by Gigi Pandian
CHAPTER 36
Even if Sébastien could make a key from the impression—which he informed me he could—I knew we’d have to wait until after midnight before sneaking into North’s room.
Our best information told us they’d be sticking to their plan of searching for the treasure between midnight and five a.m. What were they doing there at the end of the legitimate work day?
“I’m going to go crazy waiting,” I declared, peeking out the window. The floodlights had clicked on, giving me a beautiful view of the tiny village and the lapping tide below. “I feel like things are so close to making sense, but at the same time I can’t imagine what’s going on.”
“The awkward man,” Sébastien said. “He was a real workman here on the Mont.”
“The fidgety guy with the crucifix? You think so?”
“Their inside man. That’s how you would say it, no?”
“Oh! That explains why North is there during the day to check things out. If their accomplice is a real workman who was working today, he would have seen that the scaffolding had been disturbed. He must have told them, so they wanted to check it out.”
“After his own full day’s work.”
“Which explains why he looked so tired.”
“This whole operation,” Sébastien said, shaking his head. “These men have some good ideas, but haphazardly executed. They are behaving like amateurs. You led me to believe they were professionals.”
“They are. Even a few days ago, they were behaving more professionally. Something is going on. They’re desperate. But why?”
“Is it not simply the fact that renovations will be over soon?” Sébastien suggested. “The crypts are too big to examine quickly, and if they don’t know where they should look...”
“I need to see what’s in North’s room.”
“Patience. I will get you inside in a few hours.”
“If you suggest I take a nap, I might strangle you.”
“A nap? Of course not. Naps are for the Spanish and the Italians. As for the French? We are revived by food and wine.”
“I wish we could go out to dinner, too, but this island is too small. It’s not safe.”
“That’s not what I had in mind.” Sébastien unzipped a boxy suitcase. “Perhaps this will help take your mind off things for a couple of hours.” Inside sat a picnic basket with two icepacks on top. Inside the wicker basket was an assortment of French treats including scones and chocolate-covered croissants.
“Where did you get all this?” I asked. “You were only inside the house by yourself for five minutes while we were packing up the car.”
“I like to keep Jeeves busy.” He winked before diving back into the picnic basket, leaving me to wonder about the wheelchair-bound automaton that had brought me tea the previous day.
It was an even more elaborate spread than I thought. In addition to the pastries on top, Sébastien pulled out roasted chicken, two baguettes, an assortment of cheeses, a bag of salad, a box of chocolates, and, of course, a bottle of wine.
Instead of china dishes, the serving plates, trays, cups, and bowls were all stainless steel that looked suspiciously like they were from thali sets—the Indian style of a large serving plate with smaller bowls on top for various dishes.
“I know the thali plates aren’t traditional picnic fare,” Sébastien said, “but they’re so much lighter than china. When I reached my eighties, I thought it was a good idea to take better care of my back. My friend Samir was changing the style of dishes he used at his restaurant. Alors, he gave these to me. Wine?”
“I’d better not. I want a clear head later.”
“Wise,” Sébastien said, pouring himself a glass. “It’s in my blood. Without a glass of Burgundy, I might as well lie down and die. Which is not the plan for this evening. But I will only have one glass. We must stop those men!”
“What did you think of them? Your impression, as a keen observer of human nature.”
“Desperate men do desperate things, Jaya. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
“How can I stop? They might destroy the Mont in search of their treasure. I don’t have enough evidence to get them arrested. At least, not without implicating myself.”
“A bad situation indeed.”
While waiting for midnight to approach, I called Lane to let him know North’s men knew about the disturbed scaffolding but didn’t think it was due to the two of us, and that Sébastien had pilfered North’s room key.
“Don’t do it,” Lane said. “I can be there tomorrow.” Even when he was angry, it was comforting to hear his voice.
“I didn’t call to ask for your permission.”
“Please, Jones. You know what North is capable of.”
“We’re waiting until we’re sure he’s not there.”
“You don’t get it, Jones. He’ll have the room booby trapped in some way.”
I sat down on the floor and swore. “Really?”
“Wait for me to get there tomorrow. Jacqueline and I have made a fuss with the hotel staff, so if North heard the call you made to Sanjay and is following our movements, he’ll know that you and I are vacationing here together already. I can come back—”
“And your shoulder?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Jacqueline can drive me.”
“You need to recover. Tell me what to expect from North. That way we can be careful.”
“You don’t want to—”
“I do, and I am. So you can either tell me what to look for, or you can leave it to me and Sébastien.”
At a quarter to midnight, Sébastien insisted on departing by himself to spy on North’s hotel room. From the keychain he’d lifted and promptly returned, we knew in which establishment North was staying. It was too dark out for me to see much on the video feed, but I heard rustling as Sébastien got as comfortable as he could in a shaded nook in front of the door leading to North’s room.
