by Marie Laval
‘What’s going on, Fabien? I don’t understand who these men are and what they want.’ Céline Coste asked, her voice edgy with fear.
‘I’m not sure … Where is Bijard?’
‘In the kitchen, unconscious.’ Amy rushed to Fabien’s side. ‘Serena is going to show us where the treasure is and these two will take it.’
‘You want to go back down there?’ Fabien got up, winced in pain. ‘The tunnels might be completely flooded by now.’
‘I have to. It’s the only way Toby and his friend will leave us alone.’
‘Then I’m coming too.’ Turning to Toby, he said in a voice that suffered no contradiction. ‘You’ll need someone who can carry heavy bags of … whatever we’ll find down there.’
‘Good thinking, man.’
Toby asked Fabien to help pull Bijard’s body into the living room where his accomplice could keep an eye on him.
Amy found two electric torches in the kitchen and a roll of heavy-duty bin bags, and Serena led them down into the basement, where the trap door was wide open. So she'd been right in thinking this was the way Anne, Frédéric and Serena had come in earlier from the temple …
‘I don't like this,’ Toby said a few moments later as he watched Serena lower herself down through the trap door, followed by Amy and Fabien.
As Toby was the last one to go down, he shut the trap door so that no one could come after them and they were immediately plunged in darkness. He gave Serena a torchlight to lead the way and kept one for himself.
After a steep incline the tunnel forked into two passages. Serena turned right, seemingly oblivious to the water level which now reached up to her knees.
‘How long until we get to that bloody treasure?’ Toby hissed. ‘It’s freezing in here.’
‘We’re almost there,’ Serena replied.
A few minutes later she asked Fabien to hold her torch, placed her hands inside two holes on the wall, and pushed forward. The wall receded, and the flood water gushed through the opening. A strange blue light glowed faintly. How odd, Amy thought. It looked just like the blue light she had dreamt about. Serena led the way down a flight of steps roughly carved out of the rock.
Fabien grabbed hold of Amy’s hand.
‘Take care, it’s slippery.’
They saw the lake as they reached the last few steps. Its clear waters cast a luminous, eerie blue green on the cave all around.
Toby whistled between his teeth.
‘Holy cow. What is this place?’
Even though he spoke in English, Serena must have understood.
‘This is the source of our sacred spring and where the Goddess was born,’ she answered. ‘Her spirits light up the lake, and when She wants to talk to us, She sends the lights into the woods. This is the way it’s always been, the way it’ll always be.’
‘So this is the very first temple.’
Even Fabien sounded in awe. He walked to the edge of the turquoise water and knelt down.
‘The temple and the Roman fountain were built just above us.’ Serena nodded. ‘But the temple was a decoy, an empty shell hiding the real entrance to our secret worshipping chamber.’
The cave glittered with hundreds of stalactites made of shiny white and purple crystals.
‘The whole place is full of fluorite crystals,’ Amy whispered.
‘They're the Goddess’ magic stones. They allow us to have visions and dreams and reach higher spheres.’
‘Why did you give me one?’
‘I wanted to unsettle you, scare you away. It worked. You did have vivid dreams, didn’t you?’
Amy nodded.
‘Who organised the burglary at Bellefontaine?’
‘Bijard and Frédéric. We couldn’t let the archaeologists take away the artefacts and prove that there was indeed a Gallic temple to be found in the forest. Bijard and Frédéric returned to Bellefontaine later that night. They drugged you and took you down to the temple. I only meant to scare you, so that you’d go away and Bellefontaine would be empty once again …’
‘And then after two years, your husband would have been able to buy it.’
Serena winced.
‘That’s right. Marc only agreed to take on the sale of Bellefontaine because he thought he could put off any potential buyer. The plan was to wait for two years, then put in an offer ourselves. But you came along …’
‘All right, ladies, enough chatting. Where’s that treasure?’ Toby sounded edgy, perhaps even a little scared.
Serena sighed. ‘Le trésor. Follow me.’
They walked up to a recess at the back of the cave. Serena turned a ring hidden inside the wall which slid to one side.
