The Paris Secret (22 page)

A quick look at the chart showed Hilaire-Marion Dumaire was born in 1822 the elder half sibling of Albertine Dumaire’s father, Gillaume, and had also never married. His date of death wasn’t listed.

Simon shrugged. “Every family has members who go their own way and don’t follow in the family business. Sounds like he could be our guy.” He typed the name into the census database.

“If he really is a guy.”

And if he was, we couldn’t find a single trace of him in any city in France with census records posted online. I studied the chart and noticed the word
Father
that Juliet had written in the upper left-hand corner was written with a capital
F
. And then it hit me. Hilaire-Marion Dumaire was born into a Catholic family, had never married or worked in the family bakery business.

“I think he was a priest, Simon.”

Simon’s head jerked up from the computer screen. I went over and joined him.

“That’s why they couldn’t find him. If he became a priest and changed his name, that would pretty much take him off the radar, right? This must be what Juliet figured out.”

“But it’s only nuns who take new names.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to look,” I said, prodding him.

Simon fingers reluctantly flew across the keyboard. He did a new search for Father Dumaire and came up with a solitary hit.

A Father Jean Dumaire was listed on a site about religious orders in France. He’d been a Eudist, a member of the Catholic Society of Jesus and Mary, and had left a promising career as an architect in Paris to join the priesthood. He moved to Columbia in 1855 to start a string of Eudist seminaries. Next, we looked up the Eudists and discovered their founder was Saint Jean Eudes.

“He took the name of Jean when he became a priest.” I squeezed Simon’s shoulders.

“And who better to hide a secret book than an architect,” replied a grinning Simon.

“Okay. We know who hid the book. Now we need to find out where because if he was an architect it could be hidden in any building he worked on.” My heart was beating fast with excitement.

“That must be what that passage in the book the angel was holding is referring to, clues to where the book is.”

We looked again at the words from the book the angel was holding that Simon had scribbled in Luc’s sketchpad.

In the seat of knowledge. In view of all the gods. Under the blessed protection of the Saint of Lutetia.

“In view of all the gods? That’s seems like a strange thing for a Catholic to write. For a Christian there would only be one God,” I pointed out.

“Remember these are clues, Maya.”

“I’m wondering if the seat of knowledge refers to a college.” I mused.

“I hope not. Do you have any idea how many colleges are here in Paris?”

“I got it!” I had a eureka moment. “Ancient Greeks and Romans worshipped more than one God!” I started typing or rather hunting and pecking.

“We have buildings here in Paris modeled after Roman ones,” added Simon.

When I found what I was looking for, I turned the laptop to face him. “
Voila!
” I said. On the screen was a picture of the Pantheon in Paris. “The word
pantheon
in Greek means
temple of all the gods,
” I concluded triumphantly.

He hugged me.

“The book is hidden in the Pantheon! Let’s go.” He rushed past me for his coat and I caught him by his shirt and pulled him back.

“Not the Pantheon. It says in
view
of all the gods. Meaning wherever the book is hidden is in view of the Pantheon.”

“That could be anywhere! You can see the Pantheon for miles,” he said, throwing up his hands.

“Hold on. There’s still this Saint of Lutetia thing to figure out. Maybe it’s a church near there.”

“The passage says the seat of knowledge. Wouldn’t a church be considered a seat of spiritual enlightenment?”

“Yeah, okay, you’ve got a point. Is there a college named after this Lutetia person?”

“Not that I know of, but like I said that name sounds familiar.” He did another Internet search. “There’s no Saint of Lutetia but there’s a Hotel Lutetia,” he said. “Now I remember. It’s in St-Germain-des-Prés. I remember Justine took photographs of it for a travel article. It would certainly be in view of the Pantheon and maybe the saint is referring to St-Germain-des-Prés.”

“But unless it used to be a college or something, a hotel isn’t a seat of knowledge. What else came up in the search results?” I asked leaning, over his shoulder.

There were several links to the history of Paris and I reached down to click on one. Simon and I both read it and then looked at each other.

“Paris used to be a Roman settlement called Lutetia!” I exclaimed.

“I remember the Roman settlement part from my school history lessons but who the hell is the Saint of Lutetia?”

More searching turned up no such person and it was 9:40. It was time to start thinking like a librarian. I stood and started pacing. If I were back home at work helping a student do research on this topic, how would I help them? I would tell them to look at the passage and take all the words into account that could be used in a keyword search. Eliminate the unnecessary words, and add the one word we hadn’t paid any attention to. The word
protection.

