“One hundred percent!”
“Good. So, Eliza asked her uncle George to have a portable desk made for Jane, and to fit a keyhole in its drawer to match Jean Capot’s key.”
“In other words, she hid it in plain sight,” I say.
“Exactly!” Margot turns up her chin in triumph. “Quite a story, huh? Was Giselle’s better?”
“Do you have that key here in your flat? May I see it?”
“Sure.”
While she’s fetching it from a box on the top shelf of her bookcase, I try to calm myself. This is too wild. Coincidences like this don’t occur in nature. There is no way Margot’s key is one of the nine Montevor keys.No way.
Margot sets a small key on the table.
It resembles the other three recovered by the previous key seekers like a pea from the same pod. There is no doubt, I’m looking at key number four.
How can this be?
Our oracle, Princess Felicia, must’ve received a messed-up vision, or maybe she misinterpreted it. She was close, very close, sending me to London and getting me involved in Sandra’s production. But, for the first time, she got the Key to the Key wrong. It wasn’t the blonde Giselle, but the dark-haired Margot. It had always been Margot!
An attention-worthy thought stirs in the back of my mind, and I close my eyes to focus so I can catch it.There!The oracle saw only a part of the Key to the Key’s face, and never her name. It was MESS that deduced it.
“Are you a natural brunette?” I ask Margot.
She blinks at me. “Why do you need to know?”
“Just humor me, please.”
“I’m not,” she admits. “My natural hair is blond. When I landed Caroline’s part, Sandra told me to dye my hair auburn, because that’s how she pictured Caroline Bingley.”
Wow.I gaze at Margot and let my mind process everything and adjust to the realization that I did it. I completed the mission. I found the key.
“Your story is better than Giselle’s,” I say. “It wins with both eyes closed and hands tied behind its back.”
She bangs the table. “I knew it!”
“May I buy this key from you?”
My question seems to give her pause, even though it should be expected from a “collector” as I told her I was.
“It’s not for sale.”
Her reply both surprises me and doesn’t.
“Name your price, Margot.” I take out my checkbook. “And don’t worry, no matter how large the amount, my check will clear within twenty-four hours.”
She stares at me.
“Think big!” I sweep a hand around us. “You’ll be able to swap this minuscule flat on the noisy Blackfriars Road for a townhouse in a much nicer part of your hood, on one of those charming little streets between Roupell and Stamford.”
She says nothing.
“Or, you could buy yourself a villa with ancient olive trees and a pool in Tuscany,” I go on, calling on my imagination to entice her. “Or a nice apartment with a rooftop terrace in Paris, or a loft in New York, or a yacht with a crew so you can sail anywhere you want.”
“I don’t understand…”
OK, I believe I owe her a bit more honesty. “That key of yours, it isn’t just a cool object with a cool story that goes with it. My interest in it is more than a collector’s.”
