He pulled her out onto the salon floor landing and then, before she could protest, down the stairs to the ground floor. The women from the atelier had left, but Sam could hear Chip’s heavy feet behind them. When they reached the floor below, Alain des Baux searched through the ring of keys Sophie had given him.
“Look,” Sam said, quickly, “if it’s the Paris sewers, I saw them once in an old movie on television. It was called The Phantom of the Opera.”
“Would I show you a sewer?” He pretended to look pained. “There are better things in Paris to see. Besides, the entrance to the Paris sewers is in the Place de la Resistance, miles from here.” He unlocked a door to one side of the elevator and motioned her to step in. “No, this is a real feature of the house. And very interesting.”
They were in what appeared to be a janitor’s closet with a rust-stained sink flanked by mops and brooms. There was another door at the far end secured with a padlock.
Alain des Baux was searching for another key on the ring. “In the last century, when many of Paris’s streets were widened under Louis Napoleon, this building was supposed to have been torn down, but it was spared because the city inspectors found the remains of a Benedictine chapter house under here. From which, of course, the street gets its name. You have heard,” he said looking up at her, “of the Benedictines, the religious order?”
“Monks?”
He had found the key and was unlocking the padlock. “Yes, monks. They were all over Paris, the Benedictines. There was a very large monastery on the top of the hill of Montmartre, the name means the ‘mount of the martyrs,’ from the early Christians. Across the Seine there was an even more famous Benedictine abbey at Saint Germain des Prés. Unfortunately, it was destroyed during the French Revolution.”
He pulled the padlock chain away and opened the metal door. There was only pitch blackness beyond. “What was here was a small chapter house facing the other monastery of the Capuchins across a stream. The stream is gone, too, but I believe it joins that famous American movie location”—he made a wry, teasing face—”the well-known Paris metropolitan sewer systems. What’s left here is the Benedictines’ crypt.”
“Why isn’t it safe?”
“Because it’s not a good idea to go down here alone. But if you wish to make a study of crypts, there are many of them in the big churches of Paris. Notre Dame has a beautiful crypt, but unfortunately it is not open to the public right now.” He swung the metal door back and groped along the wall just inside with one hand. “I will go ahead of you, as soon as I can find the light switch. Watch the steps,” he cautioned as a string of electric lights that descended into darkness glimmered on.
Sam peered down at the darkness. “Are you sure you ought to be doing this?” she asked doubtfully.
“Of course. I came here as a child many times. There was an old porter, René, who used to show it to me when my mother was being fitted for her clothes.”
He took Sam’s hand. The steps descended one turn and continued down in a continual, narrow, stonewalled spiral, vanishing into thick blackness just beyond the glow of the electric light bulbs. Chip’s booted feet sounded like drumbeats coming down behind them.
“The crypt is the area below the sanctuary.” Alain des Baux’s voice echoed hollowly. “They are usually built in the shape of a cross. Watch your head,” he warned as they reached the bottom of the steps.
When they got to the bottom of the stairs, they were in a vaulted stone chamber like a cave, with a ceiling so low they had to stoop slightly, the rough stone arches right over their heads. The air inside the crypt was cold and dank as a refrigerator, smelling of dust and stone and mildew.
It took Sam’s eyes a moment to adjust. “Good God,” she almost shrieked, “what are those?”
The tall figure in the elegant gray suit beside her hunched over to keep his head from touching the ceiling. “Ah, they are marvelous, aren’t they? Sarcophagi, eleventh or twelfth century. Tombs of knights of the time of the Crusades.”
“Tombs?” For a moment she’d thought they were human bodies. Now she could see they were reclining stone figures. She twisted to look over her shoulder. Chip was leaning up against the wall in the pool of light at the foot of the stairs. For the first time the sight of Chip was reassuring.
She followed Alain des Baux under an even lower part of the ceiling. He moved around to the far side of a stone effigy, putting it between them. Sam’s back almost touched the dank walls.
