The Corpse Who Came to Tea: Chapter One

Chapter 1
Of Breakfast and Headlocks

My breath was taken away as the maid gave a final tug, pulling the ribbons on my corset a centimetre or two tighter. As much as I had missed the fine dresses of high society, I could have gone forever and a day without forcing my poor body into one of those fashionable torture devices again.

My ribs stopped their groaning and were content to limit their complaints to a dull ache as the uniformed maid, Marie, tied the strings with a severity that one would not except from a girl as petite and timid as she. Next came my dress, one of the many gifts from my employers. They said that they would take the cost of my wardrobe out of my pay checks, but I knew they never would.

And my wardrobe must have cost more than a handful of francs. This dress Marie was currently helping me into was made of expensive muslin in a colour of green that perfectly matched my eyes. I know M. Giry must have picked it out, as when it comes to anything every remotely refined, M. Delacroix is pitifully in the dark.

I must admit, the messieurs have done quite a lot for me. They have been treating me much better than most other men treat their secretaries. And, much to my surprise, neither of them have made any unwholesome propositions to me. This, as you can imagine, is a huge relief, though I hope this is because they are proper gentlemen and not because I am unattractive…

In any case, I know for a fact that I could be working for worse (and more lecherous) men than MM. Delacroix and Giry. This thought rang in my head as a small form of comfort as I descended the stairs and made my way to the dining room. I heard the voices before I saw the people they were attached to.

“Ow! Let go of me!”

“Not until you take it back!”

“Richard, you are acting like a child! Not the ears, not the ears!”

“Say it! Say rugby isn’t a sport for brainless apes!”

Upon walking into a dining room and seeing two males roughhousing and carrying on in such a manner, you, dear reader, would assume that they are children, either mine or the offspring of my employers. Unfortunately for me, however, the males in question were my employers.

M. Delacroix is a tall man and, as they say in classes lower than my own, is built like a brick shithouse. Therefore it was no challenge for him to keep poor M. Giry, a touch short with a lithe, delicate build, in a firm headlock no matter how much the later struggled.

I imagine that when he was young, Richard Delacroix was quite the ladies’ man. I do not know why he is still not; God knows the years have been fairly good to him. Most of his hair is still brown at forty-four (not to mention all of it is still there), though my pity goes out to the man who mentions the strands of steel grey that are starting to gather at his temples as if they were worshippers. A few creases on his forehead are of little matter as well; they are only prominent when he is deep in thought, and that is a rare occurrence.

His eyes, however, are what one first notices about him. They are blue, though a single adjective with only four letters to it hardly does them justice. They remind me of pots of blue ink in which some careless clerk has dipped his fountain pen in immediately after dipped the same nub in black ink. The pupils, where the pen first touched, is pure black, and the colour grows lighter as the iris runs on as if being diluted by the blue, so that the outsides of the eye colour is almost light.

Almost, but not quite.

Richard Delacroix’s eyes, however, were the least of my worries at the moment.

“Monsieur, with all due respect, must you act like this in the dining room?”

“Yes,” was his atypical reply, tightening his hold on his friend and business partner and completely ignoring his loud protests. “Yes, I must. And good morning to you as well, Mlle. Garnier.”

“Yes, good morning, mademoiselle,” M. Giry said, his greeting lacking the sarcasm M. Delacroix’s had been so bountiful with. Even in a headlock. Gilles Giry was a gentleman.

“Good morning, messieurs. Now, M. Delacroix, could you please let M. Giry go? Your eggs are starting to get cold.”

Giving a sigh as if I were asking him to relieve Atlas of his duties, he loosened his grip on the smaller man and let him fall onto the Persian carpet with a slightly high-pitched yelp.

“Thank you…” M. Giry groaned, hauling himself up from the floor and stumbling to one of the polished wood chairs. His normally fair face was flushed from being held in such an awkward position for so long.

“You’re welcome,” smirked his partner, plopping into his seat with all the grace of a public school student, shoving the better part of a fried egg in his mouth before adding
“Never say I don’t do anything for you.”

M. Giry sighed, and that sigh implied that his suffering with this man had been far too lengthy for his liking. “Do not talk with your mouth full.”

His only reply was conveyed through a rather crude hand gesture.

Because I have wasted so much paper and ink describing the physical characteristics of M. Delacroix, I feel it is only fair that an equal amount of material is sacrificed in order to paint a literary portrait of Gilles Giry. Besides, I hardly wish to give the impression that I have a certain fondness for M. Delacroix, for I am much more at ease with his partner. The former is often noticed first, however, due to his size and demeanour, as well as being first alphabetically, and it is much easier to picture M. Giry in contrast to M. Delacroix.

