The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense

by M. J. Rose

  At four o’clock he called and asked her to meet him at the boathouse.

  Jac had expected him to be contrite and apologize. She knew she was going to forgive him. But leave her rather than deal with what he’d done?

  The following morning, she got herself out of bed and to the airport. She went to her grandmother’s house in the south of France; the only safe place she could think of. Every day that first week, she expected Griffin to call or email. Every night she’d climb into bed and cry, devastated. She’d get to sleep only by telling herself that she’d hear from him the next day. For sure.

  Every morning, she woke up angry with herself for being needy. For still wanting a man who was so weak that he wouldn’t even fight for her. She’d get out of bed resolute. If he called, she wouldn’t talk to him. If he emailed, she’d delete it.

  And then she’d wait.

  By the end of August, Jac’s emotional reserve had dried up, and she returned to New York with only half her heart.

  After that summer, whenever Jac needed to remind herself that she’d once made a grave error opening up and trusting someone, she had a ritual.

  She’d remove one of the bottles of his cologne from her armoire. Shut off the lights, pull the blinds. Sit on the edge of the bed. Holding her breath, she’d wet her fingertips with some of the precious liquid, dab it across her collarbone and both sides of her throat, then down one arm and up the other. Finally, she’d bring her hands up to her face and inhale, allowing the full impact of the scent to hit her.

  The powerful musk embraced and enveloped her, lulled her into believing that she was still with Griffin—that she’d once more found the soul she was truly connected to.

  Then she’d open her eyes and look around at the bedroom with its beautiful damask curtains, engravings of ancient roses on the wall, and the dozens of glittering bottles of L’Etoile perfumes on the vanity. In the mirror, she wouldn’t see herself as much as the emptiness in the space beside her where, but for an instant, she’d imagined Griffin to be.

  And then, because the whole exercise was a punishment, so that she’d never again forget how foolish it was to believe in dreams, she’d allow herself to remember more. The first time they’d been together in her bedroom in her aunt’s house. Dusk was turning to night. After they’d made love, he’d told her the story about the two halves of Plato’s whole.

  “We’re those halves . . .” he’d said.

  “mes soeurs.” She’d translated the phrase into French.

  “You were too vulnerable when you met him,” Jac’s grandmother had told her, trying to console her. “You were too impressionable and too much a loner. Too young. He got too deep under your skin. You’re going to have to make an effort to get over him. But you will. Do you hear me? You will, in time.”

  Jac had made the effort. She turned Griffin into a lesson learned. Used him as a map of terrain to avoid.

  But no matter how happy she was in subsequent serious relationships, her deep connection to Griffin haunted her.

  And now he was here in Paris. Why? There was a phone number beside his name in Robbie’s agenda. Jac hesitated. Call him after ten years? Hear his voice again? How could she let any of that matter? Their connection to each other was long, long gone. Evaporated. Robbie was missing. That was her only concern now—not her past.

  She dialed the number.

  “Hello?”

  The sound of his voice froze her own. A vertiginous wave of feeling broke over her, and she struggled to pull herself back to the surface; to say something, to find her voice over the roar of the imaginary, turbulent ocean. It had been so many years since she’d last talked to Griffin. Suddenly, she rememberd watching his back as he walked away from her that last time.

  “Griffin,” she said, “it’s Jac.”

  She heard a sharp intake of breath and was satisfied by it. At least there had been that.

  Twenty-two

  THE LOIRE VALLEY, FRANCE

  12:55 P.M.

  The wind had slowed to a breeze, and the cyclists, two couples from London who often traveled together, were enjoying a respite and some lunch by the shore of the river. The past three days spent exploring the forty-kilometer-long estuary, sprinkled with islands and edged by marshes, had proved to be everything the travel agent had promised: a haven for bird watching, perfect for fishing, and when they wanted to get off their bikes, there was more than enough to see and do in the ancient cities nearby. Sylvie had a degree in French history and entertained them all with her anecdotes that were always spiced with salacious or gruesome details. Her husband, Bob, joked that she was a walking repository for the dark side of history.

  “During the French Revolution,” she was saying now, “there was a victory here for the Jacobites in 1793 that was very important, but what the area was most famous for was the hundreds of thousands of Republican marriages that took place here.”

  “Why do I get the feeling that’s not something as simple as a Bush marrying a Cheney?” Olivia said.

  They all laughed, and Sylvie continued. “It was a term that referred to a Jacobite method of execution. The antireligious revolutionaries stripped men and women—most were priests and nuns—and, standing them back to back, tied their wrists together, took them in a boat onto the river and then baptized the union by throwing them into the water, where they eventually drowned.”

  They looked at the churning current that was pulling north, heading out to the sea, as she finished. “They didn’t call it the Reign of Terror for nothing.” Reaching forward, Sylvie dipped her fingers in the water as if cleansing them after telling the story. The sunlight glinted on a rock that had—she looked closer. Was that a credit card sticking out from under it? She reached down. It wasn’t a rock. It was a soggy wallet.

  “What have you got?” Bob asked as he came up beside her.

  “Someone must be pretty upset,” she said as she showed him.

