The Loire was cold and the current was strong, but Olivia was able to wriggle free of the car as it spun slowly downstream. Its lone headlight was still shining in the water. As she squirmed out of her sodden coat and let it sink, she saw the panicked Swiss Guardsman, still entangled, gasping behind the windshield. The interior was almost filled by now.
The river was carrying her downstream, too, and she had to strike out hard for the riverbank. By the time she made it, she was several hundred yards from the wharf. She clambered up onto the rocks with one foot bare, shivering wildly, and looked back at the water. There was no sign of a swimmer, anywhere. All she could see, in fact, was the silver roof of the Maserati skimming along the moonlit surface, leaving a trail of bubbles in its wake.
And then, like a submarine smoothly diving, even that disappeared.
Chapter 38
Entering the salle d’armes, David felt as if he were surrounded.
All along both walls, gleaming in the moonlight, there were standing suits of armor, some holding pikes or lances or swords. A battle-axe and a mace were crossed above the great stone hearth, a crossbow and arrows above the door. It was an amazing display, David thought, enough to rival any museum’s collection.
As quietly as he could, he followed Ascanio, who knew the chateau well, out into a vast entry hall with a grand escalier. The marble stairs swept upward like a pair of angel’s wings, and Ascanio, like David dressed all in black, moved stealthily up the right-hand side.
But they had gone only a few steps, shielded by the balustrade, when they suddenly heard footsteps on the floor above, and the clicking of a woman’s heels. If she chose to come down their side of the steps, there’d be nothing they could do to avoid exposure. Hunching down low, they waited, until they heard her call out, “Monsieur Rigaud? Où êtes-vous?”
But thankfully she did not start down the steps. Instead, a voice answered her from somewhere on the same floor.
“Je suis ici, Madame Linz.” A man was approaching her.
David wished that he could simply melt away into the marble stairs he was flattened against.
“That business in Paris then?” the woman was saying. “It’s all taken care of?”
“Yes, I took care of it myself,” he said, though David thought he detected the slightest lack of conviction in his tone.
“You’re sure?” she said.
So she’d noticed it, too.
“Quite, Madame. I have already given a full account to Monsieur Linz.”
Through the balustrade, David could just catch a glimpse of this man Rigaud, with close-cropped hair, dyed an unnatural shade of blond, and an erect, military bearing.
She scoffed. “You can tell him whatever you want. But you had better not ever lie to me.” She took a step away, and David saw that she was young and pretty. “You’ve made the rounds?”
“I have.”
“It’s been a long day, and Auguste’s stomach is bothering him again. We are going to bed.”
“I hope he feels better in the morning.”
“Leave a note for the cook, will you? He’d like cream of wheat for breakfast.”
“I’ll let her know.”
“Good night then,” she said, the sound of her heels clicking away.
“Sleep well, Madame,” he replied, before returning to wherever he’d been.
David realized that he had not taken a breath the whole time. He took one now, and after a few seconds, Ascanio gestured toward the top of the stairs. There, they saw light spilling from a doorway at the far end of the hall, and Ascanio quickly led David in the other direction and up another staircase.
This floor was as gloomy as the rest. Wall sconces, with dim bulbs, provided the only light, and there were cords and wires running along the baseboards of the hallways and salons they moved through. It was as if the place hadn’t been renovated in sixty years. But everywhere David looked, he caught glimpses of old oil paintings hanging forlornly over velvet sofas, and antique sculptures tucked into forgotten corners. It was a total hodgepodge—in one room alone, he saw what appeared to be an Italian fresco, a Ming vase, a Dürer etching, and a framed Egyptian papyrus. Who was this Auguste Linz?
Again, they rose, checking every room but encountering no one else. Ascanio, crooking one finger, led David into a salon, where he closed the door quietly behind him. Only then did he take out his flashlight and shine it around the room. At first, David didn’t understand what he was seeing—images were repeated, fractured, distorted—but then he saw that the salon had five sides, and they were all mirrored. An unlighted crystal chandelier hung directly above an ornate desk covered with papers and books and a bronze bust of the composer Richard Wagner. Ascanio stopped to train the flashlight beam on the blotter, where a notebook was open. In it, Linz had been scrawling something in a crabbed hand, in German, but so forcefully that the pen had indented every letter.
“This was once the marquis’s private study,” Ascanio whispered, taking a few seconds to absorb the room, as if for the first and the last time, but David’s attention was riveted on the notebook. Though his command of German was poor, and the handwriting hard to decipher, one thing jumped out at him as if it were in letters a foot high.