Chapter 46: The Missing Place

 

The photograph showed Theo Calloway pushing through the hospital's side entrance, his pale volunteer jacket creased at the shoulders.

Rhys took one step toward the door.

"Where are you going?" Brandt asked.

"To find my cousin."

"You're not conducting my interview."

"He's been inside the room of a woman someone tried to murder."

"And the camera shows him leaving it, not harming her." Brandt folded his arms. "Let me establish what happened."

Elara touched Rhys's wrist. His pulse beat against her fingertips.

"Call him," she said. "Put it on speaker."

Rhys dialed.

Theo answered on the second ring.

"If Grandfather sent you," Theo said, "tell him I don't have it."

"Have what?" Rhys asked.

Silence.

Then Theo swore softly. "You're at the hospital."

"So were you."

"Meet me in the old chapel. Ten minutes. No Calloway security."

The line went dead.

Brandt was already reaching for his radio.

 

The chapel stood at the end of a disused corridor, its stained-glass windows dark against the morning sky.

Theo waited in the last pew. Without his expensive suits and practiced smirk, he looked younger. His right sleeve was buttoned, but blood had dried along the cuff.

Brandt remained at the door with an officer.

"Show me your arm," he said.

Theo rolled up his sleeve. A shallow cut crossed his forearm, hastily closed with strips of tape.

"Laundry chute," he said. "There's broken metal inside. I dropped my badge trying to get out."

"Why disguise yourself?" Brandt asked.

"Because my family pays for half this hospital. The moment I walked in as Theo Calloway, somebody would call Augustin."

Rhys's voice hardened. "And what would he do?"

"Stop me delivering the letter."

"To Odette," Elara said.

Theo looked at her. "She was supposed to pass it to you after she woke. I wasn't meant to see you."

"Who gave it to you?"

Theo reached inside his coat and produced a crumpled receipt from a luggage locker at Gare du Nord.

"Someone left it there with instructions."

"Someone?" Rhys echoed.

"I never saw his face. But he knew about the knocks."

Rhys gripped the back of the pew.

"Three and two," he said.

Theo nodded. "He wrote that you'd understand."

Elara studied him. Theo had fought Rhys over board votes, property deals, even the seating order at family dinners. She could not imagine him risking arrest for a stranger's letter.

"Why did you agree?"

Theo looked toward the altar.

"Because the envelope contained something for me, too."

He produced a folded photograph. It showed two boys standing beside a garden wall, one older and stiffly dressed, the other holding a wooden horse.

Rhys's breath caught.

"That's me."

"And Gabriel," Elara said.

On the back, in careful adult handwriting, were five words: Ask who erased his name.

Theo turned the photograph over again.

"When I was fourteen, I found a second place setting at Grandfather's birthday dinner. He told the servants to remove it before the guests arrived. I thought it was for a mistress."

"You never asked?" Rhys said.

"Would you have?"

Rhys looked away.

For once, neither cousin seemed eager to win.

Rhys lowered himself into the pew. He kept staring at the empty space between the boys in the picture, as though another face might appear if he waited. Elara sat beside him. His hand found hers without looking.

"I remember the wall," he said. "There were roses climbing over it. Gabriel hated their thorns."

He gave a small, disbelieving laugh.

"I remember that, but not his face."

"You have his face now," Elara said.

Theo turned away, giving them the smallest privacy he could manage.

 

Brandt sealed the photograph and locker receipt in separate evidence sleeves. Theo agreed to provide the original message and have his wound documented. Brandt also requested the chapel's security footage. Elara was grateful for that. A convincing story was still only a story, and Theo had spent years practicing convincing ones at the Calloway boardroom table.

"The police will verify your account," Brandt said. "Until then, don't leave Paris."

Theo nodded, but he kept watching Rhys.

"There's another thing," he said. "I went to House Calloway yesterday. Grandfather's study was locked, but I heard voices inside."

"Whose?" Rhys asked.

"Grandfather's. And a man's voice I didn't recognize."

"That proves nothing," Elara said.

"I know. That's why I stayed near the door." Theo swallowed. "The man said the second supply had arrived. Grandfather asked whether the witness had taken it."

Rhys went pale.

"What did the man say?"

Theo looked straight at him.

"He said, 'Not yet. He refuses to drink anything we give him.'"

Elara felt the room grow cold.

"And then?"

"Grandfather said, 'Then tell Gabriel his mother is waiting.'"