The Cathedral of Fear Page 8

  “From seeing how you’re dressed, I’d say,” Sherlock said, raising an eyebrow. “And because the woman downstairs told us we should go down to the cellar and get a third pallet to put in the room.”

  It was useless to pretend. In a few words, I told them of my flight from home. It seemed an adventure worthy of Rocambole, the gentleman thief I’d read three books about, written by the Viscount Ponson du Terrail.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “We need a hearty dinner!” Lupin roared.

  “Or at least the Parisian equivalent,” Sherlock added.

  I snorted and asked, “Is eating the only thing you know how to do?”

  “Whether you believe it or not, Irene, a hearty meal may be the only way to figure out more about the Grand Master.”

  Sherlock explained to me that thanks to his brother Mycroft and his subscription to The World Literary Gazette (a showy periodical filled with information about the latest literary news), Sherlock had found a clue about the Grand Master.

  “And how can that help us?” I asked, puzzled.

  “Simple! I remembered that the article in question spoke of a Parisian writer … Mr. Alexandre Dumas!”

  Hearing the name of the author of The Three Musketeers greatly surprised me.

  “Alexandre Dumas?” I stammered. “You mean that Alexandre Dumas? He’s still alive?”

  “Unfortunately not. He died last December,” Sherlock replied. “But his son, who has the same name, is still alive. Although he’s not the writer his father was, in my opinion, he might be able to help us. The two worked hand in glove with each other!”

  “Oh, and where —” I began.

  “I made a little visit to the French Academy!” Lupin interrupted with a clever smile. “A peek at their address book was enough to find out where our Dumas lives.”

  “And a chat with his very friendly maid yielded his habits,” Sherlock added.

  According to what Dumas’s housekeeper said, the writer usually dined at Francillon, an expensive restaurant that had somehow managed to keep up its business, despite the war.

  We headed to the restaurant, which was near the big church of Saint-Eustache, located inside the borders of the park of Les Halles.

  Lupin reached the revolving door and pushed it. The aroma of roasted meat, game, and baked potatoes enveloped us.

  We asked for Dumas fils. Lupin was doing the asking, and since he’d retained an excellent accent, despite his roaming, he received the answer, “Of course!”

  We followed the waiter to a small table in the corner, where a fancy gentleman with luxurious, gelled hair and a prominent chin sat. He had a large stained napkin stretched across his chest.

  “Mr. Dumas?” Lupin began. “Please forgive me for disturbing you.”

  The diner barely raised his eyes from the wine that was being poured, immediately assuming a suspicious expression.

  “I hope you haven’t come to ask me about my father’s books,” he began drily when he saw three children standing before him.

  “Absolutely not,” Lupin hastened to respond. “On the contrary, I must confess we’ve never read them.”

  I wanted to object that I had devoured The Count of Montecristo and The Three Musketeers, but I thought it better to support Arsène’s game. And sure enough, his claim had somewhat of an effect.

  “So what do you want?” Dumas asked. “I don’t think you want a meal, I imagine, nor do you seem old enough to invite me to accept a post in the socialist government … although you never know, when officials spend their time shrieking, ‘Power to the young!’ And so, as I already said, I’m not interested.”

  Sherlock seemed annoyed by this rant, but limited himself to a look of disapproval. I, however, noticed Dumas glancing over at me as he spoke, as if he hoped I would at least laugh a little. He looked back and forth between us, his head bobbing like a ship in the middle of the sea. So I smiled.

  “None of those, actually,” my friend continued. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Arsène Lupin, artist and juggler.”

  “Oh, good grief,” Alexandre Dumas muttered under his breath.

  “And with me are Master Sherlock Holmes, puzzle buff, and Miss Irene Adler … writer.”

  I snapped a fiery glance at him. Why had he introduced me that way?

  “Oh, really?” Dumas chuckled, looking at me a little more carefully. “A writer? And what do you write?”

  “Murder mysteries,” I replied, without hesitation.

  He seemed to leap out of his chair. “A delicate young lady like you writes murder mysteries? What kind?”

  “All kinds of them,” I replied. “I don’t have a preference. As long as someone dies.” I looked at Lupin. “And someone investigates.” I looked at Sherlock.

  “I don’t believe it!” Dumas exclaimed, greatly amused. “I’ll have to introduce you to my friend, George!” Then he arranged his napkin around the collar of his shirt and grabbed his silverware, because his pigs’ feet and potatoes had arrived. They had an aroma good enough to twist a hungry stomach into knots. “But the fact remains that I still don’t know why you —”

  “We’re looking for the Grand Master,” Sherlock interrupted from behind Lupin and me. And we’ve been told you might know who he is.”

  At those words, Alexandre Dumas set down his fork, and his face turned ashen. After a moment of church-like silence, he displayed a forced smile. “The Grand Master, eh?”

  “Precisely.”

  “And you say you’ve never read my father’s books?”

  “I actually have,” I admitted. “But as I recall, they don’t speak of a Grand Master.”