As I have mentioned before, he is no giant among men, and as he rarely leaves the side of the vertically endowed M. Delacroix, he seems much shorter than he truly is. He and I are fairly close in height, as I have always been considered a bit tall for a woman.

While M. Delacroix is built for full contact sports (he once played rugby and still follows it avidly), M. Giry has the build of a dancer, minus the long legs. He possesses a slim frame which seems to come with a calm sort of grace, and his body is delicate like an ancient stature of a young Greek although he too is four and forty. I must admit, however, that he lacks a dancer’s power and force.

Delicate seems to be an all-inclusive word when it comes to describing M. Giry, actually. If M. Delacroix is handsome, then he is pretty. His skin, aside from the light crow’s feet adoring the corners of his light silvery-grey eyes, is as flawless and as pale as porcelain. His hair is fine, wavy, and a wonderful colour of golden blonde, as of yet untouched by the meddlesome shades of grey that anger M. Delacroix so.

I have heard it said that in the all boys academy M. Giry attended in his youth, he was often cast in the semi-annual plays as the leading lady. If these stories are indeed true, I have no doubt that the audience would not have been able to tell him from a genuine girl. Even now, if he even donned a dress I know that he would be more beautiful than many of the high class women I have seen.

The early morning wrestling event was, unfortunately, not an uncommon one at the breakfast table. Or the lunch table or the supper table. Or anywhere in the house at any time, come to think of it. I often think of M. Delacroix as fire and M. Giry as water, and when in close proximity to one another, water and fire tend to create steam.

That steam, however, was not going to keep breakfast warm, so I sat down at the table to eat my eggs and toast and to drink my tea with all the grace and civility that is expected of a lady, despite the fact that I knew I was in a war zone.

“So, are there any cases today?” M. Delacroix inquired of me, this time minding M. Giry’s scolding and swallowing before speaking. “For God’s sake, say we do because if I’m forced to endure any more of this god awful tedium, I swear I’ll go as mad as a damn hatter.”

“I would say that you are already mad,” commented the other man, his tone dry as he sipped his tea. “And mind your mouth when a lady is present.”

“Do you mean Mlle. Garnier or yourself?” he shot back, trying to spark another fight and possibly a chance to pin him on the rug in a full nelson.

I have failed to mention previously, possibly because I wish I could forget, that my employers have made careers as detectives. Not just any detectives either, they were the most well-known detectives in Paris, if not the best. They may be the best, or M. Giry may be anyway, but as they are the only detectives I have ever met, I have little to compare them to.

“Actually, monsieur,” I piped up before M. Giry could speak and launch breakfast into a battlefield. Though at this point, I think I might have faked a seizure to escape listening to their barking back and forth. “The Vicomte de Saul’s widow sent a message here last night saying that it is most urgent that you see her in her manor at nine o’clock this morning.”

M. Delacroix gave a melodramatic groan, throwing his arm out in a Shakespearean-esque gesture of woe and suffering. This gesture was in fact so violent that he nearly upset the carafe of cream.

The fine china pitcher tottered perilously and was only saved from certain destruction by M. Giry’s quick hands. He barely managed to steady it, and it nearly crashed to the floor. “Richard, really!”

“I am not going within fifty metres of the Countess de Soulless’s manor! That woman is Satan’s bride! And even Satan himself would want a divorce from that harpy after fifteen minutes of listening to her!”

I gave a small sigh, and drank my tea so that I would not be tempted to talk. I had learned over the month and a half I had been under their employment that it was best to simply let M. Giry handle it.

“Richard, she is not as bad as that,” protested M. Giry in his quiet manner. “Besides, you know she is very rich. She is likely to offer us a generous fee. And you were just saying a minute ago how badly you wanted a case to keep you occupied.”

I could very nearly see the wheels in his head turning, mulling over his options. On one hand was a woman that, from M. Delacroix’s descriptions, did not seem like the most pleasant person to be around let alone to work for. M. Delacroix had a short temper, and it was very easy to picture him getting into a shouting match with anyone, especially a countess. And if she truly was as bad as he alluded to, the two of them were likely to go at it like small, spoiled children.

On the other hand, there were three things Richard Delacroix loathes with a fiery passion; salmon, Christians, and boredom. The first two were usually quite easy to deal with. He simply does not eat salmon at home and when at a dinner party he will either feed it to their dog, cat, or potbellied pig when no one was watching or slip it onto his neighbour’s plate. As for Christians, he avoids church as if they gave out free infections of the bubonic plague with every donation to the collection dish, and gets himself out of conversations with the more zealous of the their group by simply spouting out the most pagan inspired topics he could think of on the spot. That usually sent them scurrying off with their proverbial tails between their legs.

