The Counterfeit Heiress (27 page)

“I always thought, Em, that I’d feel rather a different sensation if I ever saw you removing your petticoat.” I appreciated his attempt at humor even as he slumped against the side of the passage, his face alarmingly pale.

“Right or left?” I asked. He made no reply. I took his hand in mine and pulled him to the right.

Right proved wrong. After traversing a distance of approximately seventy-five yards, we reached a dead end, and were forced to retrace our steps. This time, we meandered for a goodly distance, and I was beginning to feel extremely disoriented. Panic pushed against my chest. Jeremy, recognizing this, squeezed my hand, and we continued on, our candles doing their best to fight the smothering darkness. At the next junction, there were three paths from which to choose. I ripped my petticoat again, and again used strips of fabric to mark the way from which we had come.

“Let’s make a practice of always choosing the passage the farthest on the left to begin,” I said. There was no reason for this decision, but I felt it incumbent on me to attempt as organized and controlled an assault on these tunnels as possible. If we did, eventually, get confused and lost, having followed a rational and consistent system would prove helpful. This time, my first guess was a good one, and we did not reach a dead end, but as we continued along the narrow path, I worried that either of the two we had not taken might have been a better choice. We went back to the junction, and explored the other two, both of which went only a short distance before ending. From this, I drew the conclusion that we could reasonably assume there to be one main route through the tunnels, with shorter, subsidiary ones splitting off. So long as we did not reach a dead end, we were headed—headed where? And headed to what?

Our candles flickered and I blew mine out, not wanting to have no light waiting for us in reserve. The passage turned and then ended sharply at a staircase cut into the rock. We descended it, and at the bottom, met with a horrible sight. Bones—human bones, mostly femurs—covered the floor, almost a foot deep. “We must be at the Catacombs,” I said.

“I don’t think we should walk over them.” Jeremy winced and sat on a step.

“I’m afraid we must.” I took his candle and bent over, illuminating the pathetic remains beneath us to reveal a channel of sorts that crossed through the bones, as if they had been pushed apart. “Someone else has already made his way through here.” Gingerly, I stepped into the pile, doing my best to disturb the bones as little as possible, and tasting bile every time I heard one crunch beneath my feet.

I still had the candle, and Jeremy was just behind me. The passageway widened and then grew suddenly narrow before ending at another set of steps. We descended, thankful for the absence of bones on them. At the bottom of these steps was a large, circular room. Femurs, stacked one on top of another, their ends pointing to the center of the chamber, lined the walls, and in front of their eerie display were more bones, these crushed and fragmented. We followed a passage out of this room, which snaked around for a while, the ceilings considerably lower, until we saw letters carved on the wall:
Chemin du Port Mahon
. Beyond this, someone had made elaborate carvings in the stone walls. The scene looked like a medieval citadel with no detail forgot. I stopped, just for a moment, in front of a depiction of an ornate building over which the words
Quartier de Cazerne
had been carved, and stood very still.

“Did you hear that?” I whispered. Jeremy shook his head and silently raised a finger to his lips. “There—again.” It was unmistakable this time. This was not the rustle of a small animal, this was something much larger, and it sounded as if it—he?—were moving rocks. We crept in the direction of the noise, exiting the room with its carved walls and entering an extremely narrow passageway that went down two steps before turning hard to the right. From here, no fewer than five tunnels presented themselves to us. The noise grew louder, and became clearer. It was not someone moving rocks; it was someone moving something against them. I raised my candle and stepped into the passage from which it came, following twists and turns until I saw my husband, his chiseled features bruised and battered, his wrists and ankles bound. His arms had been wrenched behind his back, and he was methodically rubbing the rope around his wrists against a bit of the wall that jutted out enough to create a hard edge.

“Colin!” I fell upon him at once, covering his face with kisses before removing from my reticule the penknife I always carried with me. My hands were shaking so much I did not trust myself to free him from his bonds without further injuring his dear person, so I gave the knife to Jeremy, who made neat work of it. Colin’s wrists were bloody and raw, and he winced as the rope fell to the ground.

“Did you see him?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “What happened?”

