The matchmaking of marie.., p.18
The Matchmaking of Marielle Clarac, page 18
“Impossible” is the word, certainly. If this hadn’t been prearranged, I’m certain he’d have a scowl on his face.
The sitting room looked just as it had the day before. Lord Simeon had come as an escort for His Highness and was sitting beside him. This time, Pearl ran out of the bedroom and scampered about at everyone’s feet. When she charged toward me, I crouched and said hello to her as well.
“Good afternoon, Pearl!”
When I stroked her little head, she wagged her tail even harder and leapt up at me. With her forelegs on my lap again, she stretched and tried to lick my face.
“No, you mustn’t lick me! I have makeup on!” I raised my head so she couldn’t reach any higher than my chin, and she licked me there. “Hah! That tickles!”
I began to laugh my head off. As I tried to restrain the dog with my arms, His Highness rebuked Lord Simeon. “Your rival, in this case, is a pint-sized puppy. No need for the murderous glare.”
Lord Simeon turned his head away with a look of displeasure.
I explained, “When a dog licks your face, it’s a sign of flattery. Puppies do it to adult dogs, and the lower-ranking members of the pack lick the higher-ranking ones when they greet them. So, if I turn the tables and go to lick Pearl’s face... See?”
She turned tail and tried to run off.
“Stop that at once. It’s unsanitary.”
“I wasn’t actually going to do it.” I picked her up and rubbed my cheek against her instead. “Aren’t you a cute little doggy? Yes you are! Oh yes you are!”
Alas, this only added to my husband’s ill humor.
Princess Henriette laughed. “Don’t be jealous. Pearl’s a girl, anyway.”
“Perhaps Prince Liberto did that on purpose,” said His Highness. “He might be the jealous sort as well.”
“Hmm, I wonder if that was the reason,” his sister replied.
I put Pearl down and sat next to my husband. One of the ladies-in-waiting gave me a cloth to wipe my hands and face. In the princess’s chambers, such things were presumably always available. Looking around, there were dog toys lying on the floor, and a cushion laid out that looked like a very comfortable place for her to sleep. All in all, a lot of attention was paid to the dog’s needs. Pearl was a little princess herself, always in high spirits when visitors came, and everyone looked at her with great affection.
Only one person, Nadia, deliberately kept her distance and watched Pearl with cold and wary eyes. Unlike Julianne, Nadia had not been confined under guard, but had simply returned to work. Now that all the guests had arrived, she went into the kitchenette to prepare the tea.
His Highness and Lord Simeon paid no attention to her. With faces that betrayed no particular concern, they chattered idly...or so they made it appear.
Officially, the reason for this little gathering was for a report to be delivered about how events had proceeded over the past day.
“Have you spoken to Julianne at all?” I asked His Highness.
“No, I’m leaving the investigation in Simeon’s capable hands.”
Not a shred of yesterday’s anguish and uncertainty remained on his face. He was perfectly self-possessed—a man who thought it a shame that this has happened, but was able to watch with the neutral eyes of an observer.
It was a flawless performance.
“I mustn’t allow my personal feelings to get in the way. The truth is crystal clear regardless. I can hardly come to her defense, sad as that may be.”
When he chose to, His Highness could project an air of confident composure. After all, he was the brutal, blackhearted military officer’s master. Even though he wasn’t happy about Julianne being placed under guard, he hadn’t betrayed this by secretly going to visit her and offer his support. He was playing the role of the levelheaded, perhaps even cruelhearted prince who could easily discard the woman he’d wished to marry.
“I still find it hard to believe that Julianne would do such a thing,” I commented.
“Rather a shocker for me as well. The fact remains, however, that arsenic was found in the tea Julianne made for us. She didn’t even offer a clear denial. I suppose she really did find her treatment here a tad too rotten. Still, poison? Very unwise indeed. I thought she was more sensible than that. It seems I’m a terrible judge of character.”
It really was magnificent. I was so convinced that I started to feel offended despite knowing it was all an act. Men like this really do exist, though, don’t they? Is this the kind of skill he brings to his political and diplomatic work?