Boredom, however, was a force he has no control over whatsoever. And he hates being bored more than being in a roomful of Bible-beating Christians. He likes it slightly better than salmon, but by a very narrow margin, and there is some room left for doubt.

Therefore, now that a case was presenting itself after a long period of inactivity and cases of missing people that can be found simply by looking up their names in hotel legers, he was considering just how stir crazy he would go if he did not take this case.

“It’s probably just a missing pet,” M. Delacroix said finally, taking a large bite of toast and speaking while he chewed it, much to the annoyance of M. Giry. He probably did this simply to annoy his partner, but I cannot be sure. “Her pet shiatsu Arthur ran away or something. We’ll be chasing the little rat all over Paris for some chump change we could have made dancing for coins on the street.”

“Well, you cannot be sure of that if you do not go and see her,” remarked M. Giry. I believe that he too was anxious to be back in the game again, though he enjoyed the periods of rest much more than M. Delacroix. “A visit would not hurt anything.”

“Except my eardrums,” he muttered through a mouthful of toast.

“And besides, even if the fee is not astronomical, we hardly are in dire need of money at the moment. A case simply for the sake of having a case would be a welcome change from lounging around in the manor day after day.” To my knowledge, there is no one who can handle M. Delacroix a quarter as well as M. Giry. And while the former may be able to dominate him physically, when it comes to mind games then it is more often the later who walks away victorious.

M. Delacroix, draining the last dregs of his tea (which he took without cream or sugar), began twisting the gold ring on his index finger around, as he often did while he was thinking. He has worn that ring more years than I know of, and one would think that the soft gold would have begun to wear away, but the lack of the erosion of the ring is yet another piece of evidence supporting his tendency to dive straight into things with little or no premeditation.

“I suppose…” he finally said, still unsure in his choice as well as his words. “That it wouldn’t kill me to go see what that old hag wants. It might injure me, maybe even permanently maim me if I don’t keep my guard up, but it wouldn’t kill me…”

“Exactly!” praised M. Giry. It sounded as if he were rewarding a dog who had performed the correct trick This normally reserved, sometimes cowardly man was treating the great detective Richard Delacroix like a spaniel. “What is the harm in simply going to see what it is she wants? And who knows? Perhaps it is a truly interesting case. She may want us to track down an illegitimate child of her husband’s. Tracking down ones husband’s illegitimate children is gaining popularity among the rich as of late.”

“That’s right… And de Saul did seem the type to spread his seed around. After all, how could stay married to that dog who walks like a women for so long if she was the only one he was bringing his business to? And she would be absolutely furious if she even found the barest trace that he might have fathered more children than their daughter. After all, if he had a bastard son, he might get the inheritance instead of her precious Angelina!”

“It does seem very likely,” I put in, knowing that the ball had been set in motion and nothing I said (or said wrong, to be more specific) could stop it now. “And publicly shunning illegitimate children is terribly fashionable; an Italian duchess, I can’t remember her name, she just denounced seven of her husband’s offspring. Made a party out of it and everything.”

“A hunt for someone who doesn’t want to be found would be difficult…” pondered my employer, but his tone held no grudge at the prospect of hard word; on the contrary, he seemed to relish it. Work was the perfect cure for boredom, and the only thing better than work was hard work.

M. Giry glanced up to the ivory-handled mantle clock sitting daintily on top of the dining room fireplace, which was rarely lit but looked wonderful. “If we are to be there in time, we will have to leave in the next ten minutes. Richard? You are the brains of this partnership, what do you say?”

The very idea of M. Delacroix being the brains in anything almost made me laugh, but years in a private girl’s school had rendered me more than capable of restraining my emotions. M. Giry was worlds smarter than his partner, thought he would never tell M. Delacroix that. He simply did not want to hurt his feelings.

“Yes!” the taller man exclaimed. “Yes, we’ll take this case! Tell Ian to have a carriage hailed, I’ll go upstairs and get my good cloak!” In a rush, he was out the door and probably halfway up the stairs.

“Your good cloak is downstairs!” hollered M. Giry, though he could not keep a smile from his face. He had won yet again. “Mlle. Garnier, could you please go inform Ian that we will be needing a carriage?”

I nodded, rising from my place at the table and going to find the stuffy butler who ran the household to do as M. Delacroix had commanded. We had to leave in ten minutes, but not even five had passed before all three of us were leaving Forty-Two Rue Cheval.

Coming soon: Our heroes (and heroine) reach their new employer's manor and start to wonder if the butler does always do it in the next chapter; The de Soulless Manor.