Mystery in the Darkest Shadow Read online

  Mystery in the Darkest Shadow

  The Mysteries of Severine DuNoir

  Beth Byers

  Contents

  Summary

  Quote

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Also by Beth Byers

  Summary

  October 1925

  The hunt for the person who killed Severine’s parents continues, and things are intensifying. She’s finally got a direction along with the most unexpected of helpers. Will she be able to find out why they were killed?

  As she presses forward, she again encounters the man in the shadows. Who is this person who is trying to stop her from learning more about what was happening when her parents died? Why is he invested enough to find her—and others—expendable? And just what will happen if she continues?

  Quote

  Sister Mary Chastity: There’s a reason that the Lord claims vengeance to himself.

  Severine: Why?

  Sister Mary Chastity: Humans cannot be trusted with anything so complex. God doesn’t only look at their deeds, he looks at their hearts, what they knew, what they understood, their intentions.

  Severine: But, I want them to suffer.

  Sister Mary Chastity: And yet, when it is our turn for judgement, we want mercy. Err on the side of mercy,Severine. You don’t have all the knowledge necessary, and neither of us needs more sins laid at our door.

  Chapter 1

  “What are we going to do now?” Severine asked Lisette. They had finished locking every window and door after the last workman had left and were sitting side-by-side on the stairs because the other rooms were still too painful.

  Just two days ago in the parlor, Mr. Greyson Thorne had been shot as he tried to help Mr. Charles Brand escape from his bonds. In the office, Severine had knocked the female invader, Amelia Grantley, unconscious and faced off with her half-brother. She’d eventually shot at him with eyes closed, and he’d escaped. Upstairs, Lisette along with her mother and grandmother had faced Lisette’s first love. That had ended with Chantae—Lisette’s mother—having a concussion and serious bruising.

  “I don’t know what to do either.” Lisette shuddered and then muttered low, “Buy more ammunition.”

  Severine’s laugh was bitter, and she didn’t disagree with that statement. She wasn’t sure they didn’t need a half-dozen more dogs and possibly some sort of cauldron of boiling oil to pour over the side of the house on anyone trying to come in through the doors.

  “May I ask you a question?” Lisette asked.

  Severine heard the concern in the tone and guessed that she wasn’t going to love the question. She nodded at Lisette and considered what she would be doing after just such a day in the nunnery.

  Speaking quietly and gently, Lisette asked, “Why did we let Amelia go? We could have called the police. They cut our telephone line, but we could have gotten help using the boys’ phone line. We could have seen one of them arrested and revealed what we’ve been dealing with. Your brother is just blithely prancing around New Orleans, and he tried to kill you or make you seem mad or—”

  Severine’s building headache burst into full rage and her humor from a breath ago shifted from bitter to watery. There was an edge of a sob in her tone when she asked, “What do you think would happen if I went to the police and said my brother used hidden passages in my house in order to make me seem mad? Or that he had been drugging me?”

  Lisette shook her head, rejecting the possibility immediately. “I suppose I understand about time. Especially since your grandmother would not have taken your side and it would have seemed to be a he-said/she-said situation.”

  Severine nodded and regretted it immediately as her pain increased. “And, perhaps, if we’d called about the invasion and showed them all the evidence, this time they would have believed us.”

  Lisette waited, but when Severine said nothing more, she answered. “Except these are the established families of New Orleans and you’ve been away. Your father isn’t here and Mr. Brand’s presence bothers a lot of them.”

  Severine nodded and then added, “And I want to know what happened to my parents more than almost anything.”

  “Almost?” Lisette asked with a frank, demanding tone.

  “It’s not worth any of our lives,” Severine said without hesitation. “We got too close to that today.”

  “They wouldn’t have left us alive,” Lisette said with conviction, but Severine wasn’t so sure. All of this had to do, she felt, with her own unsubstantiated conviction, with her father’s estate. Why else would Andre have been drawn in as he had been?

  They might not, however, have left Mr. Brand alive. What was the plan if something happened to Mr. Brand? Had her father set up an alternative, or would she end up in the care of her brother?

  Severine shivered at the idea, certain that her brother would never let her have a scrape of happiness if she ended in his care. The best thing she could do for herself was ensure that fate never occurred. Severine knew she was barely holding herself from sobbing.

  The longer that the moments passed from when they’d locked the doors, the more the reality set in. They had been invaded. They had people break into their house. She took in a deep breath and wondered what else they could do to ensure their safety.

  They’d added bars to the lower windows. They’d replaced the doors with something that the average man would have a hard time getting through without a ram. Additional ammunition and weapons were basically all that was left.

  “What are you two doing on the stairs?” Edmée, Lisette’s grandmother, asked.

