Sepulchre

  It was a pragmatic and unromantic story. And although it answered many of the questions Léonie had about the nature of her aunt and uncle’s marriage, it did not explain of whom Isolde had been speaking when she had talked so tenderly on that first walk they had taken together. On that occasion, she had hinted at a grand passion straight from the pages of a novel. She had given tantalising glimpses of experiences about which Léonie could only dream.

  During these peaceful early weeks of October, the storms forecast failed to materialise. The sun shone brightly, but not too fiercely. There was a temperate, but moderate, breeze, nothing to disrupt the tranquillity of their days. It was a pleasant time, with little to disturb the surface of the domestic and self-contained life they were constructing for themselves at the Domaine de la Cade.

  The only shadow on the horizon was the lack of word from their mother. Marguerite was a lackadaisical correspondent, but to have received no communication whatsoever was surprising. Anatole tried to reassure Léonie that the most likely explanation was that a letter had been mislaid on the mail coach that had overturned outside Limoux on the night of the storm. The postmaster had told him that an entire consignment of letters, packages and telegrams had been lost, hurled by the force of the accident into the River Salz and carried downstream in the floods.

  At Léonie’s persistent prompting, Anatole agreed, albeit reluctantly, that he would write. He addressed the letter to the apartment on the rue de Berlin, thinking that perhaps Du Pont had been obliged to return to Paris and that Marguerite therefore might be there to receive the letter.

  As Léonie watched Anatole seal the envelope and give it into the hands of the boy to be taken to the post office in Rennes-les-Bains, a feeling of dread suddenly overwhelmed her. She all but reached out a hand to stop him, but checked herself. She was being foolish. She could not think that Anatole’s creditors were still pursuing him.

  What harm could come of sending a letter?

  At the end of the second week of October, when the air was filled with the smell of autumn bonfires and the scent of fallen leaves, Léonie suggested to Isolde that perhaps they might pay Monsieur Baillard a visit. Or, indeed, invite him to the Domaine de la Cade. She was disappointed when Isolde informed her that she had heard it reported that Monsieur Baillard had unexpectedly quit his lodgings in Rennes-les-Bains and was not expected to return before Toussaint, the Eve of All Saints.

  ‘Wherever has he gone?’

  Isolde shook her head. ‘No one knows. Into the mountains, it is believed, but no one knows for certain.’

  Léonie still wished to go. Although Isolde and Anatole were reluctant, they capitulated finally and a visit was arranged for Friday 16th October.

  They passed an agreeable morning in the town. They ran into Charles Denarnaud and took coffee with him on the terrace of the Hôtel de la Reine. Despite his bonhomie and cordiality, Léonie still could not bring herself to like him, and from Isolde’s manner and reserve, she realised her aunt felt similarly.

  ‘I do not trust him,’ Léonie whispered. ‘There is something false in his manner.’

  Isolde did not say anything in response, but raised her eyebrows in such a manner as to confirm she shared Léonie’s misgivings. Léonie was relieved when Anatole stood up to take his leave.

  ‘So you’ll join me for a morning of shooting, Vernier?’ said Denarnaud, shaking Anatole’s hand. ‘Plenty of sanglier at this time of year. Woodcock and pigeon also.’

  Anatole’s brown eyes glinted brightly at the prospect. ‘I would be delighted, Denarnaud, although I warn you I have more enthusiasm than skill. And, I am embarrassed to inform you, I am ill prepared. I have no gun.’

  Denarnaud slapped him on the back. ‘I’ll provide the weapons and ammunition, if you stand the cost of the breakfast.’

  Anatole smiled. ‘A deal,’ he said, and despite her antipathy to the man, Léonie was cheered by the look of pleasure the promise of the hunt had brought to her brother’s face.

  ‘Ladies,’ said Denarnaud, raising his hat. ‘Vernier. Monday next? I’ll send what you need up to the house ahead of time, if that is agreeable to you, Madame Lascombe.’

  Isolde nodded. ‘Of course.’

  As they promenaded, Léonie could not help but notice that Isolde attracted a certain amount of interest. There was no hostility or suspicion in the scrutiny, but there was a watchfulness. Isolde was dressed in sombre clothes and wore her half-veil lowered in the street. It surprised Léonie that, even nine months after the event, she was still expected to dress as Jules Lascombe’s widow. Periods of mourning in Paris were brief. Here, there was clearly a requirement for a longer observation.

  The highlight for Léonie of their visit, however, was the presence of a travelling photographer in the Place du Pérou. His face was hidden beneath a thick black cloth, and the box contraption was balanced on the spindly wooden legs of a tripod with metal feet. He came from a studio in Toulouse. On a mission to record the life of the villages and towns of the Haute Vallée for posterity, he had already visited Rennes-le-Château, Couiza and Coustaussa. After Rennes-les-Bains, he was to progress to Espéraza and Quillan.

  ‘May we? It will be a souvenir of our time here.’ Léonie pulled at Anatole’s sleeve. ‘Please? A gift for M’man.’

