Labyrinth (31 page)

Alongside the French windows was a small kitchen window that had been left open at the top. Authie slipped on the latex gloves, threaded his arm through the gap and manipulated the old-fashioned clasp until he slipped the catch. It was stiff and the hinges groaned in complaint as he eased it open. When the gap was wide enough, he squeezed in his fingers and released the lower window.

A smell of olives and sour bread greeted him as he climbed in to the chill pantry. A wire guard protected the cheese board. The shelves contained bottles, jars of pickles, jams and mustard. On the table was a wooden chopping board and a white tea towel covering a few crumbs from an old baguette. Apricots sat in a colander in the sink, nearly overripe, waiting to be washed. Two glasses, upended, stood on the draining board.

Authie walked through into the main room. There was a bureau in the corner on which sat an old electric typewriter. He pressed the on/off button and it buzzed into life. He slipped a piece of paper in and struck a couple of keys. The letters appeared in a sharp black row on the page.

Sliding the machine forward, Authie searched the pigeonholes behind. Jeanne Giraud was an orderly woman and everything was clearly labeled and filed: bills in the first section, personal letters in the second, pension and insurance documents in the third, miscellaneous circulars and flyers in the last.

Nothing caught his interest. He turned his attention to the drawers. The first two yielded the usual stationery: pens, paper clips, envelopes, stamps, and stores of white A4 paper. The bottom drawer was locked. Using a paperknife, Authie carefully and efficiently slid the blade into the space between the drawer and the carcass and popped the lock.

There was only one thing inside, a small padded envelope. Big enough to contain a ring but not the book. It was postmarked Ariege: 18:20, 4 July 2005.

Authie slipped his fingers inside. It was empty except for the delivery receipt confirming that Madame Giraud had signed for the package at eight-twenty. It matched the slip Braissart had given him.

Authie slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Not incontrovertible proof Biau had taken the ring and sent it to his grandmother, but it pointed that way. Authie continued his search for the object itself. Having completed his examination of the ground floor, he went upstairs. The door to the back bedroom was straight ahead. This was clearly Giraud’s room, bright and clean and feminine. He searched the wardrobe and chest of drawers, his expert fingers riffling through the small but good quality clothes and underwear. Everything was neatly folded and ordered and smelled faintly of rose water.

A jewelry box sat on the dressing table in front of the mirror. A couple of brooches, a string of yellowed pearls and a gold bracelet were mixed in with several pairs of earrings and a silver crucifix. Her wedding and engagement rings sat stiffly in the worn red felt, as if they were rarely taken out.

The front bedroom was bare and plain in contrast, empty except for a single bed and a desk under the window with a lamp on it. Authie approved. It reminded him of the austere cells of the abbey.

There were signs of recent occupation. A half-empty glass of water stood on the bedside table, next to a volume of Occitan poetry by Rene Nelli, its paper marked around the edges. Authie moved to the desk. An old-fashioned pen and ink bottle stood on the top, together with several sheets of heavy paper. There was a piece of blotting paper, barely used.

He could hardly believe what he was seeing. Someone had sat at this desk and written a letter to Alice Tanner. The name was perfectly legible.

Authie turned the blotter round and tried to decipher the signature half visible at the bottom. The handwriting was old fashioned and some of the letters merged into others, but he persevered until he had the skeleton of a name.

He folded the coarse paper and slipped it into his breast pocket. As he turned to leave the room, his eye was caught by a scrap of paper on the floor, caught between the door and the doorjamb. Authie picked it up. It was a fragment of a railway ticket, a single, dated today. The destination, Carcassonne, was clear, but the name of the issuing station was missing.

The sound of the bells of Saint-Gimer striking the hour reminded him of how little time he had to get back. With a last look around to check that everything was as he had found it, he left the way he had come.

Twenty minutes later, he was sitting on the balcony of his apartment on the Quai de Paicherou looking back over the river to the medieval Cite. On the table in front of him was a bottle of Chateau Villerambert Moureau and two glasses. On his lap was a file containing the information his secretary had gathered in the past hour on Jeanne Giraud. The other dossier contained the preliminary report from the forensic anthropologist on the bodies found in the cave.