  The old woman stood at the top of the stairs with a righteous fury, hands on hips, narrowed eyes, and a down-turned mouth. Her dark skin was wrinkled, but she had the look of a much younger woman with the fire she was blazing towards the two of them.

  “Avoiding the parlor,” Severine said, hoping to save Lisette.

  Edmée, however, was entirely unmoved by Severine’s sacrifice. “We didn’t have those girls in to clean the parlor so you two could make the stairs the gathering room. Chantae won’t be feeling up to looking after you two and the boys, so you’ll need to take care of feeding the family.”

  Severine rose and found that purpose was what she needed to avoid the anxiety roiling through her stomach. “I can do that.”

  “You can?” Lisette questioned.

  “I was raised by nuns.” Severine laughed and found the headache was fading with the humor and the goal. “I can do all kinds of practical things.”

  “You can?” Lisette repeated. “More than bread? Because I can only make gumbo and scrambled eggs.”

  “Scrambled eggs would be fine,” Edmée replied. “My girl and that Thorne man are injured. They need protein and care. It’s up to you two.”

  Severine headed towards the kitchens and shuddered in relief at the sheer idea of something to do. She could make soup and bread. Focusing on the task, she lost herself in the familiarity of cooking.

  She mixed up biscuits quickly. Once they were in the oven, Severine made her way through the kitchens and found roasted chicken in the ice box. Severine immediately began turning the chicken and dried pasta from the cupboards with some vegetables from the bin into chicken noodle soup. Lisette easily
chopped vegetables and herbs, proving that although she hadn’t learned to cook herself, she’d assisted more than one time.

  Severine had kicked off her shoes, and the dress she’d changed into earlier was simple and easy. She was exhausted as she worked, and the chill of autumn welcomed the soup. She hadn’t slept other than unwelcome catnaps since they’d sent the doctor home, and she knew that the time had come to take a long, lingering bath and truly fall to sleep.

  She wasn’t sure, however, that she’d be able to succumb. Instead, Severine felt certain that she’d lay awake with burning eyes and an aching body, reliving holding a revolver on her brother. Or perhaps striking Amelia Grantley down and binding her wrists. Or the moments when Severine had pressed her hands to Mr. Thorne’s wound and wondered if they’d lost Lisette’s mother in the ruckus.

  Severine’s knife moved faster as the memory struck her and—for a moment—she thought she could see Mr. Thorne’s blood on her hands again. Instead of giving into the horror, she pulled the biscuits from the oven and started making trays for their invalids. Mr. Thorne and Chantae would need to eat in their beds.

  Perhaps in a day or two, Chantae would be up to getting out of bed, but Severine would prefer if the woman lingered in bed. She wasn’t, really, all that old herself. She’d been but sixteen-years-old when Lisette was born, and Lisette was but a year older than Severine. Chantae was a vital woman, and her recovery would be reasonably fast. Chantae, however, had been the last of fourteen children that Edmée had borne. It was a blessing that it had been Chantae struck and not Edmée, Severine thought, attempting to channel her beloved nuns.

  The less-believing part of her heart, however, thought how wonderful it would have been if no one had been hurt at all. She swallowed thickly and set the soup to simmering before facing Lisette.

  “I’m sorry your mama got hurt in my house, helping me.”

  “She hated her work before here, Severine,” Lisette said and Severine realized her friend had struggled to rest as much as Severine had. That must be why the circles under her eyes were so dark. Severine would have been tempted to smack her head if the headache weren’t lingering at the back of her mind.

  Lisette started making coffee for everyone, but Severine suggested tea instead. They, all of them, needed to rest. Chicory coffee might be comforting, but Severine needed to sleep or she’d be worthless. They needed a plan, they needed some way ahead, they needed to feel safe again, and Severine didn’t think such a day would happen until they were able to sleep, even if they took turns keeping watch.

  The idea paused Severine and then she went back to work. It wasn’t long before she’d placed a crock of soup and a platter of biscuits in the dining room while Lisette carried up the tea trays.

  Severine stared at her bowl of soup and then around at the table. It was the first time they’d gathered to eat again since they’d been invaded and the memories were striking her hard and fast. By the look on Mr. Brand’s face, he was feeling the same. Mr. Oliver looked worried, Lisette tired, but Edmée was staunchly eating her soup as though nothing at all distressing had happened.

  “Mr. Oliver, did you find anything of your wife?” Severine hadn’t been able to ask since his timely and welcome appearance during the fight.

  He shook his head. “I’ll be going back when Thorne is up again. I can’t leave him wounded.”

  Severine struggled to take a bite and then settled for her teacup, letting the tea mix from Sister Bernadette sooth her head and stomach before she tried the soup again. The table was silent as they filled their bodies after too long. Her appetite returned with the tea and she was still famished by the time she finished the first bowl of soup. After a second bowl of soup and several biscuits, she found her headache was in shreds.

