Of course! I nearly upended my bowl of fruit salad as I pushed my chair back from the table and ran to my aunt’s sitting room. I sat at her desk and flicked her computer on. And there it was, on Wikipedia, in the first sentence: The Hotel de Buismont, designed by Louis Le Vau, and better known today as the La Lune mansion, was built in 1665 for wealthy financier, Salatin de Buismont.
No wonder it looked familiar – the Hotel de Buismont and the La Lune mansion were one and the same! Presumably Darius knew this too…
But what about the word passages in his note? What did it mean? Or could passages really be as straightforward as it sounded? Like the passages in a house? Or, more specifically, the passages in a house designed by Le Vau?
Back and forth I flipped through the pages of the book, hoping my hunch was right. I scanned the dense text until I found the words I was looking for: secret passages. According to the book, the houses Louis Le Vau designed were full of them.
And what was easier than disappearing via a secret passage?
“Well done, Sherlock.” Sebastian had just arrived.
“That’s Holmes to you.”
He laughed. “I thought you might say that.”
“If I didn’t have to do Elle, I’d follow this lead myself.”
“I know. But don’t worry, I’ll dig – hard. And I’ll keep you posted.”
Great. I’d just noticed I’d put my jumper on inside out. Not surprising, considering that after calling Sebastian I’d realized I was still in my heart PJs. At least I’d managed to brush my teeth and hair. I stretched and poured myself another glass of orange juice. I still had half an hour before I had to leave.
“By the way,” I said, as I handed him the day’s Figaro, “did you read your horoscope yet? Apparently you’re going to make a major discovery today.”
“And according to your horoscope, romance is in the air for you this week.” He was grinning.
“Yeah, right,” I said, recalling Dom’s anger last night. “Fat chance.”
“Are you so sure?” He was leaning back, still grinning, but his eyes didn’t leave mine.
I quickly turned back to the computer, hoping I looked sufficiently absorbed by the Wiki entry on Le Vau. Come on, Axelle, focus, focus. Ignore your sidekick’s broad shoulders and killer smile. Easier said than done. Somehow my annoying sidekick had morphed into a distraction – of the cute kind. I wasn’t sure when or how it had happened but, honestly, I’d need a blindfold to ignore Sebastian now – which, incidentally, wouldn’t have been a good thing on the clue-gathering front. You have a case to solve, remember, Axelle? I told myself. Besides, you’re working with him – you have a working relationship with him. And that’s how you need it to stay – I mean, imagine if…no, don’t go there. Not now, anyway. Argh! I have to solve this case.
I took a breath, turned, and met his stare. Shrugging my shoulders, I said, lightly, “Who knows? Anything could be possible this week.”
“I guess time will tell.” He was still grinning at me, a teasing glint in his eye.
“Uh-uh,” I mumbled and quickly turned back to the computer.
After a moment he said, “What I don’t understand is that my father and his team searched the entire La Lune mansion and didn’t find any sort of secret passage, and yet…” He hesitated as he grappled with filial loyalty. “And yet I’m sure you’re right – there must be a secret passage in that house. It would certainly explain the noises Rose has been hearing.”
“Yeah, and Dom too. Anyway, while a secret passage in the house might explain how the kidnapper moved within the house without being seen, it still doesn’t explain how the kidnapper has been able to get in and out undetected.”
“Unless…” He was looking out the large open window towards the river.
“Sebastian…?” He’d stepped out onto the narrow balcony.
“What did you say my horoscope said?” he asked.
“That you’d make a discovery today?”
“Well, I think I’ve just made it.” He stepped back in and turned to leave. “I’ll pick you up after Elle,” he called over his shoulder. The door shut with a bang as he ran down the stairs.
I arrived at Pin-Up Studios in time to join the Elle team for lunch in the studio cafe, and by five o’clock the shoot was finished. It was a beauty shoot, a gold and shimmery summer make-up story. We shot three different photos, each one focusing on a different aspect of my make-up: eyes, lips and skin. This meant that my make-up was changed three times. I’d asked the digi-tech guy to take a photo of me (with my phone) in each of the different make-up looks I’d worn. I’d show them to Hervé when I saw him next. Apparently, bookers love to see whatever images a model can bring back from a shoot. The afternoon went by quickly, but, still, not quickly enough: by the time we’d finished I was itching to follow up my clues.
Sebastian picked me up outside of the studios and drove towards the Seine. However, along the way he suddenly motioned to me with his hand that he wanted to stop. He zigzagged through the traffic, then zoomed up the Boulevard Saint-Michel. A few moments later we parked on a tiny side street tucked away in the residential part of the sixth district behind the Luxembourg Gardens.
“I need to show you all that I’ve found out and we need to do it somewhere quiet…somewhere we’re not likely to be overheard. And, anyway, we have some time to kill,” he added mysteriously, as he led me to the park, “because what we’re going to do is better done in the dark.”
I followed him to a small space enclosed by trees and crawling vines. Opposite us, against a backdrop of spring green, a large fountain was set into a high wall. A Greek god hovered on top, surprising the lovers underneath. Water cascaded gently into a long, narrow basin. The air was quiet and humid, twilight on its way. “It’s the Medici Fountain,” Sebastian said, as he dragged a second chair to one of the small metal tables flanking the water.