Authie reflected for a moment, then removed several sheets from Giraud’s file. Then he resealed the envelope, poured himself a glass of wine and waited for his visitor to arrive.

CHAPTER 32

All along the high embankment of the Quai de Paicherou, men and women sat on metal benches overlooking the Aude. The sweeping, cultivated lawns of the public gardens were divided up by brightly planted flowerbeds and cultivated paths. The garish purples and yellows and oranges in the children’s playground matched the riotous colors of the flowers in the beds—red-hot pokers, huge lilies, delphiniums and geraniums.

Marie-Cecile cast an appraising eye over Paul Authie’s building. It was what she had expected, a discreet and understated
quartier
that had no need to shout, a mixture of family homes and private apartments. As she watched, a woman with a purple silk scarf and a bright red shirt cycled past on the towpath.

She became aware someone was watching her. Without turning her head, she glanced up to see a man was standing on the top floor balcony, both hands placed on the wrought-iron railings, looking down at the car. Marie-Cecile smiled. She recognized Paul Authie from his photographs. At this distance, it did not look as if they had done him justice.

Her driver rang the bell. She watched Authie turn, then disappear through the balcony doors. By the time her chauffeur was opening the door of the car, Authie was standing in the entrance, ready to greet her.

She had chosen her clothes carefully, a pale brown sleeveless linen dress and matching jacket, formal but not too official. Very simple, very stylish.

Close up, her first impressions were reinforced. Authie was tall and well toned, wearing a casual but well-cut suit and white shirt. His hair was swept back from his forehead, accentuating the fine bones of his pale face. An unnerving gaze. But beneath the urbane exterior, Marie-Cecile sensed the determination of the bare-knuckle fighter.

Ten minutes later, having accepted a glass of wine, she felt she had a sense of the man she was dealing with. Marie-Cecile smiled as she leaned forward and extinguished her cigarette in the heavy glass ashtray.

“
Bon, aux affaires
. Inside would be better, I think.”

Authie stood aside to let her through the glass doors that led into the immaculate but impersonal living room. Pale carpets and lampshades, high-backed chairs around a glass table.

“More wine? Or can I get you something else to drink?”

“Pastis, if you have it.”

“Ice? Water?”

“Ice.”

Marie-Cecile sat in one of the cream leather armchairs angled on either side of a small glass coffee table and watched him mix the drinks. The subtle scent of aniseed filled the room.

Authie handed her the drink, before sitting in the chair opposite.

“Thank you,” she smiled her thanks. “So. Paul. If you don’t mind, I’d like you to run through the precise sequence of events.”

If he was irritated, he didn’t show it. She observed him closely as he talked, but his report was clear and precise, identical in every respect to what he had told her before.

“And the skeletons themselves? They’ve been taken to Toulouse?”

“To the forensic anthropology department at the university, yes.”

“When do you expect to hear anything?”

His response was to pass her the white A4 envelope from the table. Not above a bit of showmanship, she thought.

“Already? That’s very quick work.”

“I called in a favor.”

Marie-Cecile laid it on her lap. “Thank you. I’ll read it later,” she said smoothly. “For now, why don’t you summarize for me. You’ve read it, I presume?”

“It’s only a preliminary report, pending the results of more detailed tests,” he cautioned.

“Understood,” she said, leaning back in the chair.

“The bones are those of a man and a woman. Estimate, somewhere between seven to nine hundred years old. The male skeleton showed indications of unhealed wounds on his pelvis and top of the femur, suggesting the possibility they were inflicted shortly before death. There was evidence of older, healed fractures on his right arm and collarbone.”

-Age?“

“Adult, neither very young nor old. Somewhere between twenty and sixty. They should be able to narrow it down after further tests. The woman the same bracket. The cranial cavity was depressed on one side, which could have been caused either by a blow to the head or by a fall. She had borne at least one child. There was also evidence of a healed fracture in her right foot and an unhealed break in her left ulna, between elbow and wrist.”

