Chapter 30: Dr. Valmont

Chapter 30: Dr. Valmont

The study door opened.

Two orderlies in white stood in the hall, broad and silent. Between them came a small gray man in a rumpled tweed jacket, a leather bag in one hand, round spectacles perched on a sharp nose. He looked like someone's tired uncle.

"Dr. Valmont," Julian said, reclaiming his smile. "Thank you for coming so promptly. My wife has had a terrible day."

"So I understand." The doctor's voice was dry and unhurried. He crossed the room and set his bag on the desk. "May I see the petition?"

Julian handed it over.

Valmont read it slowly. He turned a page. He turned another. He took off his spectacles, wiped them on his tie, and put them back on.

"Mrs. Hart," he said, "are you hearing voices?"

"No."

"Have you set any fires?"

"Only in self-defense."

"Do you believe your husband is trying to have you committed?"

"I do."

"And is he?"

"Yes."

Valmont nodded gravely and tore the petition in half.

Julian's face went blank. "I beg your pardon?"

"I find the patient perfectly sane," said Dr. Valmont. "Considerably more sane than the petitioner, if I may say." He dropped the halves into the wastebasket. "I was asked to come by a woman named Priya Nair, on behalf of a man I owe a great debt. Augustin Calloway paid for my daughter's education. He asked me one favor in thirty years." He smiled, thin and cold. "This is it."

The orderlies stepped inside and closed the door.

Elara's heart began to pound.

Julian lunged for the desk drawer. One orderly caught his wrist. The other struck him once, neatly, behind the ear. Julian crumpled without a sound.

"Quickly," Valmont said, picking up his bag. "The guards downstairs believe we are conducting a medical examination. We have perhaps four minutes. There is a woman upstairs?"

"Vivienne." Elara was already on her feet. "The attic."

The attic door was locked from outside. One of the orderlies put a shoulder to it and it flew open.

Vivienne sat on the bare floorboards in the dark, her wrists bound with silk cord, a bruise darkening one cheek. She looked up. Her whole body sagged with relief.

"I thought he would leave me to rot."

"Not today." Elara knelt and began working at the knots. "Can you walk?"

"Yes." Vivienne's voice cracked. "Listen. I have to tell you something. He keeps your real notebooks."

Elara's fingers stopped.

"The ones with all your formulas. Every page you ever wrote. He did not burn them." Vivienne swallowed. "They are in a vault in the cellar. A steel door behind the wine racks."

"Then we can get them."

"No. You cannot." Vivienne shook her head. "It does not open with a key. Julian had it built by a Swiss firm. It reads scent. A single fragrance, and nothing else. He programmed it with the one thing he never could replicate."

Elara felt the blood drain from her face.

"Last Light," she whispered.

"The real one. The full formula, with your mother's base. That is why he needed you to write it. He could not open his own safe."

A vial pressed against Elara's ribs, warm through the lining of her coat. A small glass tube, sealed with black wax, twenty-five years old.

For Elara, when she is ready.

She had it. She had carried the key to everything in her pocket since the hospital.

"Doctor," she said. "Can your orderlies get us to the cellar?"

"For Augustin Calloway," said Dr. Valmont, "they would get us to the moon."

Below them, in the house, a phone began to ring.

It rang once. Twice. Three times. In the study, Julian stirred on the carpet and groaned.

Elara went still.

From the lower floor, a man's voice answered, crisp and tight with unease. "Yes, sir? She did what? Wait. Say it again."

A long, dreadful pause.

"Musk ketone," the voice said slowly. "Not ambrette."

The house went completely silent.

Then, upstairs, in the study, something large and furious began to move.

"ELLIE!"

Julian's voice tore through the townhouse, raw and ragged, stripped of every ounce of charm. Doors banged. Boots thundered on the stairs. A dozen men shouted at once.

Vivienne's eyes widened in terror.

"They have found out," she breathed.

Elara closed her fingers around her mother's vial and drew a slow breath.

"Then we run," she said, "and we do not stop."