ascesis_ira (ascesis_ira) wrote in toujoursliberer, @ 2008-05-20 21:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | elisamarie_fournier |
Elisamarie Fournier: Notes in the desk.
Subject: Elisamarie and the notes in the desk
Where: The Embassy
Who: Elisamaire Fournier
Warnings: None
Open to: Léon Belmont.
There was only so much time. The ambassador would be home soon from his dalliances and she had been far too lax, waiting too long to assure she would not be disturbed. It would be easier to explain herself to a servant than to Léon.
Elsiamaire dug through the letters in the bottom draw on the man’s desk, reading them quickly and then discarding them. Nothing of interest there save for gossip about his wife and son. She closed it quickly and turned her attention to the notes on the desk.
Again they were mostly little things of inconveniences – correspondence, permits, and letters but then she found the ledger. It was a thing of meticulous beauty – the wages of the staff, the outgoings and incomings of the household – and she read it aptly.
He was certainly a clever man. If he’d sent copies and reports of this back to France no-one would have thought anything of them. They seemed utterly perfect and in that was the flaw for Elsiamarie was not in France. She knew the household as if it was the back of her hand. It was a simple fraud, elegant in its effortlessness and relied on the incompetence of men when it came to recognizing their own staff. There, hidden in amongst the kitchen staff was the name of a young lady who had left their employ some months before when she had married.
She would have been vetted carefully and would be on record in France, but Monsieur Belmont had never sent her letters of resignation, and every month he collected and pocketed a small bonus atop his own wages. It seemed such a paltry sum for the man to take, but it had stopped him from detection. Elisamarie flicked through the rest of the pages, heart-racing as she noticed more names of fictitious servants or tradesmen.
Always small amounts that would not raise suspicion, and always carefully close to the truth. Oh, she had him now but where did he send the money? She could not account for anything he had been lavish on that he had not used his own money and she had kept an account of that and it had always been well-within his own salary. Did he save it somewhere then?
She pulled the draws of the desk open, looking for a recite or scrap of paper, something that would lead her to the final part of her deliberations when she heard the sound of footsteps outside the door and she slammed the draw quickly.