“Cause of death?”

“He’s not prepared to commit himself at this early stage, although his opinion is it will be hard to isolate one clearly identifiable diagnosis. Given the sort of time period we’re talking about, it’s probable that both died as a combination of their injuries, loss of blood and, possibly, starvation.”

“He thinks they were still alive when they were entombed in the cave?”

Authie shrugged, although she registered the flicker of interest in his gray eyes. Marie-Cecile took a cigarette from her case and rolled it between her fingers for a moment, while she thought.

“What about the objects found between the bodies?” she said, leaning forward for him to light her cigarette.

“Again, the same caveat, but his estimate is they date from the late twelfth to mid-thirteenth century. The lamp on the altar might be slightly older and is of Arab design, Spain possibly, more likely farther afield. The knife was an ordinary eating knife, for meat and fruit. There is evidence of blood on the blade. Tests will confirm if it’s animal or human. The bag was leather, locally sourced and typical of the Languedoc in that period. No clues as to what, if anything, it contained, although there were particles of metal in the lining and slight traces of sheepskin in the stitching.”

Marie-Cecile kept her voice as steady as she could. “What else?”

“The woman who discovered the cave, Dr. Tanner, found a large copper and silver buckle. It was trapped beneath the boulder outside the entrance to the cave. He’s also dated this to the same sort of period and believes it to be local or possibly Aragonese. There’s a photograph of it in the envelope.”

Marie-Cecile waved her hand. “I’m not interested in a buckle, Paul,” she said. She breathed a spiral of smoke into the air. “I do, however, want to know why you haven’t found the book.”

She saw his long fingers wind round the arms of his chair.

“We have no evidence the book was actually there,” he said calmly. “Although the leather pouch is certainly big enough to have contained a book of the size you seek.”

“And what about the ring? Do you doubt that was there also?”

Again, he did not let her provoke him. “On the contrary, I am certain :he ring was there.”

“Well?”

“It was there, but some time between the cave being discovered and my arrival with the police, it was taken.”

“But you have no evidence of that either,” she said, her voice sharp now. Unless I am mistaken, you do not have the ring either.“

Marie-Cecile watched as Authie produced a piece of paper from his pocket. “Dr. Tanner was most insistent, so much so that she drew this,” he said, handing it over. “It’s crude, I admit, but it’s a pretty good match for the description you gave me. Don’t you think?”

She took the sketch from his hand. The size, shape and proportion were not identical, but close enough to the diagram of the labyrinth ring Marie-Cecile had locked in her safe in Chartres. No one outside the de l’Oradore family had seen it for eight hundred years. It had to be genuine.

“Quite the artist,” she murmured. “Was this the only drawing she did?”

His gray eyes looked clear into hers without faltering. “There are others, but this was the only one worth bothering about.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that,” she said quietly.

“I’m afraid, Madame de l’Oradore, I took only this. The others seemed irrelevant.” Authie shrugged apologetically. “Besides, Inspector Noubel, the investigation officer, was already suspicious of my interest.”

“Next time…” she started to say, then stopped. She extinguished her cigarette, grinding it so hard that tobacco spilled out in a fan. “You searched Dr. Tanner’s belongings, I presume?”

He nodded. “The ring wasn’t there.”

“It’s small. She could easily have hidden it somewhere.”

“Technically,” he agreed, “although I don’t think she did. If she stole it, why would she mention it in the first place? Also”—he leaned over and tapped the paper—“if she had got the original in her possession, why bother to make a record of it?”

Marie-Cecile looked at the drawing. “It’s surprisingly accurate for something done from memory.” I agree.

“Where is she now?”

“Here. In Carcassonne. It appears she has a meeting with a solicitor tomorrow.”

“Concerning?”

He shrugged. “A legacy, something of that sort. She’s due to fly home on Sunday.”

The doubts Marie-Cecile had from the moment she’d heard about the find yesterday were intensifying the more he told her. Something didn’t add up.