“Does this frighten you?” he said apologetically. “I didn’t mean to, please believe me. Europeans are quite used to old places, and I forget Americans are not.” His lips quirked. “Would it make you feel better if I told you that the restaurant on top of the World Trade Center in New York scares the hell out of me?”
The stone figure of a knight lay on top of a large sandstone bier as though it were sleeping, hands crossed over its chest. The yellow glow from a bulb strung overhead was the only light.
“I’m not afraid.” Actually she was thinking of this in a report back to Jackson Storm headquarters in New York. Item 47, lower level: One crypt with knights in coffins, in reasonably good condition. “Is someone really buried in here?”
He leaned his elbows on the Crusader’s chest to look across at her. “Yes, they are real tombs. As a child I was fascinated with this place. I tried to imagine what it was like then, when the monks were here. There were fields and vineyards covering this part of Paris in the Middle Ages. The monks raised sheep. It was all very rural, very pretty. The city itself was a small, muddy town on the Île de la Cité in the middle of the Seine.” He traced a long finger across the effigy before them. “How the knights came to be here is something of a mystery. The tunic identifies them as the order of St. John of Jerusalem. You can see the cross on the shoulder.”
The knight between them lay fully stretched out with a long shield covering his body from his chest to his feet, the carved gray stone blackened with mildew. The knight’s hands came together at the top of the shield in an attitude of prayer. A helmet covered his head and a long nosepiece came down between his eyes.
“There are two. The other one is over there, in the alcove opposite. They look like brothers.”
“Brothers?” Sam was intrigued. “Are you sure?”
He shrugged. “No, but they look exactly alike. I used to imagine two brothers, coming back from the Crusades, who stopped here at the monastery and never went on. Perhaps they caught the plague. There was always plague down in the city in those days.”
She shivered. The darkness around them was as cold as a real cave. “It’s very interesting.” She was trying to be polite. “Do you have a degree in history?”
He laughed. “My God, no. French children learn this in school. It was very boring, too. Look,” he said, pointing to the stones over their heads. “Do you see how low the ceilings are? These were small people by our standards, even the knights. Their armor in museums shows how little some of them were. They suffered a lot of sickness, a lot of war, a not too good diet perhaps, and they died young. It was tragic, those times.” He said, quite seriously, “Do you believe in ghosts?”
Sam had been following him, fascinated, up to that point. Now she looked at him skeptically. “Ghosts?”
“It’s nothing serious.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Actually, they’re another interesting feature of the house, Nannette and Sylvie will tell you so. Monks in their black habits wander above us, in the halls upstairs in the Maison Louvel. Many people have seen them.”
She knew he was putting her on, but he was doing it with such a straight face she couldn’t help giving it right back. “I know, they use the elevator,” she said just as seriously. “I had a ride in it today and I could tell it was haunted.”
“Ah, you Americans. You are such cynics, you don’t believe in anything. Look,” he said teasingly, “is this a fake? Bend over. Take a look at this poor fellow’s face.”
The crusader’s stone features were hands
ome. The mouth was sensitive with a nice, clear-cut chin, and his eyes were closed.
Sam stared at it for a long moment, frowning. “Good lord, did you bring me down here just to see this?”
The sudden hoot of his laughter bounced around the curves of the vault. “Ah, you finally noticed!”
The face of the knight looked just like Alain des Baux. Puzzled, Samantha stared at one and then the other. The tombs were real, she believed that much. But what was going on, anyway?
“It’s a coincidence.” He was still laughing at the expression on her face. “But of course all Frenchmen look alike, don’t they? Think of Louis Jourdan, Trintignant, Jean-Paul Belmondo, even old Chevalier. It’s the old story. You can’t tell us apart.”
“You’re weird, you know that?” Alain des Baux was a practical joker in spite of his magnificent good looks, his perfect manners. It was sort of endearing.
“Please, forgive me, I couldn’t resist it,” he chortled. “Quite seriously, there was a purpose in taking you here. This is not a good place to come to by yourself. Since you will have the keys to the building I wanted to show it to you and be with you when you saw it.” He reached into an inner breast pocket and drew out a card and handed it across to her. “I have an office in Paris. This has my Paris telephone number. I own a computer firm in Nîmes, in the south of France. We deal mainly in software for French aerospace programs like Ariane.”