‘The treasure is inside.’
She stepped into the cave, closely followed by Toby who darted his beam of light around and gasped in shock. There were statues, gold and silver vases, goblets and plates, caskets full of glittering coins and gems, piles of golden jewellery, swords adorned with precious stones, together with ancient shields and helmets.
‘Holy shit!’ Toby said. He gestured at Fabien and pointed to the bin bags. ‘Come on. We have to fill them up. Hurry!’
He started grabbing anything he could lay his hands on to fill the bags.
‘We’ll have to come back. There’s so much.’
Amy stopped in front of a statue, which looked like an earlier version of the Goddess’ head she had found in Bellefontaine's garden. The stone was roughly carved, the eyes and nose just an outline, yet the crown was unmistakably the same with oak leaves and snakes.
‘Is that the Goddess?’
‘Our Gallic mother. The one who listens to women, later known as Bona Dea or Fauna. The Romans adopted her but in doing so they betrayed her. Only we remained true to the real Goddess throughout the centuries.’
‘Right, we’re done for now. Let’s go back to the house.’
Toby heaved a bag over his shoulder, but as they returned into the main cave they saw that water now gushed down the stone steps like a waterfall.
Toby swore.
‘Ask the woman which way we’re to get out of here.’
But Serena wasn’t listening. She stood near the edge of the underground lake, as if in a trance. Slowly she pulled a dagger from the folds of her tunic, held it with both hands, and extended her arms in front of her.
‘No,’ Amy cried out. ‘Fabien, stop her!’
She stepped forward but Fabien yanked her against him just as Serena plunged the blade into her chest and collapsed on the ground.
They both rushed to her side. The dagger stuck out of her chest at an odd angle, blood gushed out from the wound onto her tunic. Her eyes stared blindly at the cave’s glittering roof.
‘Hell, now what?’ Toby paced the cave, frantic.
‘Now we look for an exit,’ Fabien said calmly. ‘Put your bag down and search on that side. Hurry, the water level is going up.’
Despite the loud gushing of the water in the cave, Amy thought she could hear something else – a dog barking on the other side of the cave wall. Hope surged inside her. Could it be Michka? She walked up to the wall and called as loud as she could. The dog barked in response. Suddenly rocks tumbled and crashed around her as a side of the wall collapsed and half a dozen gendarmes wearing Special Branch dark blue uniforms stormed in. Amy stepped back with a shriek.
‘Throw your weapon to the ground and put your hands up. Now!’
The gendarmes pointed their guns at Toby.
Toby swore as he dropped his gun and held his hands up in the air. He was quickly surrounded by several gendarmes who handcuffed him and took him away. Michka jumped above the rubble and yelped excitedly as she raced towards Amy.
‘Oh sweetie, I’m so glad to see you.’ Amy bent down to stroke the puppy’s fur and scratch behind her ears.
‘We found her in the woods earlier this evening,’ Capitaine Ferri explained as he carefully walked over the pile of rocks.
‘Mademoiselle Carter,’ he added, ‘it's a relief to see you
're safe and well. I see that Madame Chevalier, however, is dead …’
‘She killed herself a few minutes ago in front of us, Capitaine,’ Amy said with a shaky voice. ‘We could do nothing to stop her.’
A slightly dishevelled man stepped into the cave.
‘Laurent!’ Amy cried out in wonder, ‘What are you doing here?’
Laurent stared open-mouthed at the glittering cave and the turquoise underground lake.
‘Where are Chris and Peter?’ Amy asked.
‘They’re fine, don’t worry,’ the archaeologist spoke at last. ‘I left them at my flat in Arles before driving back.’
He looked around and whistled between his teeth.
‘What an amazing place.’
‘You haven’t seen everything yet. You’re definitely going to be as famous as your colleague from the museum after tonight. This way to the treasure, Professeur Orsini.’
‘Treasure? For real?’
Laurent didn’t wait for her answer but ran across the cave, almost bumping into Fabien on the way.
