The Conservatory Was Dry
Chapter 02 - The Conservatory Was Dry
Silas led them to the security room beneath the east staircase. It had no windows, only a wall of monitors, a desk crowded with cables, and a clock that ran three minutes fast. Nora had passed the door dozens of times without being allowed inside. Now she stood beside Dante while Silas pulled up the entrance-hall footage.
The screen showed Nora struggling with the mirror. Celeste stood behind her, speaking with one hand lifted. The audio was muted, but the sequence was clear: Celeste had pointed to the frame, Nora had shaken her head, and Celeste had seized her wrist. Nora’s grip slipped. The mirror lurched, and Dante entered the frame just in time to catch it.
“Go back,” Dante said.
Silas rewound the recording.
On the second viewing, Nora saw the detail she had missed while fighting the weight. Celeste had looked up at the camera before she grabbed her. Not at the mirror. Not at Nora. At the camera.
“She knew she was being recorded,” Nora said.
Silas’s hand stopped on the console. “The camera was supposed to be offline for maintenance.”
“Since when?” Dante asked.
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“Then why is there footage?”
Silas hesitated. “The system may have been recording locally.”
Dante looked at him. “You’ve managed my security for fifteen years. Don’t give me may.”
Silas lowered his eyes and began searching the logs. Nora watched him, aware that every person in the room had a reason to keep something hidden. Even the smallest gestures seemed to carry a second meaning: Silas checking the corridor before he spoke, Dante placing the evidence pouch on the table rather than in a drawer, Celeste keeping her back to the camera as she left. The house was full of people trained to notice danger, yet a woman had been hurt in the middle of the hall while everyone waited for someone more important to decide whether it mattered.
Nora had promised herself she would not become another frightened witness. Her mother had spent years teaching her that silence could protect you for a night and endanger you for a lifetime. The trouble was that speaking up did not make you safe, either. It only made the danger easier to name. Dante had power, Silas had access, and she had a name that did not appear on the staff roster the way it should have. The difference was that she had very little left to lose.
Dante turned to her. “Tell me exactly what happened before I came in.”
Nora drew a breath. “Miss Vale asked me to clean the mirror. She said there were fingerprints on the frame. When I moved it away from the wall, I saw a black wire tucked beneath the backing. I thought it was part of a light or an alarm, but it led to a small device. I tried to pull it loose.”
“And she stopped you?”
“She said I was damaging an antique. Then she grabbed my arm. When I wouldn’t let go, she told me I’d regret touching anything that belonged to her.”
Celeste’s voice came from the doorway. “That is a remarkably imaginative version of events.”
She had changed nothing about her appearance except to remove her earrings. Without them, she looked younger and more vulnerable, a detail Nora suspected was deliberate. Celeste crossed her arms and glanced at the monitor as if the recording were an inconvenience rather than evidence.
“I asked her to dust the frame,” she said. “She found some piece of junk and started pulling at the backing. I stopped her before she ruined a family heirloom. That is all.”
“You said she slipped in the conservatory,” Dante replied.
“I was trying to explain why she was injured.”
“The conservatory floor was dry.”
“Then perhaps she fell somewhere else.”
“You’re changing the story.”
“I’m trying to have a conversation with a man who has decided his housekeeper is a witness in a spy novel.”
Nora felt the old reflex to apologize rise in her chest. She pushed it down. “I didn’t ask to be involved.”
Celeste turned to her. “No, you simply appeared in this house with a false reference, a strange interest in locked rooms, and a talent for making people feel sorry for you.”
Dante’s head turned sharply. “What did you say?”
Celeste realized she had said too much. For the first time, the smooth confidence slipped from her face.
Nora’s stomach tightened. Her employment papers had been arranged through a small agency outside the city. She had provided a reference from a woman who had once managed a hotel, not a former employer from the Moretti household. She had been careful, but not perfect. If Celeste had discovered the truth, it meant someone had been checking her background.
“Silas,” Dante said, “get me the original device. I want it examined by someone outside our security team.”
Silas nodded and placed the tiny recorder in a padded evidence pouch. As he sealed it, the red light blinked twice, then went dark.
Nora leaned closer. “It was blinking when I found it.”
“Could be a power cycle,” Silas said quickly.
“Or it has transmitted a signal,” Dante replied.
He took a second look at the black housing. A small symbol had been etched into the underside: a narrow crescent crossed by three short lines. Nora had seen it before, though she could not remember where. It was on the corner of a document she had found in her father’s old papers, a company stamp half rubbed away by smoke.
Before she could speak, Silas’s console chimed.
“Sir, the camera logs show an access code was used to disable the hall camera yesterday. It was your master code.”
Dante’s face hardened. “Who else has that code?”
“Only you, me, and Mr. Enzo.”
Enzo Moretti was Dante’s uncle, the family’s senior adviser and the man who had taught him how to negotiate before he taught him how to drive. He had spent decades claiming he wanted Dante to be better than the generation before him. Nora had heard his name spoken with respect by every employee in the house.
Dante turned to Silas. “Where is my uncle?”
“His driver brought him to the west gate twenty minutes ago. He said he was leaving for a meeting.”
“Did he sign out?”
“No.”
The room seemed to contract around them.
Dante took the evidence pouch from Silas. “Find the car. Quietly. And from this moment on, no one enters or leaves this house without my approval.”
Celeste gave a brittle laugh. “You can’t seriously suspect Enzo.”
“I haven’t decided whom I suspect.”
Nora stared at the crescent symbol beneath the plastic. She had seen it on a page her father had hidden inside the lining of an old suitcase. The page had contained a list of company names and a handwritten warning: If the crescent appears, do not trust the room you are standing in.
She had never understood what he meant.
May you like
Now, as Dante ordered the room searched for other devices, Nora realized the mirror had not been the first thing someone had planted in the house.
And it might not be the most dangerous.
