CHAPTER THREE
‘I’ll be fine here, Jérôme. Merci et bonsoir.’ Aurora shut the passenger door and watched the black Lexus speed away. The tyres splashed into puddles, and the tail lights soon disappeared in the line of traffic on Boulevard Saint-Germain, still busy despite the late hour.
The rain had stopped, and the wet pavements glistened and reflected kaleidoscopes of neon lights of the district’s many bars and restaurants. In fact, Papa Louis, the jazz club Cédric Castel had mentioned earlier, was only a few streets away – at least that’s what Jérôme had said as he drove her back from Neuilly.
Why was she even thinking about Castel? The man was smug and obnoxious – the archetype of the pushy journalist, and it seemed that she was stuck with him. What could Florent Maupas be thinking of, allowing him to shadow her as she worked on the manuscript? It would be impossible to concentrate with him at her side, watching, assessing, judging – waiting no doubt for her to make a mistake, and confirm what he already believed: that she had only been offered the job because she was Augustus Black’s granddaughter.
She pushed back a feeling of unease. The thing was, he may well be right. Once again, Augustus’s formidable shadow stretched over Aurora.
Trying to ignore the pain in her foot, she turned into a side street and hobbled across the tiny Furstemberg Square where trees created pools of shadows around an old-fashioned cast iron lamp post.
This was one of her favourite places in Paris. Centuries before, the artists and craftsmen and women she so admired had walked along the same streets on their way to purchase paints or pigments from the apothecary shops in the Ile de la Cité, or sheets of vellum from the tanners in nearby rue de la Parchimenerie, or to visit the libraires who commissioned their work. Perhaps they still haunted these narrow streets, and watched over her right now…
The thought of walking among ghosts made her smile as she strode into the narrow Impasse Fleury leading to the apart-hotel Florent Maupas’s secretary had booked for her.
As she reached out to push open the side panel of the porte cochère, a gust of wind rustled through the branches of the square’s Paulownia trees. The light from the old-fashioned lamp post flickered and the darkness filling the alleyway grew thicker. Uneasy, Aurora glanced over her shoulder. A large shadow appeared to detach itself from the wall and move towards her.
Her blood ran cold and her heart jumped to her throat. Thoughts of ghosts and revenants weren’t so romantic any longer… and neither was the more likely prospect of being mugged by a thug lying in wait for an easy prey.
She gave the door a hard shove with her shoulder and stumbled into the cobblestoned courtyard. Her breath short, she hurried towards the hotel reception, the uneven clicking of her heels echoing between the buildings, before tapping in the security code on the keypad. The glass door buzzed open. She slipped inside and pulled it shut behind her.
A nightlight bathed the reception area, unmanned at this late hour, in a dim, blue light. Ignoring the old-fashioned lift and its complicated grillage door, she climbed up the stairs to the third floor as fast as she could, and almost ran down the corridor to her tiny studio flat. Once inside her room, she kicked her shoes off and tiptoed to the window to glance at the street below. It was empty.
Of course it was empty! There had been no ghostly shadow, and no thug trying to snatch her bag. Her imagination and the three glasses of champagne she had drunk at Maupas’s reception had played tricks on her.
Nevertheless, it took a hot shower and two cups of tea to settle her nerves. Twenty minutes later, she sat on the bed, cross-legged in her flannelette pyjamas, her glasses perched on the tip of her nose, and printouts of Florent Maupas’s emails, together with notes she had already made about the manuscript, positioned in neat piles around her. As she went through them once again, she forgot all about Castel and her misadventure in the Impasse.
This was the chance to make her name in the specialist field of palaeography… or it would spell the end of her short career. There was no room for mistakes in the market for ancient manuscripts. They had become such popular investments their market value had shot up, with many now going for hundreds of thousands of pounds at auction. If Maupas’s manuscript was what the owner claimed, it would reach even higher bids.
She pushed her papers back and balanced her laptop on her legs to check her emails. There was one from Jeremy that made her smile.
‘Hello, my favourite girl,’ she read. ‘How is Paris? I’m sure you’ll do a great job with the manuscript. Enjoy and try to bring us back lots of contracts. You know how badly we need them.’
‘I shall do my best, dear Jeremy,’ she whispered as she typed her reply.
‘Things are looking good. I already had an offer of work from a wealthy Russian collector,’ she chewed on her lip and added, ‘and we will have extra publicity thanks to a journalist who is going to run a feature on my work.’ That was called putting a positive spin on things… There was no need to tell Jeremy that Castel was odious and she hated the idea of him hovering over her as she worked. No need to tell him either that she hated Nenachko’s mercenary attitude towards ancient manuscripts.
For the Institute’s sake, she may have to take up the Russian’s offer to work on his private collection. However, one thing worried and angered her in equal measure. How had he been able to buy the priceless treasure that was the Fra Angelico? She wasn’t naïve enough to think that corruption didn’t exist, but she had worked on that same manuscript only two months before in Modena, and the museum’s curator had been adamant that it belonged to the Italian museum. So why sell it to a private collector?
However, for the Institute and Jeremy’s sake, she would put her misgivings to one side. Jeremy had enough on his plate since stepping up from his post as Finance Manager after her grandfather’s death and taking over the day-to-day running of the Institute. No one understood better what a juggling act it was to preserve the Institute’s reputation for excellence whilst dragging it into the twenty-first century, and to safeguard its integrity with the need to make money.
Jeremy was much more than the Institute’s financial manager. He was a trusted family friend, the only father figure Aurora had ever had, and she loved him dearly.
She carried on typing and told him about the party at Florent Maupas’s and Lynette’s news about Patricia Lebrun’s letter. He didn’t need to know about her faux pas with Castel, so she ended on a cheerful note. ‘I can’t wait to start work on the manuscript tomorrow. Guess what? It’s raining! You know how much I love the rain, and what could be better than a rainy Paris?’
The jazzy tune she was humming earlier came back to her, but she still couldn’t remember the words.
Papa Louis, 4:30 a.m.
Cédric waited until closing time, even though he had known all along that Aurora Black wouldn’t show up. He checked his emails, browsed through the newsfeed on his phone, and drained his third espresso.
Earlier on he had been sure that the young woman was in league with Maupas and Nenachko. Hadn’t she helped the Russian bypass Italian red tape to acquire a rare manuscript, no doubt by facilitating the payment of huge bribes to Italian officials?