He loaded our table with folders and maps.
“Your idea this morning about the possibility of secret passages was spot on. And your comment last night about getting out of the mansion while dragging Belle and Darius didn’t go unnoticed,” he added with a smile. “In fact, it’s what triggered my idea this morning as I looked out from your balcony towards the river. I’ll show you what I mean.” He struggled to get one last folder out of his sack. “Et voilà!” Excitedly he laid a floor plan of a house out on the table.
“It looks old,” I said, as I scanned its sepia-toned lines and elaborate handwriting, “really old…”
“It is. This is a copy of the 1665 original. It’s the floor plan of the La Lune mansion. Fortunately for us, most of Le Vau’s work is well documented – even if it’s sometimes difficult to get hold of. With a bit of help from a friend – he’s a history geek – I found all of this at the Bibliothèque Nationale. And I was told that all of Le Vau’s big projects have secret passageways.”
Slowly, I traced what appeared to be one of them with my finger.
“What you’re running your finger along is the longest secret passageway in the house,” Sebastian said, “but it’s so well concealed that unless you happened to have been there when the construction work was going on, you’d never know it exists. That passage connects with another one in the opposite wing, via a secret door in the library. It ends in this passageway, then connects to a hidden staircase which runs the entire height of the house from cellar to attics. It also connects to another secret passageway which runs the length of this wing.”
“Why so many?”
“Because Salatin de Buismont was a bit of a shady character. By the time he had this house built he was one of the wealthiest men in France – he even loaned money to foreign governments – but there are no clear traces of how he gained his fortune. And apparently, he also had a rather complicated private life. His diaries are full of escapades – including, if he’s to be believed, a long affair with the king’s wife…”
“No wonder he needed to move around the entire house withou
t being seen.”
“Exactly. But there are two things that really interest me about this map.”
“And they are?”
“Firstly, that according to the records at the Bibliothèque Nationale, about a year ago a Mr le Néanar asked to see this plan. And the second thing is this,” he said, pointing to a minuscule circle on the basement level of the house.
“What is it?”
“Well, if it is what I think it is, then you’re looking at my clue.”
He unfolded another large sheet of paper and laid it on top of the floor plan.
He was right beside me, our arms touching. “This one looks old too,” I said quickly.
“That’s because it is.”
Carefully he turned it so that it faced me. I couldn’t really make sense of it. It was a map with double lines that obviously delineated paths or roads of some sort. But where was this place, and where did the lines lead?
“Is this the river?” I asked, pointing to a thick wavy line that divided the map in two horizontally. “And this map is dotted with the same circle that you just showed me on the house plan.” I peered closer, excited now. I didn’t yet know what it all meant but something was connecting.
“Yes, that’s the Seine and, yes again, that’s the same circle that we saw on the floor plan.”
“Do they signify the same thing?”
“I hope so…”
“And that is?”
“An entrance to the catacombs.” He took a breath. “Every circle on this map,” he continued, “represents a direct entrance to the labyrinth of underground tunnels collectively known as the Catacombs of Paris.”
“Catacombs? Isn’t that where dead bodies are buried?”
He nodded.
“I didn’t know that Paris had catacombs…”
“And I’d forgotten them until this morning, when you said ‘secret passages’ just as I was standing in your aunt’s sitting room looking at the river. There used to be a public entrance to the catacombs there – I went one weekend with my father, a long time ago. But that entrance was closed a few years ago. I think the entrance is now in the 14th arrondissement.”
He stopped to point to a spot in the middle of the Left Bank on the catacombs map. “If you look here, this circle – see how it’s off the tunnel route – seems as if it could correspond to where the La Lune mansion is. And if that’s true…if it matches with the circle on the house plan…”
“It means we’ve found a way on and off the property—”
“That connects directly with the secret passages in the house.”
“But why would the house have direct access to the catacombs?”
“Well, the catacombs were created at the end of the eighteenth century, which means the house predates them by nearly one hundred and twenty years. Now, as we know, Salatin de Buismont asked Le Vau to design the house with a complex passageway system – but it was Salatin’s grandson who had the entrance to the catacombs excavated.”
“Why?”
“Because, according to my research—”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia,” I said.
Sebastian rolled his eyes. “I, mademoiselle, have sources in high places. This information comes directly from the Bibliothèque Nationale. Anyway, as I was saying, de Buismont the grandson was a clergyman – a very high-ranking one and, as such, he was involved in the removal of the human bones from the old city cemetery at les Halles to the newly excavated catacombs.”
“Yuck! Why did they have to move the old bones?”
“I believe it was a case of overcrowding. It got to the point where there wasn’t enough room to properly bury them – the bodies, I mean.”
“Gross!”