  To her surprise, tears sprang into her eyes. For the first time since Anatole had sent the letter to the post, Léonie found herself sentimental at the thought of her mother’s company.

  Perhaps observing her high emotions, Anatole capitulated. He sat in the middle upon an old metal chair, its legs uneven and wobbling upon the cobbles, holding his cane across his knees and with his hat in his lap. Isolde, elegant in her dark jacket and skirt, stood behind him to his left with her slim black fingers in silk on his shoulder. Léonie, pretty in her russet walking jacket with brass buttons and velvet trim, stood at his right, smiling directly into the camera.

  ‘There,’ Léonie said, when it was over. ‘Now we shall always remember this day.’

  Before they departed Rennes-les-Bains, Anatole made his regular pilgrimage to the poste restante, while Léonie, wishing to be convinced that Audric Baillard truly was not in residence, made her way to his modest lodgings. She had slipped the sheet of music taken from the sepulchre into her pocket and she was determined to show it to him. She wished, too, to confide how she had begun to make a record on paper of the paintings on the wall of the apse.

  And to ask him more of the rumours surrounding the Domaine de la Cade.

  Isolde waited patiently as Léonie knocked upon the blue wooden door, as if she could draw Monsieur Baillard out by force of will. The window boards were all closed and the flowers in the boxes on the outer sills were covered in felt, in anticipation of the autumn frosts that might soon come. An air of hibernation hung about the building, as if it was not expecting anyone to return for some time.

  She knocked again.

  As she gazed at the shuttered house, the strength of Monsieur Baillard’s warning not to return to the sepulchre nor seek the cards came back to her more strongly than ever. Although she had only spent one evening in his company, she had complete confidence in him. Some weeks had passed since the dinner party. Now, as she stood silently waiting at a door that did not open, she realised how much she wished him to know that she had remained obedient to his wishes.

  Almost completely so.

  She had not retraced her steps through the woods. She had not taken steps to learn more. It was true she had not yet returned her uncle’s book to the library, but she had not studied it. Indeed, she had barely even opened it since that first visit.

  Now, although it frustrated her that Monsieur Baillard truly was absent, it did nonetheless strengthen her resolve to abide by his advice. The thought flashed through her mind that it would not be safe to do otherwise.

  Léonie turned away and took Isolde’s arm.

  When they arrived back at the Domaine de la Cade some half an hour later, Léonie ran to the corner bene
ath the stairs and placed the sheet of music in the piano stool, beneath a moth-eaten copy of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Now, it seemed significant to her that in all that time she had possessed it, she had not ever actually tried to play it.

  That night, when Léonie blew out the light in her bedchamber, for the first time she regretted that she had not previously returned Les Tarots to the library. She was sensitive to the presence of her uncle’s book in her chamber, albeit hidden beneath her spools of cotton, thread and ribbon. Thoughts of devils slipped into her mind, of children stolen from their beds, of markings upon the ground and stones that seemed to tell of some evil unchained. In the middle of the long night, she jolted awake with the image of the eight Tarot tableaux pressing down upon her. She lit a candle and set the ghosts to flight. She would not allow them to draw her back.

  For Léonie now understood absolutely the nature of Audric Baillard’s warning. The spirits of the place had come close to claiming her. She should not give them such an opportunity again.

  CHAPTER 54

  The clement weather held until Tuesday 20th October.

  A gunmetal-grey sky sat low on the horizon. A damp and obscuring mist wrapped the Domaine in chill fingers. The trees were but silhouettes. The surface of the lake was choppy. The juniper and rhododendron bushes cowered in a gusting south-westerly wind.

  Léonie was glad that Anatole had had his day’s hunting with Charles Denarnaud before the rain set in. He had set off with a brown leather etui à fusil slung across his shoulder holding his borrowed guns, the buckles gleaming in the sun. Late in the afternoon, he returned home with a brace of wood pigeon, a weatherbeaten face and eyes flushed with the thrill of the shoot.

  As she glanced out of the window, she thought how much less pleasurable an experience it would have been today.

  After breakfast, Léonie took herself into the morning room and was curled up upon the chaise longue with the collected stories of Madame Oliphant when the post was delivered from the village. She listened to the front door being opened, a murmuring of greetings, then the clipped footsteps of the maid on the tiled floor crossing the hall to the study.

  For Isolde, it was approaching a particularly busy time of year on the estate. St Martin’s Day, 11th November, was a month away. It was the day of annual accounting and, on certain estates, evictions. Isolde explained to Léonie that it was the day the tenants’ rents were settled for the coming year, and as chatelaine, she was determined to fulfil her role. It was more a question of listening to the estate manager and acting on his advice rather than making decisions per se, but the matter had kept her cloistered away in her study the past two mornings.

  Léonie dropped her eyes back to her book and continued reading.

  A few minutes later, she heard raised voices, then the unaccustomed sound of the study bell jangling. Puzzled, Léonie put down her book and, in stockinged feet, ran across the room and opened the door a fraction. She was in time to see Anatole bounding down the stairs and disappearing into the study.

