The front bedroom was bare and plain in contrast, empty except for a single bed and a desk under the window with a lamp on it. Authie approved. It reminded him of the austere cells of the abbey.
There were signs of recent occupation. A half-empty glass of water stood on the bedside table, next to a volume of Occitan poetry by Rene Nelli, its paper marked around the edges. Authie moved to the desk. An old-fashioned pen and ink bottle stood on the top, together with several sheets of heavy paper. There was a piece of blotting paper, barely used.
He could hardly believe what he was seeing. Someone had sat at this desk and written a letter to Alice Tanner. The name was perfectly legible.
Authie turned the blotter round and tried to decipher the signature half visible at the bottom. The handwriting was old fashioned and some of the letters merged into others, but he persevered until he had the skeleton of a name.
He folded the coarse paper and slipped it into his breast pocket. As he turned to leave the room, his eye was caught by a scrap of paper on the floor, caught between the door and the doorjamb. Authie picked it up. It was a fragment of a railway ticket, a single, dated today. The destination, Carcassonne, was clear, but the name of the issuing station was missing.
The sound of the bells of Saint-Gimer striking the hour reminded him of how little time he had to get back. With a last look around to check that everything was as he had found it, he left the way he had come.
Twenty minutes later, he was sitting on the balcony of his apartment on the Quai de Paicherou looking back over the river to the medieval Cite. On the table in front of him was a bottle of Chateau Villerambert Moureau and two glasses. On his lap was a file containing the information his secretary had gathered in the past hour on Jeanne Giraud. The other dossier contained the preliminary report from the forensic anthropologist on the bodies found in the cave.
Authie reflected for a moment, then removed several sheets from Giraud’s file. Then he resealed the envelope, poured himself a glass of wine and waited for his visitor to arrive.
CHAPTER 32
All along the high embankment of the Quai de Paicherou, men and women sat on metal benches overlooking the Aude. The sweeping, cultivated lawns of the public gardens were divided up by brightly planted flowerbeds and cultivated paths. The garish purples and yellows and oranges in the children’s playground matched the riotous colors of the flowers in the beds-red-hot pokers, huge lilies, delphiniums and geraniums.
Marie-Cecile cast an appraising eye over Paul Authie’s building. It was what she had expected, a discreet and understated quartier that had no need to shout, a mixture of family homes and private apartments. As she watched, a woman with a purple silk scarf and a bright red shirt cycled past on the towpath.
She became aware someone was watching her. Without turning her head, she glanced up to see a man was standing on the top floor balcony, both hands placed on the wrought-iron railings, looking down at the car. Marie-Cecile smiled. She recognized Paul Authie from his photographs. At this distance, it did not look as if they had done him justice.
Her driver rang the bell. She watched Authie turn, then disappear through the balcony doors. By the time her chauffeur was opening the door of the car, Authie was standing in the entrance, ready to greet her.
She had chosen her clothes carefully, a pale brown sleeveless linen dress and matching jacket, formal but not too official. Very simple, very stylish.
Close up, her first impressions were reinforced. Authie was tall and well toned, wearing a casual but well-cut suit and white shirt. His hair was swept back from his forehead, accentuating the fine bones of his pale face. An unnerving gaze. But beneath the urbane exterior, Marie-Cecile sensed the determination of the bare-knuckle fighter.
Ten minutes later, having accepted a glass of wine, she felt she had a sense of the man she was dealing with. Marie-Cecile smiled as she leaned forward and extinguished her cigarette in the heavy glass ashtray.
“Bon, aux affaires. Inside would be better, I think.”
Authie stood aside to let her through the glass doors that led into the immaculate but impersonal living room. Pale carpets and lampshades, high-backed chairs around a glass table.
“More wine? Or can I get you something else to drink?”
“Pastis, if you have it.”
“Ice? Water?”
“Ice.”
Marie-Cecile sat in one of the cream leather armchairs angled on either side of a small glass coffee table and watched him mix the drinks. The subtle scent of aniseed filled the room.
Authie handed her the drink, before sitting in the chair opposite.
“Thank you,” she smiled her thanks. “So. Paul. If you don’t mind, I’d like you to run through the precise sequence of events.”
If he was irritated, he didn’t show it. She observed him closely as he talked, but his report was clear and precise, identical in every respect to what he had told her before.
“And the skeletons themselves? They’ve been taken to Toulouse?”
“To the forensic anthropology department at the university, yes.”
“When do you expect to hear anything?”
His response was to pass her the white A4 envelope from the table. Not above a bit of showmanship, she thought.
“Already? That’s very quick work.”
“I called in a favor.”
Marie-Cecile laid it on her lap. “Thank you. I’ll read it later,” she said smoothly. “For now, why don’t you summarize for me. You’ve read it, I presume?”
“It’s only a preliminary report, pending the results of more detailed tests,” he cautioned.
“Understood,” she said, leaning back in the chair.
“The bones are those of a man and a woman. Estimate, somewhere between seven to nine hundred years old. The male skeleton showed indications of unhealed wounds on his pelvis and top of the femur, suggesting the possibility they were inflicted shortly before death. There was evidence of older, healed fractures on his right arm and collarbone.”
– Age?“
“Adult, neither very young nor old. Somewhere between twenty and sixty. They should be able to narrow it down after further tests. The woman the same bracket. The cranial cavity was depressed on one side, which could have been caused either by a blow to the head or by a fall. She had borne at least one child. There was also evidence of a healed fracture in her right foot and an unhealed break in her left ulna, between elbow and wrist.”
“Cause of death?”
“He’s not prepared to commit himself at this early stage, although his opinion is it will be hard to isolate one clearly identifiable diagnosis. Given the sort of time period we’re talking about, it’s probable that both died as a combination of their injuries, loss of blood and, possibly, starvation.”
“He thinks they were still alive when they were entombed in the cave?”
Authie shrugged, although she registered the flicker of interest in his gray eyes. Marie-Cecile took a cigarette from her case and rolled it between her fingers for a moment, while she thought.
“What about the objects found between the bodies?” she said, leaning forward for him to light her cigarette.
“Again, the same caveat, but his estimate is they date from the late twelfth to mid-thirteenth century. The lamp on the altar might be slightly older and is of Arab design, Spain possibly, more likely farther afield. The knife was an ordinary eating knife, for meat and fruit. There is evidence of blood on the blade. Tests will confirm if it’s animal or human. The bag was leather, locally sourced and typical of the Languedoc in that period. No clues as to what, if anything, it contained, although there were particles of metal in the lining and slight traces of sheepskin in the stitching.”
Marie-Cecile kept her voice as steady as she could. “What else?”