Read Chapter 9: The Gardener's Tale

The gardener’s cottage sat at the far edge of the orangery, its stone walls swallowed by climbing roses gone wild. Marguerite found old Philippe among his rows of lavender, his hands buried in soil, his back bent like a question mark. He did not look up when she approached, but his ears were sharp—they had to be, for a man who tended the private gardens of the Duchesse de Montfort.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, not turning. “You walk like someone who wants to ask a question she already half-knows the answer to.”

Marguerite stopped beside him. The morning sun slanted low, catching the dew on the thyme. She had slipped away before the household stirred, before the Duchesse’s first cup of chocolate, before anyone could wonder where a lady’s maid might be going at such an hour.

“I need to know about belladonna, Philippe.”

The old man’s hands stilled. He sat back on his heels, wiped his brow with a forearm, and studied her with pale eyes that had seen forty years of Versailles and its shadows.

“That’s a dangerous word to carry through these gardens, child.”

“I’m not a child, and I’m not carrying it lightly.” She crouched to his level, lowering her voice. “A woman bought a large quantity of it. Not from a garden—from a shop in the rue Saint-Honoré. I need to know if you saw her. If anyone in this household—” she hesitated, but pressed on, “—or any household nearby, purchased such a thing.”

Philippe was quiet for a long moment. He plucked a sprig of lavender and rolled it between his fingers, releasing its scent into the air between them.

“I tend the grounds of Montfort,” he said slowly. “But I’ve worked these gardens for thirty years. That means I dig where the great houses overlap. I see things the ladies and gentlemen think are private.”

Marguerite waited.

“Three weeks ago,” Philippe said, “I was trimming the hedge along the eastern wall. You know the one—it borders the Hôtel de Vaudreuil’s garden.”

Her heart quickened. The Comtesse’s residence.

“A servant girl came out to the well,” he continued. “Not one of ours. I know all of ours. She was young, dark-haired, wearing a plain grey dress. The kind a chambermaid wears, not a lady’s companion. She had a pouch tied at her waist, heavy with coins. She kept looking over her shoulder like she expected someone to follow.”

“Did she meet anyone?”

“Not in the garden. But she crossed into the lane that runs behind the orangery, and there she stopped at a cart.” Philippe’s eyes grew distant. “A vendor’s cart. Not one I recognized. The man had a narrow face and hands like a weasel’s. They spoke for some minutes, and then she gave him the pouch and he handed her a small leather case. She tucked it into her bodice and hurried back the way she came.”

“Into the Hôtel de Vaudreuil?”

“I assumed so. But here’s the strange thing, mademoiselle.” He lowered his voice further. “Two days later, I saw the same girl. Only she wasn’t wearing grey. She was in Montfort livery. Coming out of the kitchen door with a basket of herbs.”

The earth seemed to tilt beneath Marguerite.

“Montfort livery? Are you certain?”

“I’m certain of what I saw. The same dark hair, the same nervous look. I thought at first I’d mistaken the first sighting—that she was always one of ours and I’d caught her making some private purchase. But the dress was different, and the way she moved was different. The grey dress had been tight, worn. The livery fit better. She walked like someone who belonged.”

“Do you know her name?”

Philippe shook his head. “She’s not in the main house. Maybe one of the visiting households’ staff. There were extra servants brought in for the Duchess’s autumn ball. Some of them were housed in the eastern wing.”

The eastern wing. Where the minor guests stayed, and their staff with them.

Marguerite pressed her fingers to her temples. A maid. Not a lady. She had assumed the buyer was someone like the Comtesse herself, or one of her confidantes. But a servant—a dark-haired servant who moved between households—

“Thank you, Philippe.” She stood, brushing dirt from her skirt. “You’ve given me more than you know.”

“Mademoiselle.” His voice stopped her. “Be careful with what you’re digging up. Belladonna doesn’t just kill the body. It kills reputations. And in this place, reputation is the only thing keeping most people alive.”

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Dr. Beaumont was waiting for her in the shadows of the chapel colonnade, a spot that offered a clear view of the courtyard while concealing them from it. He had taken to dressing more plainly since their visit to Masson’s shop, his physician’s coat exchanged for a sober brown one that made him look like a minor clerk.

