Despite the presence of furniture, Legard’s room appeared rather empty and sterile.
The bed was positioned parallel to the single window that overlooked the wet land of the observatory’s estate. The window was closed and latched. The bed itself was bare. The linens and blankets had been stripped. The curtains that used to enclose the bed into its own world had been removed. There was nothing except the mattress. There was a faint antiseptic smell that indicated that the place had been scoured of everything not long after Legard’s murder.
While Renaud was brooding over the bookshelf on the opposite end of the room which was stuffed with texts and astronomical knick knacks, Haidée went over to the desk which was near the fireplace. Someone had thrown out the ink bottle and the papers. Only a vague oily stain marred the surface of the desk as a reminder of what she had seen on her first night at the island. She searched the desk and found nothing of interest.
The marten had dragged its half-eaten pastry into the room and was crouched in the doorway nibbling when it heard voices coming down the hallway. Recognizing the tones, it chirped a warning.
Renaud turned from his examination of Legard’s books and strolled toward the door. The voices were that of Everard and Roland bickering over certain calculations that Roland had done a month previously. The old astronomer cackled loudly and said that he had proof that he was right and that he would show it to Everard as soon as he found it under the stacks of papers in his room. Renaud shut the door and met Haidée’s curious gaze.
“Just Everard and Roland,” he said in response. “They seem to be preoccupied with their own research.”
She nodded. “Good. I hope they don’t realize that we’re in here.”
“I think most people would assume that this room is locked.”
“And common sense would dictate that no one could get through a locked room without a key.” She looked back at the desk. “It would have been so much more useful if no one had cleaned this place out.”
“Everard probably ordered the servants to scrub the place,” he replied. “The magistrate hasn’t come back to this room, obviously, to check for clues. He’s either an inept magistrate, someone who follows Everard blindly, or he has a reason for not looking at this place too closely.”
“Monsieur Galliard does seem to be quite the follower of Monsieur Everard. I seem to remember that someone told me that he looks up to the head astronomer since he is a bit of an amateur himself.”
“An amateur, hm? I wonder if he’s skilled enough to work those spells for operating a telescope.”
Haidée was struck by that thought. “What if he is? But since he is an amateur, why would he want to kill the other astronomers? In a way, they are Everard’s subordinates and I can’t see how eliminating the others would make his mentor very happy.”
“But that is if you’re thinking like a rational person. Most murders aren’t committed in a rational frame of mind.”
“Well, I think it could be very rational—if you realize that killers have vastly different priorities than the usual person.” She turned her attention to the fireplace and the floor next to it.
She sighed to herself. Whoever had cleaned up the bed had also swept up the ashes next to the fireplace. There were no strange patterns of ash on the floor, just the floor itself.
“You look frustrated.”
“I am.” She looked back up at him. “There are no clues to this place. I have this hunch that there’s something about the fireplace, but I can’t think what it was that made me suspect that there’s more to this room than first impressions. Did you find anything interesting on the bookshelf?”
“Legard had the usual texts and instruments. Unless, of course, he hid something in one of those books. But that would take a while to find.”
Haidée gave him a sly look. “You don’t suppose you hid something in one of the books in your room, did you?”
His expression was hard. “You are not searching my room. There’s nothing in there.”
“Oh, I don’t know—you being an agent for the Five Hundred and all. I might find some coded messages. Although it would be quite the feat to get them back to mainland since it would be a couple of weeks before the tide goes back out thus allowing a way for us to get off this island…oh!”
Renaud had backed her up against the wall beside the fireplace. He was looking down at her, his gaze dark behind his spectacles. “Haidée, it would be a very bad idea for you to bring up what I really am.”
“I’m a discrete person, really. I would never spill your secrets in front of everyone.” She reached behind her and grasped a piece of the fireplace molding. “Unless, of course, you spill my secrets in front of everyone first.”
He took a step back and smiled ruefully. “Of course, I wouldn’t.”
She let out a breath she didn’t know that she had been holding and her shoulders slumped. “Right.” She still didn’t quite trust Renaud yet. She forced herself to loosen her fingers from the piece of molding and step away from the wall. “Then I suppose we…”
Part of the fireplace suddenly swung inward and she momentarily lost her balance. He reached out grabbed her arm before she could tumble into the square bit of darkness that the fireplace had revealed.
Seeing a new hole explore, the marten tucked the last bit of pastry into its cheeks and bounded into the depths of the hidden passage.
