Death and Transfiguration

Chapter 34

I read the note over and over again, and every time I saw those words, I became more certain that this was it, that this was the note that Claire had left for Bertrand Sylvestre when she'd disappeared. It was the list of names that intrigued me though. These were the people that Claire blamed for her predicament, the people who had driven her away from Paris.

The first two names on the list were Johann Bergmann and Pierre Lajoie.

Someone was using this note as a hit list.

And Léa was next.

I stuffed the note into my purse, and I immediately sprinted out of the house. I had to tell Léa about the note. I needed to warn her before it was too late, so I ran straight down Rue de Richelieu until I reached Café de la Paix, exhausted, out of breath, and covered in sweat.

When I opened the door, I immediately spotted Léa. She was wearing one of her finest dresses, the bright blue skirt highlighting her lovely blue eyes. I smiled slightly, and as my heart raced, her gaze met mine, and she said, "You look beautiful today, Mattie."

I blushed and stumbled toward the table she had reserved for the two of us. She took a large gulp of her coffee, and when she saw how anxious I was, she placed her hand on mine and asked, "Is everything alright?"

"I just got back from Sylvestre's house," I said.

"So? You're there every day."

I reached into my purse, and as I placed the note on the table, I said, "I...I found this in his study."

Léa picked up the note and read it, her eyes going wide as she made her way down the page. After a few minutes, Léa set it back on the table, looked in the eye and said, "Good heavens. I thought Sylvestre burned that."

"Clearly, he didn't," I said. "I think he just didn't want you to see it."

"I can't imagine why."

"Well, you did have an affair with his wife," I said with a slight laugh, but it came out a little more nervous than I would have liked. "I'm sure he wasn't exactly thrilled about that."

"Trust me, he wasn't," Léa said. "He wouldn't speak to me for months after Claire's disappearance, and I'm sure he still resents me for loving Claire and then breaking her heart."

There was a brief moment of silence, and then I said to Léa, "The list still confuses me. You cheated on Claire with Bergmann, but what does Lajoie have to do with this?"

"He introduced Claire and I for the first time. None of this would have happened if it wasn't for him," Léa said. "I was the one who betrayed Claire, and Paul Saint-Yves is her brother, the one who convinced Sylvestre to marry her. Bertrand Sylvestre...well, I feel like his presence on the list should be obvious. He kept her away from music, kept her from being herself, from being happy."

I nodded, but I wasn't sure that Léa was seeing the bigger picture, the reason why I was so afraid of what might happen to her. "Bergmann and Lajoie..." I began, but Léa interrupted me.

"I know," Léa said. "They were both murdered."

"And you're not worried the same thing's going to happen to you?"

"I can handle myself. I have my sword, I know how to use it, and I'll go down swinging if I have to."

"I don't want you to die, Léa. I don't know what I would do without you."

"I'll be fine, Mattie."

"Do you have any idea who might be behind all of this?"

Léa shook her head. "I'm not sure, but it must have been someone who was close to Claire," she said. "Admittedly, that's not very many people. It's just her family, a handful of the other Nightingales, me..."

For a moment, I wondered if it was Léa, but that couldn't be possible. She wasn't in the right place to have committed either of the murders, she didn't even know that Sylvestre kept the list before today, and even if she was lying to me, even if she did know about the list, her name was on it. It simply didn't make sense for her to be the murderer.

"Bertrand Sylvestre seems like the most obvious answer," I concluded. "We know that he saw the note, and Pascal was certainly suspicious of him at the dinner today."

"But we already proved that he couldn't have committed the murders, and do you really think he would kill his brother-in-law? Or himself?"

"Fair point," I said. "I would say that it could have been Saint-Yves, but that has most of the same issues as Sylvestre. Maybe it was Claire herself?"

Léa laughed. "I received a letter from her just the other day," she said. "There's no way that she could have gotten here from New Caledonia that quickly, and besides, she's far too kind-hearted to brutally murder someone."

"I think you could say that about nearly anyone, Léa."

"That's true," Léa said.

"I just don't know who it could be then," I said. "Most of the people she was close with are on that list."

"Wait a minute," Léa said. "You said that Pascal made a breakthrough."

"I still don't know what it was," I said.

"It wasn't the note, was it?"

"I don't think so."

"So she still knows something that we don't."

I thought about that for a moment and then nodded. There was still some evidence that Pascal had found, something that Léa and I didn't know about yet, and maybe, just maybe, we could use the note to convince her that she could trust us. Maybe she would be willing to show us her evidence if she knew about what had happened to Claire, what I had found in Sylvestre's drawer, and how it all connected to the murders.

"We should show her the note," I said, and Léa seemed to think that was a grand idea, so the two of us raced out of the café, her hand clasped onto mine as we made our way past the Palais Garnier, back toward Sylvestre's house. However, Pascal was nowhere to be found.

"Funny," I said. "I thought I saw her go down this street."

"She's probably gone by now," Léa said. "I don't know if we're going to be able to track her down."

However, just as we were about to walk past Sylvestre's house, we found her.

She was lying on the ground, contorted into a strange position, and there was a bloody, gaping hole in her chest. "Miss Pascal?" I said as I tapped her shoulder, but there was no response. Her skin had already gone cold. Her heart had already stopped beating.

I collapsed onto the ground, sobbing, and I realized that I would never get to talk to her about the note, that she would never tell me whatever it was that she knew, that I would never speak to her again.

Miss Pascal was dead.