  “When we go back to town, we should drop it off with the police.”

  “There’s more than that to show the police,” John called from a few feet away. “Look at this.” He held up a black loafer.

  “That shoe doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the wallet,” his wife, Olivia, said. “You’re always seeing something suspicious.”

  Bob inspected the wallet. “Is there a label in the shoe?”

  “Yes. J. M. Weston.”

  “I’m betting these things belong to the same man, then.”

  “But anyone could buy Weston shoes. We’re in France,” Olivia said.

  Sylvie argued her case for her husband. “Expensive shoes, expensive wallet,” she pointed out. “Washed up on the shore of the Loire four feet away from each other.”

  “Is his name in the wallet?” John asked. “There seem to be initials inside the shoe, under the tongue. How rich do you have to be to have your friggin’ initials inside your shoes?”

  “Rich enough to live in one of the most exclusive areas in Paris,” Bob said. “Are the initials R.L.E.?”

  John raised his eyebrows and looked from one face to the other. “So it’s the same bloke,” he said finally. “I think we’d better find a bobby.”

  Twenty-three

  PARIS, FRANCE

  2:15 P.M.

  Jac saw him before he saw her as he came through the café doors. His easy gait was the same; she remembered how gracefully he moved despite his height. Griffin’s mouth was set in a serious straight line, and his gray-blue eyes were the color of a troubled sea. But when he noticed her, he smiled—that same strange, satisfying smile she remembered that lifted a little higher on the right side. His hair was shot through with some silver, but still thick, and waves of it fell on his forehead. He tilted his head just a fraction to the left, and his eyebrows raised almost imperceptibly. With that one look, he managed to convey the depth of his concern for her, and she remembered what it had felt like to think that they’d belonged together.

  In the past few hours, when she’d
allowed herself to imagine this moment, Jac hadn’t pictured him wrapping his arms around her before they’d even spoken. Yet now he took her in his arms without hesitation and held her tight.

  She breathed his smell. Impossibly, still the same.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said as he let her go. “We’ll find him. I know we will.”

  They sat down. Despite the jet lag and the shock of Robbie’s disappearance and the police having discovered an unidentified dead man in the workshop, something inside of her lifted. It was Griffin opposite her, holding on to her with his eyes. How could he still pull at her like this? As if no time had passed, when a lifetime had. When he’d left her, she was so lost and so angry that she’d never wanted to see him again. Now here he was, and she needed his help.

  The waiter arrived, and they ordered coffee.

  “I’m sorry,” Griffin said again.

  “Why are you apologizing? Was there something you might have done to prevent what happened?”

  He shrugged. “No. Probably not. But I was there. I’d just left.” His eyes didn’t leave her.

  “How long have you been in Paris?” Jac asked.

  “A few days.” He put his hands on the table.

  The years of working with stone and sand had taken their toll, and she wondered how rough the tips of his fingers would feel on her skin.

  “On business?”

  “Of a sort. When Robbie found out my wife and I separated, he asked me to come help him with something.”

  “You and Robbie remained friends? He’s never mentioned you.”

  “We keep in touch. I’ve kept tabs on you, though.” Another smile. This one slightly sad.

  “What were you helping him with?”

  “He’d found something and wanted me to figure out what it was.”

  “Stop being cryptic. You’re always so stingy with details.” Remembering this about him and how it used to frustrate her, she half smiled. Then her worry took over again. “What did he need help with?”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  She paused, thinking back to the last time she’d seen her brother and their conversation in their mother’s crypt. “I think he tried to, but we were arguing.”

  “He told me that.”

  “Really?”

  “We’ve been together twelve, fourteen hours a day since Thursday. There’s been a lot of conversation.”

  “Then you know what kind of shape the House of L’Etoile is in?”

  The waiter brought the coffees, and she drank hers too quickly and burned her tongue. The sting was a welcome relief from the roiling emotions.

  “He was hoping his find would pay off a chunk of those loans.”

  “What are we talking about? What did he find? Can’t you just tell me, for Chrissakes?”

  “When Robbie took over from your father, the workshop was a mess. You’ve seen it?”

  She nodded.

  “He said it was as if your father had started looking for his memory and took the entire place apart trying to find it. In one of the piles, he found a small box filled with pottery shards. He did some research and found out they were ancient Egyptian. At that point, Robbie came to see me in New York, and I agreed to help. I’ve been able to determine the object was once a round pot from the Ptolemaic Dynasty that was filled with a waxy substance, like a pomade. Its bowl is decorated with hieroglyphics that tell a story of lovers who use its perfume to remember their past lives and find their ba, their—” He’d used the Egyptian word.

  “Soul mates,” she finished for him, remembering the story her father had told her and Robbie. The ancient book of formulas and the fragrance found in Egypt over two hundred years ago. The lost L’Etoile treasure.

  “Your family’s legend, Jac, it’s real. Robbie found proof of it.”

  “Proof of what, though?” She ran her finger around the rim of her coffee cup, feeling the smooth, round edge. “Cracked pottery could be manufactured. Fakes were a big business even in the nineteenth century. A story like that would sell more perfume. There’s no scent that triggers—”

  She broke off. Remembered what had just happened to her in the workshop.