Now the stage had been set. It was simply a case of waiting.
Nadia returned pushing the tea cart. However, before serving us, she said, “Apologies, but could I ask you all to wait a moment?”
Then she poured a small trickle of tea into a cup and lifted it up to her own mouth. Although the tea was meant for her mistress and the guests, she drank it first. After that, she showed the now empty cup to all of us. The traces of brown at the bottom let us know that there had indeed been tea inside the cup.
“As you can see, it’s perfectly safe to drink. I realize my behavior is unorthodox, but I hope it provides some reassurance.”
Tacitly acknowledging that she, too, was under suspicion, she had taken it upon herself to test the tea for poison before serving it. After putting down the used cup, she poured the tea for us, laying a silver spoon neatly on each saucer.
As Nadia stared intently, we each picked up our cups and started drinking. Visible relief washed over her face. If she was no longer trusted, she wouldn’t have been asked to serve tea in the first place, but even so, her nerves were no great surprise. As soon as we’d accepted the tea without complaint, the difference in her mood was palpable.
Now Pearl ran into the kitchenette through the door Nadia had left open. For dogs and cats, a door that was always closed held a special appeal. It represented a place they could never enter, so the moment they could, they seized the opportunity at once. For a pet owner, accidentally shutting them in after not noticing them dashing into a forbidden space was an everyday occurrence.
Though Nadia should have been the one to take care of this, she did not move a muscle. Instead, I stood and followed after the dog.
Walking into the narrow room used only for making tea, I was reminded again of just how perfectly clean and tidy it was. Anywhere that food was handled should have been cleaned to a high standard, but Nadia’s work truly went the extra mile, reaching into every nook and cranny. It fit with what I’d heard yesterday about her being methodical and meticulous.
Pearl followed her nose into a corner of the room.
“No! Bad girl!”
I hurriedly picked up the small animal before she could move too far. She’d been trained to only eat the food she was offered, but that didn’t mean it was safe to let my guard down. She operated on instinct, after all. Holding her in my arms, I looked to see what she’d caught the scent of. On the floor was a tiny lump of food, cheese if I wasn’t mistaken, about the size of a fingernail.
Footsteps behind me signaled Lord Simeon’s arrival. With my gaze, I directed him toward the cheese. He didn’t touch it directly even though he wore gloves, but rather took a dishcloth from the counter above and used that to pick it up.
When he stood, we silently exchanged nods, then left the kitchenette. Upon our return to the sitting room, all eyes focused on us. The congenial atmosphere had vanished, replaced by a distinct tension in the air. Stern looks abounded, but there was no nervous anger, only levelheaded reserve.
Only one person, Nadia, looked warily at us, the color beginning to drain from her face.
Lord Simeon’s voice echoed commandingly. “Nadia Leurquin, you’re under arrest.”
“What? But... I...” For a moment, Nadia was lost for words. Then she shook her head violently. “Arrest me? For what? I didn’t do a thing!”
“The exact crime you’re guilty of may be tough to pin down, but what’s certain is that it’s too heinous to be punished by a warning alone. Your actions would have led to an execution. I’m sure you’re aware that even attempted murder of a member of the royal family warrants the death penalty.”
“This is a ridiculous accusation!” she cried. “Julianne was the one who put the poison in the tea! I stopped her from serving it! Didn’t I prove to you mere moments ago that the tea I served today was harmless?”
His Highness gave a signal to a lady-in-waiting, who opened to the door leading to the corridor. A knight entered.
Beginning to tremble violently, Nadia drew back all the way to the wall. She fervently shook her head. “It wasn’t me! You can’t prove anything! Please, if you’re saying I did it, show me some proof!”
The ladies-in-waiting looked at Lord Simeon uneasily as well. They had cooperated with our plan, but they hadn’t yet received a detailed explanation, so they remained unconvinced that Nadia was the culprit. She was a housemaid with a proven track record of hard work, so she had earned their trust.