‘We can’t stay here for much longer,’ Capitaine Ferri said then. ‘The water levels are rising, the cave and tunnels will soon be flooded.’
‘You’re right, and I must return to Bellefontaine immediately,’ Fabien urged. ‘My mother is there with Stéphane Michon. They are being held hostage by Toby’s associate. Bijard, Frédéric, and Anne Loubier are there too. They were all members of a sect involved in murders and rapes, a sect which was led by Serena Chevalier.’
Turning to Fabien, Capitaine Ferri said, ‘Don’t worry about your mother and Stéphane. They’re safe. Interpol agents have followed Toby Dickinson and his accomplice since their arrival in Calais this morning. Special Branch stormed into Bellefontaine one hour ago. The trap door was shut so they couldn’t follow you down here. We had to find another tunnel. Fortunately Professor Orsini was at hand. He came to the station earlier tonight because he was worried about you, Mademoiselle. You hadn’t given him any news since the morning. He said he knew how to find the location of the temple in the forest. Once there, we made our way down the tunnel.’
Capitaine Ferri shook his head. ‘It’s quite a story.’
‘There is more, much more,’ Amy said grimly, shivers running up and down her spine as she remembered the skulls nailed to the wall and the blood-stained stone table.
‘Bijard confessed to killing Paul Michon and Sophie Dessange,’ Amy added.
Ferri shook his head and sighed.
‘I can’t believe Bijard led a double life and fooled everybody for so long. I will need a statement from you, but it can wait.’
Ferri added that he needed to arrange for the removal of Serena’s body and make sure the treasure was secure before he could leave the cave. As soon as he walked away, Fabien put his hands on her shoulders and drew her against him.
She nestled in his arms and breathed a long sigh of relief. The nightmare was over.
‘I think we deserve a rest,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘What do you say to disappearing for the next few days?’
‘I say it’s an excellent idea,’ she replied. Forgetting the past twenty-four hours would be difficult but as long as she was with Fabien, she would do her best to try.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Fabien’s lips lingered on Amy’s shoulder, trailed up along the curve of her neck to nip at her earlobe. His hands caressed the soft curves of her breasts, slid down to her stomach, then further down to touch and tease more hot, silky skin. She stirred and muttered something in English, then turned round to face him and curl up into his arms. This was where she belonged. He never wanted to be parted from her again. He would never be parted from her again.
His caresses became more insistent, she parted her lips, and he captured her breathless moans with a kiss.
‘Fabien, you must get ready for the party,’ she said in a hoarse voice as she writhed and arched under him.
Her eyes were huge, dark blue, unfocussed. Her skin flushed pink. Her light blonde hair glowed like sunlight on his pillow.
‘The only place I have to be is right here, with you.’
He kissed her, tender at first then hard and urgent. And when he took her, they were lost to the world again.
All too soon golden, orange, and pink sun filtered through the half-closed shutters onto the walls and the tiled floor of his bedroom. It was sunset, on the last day of April. Manoir Coste’s celebrated Fête des Lumières was about to start without its host and he didn’t care. He had delegated much of the organisation of the evening to his head of staff and a couple of personal assistants.
Come to think of it, he had delegated much of the running of the hotel since Amy had come to live at the cottage, a week before. He knew what his staff whispered behind his back and it made him smile.
‘Monsieur le duc est amoureux.’
They were right, even if amoureux was too meek a term for the passion, the tumult and the sweet madness of his feelings for Amy. He, who’d always been driven to the point of obsession by his need to turn Manoir Coste into a thriving business, had only paid sporadic visits to the office this last week, and even then he'd been so distracted he couldn't focus on any of his work. Yet there was much to be done. He had to appoint a new PR, for a start.
Claudine had resigned earlier in the week and now lived at her mother’s house, pending the end of the police investigation. She had broken down during her interrogation by Capitaine Ferri and blurted out all she knew. The ceremonies her mother had forced her to attend. The affair she was having with Fred, as a solace for Fabien's indifference towards her. Then there was the sabotaging of Amy’s budding guesthouse business ordered by her mother and Serena Chevalier that she had helped carry out by using her position at Manoir Coste and her business contacts, including Garnier, the inspector from the Tourist Board and Monsieur Verdier’s young assistant Jacques.