“How did Dr. Tanner get her place on the team?” she said. “Was she recommended?”

Authie looked surprised. “Dr. Tanner wasn’t actually a member of the team,” he said lightly. “I’m sure I mentioned this.”

Her lips tightened. “You did not.”

“I’m sorry,” he said smoothly. “I was sure I had. Dr. Tanner’s a volunteer. Since most excavations rely on unpaid help, when a request was put in for her to join the team for this week, there seemed no reason to turn it down.”

“Who requested it?”

“Shelagh O’Donnell, I believe,” he said blandly, “the number two on the site.”

“She’s a friend of Dr. O’Donnell?” she said, struggling to conceal her surprise.

“Obviously, it crossed my mind therefore that Dr. Tanner might have passed the ring to her. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to interview her on Monday and now she appears to have disappeared.”

“She’s what?” she said sharply. “When? Who knows about this?”

“O’Donnell was at the site house last night. She took a phone call, then went out shortly afterwards. No one’s seen her since.”

Marie-Cecile lit another cigarette to steady her nerves. “Why was I not told about this before?”

“I didn’t realize you would be interested in something so peripheral to your main concerns. I apologize.”

“Have the police been informed?”

“Not yet. Dr. Brayling, the site director, has given everyone a few days’ leave. He thinks it’s possible—probable—that O’Donnell has simply taken off without bothering to let anyone know.”

“I do not want the police involved,” she said forcefully. “It would be extremely regrettable.”

“I quite agree, Madame de l’Oradore. Dr. Brayling is not a fool. If he believes O’Donnell has taken something from the site, then it’s hardly in his best interests to involve the authorities.”

“Do you think O’Donnell stole the ring?”

Authie evaded the question. “I think we should find her.”

“That’s not what I asked. And the book? Do you think she might have taken that too?”

Authie met her gaze straight on. “As I said, I remain open-minded about whether or not the book was ever there.” He paused.
“If
it was, I’m not convinced she could have got it away from the site without being seen. The ring’s a different matter.”

“Well,
someone
did,” she snapped in frustration.

“As I said, if it was there at all.”

Marie-Cecile sprang to her feet, taking him by surprise, and walked round the table until she was standing in front of him. For the first time, she saw a flash of alarm in his gray eyes. She bent down and pressed her hand flat against his chest.

“I can feel your heart beating,” she said softly. “Beating very hard. Now why might that be, Paul?” Holding his gaze, she pressed him back against the chair. “I don’t tolerate mistakes. And I don’t like not being kept informed.” Their eyes locked. “You understand me?”

Authie did not answer. She had not intended him to.

“All you had to do was deliver to me the objects you promised. That’s what I’m paying you for. So, find the English girl, deal with Noubel if necessary, the rest is your business. I don’t want to hear about it.”

“If I’ve done anything to give you the impression that—”

She put her fingers to his lips and felt him flinch at the physical contact.

“I don’t want to hear it.”

She released the pressure and stepped away from him, back out onto the balcony. The evening had stripped the color from everything, leaving the buildings and bridges silhouetted against the darkening sky.

A moment later, Authie came and stood next to her.

“I don’t doubt you are doing your best, Paul,” she said quietly. He put his hands next to hers on the railings and, for a second, their fingers touched. “There are other members of the
Noublesso Veritables
in Carcassonne, of course, who would serve just as well. However, given the extent of your involvement so far…”

She left the sentence hanging. From the stiffening of his shoulders and back, she knew the warning shot had hit home. She raised her hand to attract her driver, who was waiting below.

“I would like to visit the Pic de Soularac myself.”

“You’re staying in Carcassonne?”

She hid her smile. “For a few days, yes.”

“I was under the impression you didn’t wish to enter the chamber until the night of the ceremony—”

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said, turning to face him. “Now I’m here.” She smiled. “I have things to attend to, so if you could pick me up at one o’clock, that will give me time to read your report. I’m at the Hotel de la Cite.”

Marie-Cecile walked back inside, picked up the envelope and put it in her handbag.