“He found me in his rooms and we fought. I had the advantage, but he managed to throw himself across the room and make his way into his bedroom. He bolted the door behind him. I was ready for him when he opened it, only a few minutes later, but now our struggle was not so evenhanded. He had soaked a rag with chloroform—the bottle must have been in his bedroom—and held it over my face long enough to incapacitate me. I have vague memories of being dragged through darkness, but not much else. I take it we are in the Catacombs?”

I replied in the affirmative and helped him to his feet. Jones, no doubt, had long since made his escape. “I do not think he meant you serious harm,” I said. “We are not so far from the main route through the path taken by tourists that your struggles would have gone unnoticed.”

“There are only tours of the Catacombs twice a month, Em,” Jeremy said.

“And one of them was yesterday,” I said. “Thank heavens you were not left down here for a fortnight. This Jones is not quite so clever as he thinks. It was a grave error to take you someplace so easily located from his own residence.” I wanted to keep the mood light. “Now then, let’s make our way back. Cécile will be beside herself with worry and will not enjoy having to manage the police by herself.”

We retraced our steps back past the carved citadel, the cavern of bones, and up the stairs. Colin nodded his approval when he saw the shreds of my petticoat marking our way. “Good thinking, my dear.” We lit my reserved candle long before we reached the cellar, and when, at last, we came to the still-open door, our return was greeted by a gaggle of disgruntled-looking policemen.

“Worthless,” Cécile said. “They are all worthless.” One uniformed officer helped me over the trunk that blocked the door. “I couldn’t even persuade them to move that, let alone go after you.”

A rough voice called down from the top of the stairs. “You had better hope you have not damaged anything! I will not tolerate the destruction of property!” I am not ashamed to say that Colin had to physically prevent me from doing bodily harm to the infuriating concierge. She is fortunate he was there to protect her.

Estella

xviii

The train to Marseille would take almost no time, and from there, one had only to catch a steamer to Alexandria, from where—Estella consulted the guidebook Monsieur Jones had brought to her the day before—they would travel by train to Cairo. She would have to hire a companion and order some suitable traveling clothes, but neither of those tasks would prove problematic. She began a letter to her dressmaker, but found herself so distracted by the thought of the Great Pyramids at Giza that she could not focus on writing an orderly set of directions for the woman.

Putting aside her missive, she opened Monsieur Belzoni’s book, and spent a blissful four hours making a list of every site he mentioned that she intended to visit, pausing frequently to consult her other Egyptian books, and adding sketches to the margins of her list. The sketches, and her inability to satisfactorily reproduce the complicated hieroglyphic signs, frustrated her. Tomorrow she would ask Monsieur Jones if he could get his hands on a copy of Monsieur Champollion’s
Grammaire Égyptienne,
which was referred to her in travel book as including a list of all the signs. She wondered if it might include instructions on how to draw them.

“I would not trouble myself with such a task now,” Monsieur Jones said the next evening. She had persuaded him to have a glass of wine. “I will, of course, find the
Grammaire
for you, and you can dedicate yourself to the study of it on the boat to Alexandria.”

“That is an excellent idea.” Estella drained her glass and refilled it. “I am beginning to think, Monsieur Jones, that you ought to accompany me on my journey.”

“I could not—”

“Do not reject the idea out of hand. I was rather fond of you before you flung me in here, and you have taken good enough care of me for these past days—weeks?—how long have I been away?”

“It is a approaching a fortnight now, mademoiselle.”

“I will hire a companion, of course, as it would not be proper to travel, unaccompanied, with a man. I am of the opinion that your presence could prove most useful. You are capable of handling baggage, I imagine?” He mumbled some sort of incoherent reply. “I will take you on as a member of my staff.”

“If you require the services of a companion, mademoiselle, you will want to interview candidates. Would you like me to place an advertisement for you? You could arrange to meet applicants at your house starting at the end of the week.”

“I shall do that as soon as I have finalized our itinerary. May I count on you to make one of the party?”

“I could hardly deny you anything, Mademoiselle Lamar, after what I have done to you.”

