Kate Mosse - Labyrinth

“I’m going to have to go out, Aurelie,” he said. “Drop the report on Giraud at my apartment on your way home. Before eight o’clock.”

Then Authie snatched his jacket from the back of the chair, took a pair of gloves from his drawer and left.

Audric Baillard was sitting at a small desk in the front bedroom of Jeanne Giraud’s house. The shutters were partially closed and the room was dappled with the semi-filtered light of the late afternoon. Behind him was an old-fashioned single bed, with a carved wooden headboard and footboard, freshly made with plain white cotton sheets.

Jeanne had given this room over to his use many years ago, there for him when he needed it. In a gesture that had touched him enormously, she had furnished the room with copies of all his past publications, which sat on a single wooden shelf above the bed.

Baillard had few possessions. All he kept in the room was a change of clothes and writing materials. At the beginning of their long association, Jeanne had teased him about his preference for pen and ink and paper, as thick and heavy as parchment. He’d just smiled, telling her he was too old to change his habits.

Now, he wondered. Now, change was inevitable.

He leaned back in his chair, thinking of Jeanne and how much her friendship had meant to him. In every season of his life, he had found good men and women to aid him, but Jeanne was special. It was through Jeanne that he had located Grace Tanner, although the two women had never met.

The sound of pans clattering in the kitchen drew his thoughts back to the present. Baillard picked up his pen and felt the years falling away, a sudden absence of age and experience. He felt young again.

All at once, the words came easily to his mind and he began to write. The letter was short and to the point. When he was done, Audric blotted the glistening ink and folded the paper neatly in three to make an envelope of it. As soon as he had her address, the letter could be sent.

Then it was in her hands. Only she could decide.

“ Si es atal es atal . ”What will be, will be.

The telephone rang. Baillard opened his eyes. He heard Jeanne answer, then a sharp cry. At first, he thought it must come from the street outside. Then the sound of the receiver hitting the tiled floor.

Without knowing why, he found himself standing up, sensitive to a change in the atmosphere. He turned toward the sound of Jeanne’s feet coming up the stairs.

“Qu’es?” he said immediately. What is it? “Jeanne,” he said, more urgently. “What has happened? Who telephoned?”

She looked at him blankly. “It’s Yves. He’s been hurt.”

Audric looked at her in horror. “ Quora ?” When?

“Last night. A hit-and-run. They only just managed to get hold of Claudette. That was her calling.”

“How badly hurt is he?”

Jeanne didn’t seem to hear him. “They are sending someone to take me to the hospital in Foix.”

“Who? Claudette is organizing this?”

Jeanne shook her head.

“The police.”

“Would you like me to come with you?”

“Yes,” she said after a moment’s hesitation, then, like a sleepwalker, she went out of the room and across the landing. A moment later, Baillard heard her bedroom door shut.

Powerless, fearful of the news, he turned back to the room. He knew it was no accident of timing. His eyes fell upon the letter he’d written. He took half a step forward, thinking that he could stop the inevitable chain of events while there was still time.

Then Baillard let his hand fall back to his side. To burn the letter would render worthless everything he had fought for, everything he had endured.

He must follow the path to the end.

Baillard fell to his knees and began to pray. The old words were stiff on his lips at first, but soon they were flowing easily again, connecting him to all those who had spoken such words before.

A car horn blaring in the street outside drew him back to the present. Feeling stiff and tired, he struggled to his feet. He slipped the letter into his breast pocket, picked up his jacket from the back of the door, then went to tell Jeanne it was time to go.

Authie parked his car in one of the large and anonymous municipal car parks opposite the Porte Narbonnaise. Hordes of foreigners, armed with guidebooks and cameras, swarmed everywhere. He despised it all, the exploitation of history and the mindless commercialization of his past for the entertainment of the Japanese, the Americans, the English. He loathed the restored walls and inauthentic gray slated towers, the packaging of an imagined past for the stupid and the faithless.

Braissart was waiting for him as arranged and gave his report quickly. The house was empty and there was easy access at the back through the gardens. According to neighbors, a police car had collected Madame Giraud about fifteen minutes ago. There had been an elderly man with her.

“Who?”

“They’ve seen him around before, but no one knew his name.”

Having dismissed Braissart, Authie set off down the hill. The house was about three-quarters of the way down on the left-hand side. The door was locked and the shutters were closed, but an air of recent habitation hung about the place.

He continued to the end of the street, turned left into rue Barbarcane and along to the Place Saint-Gimer. A few residents were sitting outside their houses overlooking the parked cars in the square. A group of boys on bicycles, stripped to the waist and tanned dark by the sun, were hanging about on the steps of the church. Authie paid them no attention. He walked briskly along the tarmacked access road that ran along the backs of the first few houses and gardens of rue de la Gaffe. Then he climbed to the right to follow a narrow dirt path that wound across the grassy slopes below the walls of the Cite.

Soon Authie was overlooking the back of Giraud’s property. The walls were painted the same powder yellow as at the front. A small, unlocked wooden gate led to a paved garden. Pendulous figs, almost black with sweetness, hung from a generous tree, which covered most of the terrace from the eyes of her neighbors. The terra-cotta tiles were stained purple where overripe figs had fallen and burst.

The glass back doors were framed beneath a wooden pergola covered with vines. Authie peered through and saw that, although the key was in the lock, the doors were also bolted top and bottom. Since he didn’t want to leave evidence, he looked around for another way in.

Alongside the French windows was a small kitchen window that had been left open at the top. Authie slipped on the latex gloves, threaded his arm through the gap and manipulated the old-fashioned clasp until he slipped the catch. It was stiff and the hinges groaned in complaint as he eased it open. When the gap was wide enough, he squeezed in his fingers and released the lower window.

A smell of olives and sour bread greeted him as he climbed in to the chill pantry. A wire guard protected the cheese board. The shelves contained bottles, jars of pickles, jams and mustard. On the table was a wooden chopping board and a white tea towel covering a few crumbs from an old baguette. Apricots sat in a colander in the sink, nearly overripe, waiting to be washed. Two glasses, upended, stood on the draining board.

Authie walked through into the main room. There was a bureau in the corner on which sat an old electric typewriter. He pressed the on/off button and it buzzed into life. He slipped a piece of paper in and struck a couple of keys. The letters appeared in a sharp black row on the page.

Sliding the machine forward, Authie searched the pigeonholes behind. Jeanne Giraud was an orderly woman and everything was clearly labeled and filed: bills in the first section, personal letters in the second, pension and insurance documents in the third, miscellaneous circulars and flyers in the last.