At two minutes after midnight, I was wondering if Sébastien had fallen asleep when I heard his sharp intake of breath, followed by the faint sound of knocking.
“They’re leaving,” he whispered. His voice was so soft that I barely heard it over the phone.
He waited a few minutes, then stood up. A few minutes later, he was back in our room.
“Was it all four of them?” I asked him.
“The real workman knocked on the door, then the other three joined him. The muscular Italian—Darius?”
“Dante.”
“Yes, Dante. Does he always look so angry?”
“Unfortunately, yes. He suffered an injury that was North’s fault, so North feels guilty and insists on working with him.”
“Unfortunate, indeed...Alors, I watched until they were far on their way to the abbey. It’s safe for us to proceed.”
“You really think you’ll be able to spot any booby traps they’ve set in their room?” I asked.
“Yes, now that I know to look for them. Shall we?”
I bundled in my coat, hat, and scarf, and we headed out into the chilly night. The stormy skies were kicking up a ferocious wind, but weren’t letting loose with rain or snow.
Sébastien led the way to North’s room. Hotels on the Mont weren’t arranged as large blocks. There wasn’t room for that. Instead, the hotels all had main offices on the main road, but most of the rooms were spread out in small houses and cabins up winding cobblestone paths.
North’s room was a few zig-zags away from our own cluster. When we reached a main door that was an entry point to a small grouping of four rooms, Sébastien carefully inspected the solid door before we slipped into the small lobby.
“I don’t see...” Sébastien whispered. “Ah!”
“Shh.”
&nb
sp; “Your friend was right,” Sébastien whispered. He pointed at a small box next to the door frame that I never would have noticed. “Portable trip wire. Step over this line when we enter the room.”
I gulped and did as he said, stepping carefully over the foot-high trip wire.
Inside, my nervousness was quickly forgotten as I laid eyes on a leather folder I recognized.
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s North’s.”
I rushed to the desk and picked up the folder that looked like an artist’s portfolio. But I knew what would be inside. The letters North had shown me a portion of.
“It’s them,” I whispered. “There’s got to be a dozen letters here. Sébastien! He ripped this letter in half himself! I’m going to kill him!”
“I’m sure the offense is worth contemplating murder, but shall we discuss it back at the room? Take pictures and place the folder back where you found it.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I could have sworn I heard voices.”
“Probably the neighbors up late.”
“Probably...” He slipped out the door, careful to step over the trip wire.
It took all my self-control to take pictures of the letters rather than reading them right then.
“Jaya!” Sébastien whispered sharply. “Pack up. Put everything back exactly as you found it.”
“They’re coming back already?”
“Hurry!”
I snapped a last picture, then replaced the letters into the folder, sitting it squarely on the desk exactly as I’d found it.
We slipped out the front door and rounded the corner, pressing ourselves flat against the wall. And just in time.
“Did you hear something?” It was North’s voice, loud enough that he must have been only a few feet away from us.
“What?” Dante asked, his voice agitated. “One of the ghosts?”
“No.” North’s tone told me he spoke through gritted teeth. “I thought I heard footsteps—of real people, not ghosts—but it’s the wind shaking the sign to the auberge.”
“But the legends say—”
“Forget I said anything. Let’s get the schematic Gilbert asked for. I don’t see why he couldn’t have remembered he needed it before we climbed all the way up to the abbey.” The sound of their voices ceased as they stepped into their room.
I let out a sigh of relief. We hadn’t set off the trip wire. They’d merely forgotten something. Sébastien and I dashed down the path toward our own room.
“We made it!” I flung myself down onto my bed and reached up to pull off my hat, when I made a terrible discovery. “My hat. Where’s my hat?”
“Your hat?”
“Sébastien,” I said. “I had my hat with me when we went to North’s room. It’s gone.”
CHAPTER 37
“It’s windy outside,” Sébastien pointed out. “Your hat may have blown away.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Wait here.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m an old man with insomnia. I’m going on a walk. It doesn’t matter if they see me.”
“It would be better if they didn’t.”
“Yes, but this is a situation where we need to know. If they find evidence their room was searched, then it’s no longer safe for you to be here on the Mont.”
I groaned. How could I have been so careless?
“Wait here.”
I couldn’t bring myself to do anything besides pace anxiously while I waited for his return.
Five minutes later, one of the sweetest images I’d ever seen in my life stepped through the door. With hair that had been swept into an even more extreme mad-scientist coif by the fierce wind, Sébastien held my hat in his strong, wrinkled hands.
“It fell,” he said, “a few meters from their room, next to the wall where we hid.” He tossed the hat to me. “I admit you had me worried.”
“You and me both.”
“Are you ready to look at these letters that you think are so important?”
I pulled up the images on the laptop screen. Indignation again filled me as I flipped to the letter that had been ripped in half. I knew that one must be important, because he showed part of it to me, but he didn’t want me to see what was written at the bottom.
