The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense

by M. J. Rose

  Griffin’s cell phone rang. He looked down at the LED readout. Smiled. “It’s my daughter.”

  “Take it. I’ll get some coffee.”

  As Jac walked to the door, she heard Griffin answer. Listened to the catch in his voice as he said his Elsie’s name. She shut the door with a shaking hand. Leaned against it. Jac was remembering her father saying her name. She was thinking about her parents’ separation. Her loneliness. Robbie’s unhappiness. The way her parents’ bitterness ripped apart their days, cast their lives into shadows.

  “Where is the chapel?” Jac asked one of the nurses bustling by.

  For the few minutes it took to get from Griffin’s room to the simple chapel on the lower level, Jac didn’t think about anything. She willed her mind blank. Simply put one foot in front of the other and propelled herself forward. Only when she reached the small stone sanctuary and sat down on one of the wooden pews did she let the torrent of complicated thoughts twist into her consciousness.

  At the feet of a lovely and serene marble Madonna, a dozen votives burned in small ruby holders. On either side of her, vases of lilies lent their perfume to the paraffin scent. Afternoon light poured through the cobalt stained-glass windows, casting melancholy reflections of the same sad blue that always filled the mausoleum where her mother was interred.

  You know what to do.

  The voice came from the shadows of the dark little prayer room.

  Jac hadn’t expected her mother’s voice here. She’d never heard it outside of the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

  And it’s the right thing to do.

  “You don’t know anything!” Jac shouted. Shouted it before it occurred to her she was speaking out loud. She’d never spoken to her mother’s ghost. Never allowed that the manifestation was anything other than her imagination playing tricks.

  There was nothing wrong with asking Griffin to smell the pomade. If Jac was crazy, then Griffin wouldn’t remember anything. If she wasn’t, then he’d remember the things she had. They’d find out they’d been together before.

  But in both of those lives, he died for you. As Giles, when Marie-Genevieve’s husband discovered them together early that morning in Paris. And as Thoth, in Egypt, by swallowing his own potion.

  “So what?” Jac asked.

  The chapel, filled with the scent of sadness and prayers, was silent.

  Jac went over it again. Thought it all through. He’d died for her twice in the past. And just two days ago, Griffin had almost died for her again. If reincarnation was real, if they had lived these lives by each other’s sides, they were in a karmic treadmill.

  Twice she had taken him as a lover when he wasn’t free.

  Twice he had died because of her.

  Griffin was off the phone when Jac returned to his room.

  “How is Elsie?” she asked.

  “They landed in Paris. She’ll be here in an hour.”

  Jac gripped her purse to her chest.

  “She’ll be so happy to see you. And it will be so good for you to see her.”

  Griffin nodded and started to say something.

  Jac interrupted. “I’m going to go . . .” She gripped the bag tighter. She loved this man. Wanted him still. But she knew what she had to do. “I think I should—” she broke off. How could she say good-bye?

  She stared into Griffin’s eyes. Tried to speak without words. She knew she was failing.

  “Thank you for everything. For helping Robbie and me. For saving my life. I can’t ever . . .” Her voice quavered. She squeezed her bag tighter, heard one of the bubbles pop. “Go home with your wife and your little girl, Griffin. You told me yourself you weren’t sure it was over. Give it another chance.”

  “But—”

  She knew what he was going to say and interrupted. She didn’t want to hear it.

  “You can’t figure anything out with me around. And you need to. Not so much even for Elsie’s sake or for your wife’s. For yours, Griffin.” Jac wanted to reach out and take his hand and feel his flesh, but she knew if she did, she would never let go.

  “Ciao,” she whispered. He had saved her life. Now she had to give him a chance to save his own.

  Sixty-four

  MONDAY, MAY 30, 2:00 P.M.

  The room was bright and sunny, filled with furniture, books and artwork from the house on Rue des Saints-Pères. Her father sat in a leather chair by the window; Claire sat beside him.

  Jac was surprised by how lovely the small apartment was. How beautiful and green the view was. How sweet the air smelled and how peaceful her father appeared.

