Sepulchre

by Kate Mosse

  Léonie left the library, taking the purloined volume with her.

  CHAPTER 37

  PARIS

  Victor Constant folded the newspaper and placed it on the seat beside him.

  Carmen Murder - Police Seek Son!

  His eyes narrowed with contempt. ‘The Carmen Murder’ . It offended him, after all the help he had given them, that the gentlemen of the press were so predictable. No two women could be less alike than Marguerite Vernier and Bizet’s impetuous, flawed heroine, in terms of character or temperament, but the opera had seeped into French public consciousness to a distressing degree. All it took for the comparison to be made was a soldier and a knife, and the story was written.

  In the space of hours, Du Pont had gone from prime suspect to innocent victim in the columns of the newspapers. At first, the fact that the Prefect had not charged him with the murder aroused their interest and made them cast their literary nets a little wider. Now - thanks in no small part to Constant’s own endeavours - the reporters had Anatole Vernier in their sights. He was not yet quite a suspect, but the fact that his whereabouts were unknown was seen as suspicious. It was said the police were unable to locate either Vernier or his sister to inform them of the tragedy. Would an innocent man be so hard to find?

  Indeed, the more Inspector Thouron denied that Vernier himself was a suspect, the more virulent grew the rumours. Vernier’s absence from Paris became, de facto, a presence in the apartment on the night of the murder.

  It served Constant well that journalists were lazy. Present them with a tale, neatly wrapped like a parcel, and they would offer it, with little modification, to their readers. The suggestion that they might independently verify the information they had been given or satisfy themselves as to the veracity of the facts they had been fed did not occur.

  Despite his hatred for Vernier, Constant was forced to admit that the fool had been clever. Even Constant, with his deep pockets and web of spies and informants, working all night, had at first been unable to discover where Vernier and his sister had gone.

  He threw an uninterested glance out of the window as the Marseille Express rattled south through the Parisian suburbs. Constant rarely ventured beyond the banlieue. He disliked the views, the indiscriminate light of the sun or dull grey skies that bleached everything under their broad and ugly gaze. He disliked wild nature. He preferred to conduct his business in the twilight of artificially lit streets, in the semi-darkness of concealed rooms lighted in the old-fashioned way with tallow and wax. He despised fresh air and open spaces. His milieu was the perfumed corridors of theatres filled by girls with feathers and fans, private rooms in private clubs.

  In the end, he had unravelled the maze of confusion Vernier had attempted to build around their departure. The neighbours, encouraged by a sou or two, claimed to know nothing definite, but had overheard, remembered or absorbed sufficient fragments of information. Certainly enough for Constant to build a jigsaw of the day of the Verniers’ flight from Paris. The patron of Le Petit Chablisien, a restaurant close to the Vernier apartment in rue de Berlin, had admitted to overhearing a discussion about the medieval city of Carcassonne.

  With a purse full of coins, Constant’s manservant had easily tracked down the cabman who had transported them to Saint-Lazare on the Friday morning, then the second fiacre that had taken them thence to the Gare Montparnasse, something he knew the gendarmes of the 8th arrondissement had thus far failed to discover.

  It was not much, but it was enough to convince Constant it was worth the cost of the train ticket south. If the Verniers were staying in Carcassonne, that would be easier. With the whore, or without her. He did not know what name she lived under now, only that the name by which he had known her was carved upon the tombstone in the Cimetière de Montmartre. A dead end.

  Constant would arrive at Marseille later that day. Tomorrow he would take the coast train from Marseille to Carcassonne and there would install himself, like a spider in the centre of a web, waiting for his prey to come within range.

  Sooner or later, people would talk. They always did. Whispers, rumours. The Vernier girl was striking. Amongst the black-haired, coal-eyed, dark-skinned people of the Midi, such white skin, such copper curls would be remembered.

  It might take time, but he would find them.

  Constant took Vernier’s timepiece from his pocket in his gloved hands. A gold casing with a platinum monogram, it was a distinguished and distinctive watch. It gave him pleasure simply to possess it, to have taken something of Vernier’s.

  Tit for tat.

  His expression hardened as he pictured her smiling at Vernier, as once she had smiled for him. A sudden image flashed into his tortured mind of her uncovered before his rival’s gaze. And he could not bear it.

  To distract himself, Constant reached inside the leather travelling valise for something to help the journey to pass. His hand brushed over the knife, concealed in a thick leather sheath, which had cut the life from Marguerite Vernier. He pulled out The Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm and Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, but found neither to his taste.

  He chose again. This time he took out Chiromancy by Robert Fludd.

  Another souvenir. It suited his mood perfectly.

  CHAPTER 38

  RENNES-LES-BAINS

  Léonie had barely departed the library when she was accosted by the maid, Marieta, in the hall. She thrust the book behind her back.