“Yeah, well, all those exposed rotting bodies were becoming something of a health risk – hence the need for the catacombs: lots of space and all underground. Anyway, apparently, clergyman de Buismont often accompanied the black-veiled wagonloads of bones during their midnight procession through the city – the wagons were always accompanied by priests who sang a burial service – and it was he who blessed the catacombs when they opened. Now, like his grandfather, he had a complicated private life – even more so because he was a clergyman. And because he had ambitious plans for himself, there was only one thing to do about his private life…”
“Hide it.”
“Exactly. And what better way than with a secret entrance into the catacombs? So he had an entrance built, linking his house to them directly. And that,” he continued in a whisper, “is what I’d like to go and check out now.”
I was speechless. History and high fashion on an underground collision course – literally. If these maps and plans were right, then the how and where of this mystery were well on their way to being solved.
“Wait a minute… You said the mysterious Mr le Néanar had checked out the floor plan of the house. But what about it?”
Sebastian nodded. “I asked my friend if he could look up Mr le Néanar in the sign-in record books for the maps of the catacombs, going as far back as possible. His name was listed – from about eight years ago.”
“Wow. Eight years. So this guy has known about the secret passageways and catacomb entrances for a long time.”
“It seems so.”
“Do you think he’s been using them?”
Sebastian shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I don’t think he’s been looking this stuff up just for research.”
We sat in silence, the fountain gurgling gently beside us, until after few moments I suddenly sat up. “CAT!”
“Where?”
“No, no. Not that kind. I mean Claude’s CAT. The C-A-T from his agenda for Saturday, remember? I bet it refers to the catacombs!”
“You might be right. But if so…it means he knows about the secret passages too. And, if he did go into the catacombs on Saturday night…”
“It was either because he’d kidnapped his own sister…”
“Or, like you,” he teased, “maybe he was just following a hunch and hoping to find the perpetrator of the crime.”
“Hmm…maybe.” I glanced at my watch. My mum would be arriving tomorrow morning. And Belle had been missing for five days, Darius for three. I didn’t have time to waste. “Shouldn’t we get going?” I asked Sebastian, but he was already packing up. Two minutes later, we were back on his scooter, heading towards the river.
The humid stillness of the park was quickly forgotten: by the river, the air was fresh and brisk. Sebastian parked and locked his scooter. Then we walked quickly along the quayside until we turned down a staircase that led to the cobblestoned bank of the Seine.
When we reached the bottom he stopped and quickly scanned the bank – it was deserted. We walked along for about a hundred metres until we were standing directly underneath the Pont de la Concorde. Sebastian turned to an iron door set into the base of the bridge. It was painted black and looked as if it hadn’t been used in years. Long rust stains ran from its top edge down to the ground – even its bolts were rusty. It reminded me of Erik’s underground world in the Phantom of the Opera.
“Is this the entrance we’re looking for?” I asked Sebastian.
“Uh-huh.”
“How do we get in?”
He smiled at me as he reached into one of his jacket pockets. “With this.” He pulled out a large, black, iron key and showed it to me before sliding it into the lock. “It’s a master key.”
“Where did you get that?”
I didn’t get an answer because at that moment the key clicked into place and turned, surprisingly easily. The door swung open with an unexpected speed. We nearly fell in.
Sebastian quietly shut the door behind us. We were engulfed in total darkness. I heard him rustling in his rucksack and a moment later the bright beam of his torch lit the ground. “Here, take this,” he said, as he handed me a torch, a box of matches, a thick ball of string, and a small compass. “Unwind the string behind you. I’ll do the sa
me – that way we’ll know if we’re going round in circles and, if we get separated, we might have a chance of finding each other. The La Lune mansion is lying south-east from us. If you get lost and want to get back to this entrance, head north-west. Got it?”
I nodded.
“Good. Let’s go and find out if this idea works as well in real life as it does on paper.” Then he turned to me and smiled. “Holmes?” He was holding his hand out. I placed my hand in his and followed him in.
While I can highly recommend the Eiffel Tower as a destination for the entire family, I’m not sure a visit to the catacombs is to everyone’s taste. Although, having said that, they’re definitely…interesting.
The door we went through led immediately to a slippery stone staircase that took us down for quite some way. At its base, three tunnels met. Sebastian led us down the one which, according to his map and compass, would lead us to the La Lune mansion – not that the tunnels travelled in straight lines. We knew we’d have to keep our wits about us. There are apparently lots of stories of people breaking into the catacombs just for the fun of it, only to end up getting lost and dying. There are so many tunnels covering so much ground that without a way of tracing someone it is nearly impossible to find them – even if you know where they started out from. Apparently, most die of thirst… With that encouraging thought in mind, I quietly followed Sebastian and concentrated on not losing him.
We were only about a kilometre from the La Lune mansion. If we moved quickly and managed not to get lost, we’d need about half an hour to get there. The air was heavy and thick, stale with age; it felt as if it stuck to my lungs as I breathed it in (a bit like my mum’s home-made hummus). I was trying to breathe as calmly as I could, but the narrow passages and damp darkness made me feel claustrophobic. As I was concentrating on breathing – one in, one out, two in, two out – I suddenly slammed into Sebastian’s back. “What—”
“Shhh…look…”
A Crime of Fashion Page 19