the widow

Simone stared out the window of Sybille’s carriage, noting every twist and turn they made in case she had to make a quick getaway. While she wasn’t planning on doing so, it never hurt to be too careful, particularly in a situation she was still very new to. She distracted herself from her anxiety by focusing on what she did know: the intricacies of her own con. Monsieur Labelle was a well known man, and she heard rumors of the riches he possessed behind locked doors. Not to mention certain reports have linked him with the Cardinal. Over all, the opportunity was too great to not try something.

She was jolted out of her thoughts as Sybille placed a comforting hand on her knee. Her eyes met her mentor’s with a small, practiced smile on her face. “I’ll be fine. Though I hope this stupid party doesn’t last too long. I don’t know how women breathe with this.” She gestured to the corset that put her breasts on display but did little else to benefit her. As they stopped, she felt her heart pound against her chest. You belong here. With a deep breath, she placed herself into the practiced shoes of any other noblewoman. Smoothing out her skirt, she gave Sybille a short nod. This was it.

Sybille couldn't help but feel proud of how far Simone had come. She looked like a bored young woman of society going to a ball that didn't interest her. Not a street rat shoved into a pretty dress. Even her smile was perfect, even if her voice here between them had the twang of the gutters. She knew Simone would iron it out "The idea is that if we can't breathe we will be more likely to swoon into the arms of a dashing gentleman," Sybille mused, making sure the ribbon of her fan was looped tightly around her wrist. "It does provide a convenient excuse if you need to get out of a conversation in a hurry." Simone was good at hiding her anxiety, but Sybille could feel it radiating off her still. She didn't let on, just nodded back at Simone before knocking on the carriage door.

The driver opened the door and helped them both down onto the pavement. There was a brief pause while they smoothed down their skirts, and then the party set upon them. Glistening ladies and posturing men watched them as they entered. The largest room of the house had been turned into a ballroom, with a small ensemble in one corner. Dancing was something she had yet to teach Simone. How to present herself and to properly socialise with the nobility was easy to explain the importance of. Explaining why Simone should spend time learning the waltz was more difficult to impart.

Armaud startled at the unexpected pressure on his arm and stiffened on reflex. Her touch was innocuous enough, but there was something–something forceful, tyrannical–about her hand on his arm that demanded his full attention to that point of contact. Even through the layers of clothing did a chill seep through to his skin. He tried to suppress a shudder, but he felt his eyelids flicker close for just a moment before he could stop himself.

When Sybille let go of his arm, Armaud was still reeling from the casual move. It puzzled him and troubled him in equal measure. How unsound of mind was he that something so trivial was affecting him? The people around the pair paid them no attention, but Sybille was watching him, and it made him more nervous than he could understand. Armaud disliked any act of weakness in front of anybody, even though she seemed not to notice anything amiss with his strange reaction. He coughed once, delicately, into his hand.

“Well, it is a sensitive topic to be sure,” he began, a little glad to turn the focus away from his strange behavior. “The circumstances around Dorian’s death are, ah, are peculiar. I guess that’s a way to put it. He’d been missing for a few days. It sent everyone in an uproar, and we all suspended everything we were doing to help out. Everyone went around to look for him. They found him in the woods.” Armaud did not say that he had been the first to see the body, slumped at the base of a large oak tree with his father’s shotgun nestled between his arms and legs, his pale face serene and expressionless. The coroner had pronounced he hadn’t been dead for more than 24 hours and was thus very well preserved, but all Armaud remembered was the fly that crawled on top of Dorian’s unseeing eye. “There was no sign of any sort of struggle, he was just dead. It took everyone by surprise.”

Sybille couldn't help but take interest in the way Armaud acted. He was such a proud man, proud of his resolve, his manners, and it was so strange, exciting to see him doubt himself. She gave a polite smile, waited for his response.

Genuine sympathy crept into her eyes as he told of poor Dorian's demise, her hand coming up to her mouth. "That sounds awful..." she said, stepping closer to Armaud, though this time she resisted placing her hand on his arm. "I... I don't know what to say..." She looked around the room, shivering and wrapping her arms around herself. "I don't think I will ever know what to say..." This type of grief was strange, a mixture of aghast horror and relief of a resolute ending... a strange concoctions of emotions that Sybille didn't quite grasp.

Simone shrugged at her, not finding it as amusing as she did. After all, Simone had considered doing just that to one of her first boyfriends. Of course, it might not be the sane reaction, but that didn’t mean that Sybille wasn’t any more sane than she was. "In my experience, women do just as many crazy things. Except they’re better at keeping their reasons hidden.” She scowled at her a little. She wasn’t /worried/. She was doing her job and letting her client know how absolutely guilty she looked. And besides, Simone didn’t have friends either.