The incongruity of Samantha being handed a business card by a computer engineer in the middle of an eleventh-century crypt struck them both at the same time. They smiled, and then as their eyes met and lingered, there was a sudden silence.
He left her breathless, Sam was thinking. He was charming, fantastic-looking, and had a crazy sense of humor. At any other time, in any other year of her life, she supposed she would have wondered if something would come of it. You couldn’t miss that look in his eyes. You couldn’t miss the way she was responding to him, either. “Yes, well, thanks, for the card,” she said, looking away.
He reached across the stone figure to take her hand. “Say you will have dinner with me,” he murmured. “Please don’t say no. Let me show you what a very good guide I am. Let me show you Paris—the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Élysées, a quick drive in my car down to the Île de la Cité to see Notre Dame. The complete tour, with dinner after.”
Sam had drawn her hand back automatically. She knew she had no business making a date with someone like Alain des Baux when she was in love with Jack Storm. “I have a lot of work to do. I don’t think I can.” She held up his card. By the light of the yellow bulb that hung over them, she could only make out the larger print, altacomp, Inc., Computers, and an address in the French city of Nîmes.
She looked across the crypt to where Chip was lounging against the wall by the stairs, arms folded across his chest. The light from one bulb hit his black, curly hair and his face harshly. He looked like he was contemplating a burglary job.
Alain had followed her look. “He can’t hear us,” he assured her in a low voice. “Does he bother you?”
“He doesn’t exactly charm me to death. Just what does he do around here?” she whispered. “Does he stay here at night?”
He gave her an odd look. “Not that I know of. He is Solange Doumer’s good friend. You will say yes,” he said hurriedly at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, “that you will let me take you to dinner?”
Sam hesitated. The Cockney Englishman was Solange Doumer’s friend? As in S. Doumer, directrice, Maison Louvel?
“He’s the what?” she said.
Alain des Baux shrugged. “He is the good friend of the director, Solange Doumer. As to whether he is here at night, I don’t think so. Solange lives in Passy.”
Sam stared at him, wanting to make sure she knew what he was saying—if “good friend” meant the same thing on this side of the Atlantic as it did in New York.
She didn’t have time to ask. The footsteps descending the stairs into the crypt were louder. Alain took his arms from the stone sarcophagus and straightened up, bumping his head against the low arch of the ceiling as he did so.
The footsteps stopped. High heels, legs and the hem of a beige dress could be seen under electric lights as a woman paused on the stairs. Chip straightened up and moved away from the wall.
“Mais, que faites-vous là en bas?” a clear, high-pitched female voice wanted to know.
“If I’m not mistaken,” Alain des Baux said, wincing and rubbing the back of his head, “here she is now.”
Le Plan
The Design
Chapter Five
Sam woke up on Sunday morning knowing she had to call New York.
She couldn’t call Jack, not on Sunday, because Jack spent his weekends at his house in Connecticut with Marianna and their daughters. Being involved with a married man was something she condemned in others; it was even worse when you faced it first thing in the morning, Sam told herself, rolling over in bed to look at her wristwatch on the night table.
It was nine o’clock in Paris, which meant it was much too early to call New York. But she needed to talk to Mindy Ferragamo, to touch base with somebody before she met with the directrice of the Maison Louvel Monday morning. Reporting back to Jackson Storm headquarters on what she’d found in Paris wasn’t going to be as simple as they’d first thought. Well, she’d have to wait a few hours to call, but in the meantime she could at least think of what she wanted to say.
Sam rolled over on her back and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the slightly musty smell of the bed covered in unbelievable black satin sheets while she organized her thoughts. She wasn’t particularly good at the executive skill of verbal reports, and she was still a little groggy with jet lag, but she wanted to do this job right. A frantic call from Paris wouldn’t enhance her position with Jackson Storm, Inc.; she wanted to be sure of what she intended to say.