“
Bien. A demain
, Paul. Sleep well.”

Aware of his eyes on her back watching her walk down the stairs, Marie-Cecile could only admire his self-control. But as she got into the car, she had the satisfaction of hearing a glass hit the wall and shatter in Authie’s apartment two floors above.

The lounge of the hotel was thick with cigar smoke. After-dinner drinkers in summer suits or evening dresses sat enfolded in the deep leather armchairs and the discreet shadows of the high-backed mahogany settles.

Marie-Cecile walked slowly up the sweeping staircase. Black and white photographs looked down on her, reminders of the hotel’s celebrated turn-of-the-century past.

When she reached her room, she changed out of her clothes into her bathrobe. As always, last thing at night, she looked at herself in the mirror, dispassionately, as if scrutinizing a work of art. Translucent skin, high cheekbones, the distinctive de l’Oradore profile.

Marie-Cecile smoothed her fingers over her face and neck. She would not allow her beauty to fade with the passing of the years. If all went well, then she would succeed in doing what her grandfather had dreamed of. She would cheat old age. Cheat death.

She frowned. But only if the book and ring could be found. With a renewed sense of purpose, Marie-Cecile lit a cigarette and wandered over to the window, looking out over the gardens while she waited for her call to be answered. Murmured late-night conversations floated up to her from the terrace. Beyond the battlements of the Cite walls, beyond the river, the lights of the Basse Ville sparkled like cheap white and orange Christmas decorations.

“Francois-Baptiste?
C’est moi.
Has anyone called in the past twenty-four hours on my private number?” She listened. “No? Has she called you?” She waited. “I’ve just been told of a problem this end.” She drummed her fingers on her arm while he talked. “Have there been any developments with the other matter?”

The reply was not what she wanted to hear. “National or just local?” A pause. “Keep me in touch. Call me if anything else comes up, otherwise I’ll be back Thursday night.”

After she’d hung up, Marie-Cecile allowed her thoughts to dwell on the other man in her house. Will was sweet enough, keen to please, but the relationship had run its course. He was too demanding and his adolescent jealousies were starting to get on her nerves. He was always asking questions. She needed no complications at the moment.

Besides, they needed the house to themselves.

She turned on the reading light and got out the report Authie had given her on the skeletons, as well as a dossier on Authie himself, which had been compiled when he’d been put forward for election to the
Noublesso Veritable
two years ago, from her suitcase.

She skimmed the document, although she knew it well enough. There were a couple of accusations of sexual assault when he was a student. Both women had been paid off, she assumed, since no charges were ever brought. There had been allegations of an attack on an Algerian woman during a pro-Islamic rally, although again no charge had been made; evidence of involvement in an anti-Semitic publication at university, as well as allegations of sexual and physical abuse from his ex-wife, which had also come to nothing.

More significant were the regular and increasingly substantial donations to the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. In the past couple of years his involvement with fundamentalist groups opposed to Vatican II and the modernizing of the Catholic Church had also been growing.

To Marie-Cecile’s mind, such evidence of hardline religious commitment sat uneasily with membership of the
Noublesso.
Authie had pledged his service to the organization and he had been useful so far. He had arranged the excavation at the Pic de Soularac efficiently and everything appeared to be in hand for wrapping things up just as quickly. The warning of the breach of security in Chartres had come via one of his contacts. His intelligence was always clear and reliable.

Nonetheless, Marie-Cecile didn’t trust him. He was too ambitious. Set against his successes were the failures of the past forty-eight hours. She did not believe he’d be so stupid as to take either the ring or the book himself, but Authie did not seem the sort of a man to let things disappear from under his nose.

She hesitated, then made a second call.

“I have a job for you. I am interested in a book, approximately twenty centimeters high by ten centimeters wide, leather over board, held together by leather ties. Also, a man’s stone ring, flat face, a thin line around the middle and an engraving on the underside. There might even be a small token, about the size of a ten franc piece, with it.” She paused. “Carcassonne. A flat on the Quai de Paicherou and an office in the rue de Verdun. Both belong to Paul Authie.”

