Carlos Zafon - The Midnight Palace

The four-wheeled lock gave an almost inaudible click, and a few seconds later the two sides of the heavy iron door swung open, letting out a breath of air that had been trapped inside the house for years. Standing in the dark, Ian’s face went pale.

‘It opened,’ he said in a whisper.

‘How observant of you,’ Ben remarked.

‘This is no time for jokes,’ Ian replied. ‘We don’t know what’s in there yet.’

Ben pulled out his matchbox and rattled it in the air.

‘That’s only a matter of time. Would you like to go first?’

‘I’ll leave that honour to you,’ Ian said, smiling.

‘I’ll go,’ said Sheere, entering the house without waiting for a reply.

Ben quickly struck another match and followed her. Ian took one last look at the night sky, as if he feared this might be his last chance to see it, and after taking a deep breath plunged into the engineer’s house. A moment later the large door closed behind them, as gently as it had opened to let them in.

The three friends huddled together as Ben held the match up high. The spectacle that unfolded before their eyes far exceeded any of their expectations.

They were standing in a hall supported by thick Byzantine columns and crowned with a concave dome covered with a huge fresco. This depicted hundreds of figures from Hindu mythology, forming an endless illustrated chronicle set in concentric rings around a central figure sculpted in relief on top of the painting: the goddess Kali.

The walls of the hall were lined with bookshelves forming two semicircles over three metres high. The floor was covered by a mosaic of brilliant black tiles and pieces of rock crystal, creating the illusion of a night sky studded with stars and constellations. Ian looked carefully at the design and recognised various celestial figures Bankim had told them about at St Patrick’s.

‘Seth should see this,’ whispered Ben.

At the far end of the room, beyond the carpet of stars, was a spiral staircase leading up to the first floor.

Before Ben had time to react, the match had burnt down to his fingers and gone out, leaving the three in total darkness. The constellations at their feet, however, continued to shine.

‘This is incredible,’ Ian murmured to himself.

‘Wait till you see upstairs,’ said Sheere a few metres beyond him.

Ben lit another match. Sheere was already waiting for them by the spiral staircase, and without a word Ben and Ian followed her.

The spiral staircase rose in the middle of a lantern-shaped shaft, similar to structures they had studied in drawings of castles built on the banks of the Loire River. Looking up, the friends felt as if they were inside a huge kaleidoscope crowned with a cathedral-like rose window that fractured the moonlight into dozens of beams – blue, scarlet, yellow, green and amber.

When they reached the first floor, they realised that the needles of light issuing from the lantern’s crown projected moving drawings and shapes against the walls of a large hall.

‘Look at this,’ said Ben, pointing at a rectangular surface about forty metres square that stood one metre above the ground.

All three walked over to it and discovered what appeared to be an immense model of Calcutta, reproduced with such precision and detail that when you looked at it closely you felt as if you were flying over the real city. They recognised the course of the Hooghly, the Maidan, Fort William, the White Town, the temple of Kali to the south, the Black Town, and even the bazaars. For a long time Sheere, Ian and Ben stood spellbound by the extraordinary miniature, captivated by its beauty.

‘There’s the house,’ said Ben, pointing.

The other two drew closer and saw, right in the heart of the Black Town, a faithful reproduction of the house they were standing in. The multicoloured beams from the ceiling swept across the miniature streets, revealing the hidden secrets of Calcutta as they passed.

‘What is that behind the house?’ asked Sheere.

‘It looks like a railway track,’ said Ian.

‘It is.’ Ben followed the outline of the track until it came to the sharp, majestic silhouette of Jheeter’s Gate, on the other side of a metal bridge spanning the Hooghly.

‘This track leads to the station where the fire happened,’ said Ben. ‘It’s a siding.’

‘There’s a train on the bridge,’ Sheere observed.

Ben walked round the model to get closer to the reproduction of the train. As he examined it, an uncomfortable tingling ran down his spine. He recognised the train. He’d seen it the previous night, although he’d thought it was only the product of a nightmare. Sheere walked over to him and Ben saw there were tears in her eyes.

‘This is our father’s house, Ben,’ she murmured. ‘He built it for us.’

Ben put his arms round Sheere and hugged her. At the other end of the room Ian looked away. Ben stroked Sheere’s face and kissed her on the forehead.

‘From now on,’ he said, ‘it will always be our home.’

At that moment the lights on the little train standing on the bridge lit up and, slowly, its wheels began to roll along the rails.

Silent as the grave, Mr de Rozio was devoting all his archivist’s cunning to the reports on the trial which Colonel Llewelyn had been so determined to bury. Seth and Michael were doing the same with a folder full of plans and notes in Chandra’s handwriting. Seth had found it at the bottom of one of the boxes containing the engineer’s personal effects. After his death, because no relative or institution had claimed them and he had been an important public figure, they had ended up lost in the museum’s archives. The library was shared by various scientific and academic institutions, among them the Higher Institute of Engineering, of which Chandra Chatterghee had been one of the most illustrious and controversial members. The folder was plainly bound and its cover bore a single inscription, handwritten in blue ink: The Firebird .

Seth and Michael had hidden their discovery so as not to distract the plump librarian from his task and had moved over to the other end of the room.

‘These drawings are fantastic,’ whispered Michael, admiring various illustrations of mechanical objects whose specific function he couldn’t quite fathom.

‘Let’s concentrate,’ Seth reminded him. ‘What does it say about the Firebird?’

‘Science isn’t my forte,’ Michael began, ‘but if I’m right, this is a plan for an enormous flame-thrower.’

Seth examined the plans without understanding them in the slightest. Michael anticipated his queries.

‘This is a tank for oil or some sort of fuel,’ Michael said, pointing to the document. ‘This suction mechanism is joined to it. It’s a feeding pump, like the pump in a well, and it provides the fuel to keep this circle of flames alight. A sort of pilot light.’

‘But the flames can’t be more than a few centimetres high,’ Seth objected. ‘I don’t see how there can be any real power there.’

‘Look at this pipe.’

Seth saw what his friend was referring to: a sort of tube, rather like the barrel of a cannon or rifle.

‘The flames emerge round the rim of the cannon.’

‘And?’

‘Look at this other end,’ said Michael. ‘It’s a tank, an oxygen tank.’

‘Simple chemistry,’ murmured Seth, putting two and two together.

‘Imagine what would happen if this oxygen were ejected under pressure through the pipe and passed through the circle of flames.’

‘A flame-thrower,’ Seth agreed.

Michael closed the folder and looked at his friend.

‘What kind of secret could make Chandra design a toy like this for a butcher like Llewelyn? It’s like giving the Emperor Nero a shipment of gunpowder …’