Simone had to admit that Sybille could be right. But there weren’t many signs of a struggle in the study and she remembered reading that the man was burly. Why not fight his attacker the minute he came in through the balcony–if he came through the balcony? “Without your husband causing any alarm?” There were so many questions, and it seemed like any answer Sybille gave her only brought up more questions. It was infuriating for her to have the pieces to the puzzle laid out in front of her, yet none of them were fitting properly.

“Solving the murder involves finding out who is trying to kill you. I’m letting you know that at the present, all of the evidence points to you.” Maybe that was the point. If one of Emile’s officers were dirty, they could have been paid off to fabricate evidence to prove Sybille’s guilt. But the autopsy… unless the coroner was paid off as well. Or maybe Occam’s razor had some merit in this case and the simplest solution was the one that was right. “The maid that found you and alerted the police? Was she working when your husband was killed?”

Sybille watched with something close to admiration as Simone attempted to piece together the jigsaw that was her husband's murder. Unfortunately for her, she was missing the corners. "Perhaps he wanted to reason with the attacker, to keep the situation from escalating. Perhaps he thought raising alarm would definitely get him killed, as well as putting me in danger."  Sybille shrugged, sipped her coffee. It was nearly empty. "My explanations are too full of 'perhaps' for you, I think."

"I am not trying to kill myself, Simone," Sybille pointed out, unable to hide the twist of a smile on her lips. "This is not some convoluted Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde tale." She was bemused by the thought, leaning back into the armchair once more.

She nodded briefly at the mention of her grief. She was met with much the same reaction when she had diligently went to work after his death, but she had always been perceived as odd. But whereas she went to work to try to push through the sadness, Sybille didn’t seem to possess that–or she was very good at hiding it.

Simone watched her face as she seemed to stare blankly at the book. Sybille was clearly remembering something that had to do with an affair. Was that what happened? She caught her husband cheating and decided to make him pay? Or had he caught her cheating on him? When her eyes finally left the book, Simone was disappointed to not find any hint of which way it might have been. "It would give you motive,” she stated. “A woman with few if any friends married to a man she didn’t love whom was cheating on her. I’ve seen men do more with less of a reason.”

She adjusted herself in her chair. “Even with your change to your story, it still doesn’t quite add up. For him to bleed out, it would be at least thirty minutes. Add another 5 to cut his tongue. That is at least thirty five minutes and you were waiting in your room for that long? Not to mention that his body was facing the opposite direction of the balcony meaning that the person who had killed him had to have faced the main door to his study. His killer had to have broken into the house–or already be here.” But most importantly, why hire her if Sybille was guilty to begin with? There was a piece of the puzzle that was missing. Simone placed her cup down and leaned toward her client, her elbows resting on her knees. “I’m not saying you did it, madame. I’m saying that there is something you’re failing to tell me about this case.”

If Sybille had brought her cup of coffee to her lips by the time Sybille acused her of having a motive she would have been sure to ungracefully spit it out. As it was she let out a hearty bark of laughter, looking at Simone with pure amusement. "I would hardly... murder someone for cheating on me, Simone," she said with a smile, taking a sip of her coffee now that she was calmer. Maybe there was something about the look that spoke of Sybille's... interest, though it left soon after. "Do not base my hypothetical motives on what men would do; they do a great number of things without any sort of reason at all. If I wanted to get more friends out of killing my husband it was certainly the wrong way to go about it. The only person I have close to a friend is a private detective I hired who worries I am guilty." She smiled at Simone again, teasing.

She listened as Simone explained the faults in her story, the time differences that didn't add up. She took in the facts easily, her face a mask as she picked up her coffee and took another sip. "I will tell you what you need to know," she stated, giving Simone another of her smiles so it didn't seem testing. "I did not think to look at the time in my room, so I apologise I cannot tell you how long it was. I suppose Raoul and the killer could have walked around the study, the killer blocking the exit? -A theory, mind you."

She couldn’t help but smile sympathetically at her words. Simone vaguely remembered her own house in the weeks after his passing. The silence that hung in the air as her brother trudged through the house was not one that she could easily forget. But even for /him/ there were people who cared enough to check up on them–or at least on Fernand. “You don’t have friends?” she asked bluntly. “Or, your husband’s friends? None of them have asked to see how you’ve been?”