The young man had been the one who’d nailed that dead rabbit on Bellefontaine’s door when Amy had first arrived. After vandalising Amy's car the morning of the garden party, Jacques had pretended the butcher’s van had broken down on his way to Sisteron. He had later interfered with the Tourist Board’s database and computer booking system.
‘Mademoiselle Claudine told me that she wanted the English woman out of Bellefontaine and that she’d make it worth my while if I managed to scare her away,’ was all a remorseless Jacques told the gendarmes.
He had, however, denied ever sneaking into Bellefontaine at night. The taps and appliances turned on and off during the night, the fire in the living room, the freezer door left open had all been orchestrated by Frédéric, Bijard and Marc Chevalier. Frédéric had also confessed to spiking Amy’s drink at Manoir Coste, to ‘teach her a lesson’ after he’d seen her on the terrace with Fabien.
And Fabien had never suspected a thing. What a blind fool he’d been.
If Ferri didn’t believe that Claudine had done enough to be placed in custody, it was another matter altogether for her mother. Anne was detained at Cavaillon jail, charged for now with complicity in kidnapping Brice, Stéphane and Amy and with the boys’ attempted murder. Fabien had no doubt the list of her crimes would grow with time. Together with Bijard, Fred and the Chevaliers, she had been at the core of the Bloody Bonnieux Sect, as the local and national press now referred to it.
Now that the Chevaliers were dead, the police relied on Bijard and Anne Loubier to help them identify the other members of the sect, but they weren’t being forthcoming with information. A search of the Chevaliers’ house had produced notebooks full of codes and numbers which the gendarmes were unable to decipher.
Bijard had been transferred to a high-security jail in Lyon, the charges against him being more serious than the ones against Anne. Not only had he admitted to Paul Michon’s and Sophie Dessange’s murders but he was also charged with Sophie Dessange’s rape and with killing her English boyfriend. There was also the matter of the murder of Fabien’s father that he had helped co
ver up as a hunting accident and of obstructing the course of justice…
As for Fred, he had suffered some kind of psychotic episode shortly after his arrest. His lawyer claimed that his drink and drug habit had impaired his mental faculties, and that he would be unable to stand trial for the numerous offences he was charged with, among which the attempted murder on his person at the Buoux cliffs. The examining magistrate had agreed to detain him in a mental hospital in Apt to be assessed.
Lock him up and throw away the key. Or better still, let me deal with him.
Fabien took a few gulps of air, willing the knot of anger twisting inside him to loosen. He never wanted Amy to lay eyes on these monsters again. He knew, however, that they would be both called as a prosecution witness during the trial in a few months’ time. He could only hope she’d be stronger by then and that the terrors that shook her body and made her scream every night had faded and disappeared. There was one name she cried out in her nightmares, over and over again.
Bellefontaine.
He let out a sigh. Guilt tugged at his heart. He hadn’t been completely honest with Amy. It was time to tell her the truth.
Amy shifted in his arms and opened her eyes.
‘What’s the matter? You look preoccupied. Did I scream in my sleep again?’
‘No, you didn’t. There’s something I need to tell you. Something I should have told you before. It’s about my father and Serena Chevalier. What she said that night at Bellefontaine, about their affair…’
‘You heard what she said? I thought you were still unconscious. I’m so sorry you had to find out like that.’
‘The thing is, I already knew.’
She propped herself up on her elbow, gazed into his eyes.
‘You did?’
He nodded. ‘Shortly before you bought Bellefontaine, I found letters from Serena addressed to my father stuffed into a folder in the library – letters that left no doubt in my mind that they’d been having a liaison over several years, even after he married my mother.’
He felt again the anger, the shame harden into a fist inside him.
‘What was my father thinking of? From what she wrote, he was the one doing all the chasing, the one who behaved like a love-crazed fool – or rather a lust-crazed fool – and the one who indulged in all sorts of … sexual activities with Serena, and their friends.’