“Under the blessed protection of the Saint of Lutetia. Okay, Paris used to be called Lutetia. So assuming the passage is referring to Paris, we’ll leave Lutetia out of the search. And if something is under a saint’s protection, what is that saint called?” I asked more to myself than Simon.

He shrugged, not in the mood to play guessing games.

“A patron saint!”

“I should have paid more attention in school,” Simon grumbled and quickly did another search for
patron saint
and
Paris, France.

“Of course, Saint Genevieve!” he exclaimed. “Saint Genevieve is the patron saint of Paris!”

“Is there a college or university named for this person?”

Simon didn’t answer. He was having his own eureka moment. He jumped up and grabbed me.

“What is it? Tell me!”

“A seat of knowledge, Maya! You really don’t know what that is besides a university?
You
of all people?”

“What—” I began and then I knew. “A library! It’s a library!”

“Bibliothèque St. Genevieve to be exact. Located in the Place du Pantheon!”

“In view of all the gods,” I whispered.

“Let’s go get that book!”

“This place is huge. Where the hell are we supposed to find the damned thing?” griped Simon as he looked down on the Bibliothèque St. Genevieve’s massive reading room.

The dimly lit room was long and narrow. The high, vaulted ceilings supported by iron arches gave the room a cathedral-like feeling. Tables were arranged lengthwise in the center of the room between two rows of massive iron columns that supported the roof. The reading room was crowded, with few places to sit, yet it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Now,
this
was a library.

“Maybe it’s on the shelf,” I whispered. I didn’t mean to whisper. My voice had automatically adjusted to library volume all on its own.

“You’re kidding, right?” Unlike mine, Simon’s voice pierced the silence and a couple of people looked up and gave him the evil eye.

I was only half joking. Hiding a book in a library was pretty damned smart, like hiding a grain of sand on a beach. And it wasn’t just the librarian in me that thought so, either. The only problem would be making sure no one ever checked it out, which meant the book was hidden someplace where none of the library staff would have knowledge of it, or someone working here knew about the book and made sure no one had access to it.

Before Simon and I left the apartment, we printed out info about the library. It had been designed by French architect Henri Labrouste and built between 1845 and 1851, which was within the timeframe for the stained-glass scene to have been added to the handle. Hilaire-Marion Dumaire, the future Father Jean Dumaire, would have had access to the talents of a master glazier in his line of work who could have altered the original crucifix for him. Four years after its construction, Dumaire had joined the priesthood and gone to Columbia where he most likely died. Sometime either during the construction or after, the
Aurum Liber
had been hidden in the library. Now we just had to figure out where.
Think, Maya.
My last dream ran through my head like a movie on fast-forward but suddenly stopped at the point when the young priest removed the leather covering from the gold book. I had a sudden revelation.

“You know, if Dumaire went to the trouble of having the crucifix altered, maybe he had the book itself altered in order to hide it here more easily,” I said.

“Altered in what way?”

“The only way I can think of hiding a gold–and-jewel-encrusted book would be to cover it in cloth or leather.”

“And he could have easily changed the title on the book, making it look like another book,” said Simon, getting excited.

“Exactly.”

I went over to an empty computer station and pulled up the online catalog. Luckily, the catalog allowed searches in English. I instantly felt at ease. I was on familiar ground. Simon pulled up a chair and sat next to me.

“What are you looking for?”

“Dumaire was an educated man. He’d have known how libraries work. I can’t imagine he’d have meant for the book to be looked at by the public. I’m betting it’s here hidden as a title connected to Dumaire that no one would ever check out or in a rare book collection no one would have access to.”

I did a search on Saint Jean Eudes, the founder of the Eudists, and discovered the library had numerous books on the man, most of them located in the reserve room, which meant they were still accessible. I did searches on Saint Genevieve and architect Henri Labrouste with similar results. Labrouste actually had an entire collection devoted to him.

“Do a search for Jean Dumaire,” said Simon. I gave him a quizzical look. “Just a hunch,” he replied.

The search for Jean Dumaire pulled up no results. But a search on Hilaire-Marion Dumaire turned up a record for a single book about baking entitled
Cuisson de la Manière de Dumaire.
The copyright was 1851, the year the library’s construction was complete.

