coincidences like this don’t occur in nature. There is no way Margot’s key is one of the nine Montevor keys. No way.
Margot sets a small key on the table.
It resembles the other three recovered by the previous key seekers like a pea from the same pod. There is no doubt, I’m looking at key number four.
How can this be?
Our oracle, Princess Felicia, must’ve received a messed-up vision, or maybe she misinterpreted it. She was close, very close, sending me to London and getting me involved in Sandra’s production. But, for the first time, she got the Key to the Key wrong. It wasn’t the blonde Giselle, but the dark-haired Margot. It had always been Margot!
An attention-worthy thought stirs in the back of my mind, and I close my eyes to focus so I can catch it. There! The oracle saw only a part of the Key to the Key’s face, and never her name. It was MESS that deduced it.
“Are you a natural brunette?” I ask Margot.
She blinks at me. “Why do you need to know?”
“Just humor me, please.”
“I’m not,” she admits. “My natural hair is blond. When I landed Caroline’s part, Sandra told me to dye my hair auburn, because that’s how she pictured Caroline Bingley.”
Wow. I gaze at Margot and let my mind process everything and adjust to the realization that I did it. I completed the mission. I found the key.
“Your story is better than Giselle’s,” I say. “It wins with both eyes closed and hands tied behind its back.”
She bangs the table. “I knew it!”
“May I buy this key from you?”
My question seems to give her pause, even though it should be expected from a “collector” as I told her I was.
“It’s not for sale.”
Her reply both surprises me and doesn’t.
“Name your price, Margot.” I take out my checkbook. “And don’t worry, no matter how large the amount, my check will clear within twenty-four hours.”
She stares at me.
“Think big!” I sweep a hand around us. “You’ll be able to swap this minuscule flat on the noisy Blackfriars Road for a townhouse in a much nicer part of your hood, on one of those charming little streets between Roupell and Stamford.”
She says nothing.
“Or, you could buy yourself a villa with ancient olive trees and a pool in Tuscany,” I go on, calling on my imagination to entice her. “Or a nice apartment with a rooftop terrace in Paris, or a loft in New York, or a yacht with a crew so you can sail anywhere you want.”
“I don’t understand…”
OK, I believe I owe her a bit more honesty. “That key of yours, it isn’t just a cool object with a cool story that goes with it. My interest in it is more than a collector’s.”
“Go on.”
“I’ll be giving away a part of a state secret, but I’ll say this. Before Jean Capot, it belonged to my ancestors. They gave it to him, likely because he had an English wife. They no doubt hoped Jean and Eliza would get it to England and keep it safe.”
“What?” She stares at me openmouthed. “Really?”
“Yes, really. Together with eight other keys, it opens a vault. In that vault, we hope to find a legal document that could literally save my family from ruin.”
“How?”
“I can’t tell you that, but I hope you understand now why this key is so valuable to me.”
She nods once.
I detach a check, write down Margot’s name, place and date, and sign it. “Name your price, or I’ll name one for you.”
She picks up the key and sets it in front of me. “Take it. I’m giving it to you for free.”
“You can’t,” I say. “It isn’t fair.”
“The key isn’t objectively very valuable,” she says. “It’s only valuable to you because you need it really badly. I won’t have you pay for it.”
“Oh, but I’m paying, sweetheart! By the way, I’m paying from a shared fund, so it’s no biggie. Definitely not a sacrifice.”
“No.”
“Don’t be silly!” I explode. “What will your parents say?”
“They don’t even know I have this key. Like I said, it was a secret between Grandpa and me.”
I expel a frustrated breath. “Margot, why refuse to take my money in exchange for a possession of yours?”
She lowers her gaze to her hands. “Can’t you see?”
“Honestly? No!”
Her beautiful eyes glisten in the electric light, welling up.
What the hell?
She nudges the key closer to me. “Please take it and go.”
“I refuse to take advantage of your momentary lapse of judgment, which you’ll regret soon enough.”
Margot thrusts the key into my hand. “Take it. And go!”
She turns away to press the heels of her palms to her eyes.
“Thank you! And… goodbye.” I drop the key into the inside pocket of my jacket, pack my checkbook, and head out the door.
CHAPTER 31
MARGOT
I get off the train at Cambridge and walk to my parents’ house on Coleridge Road, across from the Coleridge Recreation Ground. It’s a lovely, airy park that makes for a fantastic view and a great place to jog or walk the exuberant and affectionate Papatte the spaniel, Mom’s favorite creature in the world after her children and husband.
Nah, before.
Mom and Dad used to live in Southwark in London, but now that Dad’s business is done mostly digitally, they were able to afford a house here in Cambridge, a town Dad has been enamored with ever since he studied law at its famed university decades ago. Incidentally, if you want him to despise you for the rest of your life, just tell him Oxford beats Cambridge. You’ll see.
