palace of happiness, the birds of paradise, and Pan. It’s a hodgepodge, like a lot of Dumas’s writing. Like Leila’s story, like mine. Like all of ours.
“But this place was built before Leila disappeared from Dumas’s life.”
“The main house, yes. But not all the grounds. Dumas could have easily commissioned this fountain later; even if he was going bankrupt, he could’ve found a sponsor to pay for it or one more creditor. Also, this fountain hasn’t worked in decades. Maybe Dumas made sure it never did because it’s not a fountain. It’s a hiding place. It would be very Dumas to build this in honor of her.”
We set back to work feeling around the stone, checking for tiles or crevices that might give. The large basin’s floor is pretty broken up. We can even pull up chunks of it to expose the hollow underneath. But there’s nothing there but old, moss-covered pipes and bugs. Alexandre sticks his fingers into the mouth of the dragon and then moves to Pan. He also checks the god’s pointy ears. I slide over to investigate the fish carved below the lions.
The fish on the left side turns out to be . . . a fish. The lion medallion above doesn’t yield any secrets, either. I move to the right, stepping around Alexandre, who is now pulling at the dragon’s teeth. I would like to believe I’m the Veronica Mars of art world sleuthing, but right now, I’d say we’re a little more Scooby-Doo, believing that a dragon tooth is going to be the lever that reveals a secret chamber, and I’m getting hungry again, so a Scooby snack sounds good right about now.
I squat in front of the fish on the right—its tongue sticks out, mocking me, because upon close examination, like its mate, it proves to be a carved fish. This is starting to feel ridiculous. I sigh. Alexandre and I exchange a look that’s a cross between a three-year-old who inadvertently popped their birthday balloon and a WTF-are-we-even-doing eye roll.
I stand up face-to-face with the lion on the right panel. That’s when I notice this lion isn’t carved into the stone like the other one. It’s metal. Brass or . . . ? Looks like it was once painted over—a dull gray to match the stone—but the chipped, weathered paint reveals a brownish-green. Copper, maybe?
I run my fingers over the lion’s face and mane, about the size of a dinner plate. It’s not sculpted into the fountain like the rest of the figurines. “Alexandre,” I say under my breath as I trace my fingers over the edges, hitting the groove of a nail—no, a small screw, then another. “Alexandre,” I say louder, “we’ve got to get this lion’s head off.”
He joins me, and I point to the screws. We each begin madly working on one screw at a time. Twisting, pulling. Alexandre gives up and tries simply lifting off the entire lion’s head.
“We need tools,” I say. “We can’t pull out screws and bolts with our fingers. There’s all this rust and—”
Alexandre rushes off before I can finish. “There’s a janitor’s closet!” he yells as he runs up the stairs toward the Chateau.
I take a seat on the edge of the stone basin, resting my chin in my hand. Evening is approaching, and it’s been an exhausting and exhilarating day. I still need to text my parents, and regardless of whether we find anything in this fountain, the entire world is going to know at least part of Leila’s story tomorrow. Secrets will be revealed. But not all of them.
Knowing how excited my parents get over even the tiniest of academic revelations, I can only imagine the uproar this will cause in the worlds of art and literature—in France, in England, with Ottoman scholars. And maybe even with the judges of the Art Institute’s Young Scholar Prize.
The world can be turned upside down by a chance encounter. Or, in my case, one calculated by Alexandre’s Uncle Gérard and carried out by Alexandre. Still. It makes my brain hurt to think about how little control we have over events in our life despite how hard we try to control everything. How hard I try to control everything.
Alexandre races toward me, carrying