  “I’m sorry,” Severine announced. “I feel that I’ve involved you all in something terrible and perhaps I made the wrong choice letting Amelia Grantley go.”

  “Miss DuNoir,” Mr. Oliver started and then paused. “Severine. I don’t believe you made the wrong choice at all.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No,” Mr. Oliver said firmly, and he was echoed by Mr. Brand. “Not at all.”

  “But—”

  “We aren’t dealing with a criminal that you can call the local constables over,” Mr. Oliver told her. “The person responsible for whatever happened to my wife was no man in an alley. The person who murdered your parents is likely someone you know, someone with connections in the police force here, and we can’t take that chance.”

  “The information is valuable enough to let that girl go to the care of her grandmother,” Edmée said, setting her spoon aside to look at each of them. “Besides, Theodosia Grantley is no pushover. Amelia Grantley isn’t going back to doing whatever she would like and I would guess that neither is whoever involved the girl.”

  “What is the next step?” Mr. Brand asked the table at large. “What have you all been thinking?”

  “I can’t think,” Lisette replied. “I’ve been too tired and too worried.”

  “Sev?” Mr. Brand asked, waiting.

  “I think we need someone who will work for us and who can’t be bought.”

  Mr. Oliver’s head lifted from his biscuit and his gaze narrowed.

  “I can think of one person,” Severine said, “if he’ll come. It’ll take time for him to get here, but if we want to sleep at night or be safe in the back garden or—”

  “One of my boys needs work,” Edmée interrupted. “He’s a good boy.”

  Severine hid a smile as the man had to be around forty.

  “We need a white man too,” Mr. Brand said, then he hesitated with a wince. “I—”

  Edmée waved off the explanation. They needed someone who could go anywhere and slide in unnoticed. That wasn’t going to be Severine’s Austrian fellow and it wasn’t going to be Granny’s son, though he’d do well for working at their house. They needed another set of eyes and hands who couldn’t—wouldn’t—be bought by some man flashing a stack of ready money. Another man to provide defense if someone tried to break in again.

  “I have an idea,” Mr. Oliver said. He glanced up the stairs and then added, “He’s not from New Orleans, but he’s white and he’s Southern and he’s educated, and he owes me quite a favor.”

  Severine nodded and realized in the last few days that she’d gone from being uncertain of them all to being utterly confident she could trust them. They’d stood together and protected one another. It was a price she hadn’t wanted to pay, but she was glad to know where she stood.

  Chapter 2

  “Your Grandmother has arrived,” Edmée said. There was a clear note of disgust in her tone. “I told her to leave, but she refused.”

  Severine looked up, utterly surprised. She turned to Mr. Brand and they both tilted their heads at Edmée, who hadn’t been all that excited to do more than help her daughter.

  “You don’t have to answer the door—” Severine started, trying to placate the woman who had been wallowing in various stages of angry, upset, and worried since her daughter had been injured. Chantae was up and moving again, but she wasn’t back to work. Regardless, no one had expected Edmée to fill in for her daughter except Edmée herself.

  Edmée rolled her eyes and cut off Severine with, “She brought your brother.”

  Severine snapped her mouth shut, but she heard a growl a second later. It took her another long moment to realize she was the one making the noise and not Anubis, who huffed at her. Severine forced herself to silence and then breathed in slowly and tried to gain a sense of control. Her vision had actually turned red with rage, and her hands were fisted so hard that her nails were digging into her palm, but Severine couldn’t quite force herself to relax.

  “My brother.” It was neither a question nor a statement. More it was a furious repetition of the word because she was trying to force her mind to accept that her brother had shown up at her door just as they were starting to get back on their feet.
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  They’d exchanged the quickly placed bars over the windows with custom pieces. They’d added spikes and cemented broken glass to the back wall to make it much more difficult for someone to climb the wall of the garden and enter the house through the weaker exterior. They’d exchanged their reasonable doors for steel-enforced, heavy duty things that could be latched against a regiment of soliders and hold for a while. They’d removed the vine that Mr. Thorne had climbed and then placed rope ladders at every window, so escape would be easier in the future.

  Every lock in the house had been changed. New safes had been added. New weapons had been purchased and still Severine woke with nightmares. She reached blindly for a glass of water and knew she’d need aspirin before the day was out.

  “Perhaps she doesn’t know what happened here,” Mr. Brand tried, but neither of them believed it. Grandmére may not know what happened in this most recent incident, but she well knew what had happened just after Severine’s return. Grandmére had, in fact, chosen Andre over Severine despite Andre being the one who was clearly in the wrong.

  Severine placed her hands on her temple and took a long slow breath in. “I wish that I couldn’t believe she’d brought him here. Or that he’d brought her and thought that I would just let him through the door.”

  “I refused to let them inside,” Edmée said. “They’re on the front porch and angry about it.”