King Solomon's Diamonds

5 Distress in the Walls of Villa d’Chantal

The mild evening barely kept Madame Chantal’s feet warm as she put on yet another pair of stockings over her silk pantyhose. It was autumn, yet to her the chills of winter were already prevalent wherever she went.

“I fear you might be coming down with something, darling,” her husband speculated as he checked his tie for the umpteenth time. “Are you sure you cannot just bear with your cold for tonight and come with me? You know, if people keep seeing me arrive at banquets alone they might begin to suspect things are not going well between us.”

He looked at her with concern. “They can’t know that we are practically bankrupt, you realize? You not being there with me could incite gossip and draw attention to us. The wrong people might investigate our situation just to still their curiosity. You do know that I am terribly worried and that I have to keep the favor of the Minister and his share holders or else we’re done for.”

“Oui, of course I do. Just trust me when I say that soon we will not have to worry about keeping the property or the holdings,” she assured him in a weak voice.

“What does that mean? I told you — I’m not selling the diamonds. It is the only proof of our status left!” he said emphatically, though his words came more from of anxiety, not anger. “Come with me tonight and wear something extravagant just to help me look the part — the part I am supposed to play authentically as a successful business man.”

“Henri, I promise I will accompany you to the next one. I just don’t feel I could maintain my cheerful face for that long while I fight the onslaught of fever and pain.” Chantal approached her husband with a laborious gait, smiling. She fixed his tie for him and gave him a peck on the cheek. He placed the back of his hand on her forehead to check her temperature, then visibly recoiled.

“What?” she asked.

“My God, Chantal. I don’t know what sort of fever you have, but it seems to run in reverse. You are as cold as… a corpse,” he eventually forced out the ugly comparison.

“I told you,” she replied lightly, “I do not feel well enough to decorate your side as a Baron’s wife should. Now hurry, you are going to be late and that is completely unacceptable.”

“Yes, my lady,” Henri smiled, but his heart still raced from the shock of feeling his wife’s skin, so low in temperature that he could not fathom that color still flushed in her cheeks and lips. The Baron was good at hiding his feelings. It was a prerequisite of his title and an order of business. He left soon after, desperate to glance back once more at his wife waving goodbye from the open front door of their Belle Époque chateau, but he opted for keeping up appearances.

Under the April evening’s moderate skies, the Baron de Martine left his home reluctantly, but his wife was only too glad for the solitude. It was not for the sake of being alone, however. Hurriedly she prepared for her guest after procuring the three diamonds from her husband’s safe. The Celeste was magnificent, so breathtaking that she did not want to part with it, but what she wanted from the alchemist was so much more important.

“Tonight, I will save us, my dear Henri,” she whispered as she placed the diamonds on a green velvet napkin, a cut piece from a dress she used to wear to banquets like the one her husband just left for. Rubbing her frigid hands profusely, Chantal held them out to the fire in the hearth to warm. The steady heartbeat of the mantle clock paced in the quiet house, making its way to the second half of its face. She had thirty minutes left before he would come. Her housekeeper already knew his face, as did her assistant, yet they had not yet announced his arrival.

In her diary, she made the day’s entry, mentioning her condition. Chantal was a record keeper, an avid photographer and writer. She wrote poetry for every occasion, even in the simplest moments of amusement or pleasure she would pen verses to commemorate it. Memories of the anniversary of every day were looked up in the previous journals to sate her nostalgia. A great admirer of privacy and antiquity, Chantal kept her diaries in expensively bound books and took real pleasure in writing down her thoughts.

After signing her name, Chantal once again looked at the clock in her drawing room. She had been writing for a while. As always, she put the journal in the niche behind the painting of Henri’s great grandfather and wondered what could be the reason for her appointment being sabotaged. Somewhere in the haze of her thoughts, while she had written, she had heard the clock chime the hour, but had paid no attention to it so that she would not forget what she wished to enter on this day’s journal page. Now she was surprised to see that the ornate long pointer had dropped from the twelve to the five.

“Twenty-five minutes late already?” she whispered, as she pulled another shawl over her shuddering shoulders. “Anna!” she called to her housekeeper while she took up the poker to stoke the fire. As she threw on another log with a hiss, it spat embers up into the mouth of the chimney, but she had no time to pet the flames and make them stronger. With her meeting with Raya delayed, Chantal had less time to conclude their business before her husband might return. This made the lady of the house just a tad anxious. Quickly, after making a turn in front of the hearth again, she had to ask her staff if her guest had called to explain why he was late. “Anna! Where are you, for God’s sake?” she cried again, feeling no warmth from the flames that practically licked at her palms.

Chantal heard no response from her maid, her housekeeper, or her assistant. “Don’t tell me they forgot that they were working overtime tonight,” she mumbled to herself as she hurried down the hallway to the east section of the villa. “Anna! Brigitte!” She called louder now as she rounded the kitchen doorway beyond which was only darkness. Floating in the darkness, Chantal could see the orange light of the coffee machine, the various little colored lights of the wall plugs and some of her appliances; the way it always looked after the ladies had left for the day. “My God, they forgot,” she muttered, sighing with effort as the cold gripped her insides like the sting of ice on wet skin.

Hastily the lady of the villa moved along the corridors, finding that she was home alone. “Great, now I have to make the most of it,” she complained. “Louise, at least tell me that you are still on duty,” she said to the closed door where her assistant usually worked with Chantal’s taxes, charities, and press engagements. The dark wooden door was locked and no answer came from the inside. Chantal had been let down.

Even if her guest still showed up, she would not have enough time to stage the breaking and entering charge she would get her husband to lay. Bitching under her breath as far as she walked, the noblewoman kept pulling her shawls over her chest and covering the back of her neck by loosening her hair to form some kind of insulation. It was reaching 9 p.m. when she entered the drawing room.

The confusion of the situation was almost smothering her. She had distinctly told her staff to expect Mr. Raya, but what baffled her most was that not only her assistant and housekeeper, but also her guest, had absconded from the arrangement. Had her husband caught wind of her plans and given her people the night off to stop her from seeing Mr. Raya? More worrisome yet, had Henri somehow gotten rid of Raya?

When she returned to where she had laid out the velvet napkin with the three diamonds, Chantal was in for a bigger shock than just being home alone. A frantic gasp escaped her as she slammed her hands over her mouth at the sight of the barren cloth. Tears came to her eyes, burning up from the pit of her stomach and stabbing at her heart. The stones had been stolen, but what exacerbated her terror was the fact that someone had been able to take them while she was in the house. No security measures had been breached, leaving Madame Chantal terrified at the variety of possible explanations.