And then she swallowed.
“None of them are missing, isn’t that so?” he said softly. “Which would certainly look incriminating for you. After all, a dead girl wouldn’t need to take clothing with her to heaven. I believe they provide you with a comfortable robe once you arrive at the Pearly Gates. But I’ve a list of yours, too. For instance, I have it on good authority that your beloved blue cloak seems to have disappeared as you now only wear a brown one.”
For this was what Hawkes had spent part of the morning learning from servants.
Madame Aubert slowly lifted her head. Hunted. Furious. Frightened.
“Here is what I think,” he said kindly. “You sold some of your clothing to help her finance her journey, and gave her the rest so that she would not be identified by her clothes. She didn’t take her own clothing because she didn’t want to be recognized, and she wanted to blend in as a more working-class sort of woman. If you do not deny this vehemently, I will assume your silence means ‘yes.’ And if you answer ‘no,’ I will, because I am thorough, set about verifying that you are telling the truth and I have ways of learning what I need to know. Do you doubt me?”
He waited.
The silence stretched. A cloud drifted past the sun, and the light in the room went gray. The kind of lightthat made inexpertly applied rouge on her cheeks seem downright garish.
“I sold them,” she whispered. “I sold them to a modiste. And I gave Aurelie the money. And I gave her the rest of the clothes she took.”
It was what he’d come to discover. It was time to be brisk.
“To your knowledge, did she sell any jewelry before she departed?”
“There was not a moment save one when I was not with her in public before she departed, and in none of these moments did she sell any jewelry. She was not in possession of any that I am aware of, apart from the emerald necklace Brundage gave to her. I cannot speak for what she has done with it since I last saw her.”
“What was the ‘save one’?”
She paused. And then she said thickly, “The night she and Brundage had an altercation. It was my day off, you see.” Her eyes had begun to gleam again. She gave a little toss. She wasn’t about to cry in front of him.
“She went to see him alone?”
He thought perhaps he might have put a little too much emphasis on the last word.
Regardless, Madame Aubert loyally didn’t answer this question.
She stared at him, lips pressed together.
Nothing he could say, no amount of charm, would convince her that he would transfer his allegiance to her from Brundage.
“Do you think Lady Aurelie’s brother in America would welcome a visit with her?”
Another of those silences fell, as she struggled to honor what was likely a promise to Aurelie. To find a way to answer his question without answering it.
“Would you not welcome a visit from your sister, Mr. Hawkes?” she said ironically. Finally.
“I would, at that.” He flashed a smile.
She blinked as though he’d just flung a shooting star at her.
“Would you say she is close to her brother Edouard?”
“They correspond regularly. She is delighted to receive his letters. I’m given to understand that it’s as warm as a relationship can be when siblings are separated by an ocean.”
Lady Aurelie was going to try to visit her brother in Boston; Hawkes was nearly certain of it.
“Madame Aubert, I am curious about something. I’m given to understand a month elapsed between Aurelie’s argument with Lord Brundage and her departure. Was she engaged in preparation to leave this entire time?”
She paused. She gave him a strange look, examining his face almost incredulously. And then her expression went closed.
“It was the soonest she felt she could leave, Mr. Hawkes,” she said simply.
He took this in wordlessly. The oddly specific yet vague way in which she’d phrased this troubled him. It was another carefully deliberated answer, he was certain. And all at once the tension between what he wanted to know and what was actually necessary to know made his head feel tight.