CHAPTER 33

Alice’s hotel was immediately opposite the main gates into the medieval Cite, set in pretty gardens, sunk down out of sight of the road.

She was shown to a comfortable room on the first floor. Alice flung open the windows to let the world in. Smells of meat cooking, garlic and vanilla, cigar smoke floated into the room.

She unpacked quickly and showered, then called Shelagh again, more out of habit than expectation. Still no answer. She shrugged. Nobody could accuse her of not trying.

Armed with the guidebook shed bought in a service station on the journey from Toulouse, Alice left the hotel and crossed the road toward the Cite. Steep concrete steps led up into a small park bordered on two sides by bushes and tall evergreens and plane trees. A brightly lit nineteenth-century carousel dominated the far end of the gardens, its garish fin-de-siecle ornamentation out of place in the shadow of the sandstone medieval fortifications. Covered with a brown and white striped canopy, with a painted frieze of knights and ladies and white horses around the rim, everything was pink and gold—charging horses, spinning teacups, fairy-tale carriages. Even the ticket kiosk looked like a booth at a fairground. A bell rang and children squealed as the carousel began to turn, slowly belching out its antique mechanical song.

Beyond the carousel, Alice could see the gray heads and shoulders of tombs and gravestones behind the walls of the cemetery, a row of cypress and yew protecting the sleepers from casual glances. To the right of the gates, a group of men played
petanque.

For a moment, she stood still, facing the entrance to the Cite head on, preparing herself to go in. To her right was a stone pillar from which an ugly stone gargoyle stared out, its flat face uncompromising and blunt. It looked newly restored.

SUM CARCAS
. I am Carcas.

Dame Carcas, the Saracen queen and wife of King Balaack, after whom Carcassonne was said to be named after resisting a five-year siege by Charlemagne.

Alice walked over the covered drawbridge, which was squat and confined and fashioned from stone, chain and wood. The boards creaked and clattered beneath her feet. There was no water in the moat beneath her, only grass speckled with wild flowers.

It led into the
Lices,
a dusty, wide area between the outer and inner ring of fortifications. To left and right, children were climbing on the walls and staging mock battles with plastic swords. Straight ahead was the Porte Narbonnaise. As she passed beneath the high, narrow arch, Alice raised her eyes. A benign stone statue of the Virgin Mary looked down at her.

The moment Alice passed through the gates all sense of space vanished. The rue Cros-Mayrevieille, the cobbled main street, was very narrow and sloped upwards. The buildings were packed so closely together that a person could lean out of the top story of one house and join hands with someone on the opposite side.

The high buildings trapped the noise. Different languages, shouting, laughing, gesturing as a car crawled by with barely a hand’s width to spare on either side. Shops leaped out at her, selling postcards, guidebooks, a mannequin in the stocks advertising a museum of inquisitional instruments of torture, soaps and cushions and tableware, everywhere replica swords and shields. Twisted wrought-iron brackets stuck out from the wall with wooden signs attached to them:
I’Eperon Medieval,
the Medieval Spur, sold replica swords and porcelain dolls;
A Saint Louis
sold soap, souvenirs and tableware.

Alice let her feet guide her to the main square, Place Marcou. It was small and filled with restaurants and clipped plane trees. Their spreading branches, wide like entwined and sheltering hands above the tables and chairs, competed with the brightly colored awnings. The names of the individual cafes were printed on the top—Le Marcou, Le Trouvere, Le Menestrel.

Alice strolled over the cobbles and out the other side, finding herself back at the junction of the rue Cros-Mayrevieille and the Place du Chateau, where a triangle of shops,
creperies
and restaurants surrounded a stone obelisk about two and one-half meters high, topped by a bust of the nineteenth-century historian Jean-Pierre Cros-Mayrevieille. Around the bottom was a bronze frieze of the fortifications.

She walked forward until she was standing in front of a sweeping semicircular wall that protected the Chateau Comtal. Behind the imposing locked gates were the turrets and battlements of the castle.
A fortress within a fortress.