“Wait! Come back here, you little…”
Renaud restrained her. “It’s just an animal, remember? I think we should be a little less impulsive about this kind of thing. For one thing, we should try to get some light first.”
She looked at the secret passage. She could hardly make out anything in the darkness although she could hear the marten squeaking some distance away. “All right. Be practical.”
He lit a candelabrum that had been sitting on the edge of the fireplace mantle that had swung inward. The small trinity of candles threw small pools of light into the passage. Haidée had expected it to be filled with dust or cobwebs, but the stone walls were remarkably clear. The floor was dusty with the scuff marks of feet. Someone had gone through the passage recently. Legard’s murderer, perhaps?
She followed him into the passage, feeling a little claustrophobic. On one hand, she was quite curious as to what this hidden passageway led to. On the other hand, she hated the strange, creepy feeling she was getting from the place. She thought back to Garnier’s almost hysterical ranting. Could it be possible that there were other passages like this leading to various rooms in the rest of the observatory? Could somebody be using them to spy on the observatory’s inhabitants?
“Watch your step.”
Startled by Renaud’s voice, she looked at her feet and found that the floor of the passageway had ended in a flight of stairs. She heard the marten’s chirping again, this time it sounded lower, as if the creature was at the bottom of the stairs. She gave her companion a skeptical glance. He simply gave her a grin, daring her to follow him.
“I thought you wanted me to stay behind.”
“Well, since you’re this far, you might as well go all the way.”
She picked up her skirts and followed behind him as he turned to head down the stairs. “If we get in trouble, it will be your fault.”
“Isn’t it always?”
Haidée concentrated on not tripping by counting the steps. There were forty before it stopped at a short landing and a door. Renaud tried the knob which turned easily in his hand. Once the door was open, the marten, who had been waiting for them, scurried inside.
The room they found themselves in was a small study with a hearth, a table, and a chair stacked with books. There was even a small slit of a window on the opposite side of the room. Haidée went over to it and looked out. Even with the rain, she could see that the room was on the first level of the observatory, somewhere in the vicinity of the back of the building overlooking the observatory’s vegetable garden. She wondered if anyone had puzzled over the extra window from the hidden room. Probably not. The observatory itself had so many windows that it would have seemed a waste of time to count any of them.
“These ashes look recent.”
She turned to see Renaud standing over the fireplace, stirring up the burned waste with a poker. “Somebody knows about this place.”
“Yes. But that somebody could be dead. This could have been Legard’s private study. If I recall, the window to Legard’s bedroom was open. His murderer could have escaped through that route. There’s only one entrance to this place.”
She looked out the window again. The size of it was too small for a child let alone a grown man. “I suppose I agree with you. Unless that fireplace is actually an entrance in itself.”
“That’s a thought.” He placed the poker back against the wall and began examining the mantle and molding of the fireplace by probing and pushing at it.
Meanwhile, Haidée looked through the rest of the study. The table contained a stack of blank paper and a vial of ink—similar to the one that she had seen on Legard’s desk on the night of his murder. The walls of the room were plastered with wallpaper of a rather ugly blue and green floral design. Otherwise it was bare and the only other piece of furniture, the chair, was shoved against the wall, just under the window, and piled high with books. She went through the books, flipping the pages as she went, half-hoping that she might find a message tucked within some of the pages. The texts were nothing but astronomy references, a bible, and an herbal with hand drawn illustrations.
“Find anything?” Renaud was standing behind her, looking down at the herbal in her hands.
“Just books. I take it that the fireplace isn’t hiding another passageway?”
He shook his head. “I think it would be just too much to ask if that were true.”
The marten was sniffing the wallpaper, particularly at one corner of the room where a bit of it had peeled away.
Finally deciding that there was nothing else to find, Haidée spoke to the marten even though intellectually, she knew the animal wasn’t going to pay any attention to her. “Come on, we’re leaving. You wouldn’t want to be cooped up in this place and miss lunch, would you?”
Renaud chuckled. “And you say that you could care less about the fur ball.”
“I don’t. But I’m not evil.”
The marten suddenly took hold of the wallpaper with its teeth and started pulling. Part of the paper came away with a rip.
Renaud was startled. “What on earth…”
The animal tore a sheet as long as an arm off the wall, revealing a crevasse filled with something that had Haidée shaking and praying that what she saw was just a nightmare, something cooked up by a little too much tonic. Without the wallpaper holding it in, a severed foot still wearing a boot fell from the wall.