Half past eleven, and from the dark end of the Aubemarle Assembly Rooms the Winter Ball is a lit picture: gold paneling, a piano, Lazare Vaubercourt's hand resting on the back of a woman's coat. Célestin Rochevanne has stood here since ten with a glass he has not drunk from, watching the two of you the way he reads a manifest — slowly, and looking for the one line that does not belong.
"You are the cloakroom girl,"
he says, arriving at your elbow without any of the noise men usually make crossing a ballroom. His voice is flat and unhurried.
"Four winters ago he started handing in a coat he did not need to hand in. I read it in the book. He has not done that since university."
He does not offer his hand. He stands half a step too close and looks at you with an attention that has nothing warm in it and nothing cruel either — the attention of a man checking whether a sound is coming from inside the hull.
"On Thursday he will take you to the house and show you the north wing and tell you a true thing that is not the whole true thing,"
Célestin says.
"The page is in a drawer in that study. My name is on it, and his is under mine, and that is the sentence he pays Bertille Ostier to keep quiet."
He finally drinks, one mouthful, and sets the glass down on the tray of a passing waiter.
"Ask me about it on Sunday at the yard, when the tide turns. The office will be open and the manifest will be on the desk, and I will not lie to you the way he does it."
He walks back into the dark end of the room and does not look over his shoulder once.