Read Chapter 22: The Notary's Confession

The train smelled of stale coffee and damp wool. Edward had taken the first available service from Limoges, not bothering with a hotel, not allowing himself time to reconsider. The notary's office was a narrow five-story building on the Rue de la Paix, its brass plaque gleaming like a dare.

He had not called ahead. Surprise was the only advantage he had left.

The receptionist looked up from her desk with the practiced smile of someone who had already decided he was trouble. Edward did not bother with pleasantries.

"Maître Delacroix. Now."

She blinked. "Monsieur, do you have an appointment—"

"Tell him Edward Hale. The heir of Château de la Roche. He will see me."

The name did something to her face. A flicker, quickly suppressed. She pressed a button on her intercom and murmured something in French too fast for Edward to follow. The response came back after a pause, clipped and resigned.

"Third door on the left," she said, not meeting his eyes.

Delacroix was older than Edward had expected—late sixties, with silver hair oiled flat against his skull and hands that trembled slightly as he set down his pen. His office was neat to the point of obsession: files aligned at perfect right angles, a single fountain pen in its brass holder, a photograph of a woman Edward assumed was his wife turned to face the window rather than the desk.

"Monsieur Hale." Delacroix rose, extending a hand. Edward ignored it. "I must confess, I did not expect—"

"You knew my father."

The hand withdrew. Delacroix lowered himself back into his chair with the careful deliberation of a man buying time. "I handled the transfer of the estate, yes. A legal formality—"

"He wrote to you. Six months before he died. He withdrew a substantial sum from his accounts and you know exactly what it was for."

Delacroix's jaw tightened. He reached for a glass of water on his desk, took a sip, set it down. The tremor in his hands had spread to his lips.

"I don't know what you've been told, Monsieur Hale, but client confidentiality—"

"My father is dead. I am the client now. And I will not leave this office until you tell me what he paid you for."

Silence stretched between them. Outside, Paris traffic hummed its indifferent song. Delacroix's eyes darted to the door, then back to Edward. Something behind them had changed—not guilt, not yet. Fear.

"Your father," Delacroix said slowly, "was not the first Hale to contact me. His father before him did the same. And his father before that."

Edward felt the floor shift beneath him. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying your family has been paying me—paying my predecessors, before me—for over a century." Delacroix's voice dropped to a whisper. "The Hale family has always known about the château. Has always known what it costs to inherit it. And has always arranged for others to pay that cost first."

The words hung in the air like smoke. Edward's hands found the back of a chair, gripping it to steady himself.

"Explain. Now."

Delacroix opened a drawer. His fingers brushed past folders, papers, until they closed on a yellowed envelope. He placed it on the desk between them, nudging it toward Edward with two fingers, as if it might burn him.

"I received this from your father three days before he died. He sent it ahead of his own arrival—he was already on his way to France, you see. He wanted to make sure I understood."

Edward did not touch the envelope. "Understood what?"

"Who the next heir would be." Delacroix swallowed. "He had already written the letter. The one that would persuade the current heir to vacate the château before the year was complete. He paid me to forge the proof of that heir's unsuitability—financial records, medical certificates, a history of instability. Everything necessary to force a renegotiation with the trustees."

"You mean to blackmail him out."

"To *persuade* him out, yes. Legally, it was—"

"Legally?" Edward laughed, a harsh, hollow sound. "You helped my father steal an inheritance from a man who had every right to it."

Delacroix's face twisted. "Your father was not stealing. He was *claiming what was owed.* The Hales were cheated out of this estate in 1789, when the revolutionaries seized the lands of your ancestor—the first lord. His daughter, Marguerite, was the one who—"

"Marguerite." The name landed in Edward's chest like a stone. His father had whispered a different name on his deathbed. "Marie."

Delacroix blinked. "Marie? No, I—the daughter was called Marguerite. She was accused of witchcraft after her father's death, blamed for a blight on the village crops. They burned her at the stake in 1792, and she cursed the château and its heirs in her final breath." He paused. "But your father asked about a Marie as well. He wanted to know if she had any connection to the house."

"He what?"

"Two years before his death, your father came to me with a name. Marie Leclair. He wanted to know if she had worked at the château, if she had any claim to it." Delacroix shook his head. "I told him she was a maid in the 1920s. Nothing more. He seemed—relieved. And troubled. He asked me never to speak of her."

Edward's mind raced. Marie, who had died in the river beneath the château. Marie, whose shoe he still carried wrapped in cloth in his jacket pocket. His father had asked about her years before inheriting. Which meant—

"He knew her," Edward said slowly. "Somehow, he knew her."

Delacroix's mouth opened, then closed. He reached for the water glass again, but his hand knocked it over. Water spread across the desk, soaking a stack of files. He made no move to stop it.

"I have carried this secret for thirty years," he said, his voice barely audible. "The Hales have paid my family for generations, and I have done what they asked because I believed—I believed it was justice, returning what was taken." He looked up at Edward, and his eyes were wet. "But your father was the first one who asked me to help him *hide something*. Not just from the trustees. From history itself."

"What did you help him hide?"

Delacroix opened his mouth. His face went suddenly pale, a gray tinge spreading beneath his skin. His hand flew to his chest. The glass—the fallen, shattered glass—was nothing compared to the sound he made, a choked gasp like water going down a drain.

"Maître?"

Delacroix's eyes were wide, fixed on something behind Edward. He tried to speak, but only air came out. His body convulsed once, twice, and then he slid from his chair, hitting the floor with a heavy, final sound.

Edward was around the desk in two strides. He knelt beside the notary, pressing two fingers to the man's throat. Nothing. He tried CPR, pushing against the older man's chest with desperate, rhythmic force, but he knew it was too late. The heart attack had been instant, massive, unmistakable.

He had been killed—or silenced—before he could finish.

Edward looked up. The office was empty. The window faced a courtyard, closed. No one had entered. No one had touched Delacroix.

But the envelope was gone.

He scrambled to his feet. The yellowed envelope he had not touched was no longer on the desk. The water had soaked through the files, but the envelope had simply vanished.

And the photograph on Delacroix's desk—the woman he had assumed was the notary's wife—was now turned to face the room. The woman in the photograph wore a maid's uniform. She was smiling at Edward with the same patient, placid smile he had seen in the well.

He fled the office without looking back. The receptionist called after him, but her voice faded behind the slam of the stairwell door. He did not stop running until he was three streets away, lungs burning, the cold Paris air sharp in his throat.

In his pocket, the shoe was still there. But folded inside it now, where he knew he had not put it, was a piece of paper.

A letter, typed in his father's distinctive hand, dated three days before his death.

*Edward—if you are reading this, you have done what I could not. Go to the Church of Saint-Michel in the village. Ask for Père Antoine. He has what you need to end this. But be warned: the curse cannot be broken from outside. Only the lord of the château can give up the key willingly—and only then will the house release its dead.*

*I am sorry I could not tell you this myself. I was never meant to be the one who carried it.*

*Your father, who loved you more than he knew how to say.*

Edward read the letter three times, standing on a Paris street corner with the world rushing past. His father's voice echoed in the words, the careful, precise manner of a man who had always been holding something back.

He folded the letter carefully, returned it to his pocket beside the shoe, and looked up at the gray sky.

Eighteen days remained. And for the first time, Edward had a name to fight—not a house, not a curse, but a woman who wore a maid's uniform and had watched his family for over a century.

He walked toward the station, already planning his return to the village.