  He asked what I might have read, and hearing my reply, he murmured, “Oh, of course, of course. Those are probably my papa’s best novels. Even though, you know, it wasn’t really he who wrote them, or at least not entirely. So you’ve never read any of the novels from the series about Marie Antoinette …”

  I shook my head.

  “Not even Joseph Balsamo, the Count of Cagliostro?”

  Once again, I gestured no.

  “However,” Sherlock Holmes broke in, “we know that your father was working on a last, great work … And I believe we must find out something about it.”

  The man started and gave my friend an anxious look, forgetting the plate before him for a moment. “And you,” he asked in a whisper. “What do you know about that work?”

  Chapter 13

  THE DUMAS ARCHIVES

  When I remember our adventure, even today, I am astonished that in the end, three children like us — who had just arrived in Paris without even having an address to look for — were able to convince a man to take us to his home and tell us about his family’s secrets. The fact is that my friend, Sherlock Holmes, was convincing. Having consumed his pig’s feet, Alexandre Dumas fils put on his coat and made his way to the rue Coquillière, where we could still smell a neighborhood market, continuing onward to the intersection with the rue Croix des Petits Champs, where we curved toward rue Saint-Honoré.

  “Not everything my father wrote was true,” Dumas confided, as we walked through the city, ticking along with his walking stick. “And believing his words would be like betting on a blindfolded horse. But I think the Grand Master was something entirely different for once. Papa was a genuine fan of mysterious things and people. Of what you children call the ‘supernatural.’”

  We followed Alexandre Dumas fils up to a doorway, where he pulled out his keys and opened the door on the third try. “My father had a strong point,” he said. “Before writing about something, he gathered information on it. And he kept everything he’d found, cataloging it and filing it away.”

  We went up a flight of stairs and then a second one. Alexandre Dumas fils spoke without pausing; not even Arsène could stem the flow. When we reached a door,
he stopped to look at us in the dark. For a moment, I was afraid we’d been too naïve by following him there.

  “What I know about my father’s final, terrible, unfinished book is that it’s based on a true story that he collected information about. Apparently, despite being protected by the deepest secrecy, the Grand Master holds the fate of the city in his hands — and, without exaggerating, the fate of all of France. They call him the Grand Master of the Order of St. Michael, and he is said to meet with his followers in the tunnels under Paris in order to carry out secret rites and horrific rituals … intended to restore the old regime of France!”

  Saying this, Alexandre Dumas fils flung open the door to an apartment. It was almost completely empty, except for two rows of writing tables on which a few menacing wood and metal machines were lined up. They attracted our attention right away.

  “Welcome to what the family, if one can speak of family, calls the haunted chamber. These are six Ravizza writing keyboards, originally from Italy,” he explained, showing the first models of what — over the course of years I would learn to call a “typewriter,” which ended up having such significance in my life.

  He touched them lightly with his fingertips, passing across them. “My father loved inventions and spending money in the most eccentric ways.”

  “It’s like being in a newsroom,” Sherlock observed.

  “Here’s where he created some of his most famous works — he and his assistants, the ghosts who worked with him. Which includes yours truly, of course.”

  So saying, Dumas lit a light and, holding it high above his head, moved into a second room. It was occupied by an enormous chest of drawers manufactured out of good, sturdy wood that held the Dumas Archives.

  There were no labels, only drawers. Drawers and more drawers, one after another. Newspapers were thrown in a messy pile on the floor, plus books. Books by both Dumas men.

  Before finding what he was looking for, Dumas opened and closed a few drawers, all of which were filled to the brim with pages from newspapers, handwritten notes, pictures, and stamps. When he finally caught sight of the bundle he’d been looking for, he grabbed it. A loose sheet fluttered out and fell to the ground. Sherlock, who was nearest, promptly bent down to pick it up and handed it to the writer, who stuck it in his pocket.

  “Make yourselves at home,” he said.

  We arranged ourselves on the carpet. He began running some notes through his fingers, mumbling. Whenever he found an interesting one, he read it aloud. “The Grand Master and the map of Paris … could it be this?”

  It seemed to fit. It was just a reference to the existence of a map (we hadn’t admitted to having two fragments of it with us), which convinced Dumas to bring it over to us.

  “So, ladies and gentlemen,” Dumas said, “it appears that the person who suggested you speak to me did you a great service.”

  “So it seems,” Lupin admitted.

  “What does your note say?” Sherlock inquired.

  “I’d advise you not to speak to anyone about these matters, on pain of death. You’re just children, but I think you can understand that you are faced with something much bigger than you are. It says here that the power of the Grand Master comes from a map … A map that shows the place where the holiest of relics is preserved in the vaults of Paris, a place known as the Heart of St. Michael.”

  Alexandre Dumas fils looked at us, horrified. “A relic of immense power, capable of curing all evil, present and past, and restoring the order of things as they should be, or something like that.”

  “And apparently there are people prepared to do anything to get this map,” I reflected.

  “Oh, no doubt about it, miss! Whoever has this relic in their possession, especially in a difficult time like this, can certainly —”

  “Does your note say anything else?” interrupted Sherlock, who had little tolerance for what he undoubtedly thought were silly fantasies.