  He’d turned to see who’d come in. Studied her as if he were trying to place her. But couldn’t. There was no recognition in his eyes.

  “Hello,” Claire said softly. “It’s good of you to come. Is Robbie here?”

  “Outside. In the car.”

  “I’ll go say hello and give you some time with your father.”

  Jac almost stopped her. She didn’t know if she wanted to be alone with him.

  She sat down in the chair Claire had vacated. Her father wasn’t as frail as she’d expected. He still looked like himself. He didn’t look lost—even if he was lost to her. But she was used to that. Since her mother died, he hadn’t been able to deal with her. A therapist had suggested she reminded him too much of the woman he hadn’t been able to protect and keep safe. Jac didn’t care what the reason was. The facts hurt too much.

  “I’m Jac, Father,” she said.

  “Jac?” He said it as if he’d never heard the name. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember people that well anymore. How do we know each other?”

  Jac opened her pocketbook. Took out the small package and unwrapped it. She’d told Robbie what she planned to do. He’d agreed. They’d examined the scroll. Everything her brother needed to enable him to work on the scent was written there—including the names of the ingredients. A quick internet search had pointed out the greatest problem. One of the main ingredients was extinct. Cleopatra’s ancient persimmon fields had been so valuable the Egyptians had burned them to the ground rather than let the Romans profit from them. A group of botanists was currently working in the desert in the area where the fields had been, hoping to one day find ancient seeds and regrow the plant. Perhaps if they did, Robbie could recreate the scent. He’d sniffed the jar she’d found over and over, but it only gave him a headache.

  An olfactory trigger to psychotic episodes or a memory tool? Robbie couldn’t help her unearth the truth. She called Malachai and asked him if everyone could be regressed.

  “No,” he’d said with so much sadness in his voice that she could hear it over the phone. “Why are you asking?”

  She hadn’t told him the truth. He’d only want the jar, and she and Robbie had decided that it wasn’t theirs to give away. It belonged to someone else. Even if it meant selling Rouge and Noir. It wasn’t a sacrifice, Robbie had told her. It was the past, and they had the present to take care of.

  Jac knelt by her father’s chair. Looked into his face. Searched his eyes. Hoped he could hear her.

  “You found this, didn’t you?” she asked.

  He looked down at what she was holding.

  Recognizing it, he nodded his head. “Yes. In the organ. Where it was hidden.”

  “Robbie and I want you to have it.”

  He took it from her. Bent his head toward it. Inhaled deeply.

  When he raised his head, he looked right at Jac. His blue eyes smiling.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “For what?”

  “I didn’t keep you very safe, did I?”

  She wasn’t sure what he meant. When he took her to the doctors in Paris? When he sent her to Blixer Rath?

  “What do you mean?”

  “I should have realized that you were still in love with Giles. Not arranged for you to marry another. If I had listened to your mother, you never would have run away to the convent. Never been tortured . . . They said you drowned . . .” A tea
r escaped his eye and ran down his cheek.

  He took her hand, clasped it in his, lifted it to his mouth and kissed it.

  “It was my job to keep my daughter safe. I failed.”

  “No, Papa,” Jac said, knowing somehow that this was what Marie-Genevieve had called her father. “No, Papa, you didn’t fail. See? I am safe. I am. They tried to drown me, but I survived. Married. I had children, Papa.”

  “Married Giles?”

  “No. Someone else. We named our oldest daughter after Maman.”

  He smiled down at her, remembering things that everyone else but the two of them had long, long ago forgotten.

  And then she buried her head in his lap, and while she wept, he stroked her hair, and she did what Robbie had said she would do one day. She forgave her father.

  Glossary

  of

  M. J. Rose’s Research

  M. J. Rose has been researching history and reincarnation for more than two decades. In addition, in preparation for this book she spent more than two and a half years researching the world of fragrance. She spent time with leaders in the perfume industry, reading ancient treatises on perfumery and alchemy, traveling to flower farms and conventions, as well as studying with fragrance architects, famous noses and niche perfumers.