“Well?” he asked as she approached.

Marguerite told him everything. When she finished, Beaumont’s face had gone carefully blank—the expression of a man who had learned to hide his thoughts in the presence of the powerful.

“A maid,” he repeated. “Not the Comtesse herself.”

“So Philippe claims. And she wore both households’ colors—Vaudreuil’s and Montfort’s. That suggests she has access to both.”

“Or that she’s being paid to move between them.” Beaumont’s jaw tightened. “I’ve seen this pattern before, in cases that reached the medical faculty. A poisoner rarely acts alone. The woman who sells the dose is not the woman who administers it. They keep the chain broken so no single link can betray the whole.”

“Masson is one link. We were robbed of his ledger, but we have his name.”

“And Masson may have already warned the Comtesse that we came asking questions.”

Marguerite felt the weight of the signed testimony in her pocket—Beaumont’s account naming the Comtesse as the supplier of the poison that killed her mother. It was the only true evidence she possessed, and it was written by a man the court might not believe.

“You gave me that testimony,” she said slowly. “You put your name and your career behind it. Why?”

Beaumont was quiet. When he spoke, his voice was rougher than she had ever heard it.

“Because I knew your mother.”

Marguerite’s breath caught.

“I was a young physician when she was still alive,” he continued. “I treated her once, for a fever, before she became ill with the thing that killed her. She spoke of you. A daughter with quick eyes and a stubborn heart. She said you would go far, if anyone ever gave you the chance.” He looked at her directly. “When I saw you at court, I thought—there she is. The girl with the stubborn heart.”

“You never told me.”

“What was I to say? That I knew your mother and could not save her? That I watched her sicken and could not find the poison that was draining her life, not until it was too late?” His voice cracked. “I was young. I was arrogant. I assumed it was disease. It was not until years later, when I began to study the methods of the Paris poison rings, that I understood what I had missed.”

Marguerite’s throat tightened. She had carried her mother’s death alone for so long that the weight of it had felt like part of her bones. To know that another had carried it too—that was something she had not prepared for.

“You could have told me from the beginning.”

“Would you have believed me? A stranger who failed her mother coming forward with accusations against a comtesse of the court?” He shook his head. “No. I needed to prove myself first. I needed you to trust that I was not just another man with a story to sell.”

She looked at him—really looked, seeing him for the first time not as an ally or a source of information, but as a man who had been carrying his own guilt for years.

“I believe you,” she said. “And I’ll trust you with what I know.”

She told him about the Duchesse’s brother, about the gambling debt and the Marquis de Brissac, about the plan to kill the Duchesse before the court session. It tumbled out of her, the weight of secret after secret, until she had emptied every pocket of her heart onto the stone floor between them.

Beaumont listened without interruption. When she finished, he let out a long breath.

“Then we have a chain,” he said. “The Marquis to Armand, Armand to the Comtesse, the Comtesse to Masson, and Masson to a maid who wears two households’ colors. But we’re missing one link.”

“The maid’s name.”

“The maid’s name,” he agreed. “And who she truly serves.”

A bell tolled from the chapel tower—the hour of the Duchesse’s morning toilette. Marguerite had to return before the lady of the house noticed her absence.

“Will you help me find her?” she asked.

“I have already chosen my side.” Beaumont touched his breast pocket, where his signed testimony lay folded. “I will see this through with you, Marguerite. To whatever end.”

She nodded, and turned to go.

“One more thing,” he said, and his voice had changed—the physician’s calm giving way to something rawer. “The woman who killed your mother. The Comtesse. She does not know we have her name or Beaumont’s testimony. But if Masson speaks before we act, she will know everything. Including your name.”

Marguerite’s hand went to her mother’s locket, hidden beneath her bodice. The poison inside was still there, a small glass vial whose contents could end a life without a trace.

“Then we act first,” she said.

She walked back toward the palace, the morning sun casting the long shadow of Versailles before her, and she thought of the dark-haired maid who wore two colors.

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