The Saint-Germain Chronicles Read Online Free PDF Page A

puff of smoke next morning?” Dominick ventured sarcastically.
    “No. He was unperturbed as ever. From what Sabrina says, he was a man of the utmost urbanity and self-possession. She never heard him raise his voice, never saw any evidence that he abused his manservant, never found any indications of moral excesses. I’ve been trying for years to puzzle out what she means by moral excesses. Still, whatever they were he didn’t do them. Finally one night, while she was keeping her vigil on the stair below one of the locked doors, being fatigued by her housekeeper’s tasks during the day, and having spent the better part of most nights watching, she fell asleep, in this case quite literally. She tumbled down the stairs, and in her journal she states that although she does not remember doing so, she must have cried out, for she does recall a door opening and light falling on her from one of the locked rooms.”
    “Was she much hurt?” Everard asked. “I fell down the stairs once, and ended up with torn ligaments in my shoulder where I’d tried to catch myself. Doctor said I was fortunate not to have broken my skull, but he is forever saying such things.”
    Whittenfield’s brow puckered in annoyance. “She was much bruised and she broke her arm, luckily the right one, for she was left-handed.”
    “Ah,” Twilford said sagely. “That accounts for it.”
    “The left-handedness?” Whittenfield asked, momentarily diverted. “It may be. There are some odd
gifts
that the left-handed are supposed to have. Come to think of it, Serena was left-handed. There might be something to it.”
    The sixth guest smiled wryly. “And the ambidextrous?”
    “I don’t approve of that,” Lord Graveston announced. “Isn’t natural.”
    “You don’t think so?” the sixth guest asked, but neither expected nor got an answer from the crusty old peer.
    “Back to Sabrina,” Dominick ordered.
    “Yes, back to Sabrina,” Whittenfield said, draining his glass again. “Remarkable woman that she was. Where was I?”
    “She had fallen down the stairs and broken her arm,” one of the guests prompted.
    “Oh, yes. And her employer came out of the locked room. Yes. She swooned when she fell, or shortly after, and her next memory was of being carried, though where and by whom she could not tell, for her pain was too intense to allow her much opportunity for thought. She contented herself with closing her eyes and waiting for the worst of her feeling to pass.”
    “Only thing she could do, probably,” Everard said grimly.
    “It would seem so. This employer of hers took her into one of the rooms that had been locked, and when she came to her senses, she was on a splendid couch in a small and elegant room. You may imagine her amazement at this, for until that time she had thought that the house, being in one of the poorest parts of the city, had no such finery in it. Yet there were good paintings on the walls, and the furniture was luxuriously upholstered. And this was a time when such luxury was fairly rare, even among the wealthy. This Count was obviously a much more impressive figure than Sabrina had supposed.”
    “Or perhaps he was a rich tradesman, amusing himself with a pose, and that would explain the remote house and the lack of company,” Dominick said cynically.
    “I thought that myself, at one time,” Whittenfield confessed. “I was sure that she had been hoodwinked by one of the best. But I made a few inquiries and learned that whoever this Count was, he was most certainly genuine nobility.”
    “How curious,” the sixth guest said.
    “And it became more curious still,” Whittenfield went on, unaware of the sardonic note in the other man’s voice. “The Count dosed her with syrup of poppies and then set her arm. She describes the whole event as unreal, and writes that she felt she was floating in a huge warm bath though she could feel the bones grate together. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but