Simon chuckled. “
Baking the Dumaire Way.
I bet the demand for that book is through the roof.”

I smiled. “Sounds like a dust catcher alright.”

“Does it say what the page count is? Dr. Hewitt said the
Aurum Liber
had more than five hundred pages of text.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Where is the book?”

“It’s just a brief record with just the title and author. We’ll have to ask.”

“According to our records, this book has never been on the shelf. It was a donation and has been in permanent storage for years,” explained the librarian behind the circulation desk after consulting his computer.

“Is there any way we can take a look at it?” I asked.

“
Non,
” he replied, shaking his head apologetically. “I’m afraid it is fragile and in a state of disrepair, though I’m surprised it wasn’t completely withdrawn. It has a partial record as if they were planning to put it out here on the shelf when we automated the collection and never got around to it.”

“Can we talk to one of the catalogers then? Maybe the book is about to be withdrawn and they’d be willing to sell it to us,” I asked.

“I’m afraid they’ll just tell you the same thing I just did,” he replied a little stiffly. “None of them has been here long enough to know any more than I do. Our catalogers are currently undertaking a massive project to clean up our online holdings records and it may be many months before this book’s status is updated. If you leave me your contact information, I would be glad to contact you once I have more information.”

“But—” I began until Simon cut me off.

“
Merci,
” he said, pulling me by the hand. He didn’t let go until we were clear of the circ desk.

“What are you doing? We can’t give up. The book is here.”

“I know. It’s down there.”

He was pointing down into the reading room where I could see a bank of doors beyond the stacks along the opposite wall. Most of them looked like offices. One of them was labeled
Stockage.
He headed down the stairs into the reading room with me on his heels.

“I noticed it when we first got here,” he whispered when we arrived in front of the gray metal door. It was locked, of course.

“How are we going to get in?”

“Do you have a hairpin?”

“No. But how about this?” I pulled a paperclip from my bag.

“Excellent.”

Simon turned so his back was to the door and got busy picking the lock. A middle-aged librarian with an armload of books came out of an office two doors down and I grabbed Simon around the waist and started passionately kissing him and pressing him against the door. I figured if we were going to get caught doing something we shouldn’t be doing in a library, better it be locking lips than picking locks. However, the librarian just gave us a bemused look and walked the other way. I guess as long as we were quiet she didn’t care. You just gotta love Paris.

“Hurry
up,
” I whispered in his ear. “What’s taking so long?”

“Don’t be so pushy. You’re not the one performing under pressure.”

“Do I even want to know where you learned how to do this?”

“I was an alter boy. You’d be surprised at what I learned in church.”

At the sound of another person coming down the hall, I stuck my tongue in Simon’s ear and he let out a low groan. At the same time there was a soft click. The door was unlocked. A quick peek around to make sure no one was watching and we were through the door and found ourselves at the top of a landing looking down two narrow flights of stairs. It was a basement.

“I hope if anyone saw us come in here they’ll just think we’re horny and not thieves,” I said as I followed Simon slowly down the steps.

I felt along the wall on the way down for a light switch but couldn’t find one. It was pitch-black and smelled like dust and long forgotten things. I sneezed and Simon shushed me. He finally located a light switch and flooded the room with light. The basement was cavernous with painted concrete walls and linoleum on the floor. Metal shelving units filled the middle of the room and held books, boxes of books and old equipment. Numerous book carts loaded down with books were shoved into every corner. There were outdated wooden desks along one wall with old newspapers stacked on top.

“You look on the carts and I’ll search the shelves,” I told him.

It was 10:15 and we needed to hurry. The shelves toward the back of the basement looked the oldest and I got busy searching. I made quick work of the metal shelves because the majority of the books were from the ’60s and ’70s. I didn’t find a single book older than fifty years. In my haste to move on to the next set of shelving, my shoulder knocked a dusty folder from its perch atop a file cabinet onto the floor. I bent to pick up the papers and pictures that spilled out. They were old sepia photos of a construction site from the 1800s.