  Some therapists theorized that certain odors could trigger psychotic episodes. The scientists at Blixer Rath had conducted tests with her, but hadn’t found an olfactory response.

  Griffin looked at her with fresh concern. He’d always read her so closely and reacted so quickly to her changing moods or thoughts. That he could still do this surprised her.

  “What is it? Jac?”

  When they were together one night, she and Griffin had sat in bed in the dark and told each other their secrets. His about his father. Hers about finding her mother. And the episodes. But she didn’t want to discuss her private demons with him now. Not after all these years.

  “There’s no book of formulas.”

  “Cleopatra had a perfume factory, Jac. It’s real. Mark Anthony built it for her. They’ve found it in the desert at the south end of the Dead Sea. Thirty kilometers from Ein Gedi. Ancient perfumes were found there.”

  “There’s no soul-mate scent,” she said. “It’s all the stuff of fantasy. That’s what perfume is: magic and imagery. My ancestors made it all up to enhance the aura of the House of L’Etoile.”

  Griffin’s eyes darkened. She’d forgotten that—how when the light shifted, they could lose their blue hue and turn to cold, impenetrable steel. “It wasn’t all made up,” he said intently. “The pot shards are authentic. And the chemical analysis of the clay shows it was impregnated with ancient oils.”

  “Then Robbie should have been able to reconstruct the scent and prove what it can and can’t do. He has access to all the same oils and essences the Egyptians used.”

  “Apparently there are some unidentifiable ingredients, Jac. The lab couldn’t isolate them, and Robbie can’t sniff them out. The inscription on the pottery lists the ingredients. That’s what we were working on.”

  And as Griffin continued to explain, despite her conviction that any such fragrance was only a fantasy and that there was nothing logical about what he was suggesting, she found herself wondering again. What was that thread of scent she’d always smelled in the workshop? That unidentifiable odor that neither her brother nor her father could smell but that she could? And did it have something to do with her attacks?

  Twenty-four

  NEW YORK CITY

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 10:30 A.M.

  Malachai walked up the broad steps to the New York Public Library. It was an unusually warm morning. Even though it had been a short walk from the taxi up the stairs, once inside, he welcomed the cool and dark oasis.

  And it welcomed him.

  Over the years, coming here to study obscure treatises that touched on past-life theory, he’d learned the library’s grand spaces and secret recesses. It was a living entity that shared itself willingly and appreciated those who appreciated it. A romantic notion, Malachai knew. But one he enjoyed.

  Across the lobby, he stopped for a moment at the stairway to prepare himself for the effort. An accident two years before during a concert in Vienna had left him with a slight but ever constant pain in his hip that climbing worsened.

  He glanced upward. The high ceiling transfixed him. Lifted his soul. Made him draw in his breath and filled him with reverence. The library was a house of worship to the spirit of creativity and the pursuit of knowledge.

  Reed Winston sat at a long table in the main reading room, a half-dozen books spread out before him. He didn’t turn when Malachai passed him. And he didn’t acknowledge his boss’s presence when Malachai sat down across the table from him eight minutes later.

  Malachai opened the book he’d requested from the stacks: The Letters of D. H. Lawrence. Rifling through it, he searched for a particular page. When he found it, he removed a small leather-bound book from his pocket and took notes.

  For the next thirty minutes, the two men sat at the same scratched wooden table, sharing the
same green glass lamp. To anyone watching, it appeared that they were unaware of each other. At eleven, Malachai returned his book to the front desk and left.

  He reached the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fortieth Street as the light turned red.

  “I think you left this in the library.”

  Malachai turned.

  Winston, out of breath, held out Malachai’s leather notebook.

  “So I did. Thank you.”

  Winston shook his head. “That’s okay.”

  If Winston hadn’t followed him, Malachai would have understood the ex-agent was concerned they were being watched.

  The light turned green. The two men crossed the street together. On the other side, they began to talk in earnest as they walked toward Madison Avenue.

  “What on earth happened in France?” Malachai asked. “You assured me you had the right people in place. That nothing was going to go wrong. That we were, above all, not going to lose sight of our goal.”

  “They are the right people.”

  “But Robbie L’Etoile’s disappeared?”

  “Yes. It seems impossible, but that’s what my contact reported.”

  “Is he getting that from the police?”

  “Yes. L’Etoile is missing. And he’s the prime suspect in their murder case.”

  “And the victim is still unidentified?”

  Winston nodded.

  “What about his sister?”

  “Under surveillance.”

  “By who?”

  “The best we have.”

  Malachai looked at Winston.

  “There was nothing that could have been done to prevent this,” Winston argued, even though Malachai hadn’t said a word. “There was no way to anticipate what happened.”

  “You and the men you hire are paid to anticipate everything.”

  “Yes. But it’s not possible.”

  Despite his frustration, Malachai knew the ex-agent was right. There were things you couldn’t anticipate. Like suddenly becoming aware of smelling the world around you when you were fifty-eight years old.