“I’m going to kill him,” I said again.
“At least he did not destroy these letters after he got what he wanted from them.”
“Are you always this cheery after breaking and entering?”
“I haven’t had this much fun in years.”
“We almost got caught!” But as I spoke the words, I knew that if I was being truthful, I’d say I felt the exact same way.
Sébastien pointed back to the screen. “I don’t want to distract you.”
“Right! Right. Give me a minute. I shouldn’t speculate until I’ve read everything.”
But the more I read, the more confused I became.
“These letters are written by the same man,” I said, “but they’re so different from each other.”
Sébastien looked over my shoulder as I scrolled slowly through the images.
“A descent into madness,” Sébastien murmured. “As if his stay in India were driving him insane.”
“Opium. I’ve seen this change before. Opium addiction was a big problem for East India Company soldiers.”
“The English,” Sébastien said.
“I’m surprised North took these letters seriously. You weren’t exaggerating when you said these were the ramblings of a madman. Look here. In the portion of this letter North didn’t show me, Trenton Smith goes on and on about Clive of India’s famous gold treasures that were lost at sea. But Clive had been dead for decades when this letter was written in the 1790s. Yet Smith writes of a mysterious Frenchman who had the treasures of both Clive and an Indian sultan.”
“Yet you believe him to be lucid,” Sébastien said thoughtfully, “and that there’s a treasure hidden here on the Mont.”
“The local historian I spoke with gave me the missing pieces of the puzzle about how the treasure ended up here, and why it has never been found. Wealthy Frenchmen who wanted to gain favor either politically or with God often donated their riches to this site of spiritual significance, which explains the gift. And the fact that the Mont’s historical records were hidden during the French Revolution and destroyed during World War II explains why the knowledge about its location was lost. But none of those facts tell us what we’ll find.”
“You have your suspicions.”
“Tipu Sultan’s secret treasures,” I said. “Most were lost to history when his alliance with the French wasn’t enough to save him from being crushed by the English. Unfortunately, we only have the ramblings of a madman to lead us to the answer.”
CHAPTER 38
I slept for three hours. A few minutes before five o’clock in the morning, the ancient hotel room door creaked open. I shot awake.
“Don’t trouble yourself,” Sébastien said in the darkness.
“You were outside? Where did you go?”
“I wanted to see when they would return.”
“You didn’t get any sleep?”
“I’ve never wished to spend time sleeping.”
“So you waited outside their rooms.”
“They returned to get some sleep. But we only have a few hours before the legitimate workmen will be arriving for the day.”
“Then let’s go.”
The floodlights lit our walk along the winding paths from our cabin hotel room up to the abbey. A thick fog had descended in the few hours during which I’d slept. I was tempted to believe Dante’s story of ghosts who roamed these walkways. It was the perfect atmospher
e for them. My heart skipped a beat as we rounded a corner and came upon the tiny St. Pierre church and cemetery. Standing outside the church, a statue of Joan of Arc looked eerily real through the hazy fog.
We walked on. The sound of a creaking gate caused us both to stop in our tracks.
“The wind,” Sébastien whispered. He pointed at the low iron fence that encircled the tiny cemetery of the church, as its squeaking gate clattered shut.
“Then why are you whispering?”
“This would make a perfect backdrop for a horror movie, no?”
“If I were superstitious, I’d slap you. Come on. Let’s keep going.”
A scream rang out.
I clutched Sébastien’s sleeve. I felt his body tense as well. He pulled me down, hiding us in the shadows of a low wall.
“Please tell me I imagined that,” I said. In the dead of night, sounds echoed through the empty streets. I couldn’t tell if the scream came from a man or a woman. In the foggy darkness in front of a cemetery, there was something else about the voice I didn’t want to admit to myself. It sounded almost inhuman.
“I regret to say,” Sébastien whispered back, “you did not imagine that cry.”
The wail came again.
Sébastien put his head in his hands. “Un chat!”
“What?”
He lifted his head. He was laughing. “A cat, Jaya. It’s a cat.”
“But...” He was right. If a feral cat had cried out back home in Golden Gate Park, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But here, inside this remote fortress on the coast of France that had survived for over 1,000 years, in front of a cemetery shrouded in fog, surrounded by quicksand and the ocean’s unrelenting tides, the simplest explanation of a 21st century cat hardly seemed the most appropriate.
Wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, Sébastien stood up and offered me his elbow. “Let’s get out of here.”
It wasn’t a fear of ghosts that had my heart racing as we neared the abbey. On the quest for a historic treasure from the country of my birth, with the promise of also achieving justice for Lane’s missing friend, I felt more alive than I had in months. Back at home, Naveen Krishnan was no doubt doing irreparable harm to my carefully constructed courses, yet being here seemed so much more important. Teaching history was the life I’d worked so hard to achieve. Why wasn’t it enough?