As she stepped into the lounge, she could tell instantly that this was Sybille’s area. There was a more feminine feel to the room as opposed to the cold and calculating aura of the study. Her eyes latched to the books on the table, recognizing both of them. It didn’t surprise her that the widow was a well read woman– she had probably been reading complex texts since she was a child. Despite knowing this, it never ceased to amaze her given the lack of general education where she grew up.

She settled in the chair across from Sybille, glancing at the espresso, but not reaching for the cup until she saw the other woman take a sip. Still, she waiting, allowing the warmth of the cup burn her hands as she tried to figure out exactly what question she should ask her next.

“Were you and your husband close?”

"I had friends," she mentioned briefly, a slight shrug to her shoulders. She had never been close to any of them, either wives of her husband's friends or other society women with much to talk about that meant very little. "I don't think I expressed grief to their liking. Yes, they ask me how I've been when we pass on the street, but if I say I am doing fine because it is a good day out they look at me queerly. My husband's friends never liked me; that's why I hired you."

She couldn't help the surprise at what was Simone's first question. Whether she and her husband were close was not a question she was expecting. "No," she answered truthfully, setting down her cup as she began what she knew would be a long explanation. "We weren't a love-match; Raoul's business and my father's were complementary and I was the alliance between them. We were French, of course, each of us had our little affairs..." Of course, Raoul was allowed to invite his friend's wives to his study and close the door behind them, but to discover his wife in bed with the neighbour's wife was close to treason. She thumbed the spine of the book she had set on her lap. She could still remember the sound of Raoul throwing books off the walls of her lounge as she screamed and banged against the locked bedroom door...

A change in the story. Simone weighed the truth behind it. A frightened woman wouldn’t be keen on running toward the sound of a gunshot, but that wasn’t what she told the police. So why change the story? Guilt over her cowardice? Or perhaps the simplest answer is the truth: it is another lie.

All Simone could hold onto was that she was a fantastic lier. A lesser man would fall for her tale and even Simone, as cynical as she was, was tempted to believe the emotion behind this woman’s eyes. But that feeling still gnawed at her and she wouldn’t let it go. After she pulled her hand away, she took a step back. Her father was in the Great War. Truth or lie? If it was true, it can explain her knowledge of guns, enough to get a bullet inside her husband’s chest. The statement was too self incriminating to not be true.

She nodded at her and stuffed her hands in her pockets. “Right, of course. I’m finished in here anyway.” She took one last look in the room before turning back to her client. “But I still have a few more questions for you. The lounge is private?”

Changing her story was a risky move, Sybille knew. She could see it feed the seed of doubt that was germinating in Simone's mind, but the change was easy enough to explain. That night time had felt... strange. At times it was slow as trudging through molasses, other times it was as fast as oil spreading on water. There was nothing to do but hope that Simone would believe her word.

"It's private," she softly affirmed, watching Simone in a quiet way before turning around and walking to the door. "It's not like I have many callers." She waited by the threshold, hand on the edge of the door as she turned to look back at Simone. Simone was one of the first to step into her home after the funeral, besides George and that horridly haughty Detective Moreau. "The widow of a murdered man isn't the most entertaining host."

She led Simone to the lounge, with a brief interlude where she directed George to their new location from the stairwell. The lounge was smaller than the study, and historically Sybille's domain. There was a feminine touch to the choice of furniture, the decorations. The bookshelves lacked books of any mental difficulty, but next to the armchair where Sybille sat herself were two stacks of leather-bound books, new editions of classic authors, books on philosophy and science and the world. Sybille cleared one book from the table where George placed the plate of biscuits and two cups of espresso coffee. She motioned for Simone to sit in the armchair next to the table, the two chairs angled slightly together.

“Ah, it is rare for young people your age to come to our little town rather than leave it for bigger, brighter things,” said Armaud with a faraway look, as if he could see past the tree line out into the rest of the world. “Welcome to Millais–it is a shame your arrival has been dwarfed by this profound tragedy, but nevertheless, I’m sure you’ll fit in just fine.” He peered down at her and caught her eye, offering a little smile. They made it onto the road, the ground evening out into a meandering little path to the church from the forest-lined edge of the cemetery, and their boots crunched under the gravel beneath them. Armaud checked his watch with a sweeping turn of his wrist. It had been an hour now since they bore the coffin out to the gravesite, and he made a mental note to check on the grieving family in another hour if they decided to stay out for that much longer. 