  “Oh, yes, it does. Papa drew this design.” He showed us a pencil sketch that depicted France, roughly. A few cities were shown on it, connected by a dotted line.

  After studying it, Sherlock remarked, “The constellation Virgo …”

  “Exactly!” Dumas explained. “The French Gothic cathedrals are located through France so as to duplicate that constellation.”

  “A detail worthy of a novel!” Lupin commented, amused.

  The writer gave him a dirty look. “My father drew a few lines on this sheet, with tiny writing on it. The map was divided between eight ancient noble French families, who were to protect it until …”

  “Until?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “The sentence breaks off there. And we can no longer ask him what he had in mind.”

  Eight families, I thought, and I looked at the drawing that the son of the great writer was holding out to me. Evreux had one of the cathedrals depicted. An ancient pact to hide a relic of great importance, an object for recovery during tumultuous times, like those we were passing through. Eight families and eight pieces of a map, as Sherlock Holmes had already guessed.

  It was enough to begin to understand more about the mystery, but we still were missing essential clues.

  “Your father doesn’t say who the Grand Master is or how to go about finding him?” I asked.

  “Oh, no. That he doesn’t say,” Dumas replied.

  “And do we have a list of the eight families?”

  “Not even that, unfortunately.”

  “So we find ourselves at a … dead end?”

  “Actually, young lady, we’re in an apartment filled with dusty, old notes and ghosts of ghosts, if you’ll permit me to play with words. A dead end is only a problem if you want to proceed along a certain road at any cost … But I have no intention of following my father’s clues about this fearsome story,” Alexandre Dumas fils concluded, retrieving his father’s note.

  Chapter 14

  THE LADY OF THE CAMELLIAS

  Sherlock, Lupin, and I all slept heavily, without changing our clothes, due to the conditions of the sheets and the many tiny inhabitants of our filthy little room. Since my two friends politely let me choose, I took the most isolated pallet in the room and immediately regretted it.

  In the deep silence of the Parisian night, it was a great comfort to hear Lupin and Sherlock breathing. Lupin tossed and turned frequently under his filthy covers as if he was having trouble getting to sleep, while Sherlock’s breath was regular and measured. He lay motionless on his pallet, like a motor that was off but ready to turn back on again at the slightest signal.

  For instance, a distant explosion awakened me during the night, causing me to jump from my bed. Lupin swore, without really awakening, while Sherlock had sprung to his feet and was already looking out the tiny window when I sat up.

  It’s nothing, I told myself. Maybe a weapons depot. Maybe a collapsing house. But my heart beat wildly, and Sherlock looked at me in the dark.

  Without saying a word, we pushed my pallet closer to his. When we fell back asleep again, we were much closer to each other, and I felt better protected.

  * * *

  We woke early. Still wavering between day and night, the Paris sky was a dark blue mixed with the gray of dawn. It seemed to me that the first light of that day brought a promise with it. The promise of events that would soon take place.

  While I got ready, trying to look presentable, a thought kept coming back to sting me like a barb. I thought about how much I must have worried my parents, leaving home as I had. I worried over how to let them know in a way that wouldn’t force me to give up our adventure.

  In the end, I gave up on the idea with a sigh. Was it really only the adventure of three daring children? Or was it, instead, an opportunity — perhaps the only one — to discover something important about my family? Indeed, the answer would come shortly afterward in the form of a life-c
hanging revelation.

  As soon as we were able to find an open café, we sat down at a table. We sipped a blackish concoction and ate a chunk of stale bread. But it was warm, which seemed wonderful to me.

  Sherlock did not even look at the breakfast we had been served. Motionless and angular, his profile stood out against the café window.

  “If this were a game of chess, it would be our turn to make a move now,” he suddenly said. “Any suggestions?”

  His question caught me by surprise, and — still shrouded in a sleepy haze — I tried to collect my thoughts. All I could do was feel amazed when I thought of all my friends and I had just done.

  My flight to Paris to follow the trail of a mysterious person who had somehow directed the actions of other, equally mysterious figures (the woman from the cathedral, Mr. Montmorency, and his useless pawns) now stood out in all its absurdity. And the conversation with Alexandre Dumas fils did nothing past making everything even more incredible. For a moment I felt as if I had been swallowed up by a serialized story.

  “Maybe that woman I met in front of the Evreux cathedral was nothing more than a madwoman!” I said, thinking it all over.

  But Sherlock shook his head. “And Montmorency? And his thugs? It would have to be a true epidemic of madness, don’t you think?”

  My friend was right, but his question fell on deaf ears. Lupin was unresponsive, as if he was having trouble shaking off the weight of a bad dream he’d had the previous night.

  I saw him grab his cup with an almost angry gesture. In a single gulp, he drank the whole blackish swill that they passed off as coffee.

  “Listen,” Lupin then said, with the air of someone who had just made a decision. “There’s only one thing we can do, even though it will be … far from pleasant for me.”

  Neither Sherlock nor even I could have guessed what Arsène was about to propose. We listened without saying a word as he reeled off the story of his family as we had never heard it. From the dark circles under his eyes and the way he wrung his hands as he spoke, I realized this decision had kept him awake all night.