“Very good,” Estella said. “Tomorrow I will give you a letter to post to my dressmaker. I will need you to buy new trunks for me—ones from Galeries Lafayette will do nicely—have them delivered to her so she can pack the clothes directly into them and send them to the train station. If all goes smoothly, we could be steaming across the Mediterranean in only a few weeks. I have never before so looked forward to anything in my life.”

Monsieur Jones smiled. “I am most glad to hear it. If there is nothing else…” He started for the ladder.

“One more thing, Monsieur Jones. I would like another doll, please. One with blond hair this time, I think, and dressed in a traveling costume. Would that be too much trouble?”

“It will be my pleasure.”

19

The clock struck midnight long before we arrived back at Cécile’s. Both Colin’s and Jeremy’s injuries appeared superficial, but—despite their protestations—I required them to submit to the examination of a physician. The police, after very firm direction from us, agreed to make as comprehensive as possible a search of the Catacombs, but not until the following morning. If I had not suspected Mr. Jones had long since made his getaway, I would have demanded they start immediately, but given the battered condition of our gentlemen, I agreed that a period of a few hours of rest would be advisable.

As for myself, no matter how I tried, I could not lure Morpheus to me that night, and I abandoned the pursuit once the golden pink streaks of sunrise began to pierce the dark sky. I took care to dress quietly, and obviously did not call for Meg at such an early hour. After splashing cold water onto my face in the bathroom attached to our room (Cécile viewed en suite baths as essential to civilized life), I slipped into the corridor and down to the first floor. No one else in the household was yet awake. I pulled open the curtains in the grand front sitting room and looked out the window. The street was quiet, only a few lonely pedestrians and a dissatisfied-looking cat on the pavement.

The room was still a mess from the commotion caused by our arrival. Head wounds, even when they are not serious, bleed profusely, and Jeremy had left a dark red smear on the golden upholstery of the chaise longue onto which he had collapsed before making his way upstairs. A trail of smut and gritty dirt had followed him, Colin, and me from the Catacombs, and Cécile, seeing no use in more people losing sleep, had ordered the servants to leave it until morning. I tiptoed around the worst of it, not wanting to spread it further. A policeman, following my orders, had deposited on a table the large stack of papers we had taken from the attic of Mr. Jones’s apartment. I scooped them up and took them to what Cécile called the
petit bureau,
a cozy room tucked almost underneath the curving staircase. Paintings of Venice flanked the dark gray marble mantelpiece.

To start, I sorted through the papers, dividing them into stacks surrounding me on the red silk settee that matched the walls. There were scores of travel itineraries—Estella’s, as her name was written on all of them, along with that of her companion, Miss Hexam—dating back for at least five years. I unrolled a crushed world map, larger than the one we had marked up in the library, that was covered with smudged red scrawls, made with a wax pencil, the sort one used for marking porcelain. The similarities between it and our own attempt at tracking Estella’s voyages were not inconsiderable. This one, however, included more stops and lines that I could only presume were intended to mark the path of her journey. There were lists of hotels, names of individuals—many I recognized as having received payments of £10 from Monsieur Pinard—and more train and boat timetables than I knew existed on the earth.

Then, in the midst of all these papers, I found a slim softbound notebook, filled with handwriting now familiar to me: Estella’s. I started at the first page:

ALEXANDRIA

WE WILL BEGIN HERE.

What followed were detailed plans for a trip from the city of the great Alexander (I could not remember if he had ever actually visited there, or if it was merely one of the many named in his honor) to Cairo, and on from there, to Giza, up the Nile and to the Valley of the Kings. Estella had recorded the opening times of various monuments, and had filled the margins of the book with sketches, most of them the sights she had seen in the ancient land of the pharaohs. After the first few pages, which were primarily dedicated to travel details, the book began to take on the form of a diary, recording her adventures. It was written in a style similar to most travel memoirs, self-indulgent and grandiose, but there was a charming naïveté to Estella’s narration. As well as frequent references to Miss Hexam (who proved a most excellent companion), there were many to someone called Hettie. Hettie was frequently described as being dragged from place to place, was never recorded as having a thought or idea of her own, and, after Estella discussed putting her on a high shelf after she had been intolerably surly on a day when the sun had been particularly strong, I came to the obvious conclusion that she must be one of Estella’s dolls.