I hurry over to it, my teeth chattering as I go. I can’t remember opening the window at all, but I must have. Maybe all the wine I’ve been having every night is fucking with me.
I shut the window and quickly eye the bottle of wine on the coffee table that I had polished off with ease earlier. I need to get ahold of myself.
But as my eyes drift over the wine, they focus on the Vogue magazine next to it. I’d been flipping through it earlier since our new matte lipsticks were featured in a paid-for review, but I hadn’t really paid attention to who’s on the cover until now.
It’s a famous French actress, one I’ve actually had the pleasure of meeting once at the Dumont runway show (or displeasure, since she was a bit of a cow). She’s dressed up like she’s going to a sexy version of the Venice carnival, wearing a gold dress, cape, and an elaborate gold mask.
The image of the mask makes my head spin. Suddenly I’m brought right back to that night at the masquerade ball. When he was murdered. I must have seen something. Someone must have seen something. I’ve been trying to think who was with my father right before he died, but I was off talking to guests. When I badgered Olivier about it, he didn’t seem to know either.
If I could find out who he was with just before he had his alleged heart attack, maybe that will give me a clue. Poison seems so dramatic, but that would have to be it, something slipped to him in a drink or perhaps injected without him knowing. It all sounds so grandiose and farfetched, but if I don’t explore this, I’m going to regret it.
And that’s when it hits me. I know what I have to do.
And it can’t wait until morning.
Even though a train to Bordeaux is fast and only takes two hours, there’s none running in the middle of the night, and anyway, I’d rather drive. I get to the château when the sun is rising over the rolling vineyard.
The vineyard and castle belong to Renaud, but it’s unusual for me to visit, especially by myself. I was hoping to arrive unannounced, before the morning workers show up. Because it’s February, no one is tending to the vines on a daily basis, and there are only the occasional workers in the production rooms, keeping an eye on the vats.
When my car pulls into the gravel parking lot, I see I’m the only one here.
Perfect.
I walk between rows of giant cypress and oak trees, limbs like skeletons reaching into the misty morning sky, and head across one of the bridges that span the moat, swans honking noisily as I go, like an alarm.
But I’m not trespassing. I have a key still from the masquerade ball, part of my duty as the hostess. I head around the back of the castle to the glass doors that open up into the armory room.
The key slides in with ease, and I look around to see if I’m being filmed. I know that there are cameras everywhere—that’s why I’m here, after all. I can just hope that no one other than me has current access to them.
The armory room is even more disturbing this morning. In this large, low-ceiling room with a musty red carpet, medieval armor is set up all around as if the knights are still alive and watching you under their tarnished metal masks. It’s one of the highlights of the castle, but now it just seems ghostly and macabre, like the knights may have witnessed my father’s murder.
I ignore them, trying not to get creeped out. I believe in ghosts and spirits, and there’s definitely a heavy feeling in the air, like something is stuck and can’t get out. Most people would blame dust and mildew—the castle operates as a hotel only in the summer months—but I know there’s something else here.
Maybe it’s the truth.
I know that the cameras would have been recording everything and that they would have caught something. It’s up to me to try to figure out exactly what that is.
I head up the stairs to the main floor of the castle, past the old dining-room table that had been cleared out for the ball but is now back in place. With twenty empty chairs, it seems like I’m being watched by invisible diners.
The third floor of the castle is off-limits to the public. There are two grand bedrooms up there plus a mini-kitchen. Who knows what it was back in the day. There’s also an office, and in that office is a computer with many screens where you can watch the CCTV. Though no one is here now, the caretaker lives here and watches to make sure nothing in the hotel is damaged. If there are any burglaries, this will record everything.
And, of course, in case this room is robbed, the footage is no doubt being sent to a hard drive and server somewhere, maybe in Renaud’s house in California, maybe to a security company. I know I’ll show up on today’s footage, but I have doubts that anyone is monitoring it twenty-four seven. Besides, it’s not like I can’t come here. It does belong to my side of the family. In fact, once I’m done here I’ll text my brother and let him know what I was doing.
He doesn’t need to know the specifics.
Just like Olivier, he’d think I’m crazy.
I head straight to the office and sit down at the desk, flicking on the computer screen. It immediately splits into four screens, live footage of the castle. There’s one of the dining room, one of the armor room, one of the kitchen, and one of the parlor. When I tap on the keyboard, it gives me the option to show more screens. Here I can see the study, the staircases, the back and front entrances, an overview of the property from several angles with cameras mounted on trees, plus one bedroom. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to have that last one, and I can only assume that it doesn’t record anything when guests are staying over.
But, of course, this footage isn’t what I want.
I need the footage from that horrible night in August when my world changed.
I select the calendar and go back into last year, up to August, then select the channel I want to watch. The problem is, I don’t know which camera to view, which means I’m going to have to go through all the footage for that night from each recording.
This is going to take a while.
I take in a deep breath and start clicking.
Except, aside from a few outside shots, every time I click the interior channels, I see an error message that says “Footage Not Found.”
What the fuck?
How can the footage not be found?
I click around until the day after the ball, and the footage pops up. I click around to the previous date, and that footage pops up as well. This happens on every single channel. It’s only the day of the masquerade that’s missing. In fact, when I watch the footage from the day after, I can see people straggling behind as the party came to its horrible end.
This makes no sense.
Or maybe it makes perfect sense.
The footage was deleted, which means that someone had something to hide. Someone who had access to this room.
Did it happen that night? If so, maybe anyone could have stolen away and come here when no one was looking, perhaps during the commotion of my father’s death.
But if it happened later, then it had to be someone who had access to this castle.
Which narrows things down quite a bit.
Points in a direction I knew it could take.
And yet without the footage, I have nothing. There’s something on it, something that someone (or several someones) doesn’t want anyone to see. Someone who is covering their tracks, who knew there was a chance of getting caught, a chance that someone might be suspicious.