  ‘Madomaisèla, your brother has sent me to inform you that he is planning a visit to Rennes-les-Bains this morning and would be pleased if you would accompany him.’

  Léonie hesitated, but for only for a moment. She was excited at her plans to explore the Domaine in search of the sepulchre. But such an expedition could wait. A trip to town with Anatole could not.

  ‘Please give my brother my compliments. Tell him I shall be delighted.’

  ‘Very good, Madomaisèla. The carriage is ordered for ten thirty.’

  Taking the stairs two by two, Léonie bounded up to her chamber and cast her eyes around for some secret place to conceal Les Tarots, not wishing to provoke interest on the part of the servants by leaving such a volume in plain view. Her eyes fell upon her workbox. Quickly she opened up the mother-of-pearl lid and concealed the book deep within the reels of cotton and thread, the jumble of scraps of material, thimbles, pins and needlebooks.

  There was no sign of Anatole when Léonie descended to the hall.

  She wandered out to the terrace at the back of the property and stood with her hands upon the balustrade, looking out over the lawns. Broad slatted shafts of sunlight, filtered through a veil of cloud, made it difficult to see clearly in the abrupt contrast between light and shade. Léonie took a deep breath, drawing in the fresh, clean, unpolluted air. It was so unlike Paris, with its stink of soot and hot iron and the perpetual mantle of smog.

  The gardener and his boy were working on the beds below, strapping the smaller bushes and trees to wooden stakes. A wooden barrow stood filled with raked red autumn leaves the colour of wine. The older man wore a short brown jacket and a cap, with a red handkerchief tied at his neck. The boy, no more than eleven or twelve, was bare-headed and wearing a collarless shirt.

  Léonie descended the steps. The gardener snatched his cap from his head as she approached, brown felt the colour of autumn earth, and clutched it between grimed fingers.

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Bonjorn, Madomaisèla,’ he mumbled.

  ‘A beautiful day.’

  ‘Storm’s coming.’

  Léonie looked doubtfully up at the perfectly blue sky, flecked with floating islands of cloud. ‘It seems so still. Settled. ’

  ‘Biding its time.’

  He leaned towards her, revealing a mouth of blackened, crooked teeth like a row of old gravestones.

  ‘The devil’s work, the storm. All the old signs. Music over the lake last evening.’

  His breath was peaty and sour and Léonie instinctively pulled bac
k, a little affected, despite herself, by the old man’s sincerity.

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ she said sharply.

  The gardener crossed himself. ‘Hereabouts the devil walks. Each time he comes out of the Lac de Barrenc, he brings with him violent storms chasing one another across the country. The late master sent men to fill in the lake, but the devil came and told them plain that if they continued their work, Rennes-les-Bains would be drowned.’

  ‘These are just silly superstitions. I cannot—’

  ‘A bargain was struck, not for me to say why or how, but the fact of the matter was the workmen withdrew. Lake was let be. But now, mas ara, the natural order again is overturned. All the signs are there. The devil will come to claim his due.’

  ‘Natural order?’ she heard herself whisper. ‘What can you mean?’

  ‘Twenty-one years ago,’ he muttered. ‘Late master raised the devil. Music comes when the ghosts are walking out of the tomb. Not for me to say the why and how of it. The priest came.’

  She frowned. ‘The priest? Which priest?’

  ‘Léonie!’

  With a mixture of guilt and relief, she spun round at the sound of her brother’s voice. Anatole was standing waving at her from the terrace.

  ‘The gig is here,’ he shouted.

  ‘Keep your soul close, Madomaisèla,’ said the gardener, under his breath. ‘When storm come, the spirits are released to walk.’

  She worked the dates out in her head. Twenty-one years ago, he had said, which would make it 1870. She shivered. In her mind’s eye, she saw the same date, the year of publication, printed upon the front page of Les Tarots.

  The spirits are released to walk.

  The gardener’s words chimed so precisely with what she had read this morning. Léonie opened her mouth to ask another question, but the old man had already pushed his hat back on his head and returned to his digging. She hesitated a moment longer, then hitched up her skirts and ran lightly up the steps to where her brother stood waiting.

  It was intriguing, yes. Disquieting also. But she would not permit anything to spoil her time with Anatole.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, leaning forward to plant a kiss on her flushed cheek, and looking her up and down. ‘Perhaps a little more modesty is called for?’

  Léonie glanced down at her stockings, clearly visible and flecked with touches of mud from the path. She grinned as she smoothed down her skirts with her hands.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘Quite respectable!’

  Anatole shook his head, half frustrated, half amused.

  They walked together through the house and climbed into the carriage.

  ‘Have you been sewing already?’ he asked, noticing a piece of red cotton thread stuck to her sleeve. ‘How very industrious!’

  Léonie picked off the strand and let it drop to the ground. ‘I was searching for something in my workbox, that’s all,’ she replied, not even blushing at the unrehearsed lie.