Someone had left the church doors partially ajar, and the warmth from within was seeping out of the little crack. It was an easy mistake to make but Armaud frowned when he noticed it nonetheless, displeased with this carelessness. He ushered Sybille inside and made sure the door clicked closed behind him, separating the harsh outside weather from the toasty inside temperature.

“Have you met anybody in town yet?” Armaud asked Sybille as he scanned the room, calculating which of the people here would be easiest conversation for their newest neighbor.

"I think Millais has plenty of attractions," Sybille said with a pleasing shrug, resisting the urge to look Armaud flat in the face as she did so. She couldn't help that he was so fascinating to watch, the face of a clock with hands moving deliberately, precisely due to the inner workings of the gears inside. What Sybille wouldn't give to lift up the back and take a peek at the machinations inside... "I only hope that Millais doesn't take my arrival as a bad omen."

They arrived at the church after a stretch of comfortable silence. Sybille bit her tongue along the way, taking the hint that the priest had other matters on his mind to teeth. She made note of his upset at the door being left ajar, and gave a sigh of relief once they were shut into the warmth of the church.

"I've met a few people, yes," she said in answer to his question, aware that as she spoke he was already trying to find someone to pawn her off to. "Never exchanged much more than pleasantries, and there have been too many names for any to stick."

Simone watched her, unable to shake the feeling that something was off. She found in her line of work that trusting your instincts was usually the proper way to go. But she was not quite as reckless as her impulsive brother who only every trusted his instincts. So she searched for clues, trying to place the strange and uncomfortable feeling.

She unconsciously took a step towar her client as she stumbled back to make sure she didn’t hurt herself–at least that’s what Simone told herself. It was a traumatizing situation she was sure and here she was making it worse. Perhaps her distrust in people really has gotten too bad. And yet, that feeling remained, gnawing at the back of her mind.

“Wait,” She grasping her wrist before she could leave the room. “You didn’t answer my question,” she pressed. Yes, Simone decided. She was definitely overstepping some kind of boundary toward this grieving widow, but Simone needed to know. It’s what made her a good detective. “The timeline doesn’t add up. He would have still been alive when you saw him and the killer wouldn’t have had time to cut his tongue. So what aren’t you saying?”

Sybille was moving when Simone's hand found her wrist. She pulled against it, before stopping like a ship to an anchor. She could have acted hurt, affronted by Simone's questioning, and maybe she was a little. But Sybille wasn't hurt; she was impressed. A little vexed maybe, not that she let any of these emotions show as she looked down at their hands. She looked, almost scared.

Her gaze flitted from the hands to the dark stain on the carpet, glancing off of Simone's face to some indeterminate spot on the bookshelf. "I waited," she said, quietly. "I... I waited. After the gunshot. I don't know how long." She swallowed, looking Simone in the eye as she pulled her hand away. "I know that gunshot wounds often kill from blood loss, Miss Baptiste. My father was in The Great War. Raoul's face was bloody, that I remember, but I don't know about the-" she looked away, swallowing a wave of nausea, or nerves. "-the tongue."

It took Armaud a moment to recognize his jacket as his eyes trailed from said garment in her hand back to the thoughtful stranger’s face. Looking at her, he could see she was one of those people who possessed an almost uncomfortable beauty, someone whose presence caused just as much intimidation as it did admiration though that effect seemed near irrational given her height and slight build. It seemed wrong to describe her as delicate, but his mind floundered for better words. Every word he grasped to describe her felt wrong somehow–unsuitable, incorrectly nuanced–but he couldn’t explain why this was the case. Something distinctly unsettled stirred in his stomach but he put it from his mind as it was much too early to be making any strong judgments about a person he had just met, especially in such a state of emotional turmoil.

“How good of you to get it for me, I was sorely missing it earlier,” he said after a moment’s discomfort. “I don’t believe we’ve been acquainted quite yet. I am Armaud Rossignol, I suppose you already know I’m the priest of our local church. Are you new in town or a visiting friend of the Millais, Miss–?” he trailed off to allow her own introduction and took his jacket, noting with a passing thought that she too must be freezing in this weather given the coldness of her hand. Though he did not show it on his face, Armaud was a little irked by the new obligation of polite conversation. He was very tired by recent events and though he would speak with this stranger without complaint, it would all be general formalities. The death had hit him harder than he would like to admit and if he could Armaud would have liked to hole himself away for a little while to meditate on life, on Dorian. He would have liked to grieve alone.

They walked down together even if Armaud walked a little slower than usual, hindered by his melancholic mood. The church could be seen in the distance, the lights within gave off a faint, yellow glow from behind the opaque windows despite being nearly midday.