They were photos of the construction of the Bibliothèque St. Genevieve from 1847. There were four photos in all showing the construction at various stages. Only one picture had people in it. Two solemn-looking men posing inside what I recognized as the partially constructed reading room. The room was bare save for the iron columns supporting the roof. The floor hadn’t even been laid yet. I recognized Henri Labrouste from the internet research. Bearded and dressed in a suit, Labrouste stared directly at the camera with what looked like rolled-up building plans in one hand. The man next to him was shorter by several inches and also in a suit with a mustache, a goatee and thick, dark, wavy hair. The man appeared to be about twenty years younger than Labrouste. But his eyes looked so familiar that I held the photo up to the light to get a better look. The face of someone I knew stared back at me. It couldn’t be him! It was impossible.

“Maya, any luck?” called out Simon, startling me so badly I dropped the photo. I let it lie where it fell, too afraid to touch it, and hurried off to join Simon.

“None of these books are the right date. Looks like there’re more shelves further back,” I told him and hoped my voice didn’t sound as shaky as I felt.

The deeper into the basement we got, the lower the ceilings became, the older the shelving and the dustier the books, but still no
Baking the Dumaire Way.
I spied a set of shelves against a brick wall and went over to search it while Simon rooted through boxes on the floor. I was halfway down the shelf when a glint of gold caught my eye. It was a red leather-bound book with a gold infinity symbol raised on the spine. I pulled it out and the title
Cuisson de la Manière de Dumaire
glinted up at me in flaking gilt lettering. It was Hilarie-Marion Dumaire’s book.

“Simon! I found it!”

He rushed over and stumbled over a box of books in his haste but I’d noticed a big problem before he even reached me. The book was only one hundred and thirty pages. Not nearly long enough to be the
Aurum Liber.
And once we flipped though it, we quickly discovered it truly was a cookbook. It was now 11:57 and too late to search elsewhere. Tears of defeat filled my eyes and Simon punched the wall, bloodying his fingers and swearing.

“She’s a good as dead,” he said in a flat voice.

My only response was to slam the book hard back into its slot and in doing so the palm of my hand pressed against the raised infinity symbol. It depressed. We heard a loud creak and a scraping sound as the entire shelf swung out from the wall with a groan and a cloud of dust. I had to jump out of the way before it hit me. Behind the shelf was a long, dark, narrow passageway.

“Oh my God. Is that what I think it is?” I said between coughs. The dust was thick and settled in my nose and throat.

Simon walked into the opening of the passage. After pulling down thick cobwebs he held his hand out to me. I took it and he flinched. It was the hand he’d punched the wall with.

“Hold on.” I rooted around in my bag until I found a silk scarf to wrap around his bloody fingers.

The passageway was too narrow for us to walk side by side. So I followed behind. It was dark but yellowed candles sitting inside grime-coated sconces on the wall were visible. I pulled matches from my bag and lit the first two on either side of the entrance. Once the sconces were lit, we could see the path beneath our feet was dirty mosaic tile in swirling patterns of gold, greens, blues and purples.

As we walked deeper into the tunnel, we lit the candles along the walls to light our way. We were both silent. The passageway winded around for about a hundred feet. It finally opened up on a small circular room with a high domed ceiling. Simon quickly lit the large freestanding candelabras inside the room and revealed the robin’s-egg-blue ceiling adorned with painted scenes of angels blowing trumpets.

“Dumaire must have built this when the library was being constructed,” said Simon.

Even in the dim lighting a marble pedestal in the center of the room was visible. A large faded and worn tapestry hung from a rod in the ceiling. It was the stolen Moret Tapestry, missing since 1959. That meant that though this room was built one hundred and sixty years ago, someone had been in here sometime in the last fifty years. And as impossible as it still seemed to me, I knew who that someone was.

“So this is what this has all been about,” breathed Simon in an awestruck whisper.

Sitting on the marble pedestal in front of the tapestry was a large dust-covered gold book, the
Aurum Liber
…at last. Emeralds, diamonds, amethysts and rubies were set freeform into the large infinity symbol on the cover. The pages were edged in gold. The jewels and gold glinted in the candlelight. Simon and I both grinned. I reached out to touch it and my hand froze as a cold voice came from the passageway behind us.

“I’ll take that.”

Francoise came stumbling out of the passageway first, followed by a limping Sylvie Renard holding a gun to the back of the girl’s head. When Francoise saw Simon, she launched herself at him, burying her face against his chest and sobbing.

“Are you alright? Has she harmed you?” Simon held the girl at arm’s length to examine her.

“I’m okay,” she replied.

Sylvie kept the gun trained on us but let her eyes wander around the room before resting on the
Aurum Liber.