  This glossary offers a glimpse into the author’s research and provides some factual information about some of the topics, locations, theories and legends discussed in the novel.

  Some of the rarest perfumes Rose collected during her research. Pictured are Shalimar (left) from the 1960s, Coq d’Or (middle) from the 1940s and Mitsouko from the 1950s.

  When she starts a new novel, Rose creates a journal for her main character—this is a page of L’Etoile’s impressions of Paris upon returning home after several years.

  A

  absolute A highly concentrated aromatic oil harvested from plants using solvent extraction techniques such as enfleurage. Absolutes are often favored for perfume formulation, as the low temperature used in the extraction process does not damage the delicate fragrance compounds. As a result, absolutes often smell truer to their botanical source than oils produced through extraction methods requiring higher temperatures, such as steam distillation.

  ancient perfume Rose relied heavily on the history of perfume in this novel and was greatly inspired by her research. The art of perfumery and perfume-making is said to have emerged from Mesopotamia, with earliest recorded accounts dating from around the second millennium BCE. Numerous ancient cultures used incense, perfumes or aromatics in ceremonial rituals and worship. These include the Ancient Egyptians, Ancient Greeks, Romans, Chinese Taoists, Australian Aborigines and Native Americans.

  Egypt Perfumed preparations were originally used in Egypt chiefly by the priesthood, who would burn incense in the temples to worship their deities. Perfumed smoke was inhaled and allowed to imbue one’s clothes, as it was believed this act would bring one closer to divinity. Perfume oils were used in bathing rituals and in ceremonial rites; and incense preparations such as kyphi, allegedly containing psychoactive ingredients, were burned nightly to produced a tranquilizing smoke (see hallucinogen). Plutarch writes:

  Every day they make a triple offering of incense to the Sun, an offering of resin at sunrise, of myrrh at midday, and of the so-called kyphi at sunset.

  —Plutarch, Isis and Osiris

  As perfume pervaded Egyptian culture, entire gardens were cultivated to produce perfume-bearing plants, which were then processed in some of the first primitive perfume factories of the ancient world. Perfume was considered an integral part of their civilization in both life and death. Clay pots of perfume oils were buried with ancient queens and Pharaohs to be enjoyed for all eternity. Bas-reliefs Rose saw at the Musée International de la Parfumerie in Grasse depict the entire process of making a fragrance—from harvesting the ingredients to extracting their essence.

  A bas-relief, sculpted on an Egyptian tomb presents the various stages in the process of making perfume in the Musée International de la Parfumerie.

  Greece Perfume was central to ancient Greek culture, both in mythology and in real life. According to Homer, perfume was bestowed upon man by the gods of the Olympic pantheon, and it played a pivotal role in worship to win their favor. Incense and aromatic plants were burned by the oracle priestesses of Delphi and summoned visions that were interpreted as prescient (see hallucinogen). In ancient Greek civilization, perfumed oils and libations were applied to the skin of athletes, suggesting a consciousness of their therapeutic and healing properties. Perfume was used to commemorate life—to mark milestones such as births and marriages—and to memorialize a person in death. Bodies were anointed with perfume and wrapped in perfumed shrouds, which were believed to bring happiness in the afterlife.

  C

  catacombs Under the city of Paris is another city. A necropolis known as the catacombs. This ossuary is comprised of more than 200 miles of subterranean tunnels located in what were once Roman-era limestone quarries. The tunnels and ancient chambers, which have never been fully mapped, hold the skeletonized remains of more than six million people who were moved there from aboveground cemeteries for sanitary reasons in the eighteenth century. The use of these quarries as a resting place was established in 1786 by the order of the Lieutenant General of Police, Louis Thiroux de Crosne and the Inspector General of Quarries, Charles Axel Guillaumot.

  The catacombs run under seven distinct arrondissements, but only one mile under the fourteenth is open to visitors. This mile is the museum Les Catacombes de Paris, which is on the Left Bank. It can be accessed by traveling 130 steps down into the tunnels and climbing eighty-three steps back up to ground level.

