‘What is behind the cliffs?
‘The forest we went through yesterday.’
‘So what are we waiting for?’
Ismael examined the jumble of sharp rocks that rose before them. To scale the cliffs would take some time, and considerable effort. The image of an egg cracking open as it hit the ground ran through his mind. ‘A perfect ending,’ he thought.
‘Can you climb?’ asked Ismael.
Irene shrugged. He noticed her bare feet, covered in sand. Pale-skinned arms and legs, totally unprotected.
‘I used to do gym at school and I was one of the best at climbing up a rope,’ she added. ‘I suppose it’s the same thing.’
Ismael sighed. Their problems were certainly not at an end.
For a few moments Simone Sauvelle was eight years old again. Again she smelled the intense aroma of molten wax, heard voices whispering in the dark, saw the dance of hundreds of burning candles. She was back in that enchanted place that had captivated her as a child: the old cathedral of Saint-Étienne. But the magic only lasted a few seconds.
Then, as her tired eyes became accustomed to the thick darkness surrounding her, Simone realised that the candles didn’t belong to any chapel, that the patches of light dancing on the walls were old photographs and that the voices, those distant echoes, existed only in her mind. She knew instinctively that she wasn’t in Seaview, or in any other place she could remember. Her memory produced a confused echo of the last hours. She remembered having spoken to Lazarus on the porch. She remembered having made herself a glass of hot milk before going to bed, and she remembered the last words she’d read in the book that lay on her bedside table.
After turning off the light, she vaguely recalled having dreamed about a boy screaming. She also had the absurd feeling that she’d woken up in the middle of the night to see shadows walking through the darkness. Other than that, nothing: her memory came to an end, like the edges of an unfinished drawing. Her hands felt the touch of cotton and she realised that she was still wearing her nightdress. She stood up and walked over to a mural that was lit by dozens of white candles, all neatly aligned on candelabra, each heavy with tears of wax.
The flames seemed to whisper in unison; these were the voices she thought she’d heard. Her eyes widened in the golden glow and a strange lucidity filled her mind. More memories seemed to return, one by one, like the first drops of rain. With them came the first wave of panic.
She remembered the cold feeling of invisible hands dragging her through the dark. She remembered a voice murmuring in her ear as every muscle in her body turned to stone. She remembered a shape forged of shadows hauling her through the forest. She remembered how it had whispered her name and how, terror-stricken, she had realised that none of this was a nightmare. Simone closed her eyes and clasped her hand over her mouth to stop herself from screaming.
Her first thought was for her children. What had happened to Dorian and Irene? Were they still in the house? Had that unspeakable apparition caught them? Each question seared her soul. She ran towards what looked like a door and hammered at it, screaming and crying until she was overcome with exhaustion. Slowly, an icy calmness brought her back to reality.
She was trapped. Whoever had kidnapped her and locked her up had probably also captured her children. The thought that they could be hurt or wounded was something she could not contemplate. If she hoped to do anything for them, she must not panic. Simone clenched her fists tightly and repeated those words in her mind. She took a deep breath and looked carefully around the room. The sooner she understood what was going on, the sooner she’d be able to get out of there and go in search of Irene and Dorian.
The first things her eyes registered were pieces of furniture, small and simply made: children’s furniture. She was in a child’s room, but she knew instinctively that no child had lived there for a long time. The presence pervading that place radiated an aura of old age and decay. Simone moved over to the bed and sat on it, gazing at the room. There was no innocence in that bedroom. All she could sense was darkness. Evil.
The slow poison of fear began to course through her veins, but Simone ignored the warning. Instead, she picked up one of the candlesticks and returned to the mural. It was composed of endless newspaper cuttings and photographs. She noticed the unusual neatness with which the images had been stuck to the wall. She brought the candle closer and let the torrent of photographs, prints, words and drawings invade her mind.
Suddenly Simone came across a familiar name: Daniel Hoffmann. The mysterious character from Berlin whose letters she was instructed to set aside and whose correspondence, as she had accidentally discovered, ended up in the fire. She started reading. Something about the whole business didn’t add up. The man referred to in the news articles didn’t live in Berlin and, judging from the date the newspapers were published, he would by now have reached an improbable old age. Bewildered, Simone read on.
This Hoffmann was a wealthy man – a fantastically wealthy man. Slightly further along, the front page of Le Figaro detailed the news about a fire in a toy factory. A person called Daniel Hoffmann had perished in the flames. The image accompanying the article showed the blaze destroying the building as a crowd looked on. Among them was a boy who seemed lost, staring at the camera with frightened eyes.
The same face appeared in another clipping. This time the item told the disturbing story of a boy who had spent seven days locked in a dark cellar. Police officers had found him after discovering his dead mother in another room. The boy’s expression – he couldn’t have been more than seven or eight – seemed vacant, unfathomable.
She shuddered as the pieces of the jigsaw began to come together in her mind. But there was more. The cuttings advanced through time. Many of them referred to people who had disappeared, people Simone had never heard of. Among them an extraordinarily beautiful young woman called Alexandra Alma Maltisse, heiress to a metal-forging business in Lyon. A magazine published in Marseille referred to her as the fiancée of a young but already renowned engineer, Lazarus Jann. Next to that cutting was a series of photographs showing the handsome couple donating toys to an orphanage in Le Marais. They both glowed with happiness. ‘I’m determined to ensure that every child in this country, whatever their situation, has a toy to play with,’ the inventor declared in the caption.
Further on, another article announced the wedding of Lazarus Jann and Alexandra Maltisse. The official engagement photograph had been taken at the foot of the stairway leading up to Cravenmoore. In the image, a very youthful Lazarus embraced his fiancée. It all seemed like a daydream staged for the glossy magazines. The young, enterprising Jann had acquired the sumptuous mansion with the idea of making it their marital home. Various images of Cravenmoore illustrated the item.
The succession of cuttings and photographs went on and on, ushering in characters and events from the past. Simone paused and went back to the beginning. The face of the terrified boy wouldn’t let go of her. She gazed into those lonely eyes and gradually began to recognise the features on which she had pinned all her hopes and to which she had pledged her friendship. That tortured gaze did not belong to Jean Neville, the boy in Lazarus’s story. It was a face she knew well, painfully well. It was the face of Lazarus Jann.
A dark cloud settled on her heart. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. For some reason, even before the voice spoke, Simone knew there was someone else in the room.
Irene and Ismael reached the clifftop shortly before four o’clock. The climb had left a trail of bruises and cuts on their arms and legs. However hard Ismael had predicted it would be, the ascent turned out to be far worse and much more dangerous than he could have anticipated. Irene, who hadn’t said a word or opened her mouth to complain about her painful wounds, had shown a courage he’d never witnessed before. She had ventured up crags nobody in their right mind would have attempted. When at last they reached the entrance to the wood, Ismael could only hug her.
‘Tired?’
Breathless, Irene shook her head.
‘Has anyone ever told you you’re the most stubborn person on the planet?’
A smile appeared on her lips.
‘Wait till you meet my mother.’