  The driver cracked the whip and the carriage jerked forward and down the drive.

  ‘Tante Isolde did not wish to accompany us?’ she asked, raising her voice to be heard over the rattling of the harness and hooves.

  ‘She had estate matters requiring her attention.’

  ‘But the supper party is settled for Saturday evening?’

  Anatole patted his jacket pocket. ‘It is. And I have promised we will play messenger and deliver the invitations. ’

  The night winds had shaken loose twigs and leaves from the smooth silver trunks of the beech trees, but the track down from the Domaine de la Cade was passably clear of debris and they covered the terrain quickly. The horses were blinkered and held steady, even though the lamps bumped and knocked against the side of the carriage in the holders as they made the descent.

  ‘Did you hear the thunder last night?’ said Léonie. ‘It was so strange. Dry rumblings, then sudden outbursts, all the time the wind howling.’

  He nodded. ‘It is apparently quite commonplace to have thunderstorms with no rain, especially in the summer, when there might be a string of such storms, one after the other.’

  ‘It sounded as if the thunder was trapped in the valley between the hills. As if it was angry.’

  Anatole smiled. ‘That might have been the blanquette working in you!’

  Léonie stuck out her tongue. ‘I am suffering no ill effects whatsoever,’ she said. She paused. ‘The gardener was telling me how the storms are said to come when the ghosts are walking. Or is it the other way round? I am not certain.’

  Anatole raised his eyebrows. ‘Indeed?’

  Léonie twisted round to address the driver on his bench.

  ‘Do you know of a place called the Lac de Barrenc?’ she said, raising her voice to be heard over the rasp of the wheels.

  ‘Oc, Madomaisèla.’

  ‘Is it far from here?’

  ‘Pas luènh.’ Not far. ‘For the toristas it is a place to visit, though I would not venture up there.’

  He pointed with his whip at a dense parcel of woodland and a clearing with three or four stone megaliths, sticking out of the ground as if dropped there by some giant hand. ‘Up there is the Devil’s Armchair. And, not above a morning’s walk, the étang du Diable and the Horned Mountain.’

  Léonie was only talking about what she feared in order to gain mastery of it, and she knew it. Even so, she turned back to face Anatole with an expression of triumph on her face.

  ‘You see,’ she said. ‘Everywhere evidence of devils and phantoms.’

  Anatole laughed. ‘Superstition, petite, certainly. Hardly evidence.’

  The gig set them down in the Place du Pérou.

  Anatole found a boy willing to deliver the invitations to Isolde’s guests for a sou, then they set off. They began by promenading along the Gran’Rue in the direction of the thermal establishment. They halted a while at a small pavement café, where Léonie drank a cup of strong, sweet coffee and Anatole a glass of sweet absinthe. Ladies and gentlemen in frock coats and walking suits passed. A nurse pushing a perambulator. Girls, their flowing hair decorated with silk ribbons of red and blue, and a boy in knee-length britches with a hoop and stick.

  They paid a visit to the largest shop in the town, the Magasins Bousquet, which sold all manner of items from thread and ribbon, to copper pots and pans, to snares and nets and hunting guns. Anatole passed over to Léonie Isolde’s list for provisions to be delivered to the Domaine de la Cade on Saturday and allowed her to place the orders.

  Léonie enjoyed herself greatly.

  They admired the architecture of the town. Many of the buildings on the rive gauche were more substantial than they appeared from the road; indeed, several were many storeys taller and deeper and built down into the gorge of the river. Some were well cared for, if modest. Others were a little out of sorts, the paint peeling and the walls leaning misaligned, as if time lay heavy upon them.

  At the river’s bend, Léonie had excellent views of the terraces of the thermal spa and the back balconies of the Hôtel de la Reine. More so than from the street, the establishment dominated the vista with its grandeur and importance, its modern buildings and pools and expansive glass windows. Narrow stone steps led down from the terraces directly to the water’s edge, where stood a collection of individual bathing huts. It was a testament to progress, to science, a modern-day shrine for contemporary pilgrims in need of physical succour.

  A solitary nurse, her winged white hat perched on her head like a giant sea bird, was pushing a patient in a chaise roulante. By the water’s edge, at the foot of the Allée des Bains de la Reine, a wrought-iron pergola in the shape of a crown provided shade from the sun. Outside a small travelling kiosk, with a narrow fold-down hatch giving on to the street, a woman with a pale headscarf and broad, suntanned arms was selling cups of apple cider for a couple of centimes. Beside the wheeled café, in character quite like a caravan, was a wooden contraption for pressing apples, its metal teeth grinding slowly as a small boy wi
th scarred hands and wearing a loose shirt several sizes too big for him fed apples of russet and red into it.

  Anatole stood in line and purchased two cups. It was too sweet for his palate. Léonie, however, declared it delicious and drank first hers, then the dregs of his, spitting out the stray pips into her handkerchief.