  Robespierre discarded the bodies of prostitutes in the catacombs of Paris in what are sometimes referred to as the “Crypts of Passion.” During the Second World War, both the Resistance and German SS troops had headquarters in the twisting mazes of tunnels but never found each other’s hiding places. The catacombs have been featured in many works of fiction, including The Phantom of the Opera and Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

  Carefully arranged bones of some of the more than six million bodies reburied in the catacombs in Paris, France.

  M. J. Rose on her visit to the catacombs. Paris, France 2010. This is the entrance before you get to the miles of skeletons.

  cataphiles People who illegally explore the miles of catacombs closed to the public. Cataphilia is practiced by spelunkers, some of whom are artists who use the tunnel walls as canvases or carve sculptures into the stone. Others stage plays in the catacombs. Some show movies on the chalk cemetery’s walls, and others engage in black magic or hazing type rituals. Some cataphiles bring wine and food on their midnight forays that they often cook in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century rooms. People have even used the quarries to grow mushrooms.

  Chinese law on reincarnation In 2007, fifty years after invading the small Himalayan country of Tibet, the Chinese government passed a law banning reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist monks without government permission. The Tibetan government claimed the law was aimed at wiping out its identity and culture, that indeed, China’s motive was to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual and political leader. The Chinese claimed the law would institutionalize the management of reincarnation, but the prime minister of Tibet, the Venerable Samdhong Rinpoche Lobsang Tenzin, said the law was an attempt to end the major Tibetan Buddhist institution—the leadership roles of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama.

  Chypre Chypre is an olfactive classification referring to perfumes featuring citrus top notes (usually including bergamot), floral middle notes (traditionally including jasmine and rose), and a base of oakmoss, musks, labdanum and patchouli.

  Chypre is the French word for the Greek island of Cyprus, also known as the Island of Venus. Cyprus is a rich source of labdanum and of the hesperidic (citrus) components found in chypre perfumes. Famous chypres include Guerlain’s
Mitsouko, Chypre de Coty and Femme by Rochas.

  Cleopatra’s fragrance factory Cleopatra (69–30 BCE), the last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, was fascinated with—some say obsessed by—scent. Marc Anthony built her a fragrance factory that was erected in fields planted with now-extinct flora, including groves of balsam trees (important in the creation of perfume at the time) that he had confiscated from Herod.

  In the 1980s a team of Italian and Israeli archaeologists believed they unearthed the factory at the south end of the Dead Sea, thirty kilometers from Ein Gedi. Residues of ancient perfumes along with seats where customers received beauty treatments were found there.

  Another journal page: Egypt and her mythology play a big part in the main character’s life.

  Cleopatra’s lost book of fragrance formulas Cleopatra was said to have kept a recipe book for her perfumes, entitled Cleopatra Gynaeciarum Libri. The book has been described in writings by Dioscorides, Homer and Pliny the Elder. No known copy of the book exists today.

  D

  Djedi 1. A powerful ancient priest and magician referred to in the fourth story of the Westcar Papyrus texts from the twelfth dynasty of the ancient Egyptian Middle Kingdom. Djedi was said to have lived in the fourth dynasty, dying at 110 years old. It was said he could consume 500 loaves of bread, a side of beef and 100 jugs of beer each day. It is alleged he possessed the ability to reattach the severed heads of animals and bring them back to life and that he predicted the births of the future rulers of the fifth dynasty. 2. A perfume created by Jacques Guerlain in 1927. Launched on the heels of Howard Carter’s historic discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922, Djedi paid homage to ancient Egyptian civilizations. Interestingly, Jacques Guerlain chose not to celebrate the opulence and splendor of the Golden Ages of Egypt in his olfactory interpretation, opting instead to memorialize the demise of the dynasties that were lost to the sands of time. Djedi’s aroma is a unique and compelling narrative of decomposition and disrepair. One of the most rare and sought-after perfumes from the revered House of Guerlain, it is still highly coveted and desired by collectors today.