However, that trust would not last forever.
Lord Simeon put the cheese, and the cloth surrounding it, on the table in front of His Highness. “It won’t take long to make sure, but this is almost certainly laced with arsenic.”
“Where was it?” asked His Highness.
“In a corner of the floor. A human wouldn’t notice it straight away, but the dog was drawn to the scent.”
“It looks like a poisoned morsel of food you might use for a rat trap.”
“Yes, it’s very much in that vein. However, this wasn’t meant to be eaten by a rat, but by a dog.”
Those last words made Nadia turn ghostly pale.
I softly stroked the dog in my arms. The poison hadn’t been for the royal family at all. Her intended victim wasn’t a person, but a dog. Nadia had wanted to kill this good little girl.
“When we spoke to other members of the palace staff who knew Nadia Leurquin, there was one common factor that emerged other than her work ethic and her background. They frequently mentioned her unusually strong dislike of animals.”
Nadia was unable to form words. As she shook violently, her face white as a sheet, she opened her mouth as if to persist in denial, but all she could do was gasp and whimper.
Even Pearl, who had been in such high spirits, sensed the discord in the air and grew restless, darting her head around to look at everyone. I went over to Princess Henriette and handed the dog to her.
“Nadia has a visceral dislike of all animals,” Lord Simeon continued. “She mentioned it rather often, apparently.”
“I see,” His Highness replied.
“She’s been known to frankly express her hatred even of creatures universally lauded as sweet and charming, such as kittens and squirrels. It seems to stem from her fastidious love of cleanliness. She sees animals as offensively unclean.”
The immaculate kitchenette served as the perfect example. For a housemaid, cleanliness was a desirable trait, of course. Even her hatred of animals wasn’t inherently a problem. It only became a problem when she had to serve a mistress who had a dog.
Lord Simeon turned to face her again. “You couldn’t stand having to deal with a dog as part of your duties. You might have been able to cope with one confined to a cage, but she’s allowed to run around freely, and you were even asked to handle her directly. You were forced to touch a creature you found disgusting even to look at, and even clean up her mess. It must have been truly abhorrent.”
When she had been told to take Pearl into the next room, even that short time spent carrying the dog had caused Nadia a great deal of displeasure. She’d even asked for her apron to be immediately put into the laundry because there was dog hair sticking to it.
“You decided you couldn’t allow this to continue, so you thought you’d eliminate the dog. Arsenic is widely used as a rat poison, so you used the same technique to make poisoned food and trick the dog into eating it. Of course, you needed a way to avoid taking the blame. Even if it was dismissed as a mere accident, if it happened on your watch, you’d be accused of negligence. Thus, you tried to make it look like someone else’s doing. The scenario you concocted was that Miss Julianne brought the poison here, then it happened to find its way into the dog’s mouth. Isn’t that right?”
When I’d realized her true goal, I’d also realized there was no time to lose. Nadia was sure to act now, or she’d forever lose her chance to kill Pearl while making it look like it was Julianne’s fault. Today, and only today, it was still possible to claim that the poison had been dropped by Julianne and left on the floor. If she’d waited, her entire plan would have fallen apart.
And, just as I had expected, she had made the attempt.
Cowering in fear, Nadia continued to shake her head, reluctant to admit the truth. His Highness glared at her harshly for a moment, but then averted his eyes and looked down at his hands. No doubt he felt anger toward the one who had tried to frame his beloved. However, I knew him well enough to know that he’d started to think about Nadia’s feelings as well.
In a detached tone, Lord Simeon pressed her further. “Given your intense dislike of animals, you wouldn’t normally be so careless as to let a dog into the kitchenette. You knew that Pearl was here, so you’d never casually throw the door open and leave it that way by accident. You opened it on purpose, intending her to go in. It was a purposeful move to make her eat the poisoned cheese.”
“No!” she shrieked. “No, you’re wrong! You’re making it all up! Where’s your evidence? Who saw me put that on the floor? Julianne could have put it there to kill rats! That’s far more plausible!”
