“I don’t speak French.”
“You don’t have to. All over the world, everyone who works for Mr. Gregorio speaks perfect English as well as other languages. When you leave the house in Paris, there will always be a companion with you to translate. Now eat something for breakfast, child. I’ll be back to collect everything later.”
When he’s alone, Crispin pushes the cart aside, flings back the covers, and gets out of bed. He restlessly walks the room, stopping repeatedly at the windows to gaze out at the city.
Having remembered spying on his mother, Mirabell, and Proserpina in the sewing room, the boy knows there is something else that he has forgotten. It eludes him.
Finally, he recalls Nanny Sayo visiting him and his brother briefly during dinner to report that their sister had a migraine and would eat in her room after the headache passed.
He remembers going to bed before nine o’clock. He wasn’t sleepy. When Nanny checked on him, he pretended to be deep in dreams. After she left, he had watched the bedside clock count down to nine-thirty.
He remembers nothing after that. Nothing. So he must not have been as awake as he thought. He must have gone to sleep, after all.
In the bathroom, he turns the water in the shower as hot as he can stand it. He steps into the large cubicle, closes the door behind him, and inhales deeply of the billowing steam.
The soap produces a rich lather. He always uses a washcloth to soap himself, but suddenly he realizes that he is using his hands instead. For reasons he can’t quite put into words, he is embarrassed to be touching himself in this fashion, and he resorts to the washcloth, as usual.
The shampoo makes an even richer lather than does the soap, and as he washes his hair, he closes his eyes because sometimes the suds sting them. As always, the shampoo smells vaguely of carnations, but after a moment the scent changes to that of lemons.
This fragrance is so extraordinarily intense and so unexpected that reflexively Crispin opens his eyes, and as he does he thinks he hears someone speak his name.
The water drumming-splashing on the marble floor, the constant
The sting of shampoo blurs his vision, and the whirling steam further hampers him, but as he turns in place, squinting at the bathroom beyond the glass walls of the shower, he glimpses a hazy figure, someone watching him. Shocked by this intrusion on his privacy, he wipes at his eyes with both hands, sluicing the suds from his lashes. When his vision clears, no one is watching him, after all. He is alone in the bathroom, and the visitor must have been a figment of his imagination, a trick of light and steam.
Dried off, dressed, he is suddenly famished. He eats the fresh strawberries and cream, the English muffin, the croissant, and the sticky bun with pecans. He drinks most of the hot chocolate, taking his time, savoring every sip.
He’s fifteen minutes late for lessons in the library, but Mr. Mordred never expects punctuality.
Harley has news. “Mirabell called from Paris!”
Crispin shakes his head dismissively. “She can’t be in Paris already.”
“Well, she is,” Harley insists.
“They left very early,” Mr. Mordred says, “but in fact they aren’t there yet. Mirabell called from Mr. Gregorio’s private jet, somewhere above the Atlantic.”
“She’s on a
“Are you sure it was Mirabell?” Crispin asks his brother.
“Of course it was.”
“How do you know — just because she said so?”
“It was her. I know Mirabell.”
Harley is seven and gullible. Crispin is nine and feels that he is not just two years more mature than his little brother, but three or four, or ten. “Why didn’t she call me?”
“ ’Cause she wanted to talk to
“She’d want to talk to me, too.”
“But you were snoring your head off or stuffing your face or something,” Harley says.
“I’m sure she’ll want to talk to you the next time she calls,” Mr. Mordred assures Crispin. “Now what should we do to start? Should I read you a story or teach you some arithmetic?”
Harley doesn’t hesitate to consider. “Read! Read us a story!”
As Mr. Mordred chooses from several books, Crispin stares at the horsefly birthmark on his left temple. He thought he saw it move just a little. But it isn’t moving now.
11
Over dinner, December 3, the eve of Crispin’s thirteenth birthday …
Amity Onawa, formerly Daisy Jean Sims, also the Phantom of Broderick’s, has put a plate of little tea cakes on the table for dessert. They are flavorful but not too rich.
The dog begs, receives half a cake, and lies down to sleep.
With her black hair, compelling blue eyes, and knowing attitude, the girl looks like a Gypsy about to read someone’s fortune by the glimmering candlelight.
“So, Crispin Gregorio.”
“That’s not my name.”
“Crispin Hazlett.”
“That’s the name my mother used.”
“And you never did?”
“I did but not now.”
“Why not?”
“I never knew any man named Hazlett.”
“So it’s what — just Crispin?”
“That’s right.”
“Travel light, huh?”
“One name’s enough.”
“So, Crispin, what do you want for your birthday dinner tomorrow night?”
“Whatever. I don’t care.”
“Got a walk-in refrigerator full of stuff. And for Christmas, they have an entire special department of delicacies down on the second floor.”
“Anything. It doesn’t matter.”
“Everything matters,” she disagrees.
He shrugs.
Cocking her head, Amity asks, “Still got your deck of cards?”
“Same deck,” he confirms. “Bought the night me and Harley met.”
“You still do with it what you used to do?”
“That’s all it’s for.”
“Did you turn up the four sixes yet, one after the other?”
“Not yet.”
She shakes her head. “You’re a strange one, boy.”
Smiling, he says, “Not just me.”
With the small bankroll and the eight gold coins that she had when she fled from that house of murder, Amity lived many months on the streets. She dressed tough, acted tough, and over time she