  ‘Anatole?’ she cried after him. ‘Is there news from Paris?’

  But evidently he did not hear her as he slammed the door firmly shut behind him.

  How quite extraordinary.

  Léonie waited a moment longer, peering inquisitively around the door frame, hoping to glimpse her brother, but nothing further happened, and soon she grew weary of watching and returned to her settee. Five minutes passed, then ten. Léonie continued to read, even though her attention was elsewhere.

  At eleven o’clock, Marieta brought a tray of coffee into the morning room and set it out on the table. There were, as usual, three cups.

  ‘My aunt and brother will be joining me?’

  ‘I have not been given orders to the contrary, Madomaisèla. ’

  At that moment, Anatole and Isolde appeared together in the doorway.

  ‘Good morning, petite,’ he said. His brown eyes were shining.

  ‘I heard the commotion,’ Léonie said, leaping to her feet. ‘I wondered if you had received news from Paris.’

  His expression faltered a moment. ‘I’m sorry, no. Nothing from M’man.’

  ‘Then . . . whatever has happened?’ she asked, realising that Isolde, too, was in a state of some excitement. Her complexion was high and her eyes too, were bright.

  She crossed the room and squeezed Léonie’s hand. ‘This morning I received the letter I have been waiting for from Carcassonne.’

  Anatole had taken a position in front of the fire, his hands behind his back. ‘I believe Isolde may have promised a concert ...’

  ‘So we are going!’ Léonie leapt up and kissed her aunt. ‘That is perfectly wonderful!’

  Anatole laughed. ‘We had hoped you would be pleased. It is not the best time of year for such a journey, of course, but we are at the mercy of circumstances.’

  ‘When shall we go?’ Léonie asked, looking from one to the other.

  ‘We will depart this Thursday morning. Isolde has wired to inform the lawyers she will be there at two o’clock.’ He paused, exchanged another glance with Isolde. Léonie caught it.

  There is something more he wishes to tell me.

  Her nerves again fluttered within her chest.

  ‘In point of fact, there was one other matter we wished to raise with you. Isolde has most generously suggested that we might extend our stay here. Perhaps even until the New Year. What would you say to that?’

  Léonie stared at Anatole in amazement. In the first instance, she did not know quite what she thought of such a suggestion. Would the pleasures of the country pall if they remained longer?

  ‘But . . . but your work? Can the magazine spare you for so long? Do you not need to oversee your interests from closer at hand?’

  ‘Oh, I dare say the magazine can manage a little longer without me,’ he said lightly. He accepted a cup of coffee from Isolde.

  ‘What of M’man?’ Léonie said, assailed suddenly by an image of her beautiful mother sitting alone in the drawing room of the rue de Berlin.

  ‘If Du Pont can spare her, we had thought, perhaps, to invite her to join us here.’

  Léonie stared hard at Anatole.

  He cannot believe she will ever leave Paris. Or return here.

  ‘I do not think that General Du Pont would wish it,’ she said as an excuse for the refusal that would surely be the response to such an invitation.

  ‘Or perhaps you are too bored with my company to wish to remain here longer?’ Anatole said, coming across the room and draping his arm around her shoulders. ‘Does the thought of further weeks spent confined here with your brother distress you so?’

  The moment stretched, taut and expectant, then Léonie giggled.

  ‘You are a fool, Anatole! Of course I would be delighted to stay longer. I cannot think of anything I would like more, although—’

  ‘Although?’ Anatole said quickly.

  The smile slipped from her lips. ‘I should be glad to hear from M’man.’

  Anatole put down his cup and lit a cigarette. ‘As would I,’ he said quietly. ‘I am certain it is only that she is having so agreeable a time that she has not yet found the opportunity to write. And, of course, allowing time for my letter to be forwarded to the Marne.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘I thought you believed they must have returned to Paris?’

  ‘I suggested only that they might have done so,’ he said mildly. Then his expression lightened again. ‘But the thought of a trip to Carcassonne pleases you?’

  ‘Indeed, yes.’

  He nodded. ‘Good. On Thursday, we will take the morning train from Couiza. The courrier publique leaves from the Place du Pérou at five o’clock.’

  ‘How long will we staying?’

  ‘Two days, maybe three.’

  Léonie’s face fell in disappointment. ‘But that is hardly any time at all.’

  ‘Quite long enough,’ he smiled.

  This time, Léonie could not fail to notice the intimate gl
ance that passed between him and Isolde.

  CHAPTER 55

  The lovers lay beneath the sheets, their faces lit only by the flickering light of a single candle.

  ‘You should return to your rooms,’ she said. ‘It is late.’

  Anatole folded his arms behind his head in a gesture that clearly spoke of his determination to stay longer.

  ‘Quite. Everyone is in bed.’

  Isolde smiled. ‘I did not believe that I could experience such happiness,’ she said quietly. ‘That we would ever be together here.’ Then the smile fell from her pale face. Her hand went, automatically, to the hollow of her throat. ‘I fear it will not last.’