Kate Mosse - Labyrinth

He placed his hands flat on the table. Thin and speckled brown with age, Alice thought they resembled the claws of a bird.

“Alais did not die before her time,” he said carefully.

That doesn’t tell me…“ she started to say.

Baillard held up his hand. “At the Pic de Soularac events were set in motion that will give you – give us – the answers we seek. Only through understanding the present, the truth of the past will be known. You seek your friend, oc ?

Again, Alice was caught out by the way Baillard jumped from one subject to another.

“How do you know about Shelagh?” she said.

“I know about the excavation and what happened there. Now your friend has disappeared. You are trying to find her.”

Deciding there was no point trying to work out how or what he knew, Alice replied.

“She left the site house a couple of days ago. No one’s seen her since. I know her disappearance is connected with the discovery of the labyrinth.” She hesitated. “In fact, I think I know who might be behind it all. At first, I thought Shelagh might have stolen the ring.”

Baillard shook his head. Yves Biau took it and sent it to his grandmother, Jeanne Giraud.“

Alice’s eyes widened as another part of the jigsaw slotted into place. “Yves and your friend work for a woman called Madame de l’Oradore.” He paused. “Fortunately, Yves had second thoughts. Your friend too, perhaps.”

Alice nodded. “Biau passed me a telephone number. Then I discovered Shelagh had called the same number. I found out the address and when I didn’t get any answer, I thought I should go and see if she was there. It led out to be the house of Madame de l’Oradore. In Chartres.”

“You went to Chartres?” Baillard said, his eyes bright. “Tell me. Tell me. at did you see?”

He listened in silence until Alice had finished telling him about everything she’d seen and overheard.

“But this young man, Will, he did not show you the chamber?”

Alice shook her head. “After a while, I started to think that maybe it didn’t really exist.”

“It exists,” he said.

“I left my rucksack behind. It had all my notes about the labyrinth in it, the photograph of you with my aunt. It will lead her straight to me.” She paused. “That’s why Will went back to get it for me.”

“And now you fear something has happened to him also?”

“I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. Half the time, I’m frightened for him. The rest of the time, I think he’s probably all tied up in it as well.”

“Why did you feel you could trust him in the first instance?”

Alice looked up, alerted by the change in his tone. His usually benign gentle expression had vanished.

“Do you feel you owe him something?”

“Owe him something?” Alice repeated, surprised by his choice of words. “No, not that. I barely know him. But, I liked him, I suppose. I felt comfortable in his company. I felt…”

“ Que ? What?”

“It was more the other way round. It sounds crazy, but it was if he felt he owed me. Like he was making up to me for something.”

Without warning, Baillard pushed his chair back and walked to the window. He was clearly in a state of some confusion.

Alice waited, not understanding what was going on. At last, he turned to face her.

“I will tell you Alais’ story,” he said. “And through the knowing of it, we will perhaps find the courage to face what lies ahead. But know this, Madomaisela Tanner. Once you have heard it, you will have no choice but to follow the path to its end.”

Alice frowned. “It sounds like a warning.”

“No,” he said quickly. “Far from it. But we must not lose sight of your friend. From what you overheard, we must assume her safety is guaranteed until this evening at least.”

“But I don’t know where the meeting’s supposed to take place,” she said.

“Francois-Baptiste didn’t say. Only tomorrow night at nine-thirty.”

“I can guess,” Baillard said calmly. “By dusk we will be there, waiting for them.” He glanced out of the open window at the rising sun. “That gives us some time to talk.”

“But what if you’re wrong?”

Baillard shrugged. We must hope I am not.“

Alice was quiet for a moment. “I just want to know the truth,” she said, amazed at how steady her voice sounded.

He smiled. “ Ieu tanben‘ , he said. Me too.

Will was aware of being dragged down the flight of narrow stairs to the basement, then along the concrete corridor through the two doors. His head was hanging forward. The smell of incense was less strong, although it still hung, like a memory, in the hushed subterranean gloom.

At first, Will thought they were taking him to the chamber and that they would kill him. A memory of the block of stone at the foot of the tomb, the blood on the floor, flashed into his mind. But, then he was being bumped over a step. He felt the fresh air of early morning on his face and he realised he was outside, in some sort of alley that ran along the back of rue du Cheval Blanc. There were the early morning smells of burned coffee beans and rubbish, the sounds of the garbage truck not far off. Will realised this was how they must have got Tavernier’s body away from the house and down to the river.

A spasm of fear went through him and he struggled a little, only to register that his arms and legs were tied. Will heard the sound of a car boot being opened. He was half lifted, half thrown into the back. It wasn’t the usual sort of thing. He was in some sort of large box. It smelled of plastic.

As he rolled awkwardly on to his side, his head connected with the back of the container and Will felt the skin around the wound split open. Blood started to trickle down his temple, irritating, stinging. He couldn’t move his hands to wipe it away.

Now Will remembered standing outside the door of the study. Then blinding crack of pain as Francois-Baptiste brought the gun down the side of his head; his knees giving way under him; Marie-Cecile’s imperious voice once again demanding to know what was going on.

A calloused hand grasped his arm. Will felt his sleeve being pushed up and then the sharp point of a needle piercing his skin. Like before. Then, the sound of catches being snapped into place and some sort of covering, a tarpaulin perhaps, being pulled over his prison.

The drug was seeping into his veins, cold, pleasant, anaesthetisingthe pain.Hazy. Will drifted in and out of consciousness. He felt the car picking up speed. He started to feel queasy as his head rolled from side to side as they took the corners. He thought of Alice. More than anything, he wanted to see her. Tell her he had tried his best. That he had not let her down.

He was hallucinating now. He could picture the swirling, murky green waters of the river Eure flooding into his mouth and nose and lungs. Will tried to keep Alice’s face in his mind, her serious brown eyes, her smile. If he could keep her image with him, then perhaps he would be all right.

But the fear of drowning, of dying in this foreign place that meant nothing to him, was more powerful. Will slipped away into the darkness.

In Carcassonne, Paul Authie stood on his balcony looking out over the river Aude, a cup of black coffee in his hand. He had used O’Donnell as bait to get to Francois-Baptiste de l’Oradore, but instinctively he rejected the idea of a dummy book for her to hand over. The boy would spot it was a fake. Besides, he did want him to see the state she was in and know he’d been set up.

Authie put his cup down on the table and shot the cuffs on his crisp white shirt. The only option was to confront Francois-Baptiste himself alone – and tell him he’d bring O’Donnell and the book to Marie-Cecile at the Pic de Soularac in time for the ceremony.