Sybille smiled as he took the jacket, her fingers brushing against Armaud's. "Miss Delacroix," she supplied at his question, holding her hands in front of her. "I've recently moved to Millais," she said, hiding her disappointment at him not having recognised her from the service last Sunday. Then again, he'd had so much on his mind lately. "I hope to be a common sight around here."  

All Simone could see was the evidence of the police stepping around a perfectly good crime scene. But she nodded at Sybille’s words regardless and did her best to take in the details of her story as she inspected the room.

What she told her checked out with what Emile had told her as well, which begged the question of the tongue. Simone leaned against an untouched bookshelf, her hands stuffed in her pockets as she observed the woman. If she was lying to her, then she was damn good at it. Some actresses thought that crocodille tears were the way to act mournful, but Sybille seemed to understand that real trauma didn’t necessarily bring out the water works.

With her eyes still on the woman, she stated, “It’s a common misconception that men die from an instantaneous gunshot wound. It’s usually the blood loss that kills them. So perhaps you could have saved him.” Simone dug into her pocket and pulled out a cigarette. She fiddled around with it in between her fingers before bluntly adding, “Did you know that his tongue had been cut out?”

After she had finished speaking to Simone, Sybille held her breath. An old trick she had learned as a child, to avoid trips or dinners she didn’t want to go to. Nothing so obvious as a large inhale and puffed cheeks, just the simple holding of her breath as Simone took in her words. She looked back at the dark patch on the carpet, until whipping back to Simone as she started speaking. Her vision started going spotty. She held on, her lungs screaming to move, to take in a breath…

“Blood loss?” she asked, vacantly. “His… tongue?” She finally took a breath, though again, controlled as her balance failed her and she stumbled into the bookshelf. Her eyes wide, she gave Simone a sheepish smile and righted herself, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead again.

There is no tragedy quite like the sudden death of a young person, the savagery of such loss in an uncaring world, and it was in the aftermath of such a circumstance that Father Armaud Rossignol found himself as he stood by the grave that bore the casket of fourteen-year-old Dorian Millais. Dorian had not been a particularly special child in any way or form, but he’d been bright and earnest and tried to be helpful whenever he could in all the interactions Armaud had with him. Armaud had something of a soft spot for him and he was sad to see Dorian go before he could reach his full potential in the world.

The brisk autumn wind lent a sobering chill through his body that late November morning as he watched the surviving male members of the Millais family bury their youngest son. Next to him, Dorian’s mother cried in heaving sobs, her face obscured by a dark veil. Armaud brought up a hand and squeezed her shoulder in a show of comfort.

“He was a good boy,” Armaud said to her in a low voice, “and he is with the Lord now. Take comfort knowing he is there in Heaven surrounded by love and peace, and that he will always be smiling and happy in our thought as he was in life. You and your husband did good by him.” 

She only shook her head and said, “We worried about him, me and George, about his eccentricities–he was such a strange boy and didn’t have many friends–but we figured he’d be okay eventually. But now–” she trailed off, fixing a look of complete sorrow at the grave that was filling with soil, the quiet peppered with the rhythmic scrape and thud of shovels digging into earth and soil pounding against the coffin below. Soon, the hole was nothing more than a dark patch of dirt surrounded by frosty grass.

And with that, Dorian was gone. Armaud stood in solidarity with the family as the few classmates who’d shown up for the funeral slipped away, in time followed by some of the parishioners who went back to the safe haven of the church. Armaud would follow them soon enough back to the church and let the family mourn however much they needed. When they were ready, they too would come in from the cold and have something to eat, and gradually the pain that was their lost son would lessen in time.

But as Armaud turned and went to leave, he noticed another figure coming up the hill toward him, and he stopped in his tracks to give her a smile that even to him felt more like a grimace.

“Hello,” he said as solicitously as he could muster, “are you here for Dorian?”

Sybille climbed the hill in her black skirt with some difficulty, caught between hot from exercising and bitterly cold from the wind. In her hands was a jacket, no, not any jacket, Armaud's, taken from where he had left it in the coatrack in the entrance to the church. She smiled as he approached, happy to be saved the rest of the trip to the crest of the hill, and the unhappy family above.

"Father," she greeted warmly in return, trying to see past the tight muscles around his eyes. "No, I'm here for you." She offered his coat, cheeks flushed from the exercise. "I saw it at church and thought of how cold it can get outside this time of year. I hope you'll forgive me for being presumptuous." For all her abashed words, her eyes never left his, level and sure.