Sepulchre by Kate Mosse Read Free Book Online Page A

awake in the rue de Berlin. There was something soothing about Achille's presence. She burrowed deeper into the folds of the chair, recognising the piece. La Damoiselle Elue, a composition Anatole often claimed Debussy had written with Léonie in mind. She knew the assertion to be untrue. Achille had told her that the libretto was a prose setting of a poem by Rossetti, which in its turn had been inspired by Monsieur Poe's The Raven. But false or not, she held the piece close to her heart, and its ethereal chords precisely suited her midnight spirits.
    Without warning, another memory swooped down upon her. The morning of the funeral. Then, as now, Achille hammering endlessly on the piano, black notes and white seeping up through the floorboards until Léonie thought she would be driven mad with his playing. The single palm leaf floating in the glass bowl. The sickly aroma of ritual and death that insinuated itself into every corner of the apartment, the burning of incense and candles to mask the cloying sweetness of the corpse in the closed casket.
You are confusing what was with what is.
    Then, most mornings, he had disappeared from the apartment before light had given shape back to the world. Most evenings he returned home long after the household had retired. Once, he had been absent for a week without explanation. When Léonie finally mustered the courage to ask him where he had been, he told her only not to concern herself. She supposed he spent his nights at the rouge et noir tables. She knew, too, from the gossip of the servants, that he was being subjected to vociferous and anonymous denunciations in the columns of the newspapers.
    The physical toll upon him was obvious. His cheeks grew hollow and his skin transparent. His brown eyes were dulled, permanently bloodshot, and his lips withered and parched. Léonie would do anything to prevent such a deterioration again.
    Only when the leaves were returning to the trees in the Boulevard Malesherbes, and when the paths of the Parc Monceau were filled once more with pink and white and lilac blooms, did the attacks upon his good name suddenly cease. From then, his spirits improved and his health recovered. The older brother she knew and loved was restored to her. Since then, there had been no more disappearances, no more evasions, no more half-truths.
Until this evening.
     
Léonie realised her cheeks were wet. She wiped away the tears with cold fingers, then wrapped the shawl tighter around her.
     
This is September, not March.
    But Léonie remained sick at heart. She knew he had lied to her. So she kept vigil at the window, allowing Achille's music below to lull her into a half-sleep, whilst all the time listening for the sound of Anatole's latchkey in the door.
CHAPTER 7
     
Thursday 17TH September
    Leaving the lady sleeping, Anatole crept from the tiny rented room. Careful not to disturb the other lodgers in the boarding house, he walked slowly down the narrow and dusty wooden stairs in stockinged feet. A gas jet burned on each landing, as he descended one flight, then another and another, until he was in the passageway that gave on to the street.
    It was not quite dawn, yet Paris was waking. In the distance, Anatole could hear the sounds of delivery carts. Wooden traps over the cobbles delivering milk and freshly baked bread to the cafes and bars of the Faubourg Montmartre.
    He stopped to put on his shoes, then set off. The rue Feydeau was deserted and there was no sound except the clip of his heels on the pavement. Deep in thought, Anatole walked quickly, to the junction with the rue Saint-Marc, intending to cut through the arcade of the Passage des Panoramas. He saw no one, heard no one.
    His thoughts were rattling around in his head. Would their plan succeed? Could he get out of Paris unobserved and without raising suspicion? For all the fighting talk of the past hours, Anatole entertained doubts. He knew that his conduct over the coming hours, days, would determine