Okay, what did she want to say? she thought with a sigh.
How about: “The Maison Louvel is in an old building in the rue des Bénédictines not far from the rue de la Paix. There’s a lot of unused workspace, especially on the office floor, and a diminished personnel force in the atelier, with one of the seamstresses doubling as the fitter.” Not good, but at least she was reporting it.
Funeral clothes seem to be the current work project? Better leave that out until you can look into it. A crypt with knights’ tombs in the cellar? Inwardly she groaned. A directrice, Madame Solange Doumer, who says she doesn’t speak English and whose daughter is the house model?
At least the mystery of why gorgeous Sophie was still a model at a house like the old Maison Louvel had been solved the moment Madame Doumer had appeared. Sam hadn’t needed Alain des Baux’s whispered explanation that Solange Doumer was Sophie’s mother. The resemblance was there in the willowy, high-breasted figure in the tailored beige silk dress, the whipped-cream complexion and the mahogany-colored hair. Madame Doumer had not been exactly overwhelmed with enthusiasm at the sight of one rather rumpled Sam Laredo in tank top, boots and jeans from Jackson Storm in New York.
With Alain des Baux translating, Madame Doumer regretted that Mademoiselle Laredo had arrived at such an inconvenient time, on a weekend. Then as the directrice turned abruptly to go back up the steps, she had said that she would see the Jackson Storm representative first thing in her office on Monday morning.
Not friendly, not cooperative, Sam decided. Obviously the news of the sale had taken the Maison Louvel management as much by surprise as it had Jackson Storm in New York. But before the Monday morning meeting with the directrice took place, Sam knew she had to talk to Mindy Ferragamo. She needed some guidelines. There were just too many questions that were going unanswered.
From what she’d seen of the Maison Louvel, the house was not exactly operating in what one would describe as the mainstream of Paris fashion. And taking everything into account, from the museumlike building in an obscure dead-end street to the half-empty offices and workrooms, right down to that
distinctly hostile lady, Madame Doumer, it probably wasn’t stretching things to call Louvel’s a backwater oddity.
Then there were the strange customers. The sample she’d seen—Alain des Baux, his sister, and the shopping-bag lady Italians—had raised even more questions. How could the old lady and her granddaughter order a lot of custom-made clothes when even the model admitted they were too poor to pay their bills? The only way you could find out about such things was to go over the Maison Louvel’s books. Sam bit her lip, frowning. But that was Dennis Wolchek’s job, wasn’t it?
In the late afternoon, she reached for the gold and ivory telephone on its stand on her bedside table. Mindy Ferragamo often spent Sundays in her apartment on Manhattan’s West Side touching base, via long distance, with Jackson Storm manufacturing plants in Brazil and Mexico and with the Far Eastern group, Jimmy Eng in Hong Kong, Daishek Kim in Seoul and C.J. Lee in Taiwan, where the workrooms ran twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week in rush season. Sam could just let her know she’d arrived in Paris, and take it from there.
The call took longer than Sam had expected. Telephone calls from New York to most places in Europe were direct-dial and usually not very complicated, but France to New York that particular Sunday seemed to be full of delays. When Mindy’s voice finally came on the line, it sounded far away and full of static.
Sam kept her voice upbeat. “It’s Sammy, in Paris, Mindy. I just thought you’d like to know I got here all right.”
“Yeah, kid.” The voice in New York was not only indistinct but rather preoccupied. “I’ve got another call waiting, Sammy. What’s up?”
Mindy had the wrong tone, Sam knew immediately. She should have waited until Monday and talked to Jack. “Mindy, I can wait and talk to Jack tomorrow.” She tried not to sound too apologetic. “Sorry I bothered you if you’re busy right now.”
“Look, Sammy, I’ve got a couple of calls waiting, I told you. It’s hell to try to get Charlie Lee in Taiwan and I’ve got him on hold.” It was the wrong tone, Sam realized; it was not only hurried but impatient. Don’t take up my time. “And Jack’s out of town, Sammy. Can you call me sometime the end of next week?”
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