“When do they say the book was hidden in the castle?” I asked.
“In 1655, Pierre Borel wrote about Flamel and his great discovery,” Madame began. Her voice had become deeper and more melodramatic. She turned away from the shelves and toward us. She was onstage again. The books were the backdrop. We were her audience, poised to listen to her every word.
“It was that book that I found in Dujols’s shop in Paris and that led me to purchase this chateau. I know the passage by heart. Borel wrote, ‘Now the book by which Flamel said he came to achieve the Great Work is that of Abraham the Jew. Many have worked to recover it . . . but these searches have been useless. I have nevertheless been assured by a gentleman of Rouergue called M. de Cabrières, tenant of his chateau of Cabrières near Millau, where I went specially to see this Monsieur, that he had the original of this book, which M. le Cardinal de Richelieu recovered a short time before his death.’?”
Sebastian and I were riveted by the recitation. Gaspard, however, didn’t seem to be affected and continued searching the shelves. Madame had owned the chateau for thirty years; he doubtless had become inured to her dramatics. Just as Madame finished, he called out, “I’ve found the movable section. It’s right here.”
We all turned to watch him open and pull out an entire unit of shelving, just like a door.
The three of us crowded around him. Beyond the shelves was a room cast in darkness.
“No one set a foot inside yet. We don’t want to disturb anything. First, we need a light,” Madame said in an excited voice.
“I’ll go get a lantern,” Gaspard offered.
I was a bit surprised that given the years Madame had been looking and the potential monumental importance of the book, Gaspard was so blasé about the discovery. It was almost as if he knew that the famed book wouldn’t be there.
He returned with a lantern, which he handed to Madame, and let her do the honors. As she held it out in front of her, a warm glow illuminated the room. Holding her breath, she took a first step into the hidden enclave. We crowded in behind her.
Two comfortable-looking chairs with ottomans flanked a fireplace faced with dark green marble. On the opposite wall, a luxurious chaise longue was covered with maroon and purple pillows and a fur throw. A thick Persian carpet lay atop the wide wood-planked floor. Two side tables, one between the chairs and another beside the chaise, were crowded with all kinds of paraphernalia. And everywhere layers of dust suggested that no one had entered in quite some time.
Madame shone her light directly at the objects on the table, on the long pipes, bronze lamps, small china bowls stained with a black tarlike substance, and an exotic Middle Eastern tea set complete with an elaborate silver pot and glass and silver cups.
“It’s an opium den!” she exclaimed.
Gaspard picked up a newspaper near my feet. “This is dated 1872.”
“I’d imagine no one has been in here since that very day,” Madame said.
I was in awe of the perfectly preserved time capsule, but La Diva was all business. “Now, carefully, we must go over every inch of this room. What a perfect place to hide an ancient book! In a room almost no one knew existed.”
She assigned us to different areas, and for the next hour we explored. I had the fireplace and worked each carved scroll and decoration, looking in vain for one that might be hinged to open a secret compartment. Next, I moved on to the mantel. Above it hung an oil painting of an Arabian harem. Like everything else in the room, it was covered with dust. I peered at it . . . Something was familiar. Then I remembered. When I was at L’école, I’d studied a very similar painting by Ingres in the Louvre. I took a handkerchief from my trouser pocket and swiped the canvas. I was no expert, but it looked very much like a slightly different view of the same Turkish bath Ingres had painted around 1860. I wiped the bottom right corner, looking for a signature. Nothing. But it was there in the left corner.
“Madame!” I called out, excited by my find.
She was by my side in an instant, and I realized my mistake. She’d thought I’d found the book.
“Do you have it?” she asked.
“Not the book, no, but this painting is a masterpiece by Ingres. Its sister is in the Louvre.”
“An Ingres?” Sebastian asked, coming over and looking at the painting with us. “This is a historic discovery.”
“But not the discovery we are searching for,” Madame Calvé said, with a sigh of despair. “Gaspard, I hope you are going to have better luck?”
He was taking apart a shelving unit in the far corner. “Not so far. But I do believe I found a good bit of opium here.”
After an hour, Madame called off the search. “Let’s all go have some coffee and figure out what room to tackle next.”
The four of us returned to the dining room and regrouped over freshly made madeleines and steaming cups of espresso.
“I have all of the castle’s floor plans here,” Madame said, as she unrolled them.
Some were recent, drawn up as part of her renovations, others were old, and still others were ancient, and she was careful with the fragile yellowed paper.
Sebastian studied them. With an architect for a father, we were both well versed in reading blueprints. “Maybe we should try the kitchen next,” he said, as he pointed. “This section looks promising.”
“Yes, and tomorrow the room in the servants’ quarters,” Madame agreed. “And then the only room we’ll have left to find is this . . .” She picked up my strange drawing of the dungeon with my shadow on the rocks. “I just don’t recognize anything about it. Gaspard, does it look familiar to you?”
I watched as he examined the drawing, his face remaining impassive. “No,” he said. “I don’t recognize it either.”
I wasn’t convinced that he’d told her the truth. But what made me suspicious? Had his fingers clenched? Had he handed it back to her perhaps too quickly?
“Do you think it could be a subbasement?” she persisted.
“I suppose it is a possibility,” Gaspard answered. “But it’s hard to imagine that I wouldn’t know about it and that you would never have stumbled upon it when you did the repairs to the foundation.”
“Well, no one knew about the opium room,” she said.
“True,” Gaspard said. “But you didn’t renovate the library.”