Turning to me, Lord Simeon said, “Marielle?”
I nodded and began. “Julianne might not love animals as much as I do, but she’s still very fond of them. House Sorel used to have a dog, although it’s long since passed away. Any house that raises cats and dogs steers clear from using poison as a pest control measure. She knows the danger full well, so she’d never have used poison in the kitchenette.”
Even though Pearl was meant to be kept out of the kitchenette, that didn’t make it safe to use rat poison. Animals—and small children, for that matter—will get into any and every corner as soon as you leave them unattended. Every pet owner has the experience of their pet opening a door that wasn’t closed tightly enough and getting into a forbidden room.
I had clear memories of Julianne’s mother screaming when a rat appeared in their home. It was inevitable that this would happen once in a while, since they didn’t ever use poison. Similarly, when I was moving my cat to the Flaubert manor, the first thing I asked about was their approach to pest control. After years of experience raising a dog and caring for her younger brother, Julianne would never have felt comfortable using rat poison here.
“Precisely,” said Lord Simeon after my explanation concluded. “In addition, we conducted a thorough search of the kitchenette yesterday and removed anything that looked even remotely suspicious. Do you honestly think we’d have overlooked something like this? We’re not perfect, certainly. Some of our members have more attention to detail than others. However, in a room as clean as that, not a single knight would be blockheaded enough to overlook the only crumb of food left littering the floor. We’d have found it and investigated it as a suspicious substance. Furthermore, after permission was given to use the kitchenette again, no one entered it but you. You’d never have left it there unless you meant to.”
Nadia’s plan was exposed by her own scrupulous fussiness. If she wanted it to look like the cheese had been overlooked, she should have left more crumbs on the floor. But she couldn’t bear to, so, alone, this small lump stood out too much.
Her back still against the wall, Nadia sank to the ground, devoid of all energy. Words failed her.
Princess Henriette heaved a very sad sigh indeed and was about to make a comment. To keep the princess from being forced to say anything too painful, I interjected first. “Why didn’t you say something before resorting to this? If you’d mentioned that you didn’t like animals, some arrangements would surely have been made. Everyone understands that pets aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Princess Henriette isn’t the type of person to ignore your feelings, nor are Sophie and the other ladies-in-waiting. You can tell just by looking at them that they’re not completely heartless.”
When Nadia turned to me, her previous cowering gave way to a horrifying scowl. It was as if, purely because I was the one who had asked this, she saw me as the cause of all her woes, and she unleashed her fury on me.
“How dare you!” she yelled. “What would you know? You make it sound so easy!” By now, she had forgone all efforts to insist upon her innocence. “If I’d complained, I’d have been moved somewhere else in the palace. Then what? I’d never have the chance to work for the princess ever again! I spent years toiling away, doing grunt work, hoping to finally be promoted one day. Now I have to be driven out by a dog!? I thought my luck had come in at last, and now this! Why does it have to be me? Why do I have to give up my place and lose everything I’ve worked for!?”
Touches of empathy appeared on the faces of the ladies-in-waiting. They had some understanding of Nadia’s feelings, I was sure. It was impossible to conceive of Pearl being put in a cage or kept far away from Nadia just because she didn’t like dogs. This was Princess Henriette’s home, so of course she would let her pet run free if she wanted to. If Nadia couldn’t bear that, the only option was to be transferred, which would no doubt be intensely grating to a housemaid who had worked to craft an excellent reputation and slowly climb the ladder.
Her frustration did make sense to me. Some people disliked animals, hated them even, and there was nothing wrong with that as such. In a world where children and animals are always treated as impossibly sweet and lovely, being the odd one out who doesn’t like them must always be a struggle. It must feel as though they’re being constantly forced upon you. Nadia had probably suffered more than her fair share of harsh words on the matter, being deemed cold, unfeeling. Now, she had spent years doing a meticulous job, and everyone acknowledged the excellence of her skills, all for it to be ruined by the presence of one single dog. That had to have been unimaginably vexing.
