Kate Mosse - Labyrinth

“I can feel your heart beating,” she said softly. “Beating very hard. Now why might that be, Paul?” Holding his gaze, she pressed him back against the chair. “I don’t tolerate mistakes. And I don’t like not being kept informed.” Their eyes locked. “You understand me?”

Authie did not answer. She had not intended him to.

“All you had to do was deliver to me the objects you promised. That’s what I’m paying you for. So, find the English girl, deal with Noubel if necessary, the rest is your business. I don’t want to hear about it.”

“If I’ve done anything to give you the impression that-”

She put her fingers to his lips and felt him flinch at the physical contact.

“I don’t want to hear it.”

She released the pressure and stepped away from him, back out onto the balcony. The evening had stripped the color from everything, leaving the buildings and bridges silhouetted against the darkening sky.

A moment later, Authie came and stood next to her.

“I don’t doubt you are doing your best, Paul,” she said quietly. He put his hands next to hers on the railings and, for a second, their fingers touched. “There are other members of the Noublesso Veritables in Carcassonne, of course, who would serve just as well. However, given the extent of your involvement so far…”

She left the sentence hanging. From the stiffening of his shoulders and back, she knew the warning shot had hit home. She raised her hand to attract her driver, who was waiting below.

“I would like to visit the Pic de Soularac myself.”

“You’re staying in Carcassonne?”

She hid her smile. “For a few days, yes.”

“I was under the impression you didn’t wish to enter the chamber until the night of the ceremony-”

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said, turning to face him. “Now I’m here.” She smiled. “I have things to attend to, so if you could pick me up at one o’clock, that will give me time to read your report. I’m at the Hotel de la Cite.”

Marie-Cecile walked back inside, picked up the envelope and put it in her handbag.

“ Bien. A demain , Paul. Sleep well.”

Aware of his eyes on her back watching her walk down the stairs, Marie-Cecile could only admire his self-control. But as she got into the car, she had the satisfaction of hearing a glass hit the wall and shatter in Authie’s apartment two floors above.

The lounge of the hotel was thick with cigar smoke. After-dinner drinkers in summer suits or evening dresses sat enfolded in the deep leather armchairs and the discreet shadows of the high-backed mahogany settles.

Marie-Cecile walked slowly up the sweeping staircase. Black and white photographs looked down on her, reminders of the hotel’s celebrated turn-of-the-century past.

When she reached her room, she changed out of her clothes into her bathrobe. As always, last thing at night, she looked at herself in the mirror, dispassionately, as if scrutinizing a work of art. Translucent skin, high cheekbones, the distinctive de l’Oradore profile.

Marie-Cecile smoothed her fingers over her face and neck. She would not allow her beauty to fade with the passing of the years. If all went well, then she would succeed in doing what her grandfather had dreamed of. She would cheat old age. Cheat death.

She frowned. But only if the book and ring could be found. With a renewed sense of purpose, Marie-Cecile lit a cigarette and wandered over to the window, looking out over the gardens while she waited for her call to be answered. Murmured late-night conversations floated up to her from the terrace. Beyond the battlements of the Cite walls, beyond the river, the lights of the Basse Ville sparkled like cheap white and orange Christmas decorations.

“Francois-Baptiste? C’est moi. Has anyone called in the past twenty-four hours on my private number?” She listened. “No? Has she called you?” She waited. “I’ve just been told of a problem this end.” She drummed her fingers on her arm while he talked. “Have there been any developments with the other matter?”

The reply was not what she wanted to hear. “National or just local?” A pause. “Keep me in touch. Call me if anything else comes up, otherwise I’ll be back Thursday night.”

After she’d hung up, Marie-Cecile allowed her thoughts to dwell on the other man in her house. Will was sweet enough, keen to please, but the relationship had run its course. He was too demanding and his adolescent jealousies were starting to get on her nerves. He was always asking questions. She needed no complications at the moment.

Besides, they needed the house to themselves.

She turned on the reading light and got out the report Authie had given her on the skeletons, as well as a dossier on Authie himself, which had been compiled when he’d been put forward for election to the Noublesso Veritable two years ago, from her suitcase.

She skimmed the document, although she knew it well enough. There were a couple of accusations of sexual assault when he was a student. Both women had been paid off, she assumed, since no charges were ever brought. There had been allegations of an attack on an Algerian woman during a pro-Islamic rally, although again no charge had been made; evidence of involvement in an anti-Semitic publication at university, as well as allegations of sexual and physical abuse from his ex-wife, which had also come to nothing.

More significant were the regular and increasingly substantial donations to the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. In the past couple of years his involvement with fundamentalist groups opposed to Vatican II and the modernizing of the Catholic Church had also been growing.

To Marie-Cecile’s mind, such evidence of hardline religious commitment sat uneasily with membership of the Noublesso. Authie had pledged his service to the organization and he had been useful so far. He had arranged the excavation at the Pic de Soularac efficiently and everything appeared to be in hand for wrapping things up just as quickly. The warning of the breach of security in Chartres had come via one of his contacts. His intelligence was always clear and reliable.

Nonetheless, Marie-Cecile didn’t trust him. He was too ambitious. Set against his successes were the failures of the past forty-eight hours. She did not believe he’d be so stupid as to take either the ring or the book himself, but Authie did not seem the sort of a man to let things disappear from under his nose.

She hesitated, then made a second call.

“I have a job for you. I am interested in a book, approximately twenty centimeters high by ten centimeters wide, leather over board, held together by leather ties. Also, a man’s stone ring, flat face, a thin line around the middle and an engraving on the underside. There might even be a small token, about the size of a ten franc piece, with it.” She paused. “Carcassonne. A flat on the Quai de Paicherou and an office in the rue de Verdun. Both belong to Paul Authie.”

Alice’s hotel was immediately opposite the main gates into the medieval Cite, set in pretty gardens, sunk down out of sight of the road.

She was shown to a comfortable room on the first floor. Alice flung open the windows to let the world in. Smells of meat cooking, garlic and vanilla, cigar smoke floated into the room.

She unpacked quickly and showered, then called Shelagh again, more out of habit than expectation. Still no answer. She shrugged. Nobody could accuse her of not trying.

Armed with the guidebook shed bought in a service station on the journey from Toulouse, Alice left the hotel and crossed the road toward the Cite. Steep concrete steps led up into a small park bordered on two sides by bushes and tall evergreens and plane trees. A brightly lit nineteenth-century carousel dominated the far end of the gardens, its garish fin-de-siecle ornamentation out of place in the shadow of the sandstone medieval fortifications. Covered with a brown and white striped canopy, with a painted frieze of knights and ladies and white horses around the rim, everything was pink and gold-charging horses, spinning teacups, fairy-tale carriages. Even the ticket kiosk looked like a booth at a fairground. A bell rang and children squealed as the carousel began to turn, slowly belching out its antique mechanical song.