Chapter 8

One Who Reads Upside Down

It was three days after he had formally requested it through His Grace the Duke that Duchess Isolde granted Sion Arden's request for an interview. The three days were an answer in themselves: the mistress of this house was a woman who said with a count of days that she could not refuse, but had no intention of complying gladly.

The interview took place at the southern end of the second floor of the main house, in the duchess's private drawing room. The wallpaper was a pale apricot, pots of plants that looked to have been brought up from the south stood in a row along the window, and on the low table a silver teapot and three tea services had been set out in advance. Seeing that there were three, Sion paused for a moment, for the lady was already seated in the chair opposite the sofa.

"Sir Arden, do sit. I asked Adelaide to join us as well. If you have questions about the people of this house, Sir, it's only fair that the girl hear them too."

The duchess smiled with her fan half open. It was a talent in itself, to say a word like "fair" so softly and make it sound so sharp. Submitting to questioning by her stepdaughter's fiancé in front of that stepdaughter was a display that she had nothing to hide, and at the same time a calculation to shame, in one stroke, both the knight who had suspected a woman with nothing to hide and the stepdaughter who had brought that knight into the house.

When Sion sat in the chair the duchess indicated, he found it faced the lady's across the low table; the lady kept her gaze somewhere about the corner of the table, her two hands folded in her lap.

Sion opened his notebook on the table and began his questions. The basket sent to House Harold, the southern grain samples in it, the merchant with the red circle mark who had sent those samples. The duchess heard the questions through to the end, then raised her teacup and took a sip with the unhurried movements of a woman who had nothing whatsoever to rush.

"That basket, I remember. That spring I sent them to fourteen houses. It was the year we were looking for a match for Céline, so there were many houses in society owed a courtesy. I divided a little of the southern specialties into each basket. We were overflowing with samples the merchants had sent, you see."

"Did grain samples go into all fourteen as well?"

"Hardly. Who would be pleased to receive grain as a gift? I put it only in the baskets for houses that keep horses. The Harolds, House Lambert, and the Vails, Count Vail's house. Three houses, as I recall. Martha packed the baskets, and my lady's maid Elsa drew up the list of what went to which house."

While Sion's hand was busy with his notebook, taking down in turn the Harolds, the Lamberts, the Vails, and the names Martha and Elsa, the lady on the other side of the table neither moved nor touched her teacup.

"What became of the horses of the Lamberts and the Vails?"

"I couldn't say. How would I know about the state of other people's stables? Only, House Lambert held a ball just last week, and I heard Count Vail won at the races this spring. There's been no rumor of anyone dying because of a horse in either house."

The duchess folded her fan and, for the first time since the interview began, looked straight at Sion.

"I know what you suspect, Sir. Ask who in this house most dislikes the Lady Reaper, and half of society would give my name. I won't deny that."

The lady's folded fingers moved ever so slightly, but the duchess went on as if she had not seen it, or had seen it and did not care.

"But Sir, consider one thing. What I wanted was for this girl to marry. As soon as possible, and out of this house. That way Céline's prospects would open up. When a fiancé dies, what becomes of the girl? She stays in this house. And she wears the name 'the Lady Reaper,' and blocks Céline's prospects as well. Six times over."

As the duchess set down her teacup, the small, precise sound of the cup meeting the saucer spread through the drawing room.

"Do you think that's what I wanted?"

Sion did not answer; he looked down at the notebook on the table. The line where he had written that the stepmother had a motive was there, and if what he had just heard was true, that motive leaned toward the stepdaughter's marriage rather than the fiancés' deaths. There might also be the motive of begrudging the dowry, but whether a ducal dowry was worth blocking Céline's prospects six times over to keep was not something he could readily answer.

"Will that be sufficient for the interview, Sir? Céline has an appointment at the dressmaker's."

Walking down the corridor after leaving the drawing room, Sion did not close his notebook. The Harolds, the Lamberts, the Vails. If the same grain samples had gone into three houses and only one house's horse had gone mad, what needed looking into was that one sack more than the grain as a whole. Martha, who had packed the baskets; Elsa, who had drawn up the list; and everyone who had passed near those baskets before they left the house.

The lady, walking half a step ahead, reached the landing, stopped, and said softly, without turning around, "Elsa left that autumn."

Sion's steps stopped where he stood. It was a name he had not yet asked anyone about.

"...What did you say?"

"The duchess's lady's maid, Elsa. About three months after Count Harold's funeral, she went back to her home village. Her mother was ill, she said. Since then Her Grace has changed lady's maids twice."

Sion looked down at the lady's back, then moved his eyes to the notebook in his hand. At the very bottom of the open page was a line he had hurriedly written as the interview drew to a close. Lady's maid Elsa — confirm whereabouts.

He had written that line on the table while listening to the duchess. From the seat opposite, where the lady sat, the writing would have appeared upside down. And he had neither read that line aloud nor shown it to anyone.

"My lady."

"Yes."

"Did you read my notebook?"

Only then did the lady turn slowly around. Her gaze was still at about his buttons and her voice was still small, but at the end of that small voice, for the first time, there clung the very faintest trace of a smile.

"Reading upside down isn't hard. Your handwriting is so neat, Sir. The 'E' in particular has such clear strokes that it's easy to see even upside down."

Sion could find nothing to say. In the knights' examinations he had passed the cipher course first in his class. And yet it had never once occurred to him that if he opened his own notebook on a table, it could be read upside down from the other side. The criminal always sat on the other side, and no one had ever taught him that the criminal might read his notebook.

"...Did you read anything else?"

"Madweed?"

The lady tilted her head slightly, as if to ask what there was to be so surprised about.

"It said it was a horse stimulant that grows in the southern marshes. Frenzy after an hour. The knights' physician looked into it, didn't he? I didn't know the name of that plant. It isn't in the northern herbal."

Having said this, the lady bowed her head in farewell and went down the stairs, the hem of her navy gown brushing each step in turn as it receded.

Left alone on the landing, Sion looked down at his notebook. Everything he had written since he began coming to this house was in it: motive and opportunity, the stable visit and the fall three days later, his suspicions of the lady, every one of them, written down. And the single line he had first written on the very first page. Adelaide Crowell — the only person connected to all six cases.

She would have read that line, too. Upside down, in that same neat hand.

He closed the notebook and put it deep inside his coat. And that night, returning to the knights' quarters, he bought a new notebook. One with a stiff cover, small enough that when opened, the inside could not be seen from the other side.

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