“Wow. What’s he been drinking?” Elise asked. She looked on the table by the bed and found a glass of clear liquid. She sniffed it. “Water.”
Conor frowned at his brother’s prone, still figure. “Let’s look around. You take that side of the room, I’ll take this side.”
Elise moved around the bed. “What are we looking for?”
“Mum’s laptop, for one. A small Mac, gray, no cover. And anything weird.”
Elise opened the doors of the freestanding wardrobe. Inside clothes were jammed on hangers and in piles on the floor. She sifted through the floor items: underwear, stockings, socks, undershirts, and other “smalls” as Conor called them. Two handbags sat in the back. The bigger one was yellow vinyl, cracked and worn. She unzipped the top. It was empty. She zipped it and pushed it into the back of the wardrobe.
The other bag was newer and more expensive, definitely leather. It was black and smooth, shaped like a bowling bag. She peered inside. There was a tablet similar to an iPad. She pulled it out.
“Is this it?”
Conor looked up from his search of the chest of drawers. “No. Quickly now. We don’t want Pauline to show up.”
Elise shoved the tablet back in the bag and felt the interior pockets. She pulled out a pill bottle. It was a French prescription in the name of Agnés Loup. Twenty small white pills rattled inside. “Found something.” She handed the bottle to Conor.
He squinted at the label. “No clue what that is. I’ll ask Mum.” He put the bottle in his pocket then had a second thought. He took it out, snapped a photo with his phone, and sent it to his mother. “Put it back for now.”
Elise stuffed it back in the black bag, closed it, and shoved it in the wardrobe. She began patting down the hanging clothes, a tedious chore as both Duncan and Pauline had so many. She had almost finished Pauline’s side of the wardrobe when she felt something in the pocket of a wool coat. A mobile phone.
“Her phone, Conor.” Elise held it up. It was an older model, inexpensive, that flipped open to reveal the keyboard.
Conor asked, “Can you get in?”
Elise opened the phone and the dim, green screen brightened. There was no password. “I’m in.” She went to the call record and scanned through a dozen numbers. Then she went to the messages. Another dozen or so, with no names attached, only numbers. She would have to read each one. She groaned inwardly, getting anxious about the time.
Conor moved to the night tables, pulling open drawers as he looked at his brother again. “Bottle of whisky. Great.” He slipped the flask-size bottle into his pocket. “You find anything on the phone?”
“A bunch of messages. I wonder if I can forward them to myself.”
“Not in here. The signal is terrible.”
Elise sat down on a small embroidered chair with a wooden back. She skimmed the messages, trying to figure out who they were from. She found one thread that began with “Looking for fun in Newport?” Someone had answered “Gawd, yes. Save me from this horror.” That had to Bree. Then there was the address for the pop-up club they went to in the bigger town, the one by the rail station, and a thank you in reply.
Elise straightened, excited by this deduction. She opened her mouth to tell Conor when he rushed to the other side of the bed and began flinging open drawers on that nightstand. “Hurry up. We have to get back.”
“Can I just take the phone?” She stood up. “There’s stuff on here. I think we should take it, Conor.”
“Yeah, fine.” He kept rummaging, pushing aside condoms and old rail and museum passes, lottery tickets. Elise scrolled down the messages to one sent the morning of December 31, the day Sabine went missing. It was in French.
“Conor, here. Translate this one.”
He straightened, looking at his watch again. He took the phone and read the message aloud: “You must never do that again. You have upset my Sabine and that is unacceptable. She will never understand, you just have to accept that. She is very hurt by all of this. She is fragile and delicate like a rose—” Conor snorted— “it is necessary that I take care of her first and foremost.”
“That must be from Gabriel,” Elise said, taking back the phone. She looked at the gaping drawers of the nightstand. “Done?”
Conor shoved them in roughly. Duncan never flinched. “Let’s go.”
As they were leaving the room, Elise caught sight of the corner of something sticking out from the bedskirt, under the bed. “Wait.” She kneeled down and slipped out a silver laptop with a large Apple logo on the lid. “Ah ha.”
They met Merle and Pascal as they were crossing the hall toward the drawing room. Elise waved the mobile phone in their direction and said in a stage whisper: “You have to read this.”
“Where have you been?” Conor asked them.
“In the kitchen,” Pascal said. “Pauline went to Sabine and Gabriel’s room the morning she disappeared. There was a big shout, a row about something.”
Elise handed the mobile to Pascal, open to the messages. “Read that one.”
Pascal read it quickly and handed the phone to Merle. “So they had some kind of relationship.”
“But what?” Elise asked.
“Did you get that background report on Agnés Loup yet?” Merle asked Pascal.
He looked at the open door to the drawing room, thinking. “I need to make a call. Go in, stall them.” He went out the front door, grabbing his coat from the hat stand.
Conor slipped into the library with his mother’s laptop, sliding it under a seat cushion, and led the sisters back to the cocktail party. Conor was very good at acting, his face placid and serious, revealing nothing. Elise herself felt a charge of excitement over their discoveries. Pauline had stolen the laptop, she had shouted with and been rebuked by Gabriel, she was taking something for some malady (or recreationally.) She was the one
