The Ladies of the Secret Circus Page 35

  “You did?” Lara held Margot’s hands. She thought of Ben Archer, so far away, yet connected to her by this mystery.

  “I gave him a clue,” said Margot. “To steer him on the right path.”

  “We’ve all suffered so much.” Cecile’s jaw clenched and she pulled Margot toward her. Then she took Lara’s hand. As the three of them held on to one another, Lara could feel the powerful magic flowing through the three of them, buoying her for battle.

  They took a cab down the Rue de Rivoli and turned up a narrow street that had a courtyard and an older building. A neon sign read:

  Le Cirque de Fragonard Performance Tonight

  Ben, Barrow, and Gaston found the employee entrance open, but the box office was shut tight. Inside, a tall man with suspenders leaned against the building smoking a cigarette. Barrow took the lead. “Is the manager in?”

  “That depends,” said the man. “What do you want him for?”

  “What do you care?” Gaston seemed irritated at the man’s tone.

  The man shrugged, seemingly realizing he was outnumbered, and directed them back to a hallway through the open door. The three men heard sounds of horses snorting and a gait of a trot. Two men were shouting “Allez.”

  A door was cracked open, and Barrow knocked.

  “Entrez,” said a voice.

  The three men found their way into a cramped, windowless office with circus memorabilia covering the walls.

  “We are looking for the manager?”

  “I am the owner,” corrected the man in impeccable English. He was an older man with a shock of graying hair and small reading glasses. A tiny light illuminated the office, which was filled with a smoky gray haze as the owner sat smoking a short brown cigarette.

  “I am Edward Barrow of the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art. These are my colleagues from les États-Unis. A few days ago, another colleague of ours was shown a painting here.”

  “That is impossible.” The man leaned back in his chair and folded his arms.

  “Pourquoi?”

  The man shrugged. “I just returned from Rome yesterday. The circus only reopened this morning.” He paused when Barrow didn’t seem to believe him. “It’s expensive to keep a place like this cool in the summer. No one was here.”

  “Are you sure?” Gaston was looking around at the paintings. “No one was cleaning?”

  “Quite sure,” said the man. “There is no cleaning crew here when we’re not here. The place has been closed tight since April.” The man ran his hand over the bookshelf beside him and held out his hand—a thick layer of dust coated his fingers. “See, no janitor.”

  “This painting that our colleague saw,” said Gaston. “It is a painting of Cecile Cabot.”

  The man nodded and pointed nonchalantly to the wall. “Oui.”

  Ben was standing nearest to the area where the man had motioned. On the wall, he noticed a small painting and leaned in to study it. The painting was surrounded by photos, many of them disturbing vintage nudes. The canvas was the same size and style as Sylvie on the Steed, but this one featured a silver-haired woman wearing a pink striped leotard on the second rung of a ladder. She was gazing at the painter, a small smile on her lips, her body bending as he imagined it would with the movement of a soft ladder. Ben could tell there was more detail in this painting than the one in Barrow’s office. While the other had featured the relationship between the horse and the trick rider, Sylvie, this painting had only one subject: the girl.

  In one swift movement, Barrow pushed Ben out of the way. “It is the second painting.” The excitement in his voice was audible as he leaned down to examine it. Turning back to the man, he said, “This painting was done by Émile Giroux.”

  The man put his cigarette out in the full ashtray next to him. “Why should I care about who painted it?”

  “Because it’s a very important painting.” Barrow seemed exasperated. “It’s quite valuable. It should be protected and placed in a museum, not hanging on your wall, especially when you don’t keep the building cool in the summer. This painting is a national treasure.”

  “My father was quite a collector of cirque memorabilia,” said the man. “He found that painting in a little shop in the Latin Quarter. Someone had sold it off to pay debts along with paints and other equipment. They told him the artist had died suddenly, leaving the stuff in his small apartment. My father was only interested in that painting. It has hung on that wall safely for seventy years. There it will remain.”

  “Our colleague has gone missing,” said Gaston.

  “That is not my concern. If your colleague saw this painting a few days ago, then they broke into this building. Perhaps they have done this again and this time it did not fare so well for them. If there is nothing more, gentlemen, I have some work to attend to.” He pointed to a written ledger.

  Barrow took out a card from his pocket. “If you are interested in parting with this painting, the institute would be grateful.”

  The man did not reach out to take the card, so Barrow placed it on the desk.

  Ben could tell that Barrow was eager to touch the painting again, but each of them had to settle for one last glance of Cecile Cabot as they exited the office. They were a few steps from the office when the door shut tightly behind them.

  “Anyone notice anything odd about that painting?” Ben said outside on the street.

  “The entire room was creepy, if that’s what you mean,” said Gaston.

  “The woman in that photo looks exactly like Lara.” Ben began to pace slowly, circling Barrow and Gaston.

  “Come to think of it, the woman did look familiar, but her hair was white,” said Gaston. “We’re no closer to finding her than we were an hour ago. That felt like a waste of time.”

  “We’re retracing her steps,” said Barrow, who seemed lost in his thoughts since seeing the second canvas. He spun on his heels. “Did you see that painting? It was beautiful.”

  “I’m less concerned about the painting right now than I am about Lara,” Ben said, annoyed.

  “But who let her in?” Gaston put his hands on his hips and looked down the street as if the answer might suddenly appear before them. “As the guy so helpfully reminded us, they were closed.”

  “I’d say it was whoever gave her the ticket.” Ben looked at Gaston gravely. “And I don’t have one missing man back home, Gaston—I now have three.” Ben ran his hands through his hair. “And they don’t come back. My fear is Lara may not come back, either.”

  Gaston looked weary. “Do you think they’re related?”

  “I sure hope not.” He shook his head. “The only one who really has ties to Lara is Todd.”

  “It feels a little circumstantial,” said Barrow.

  “Except that they disappeared into thin air.” Gaston’s tone was changing, softening almost like a father’s. He knew Lara. This wasn’t some name to him.

  “Have you told Audrey?” asked Ben.

  Gaston nodded. “I told her you were coming and to give you twenty-four hours. If not, she’s on a plane here.”

  “Gaston, I hate to tell you, but my twenty-four hours is about up.”

  “I am aware of the hour,” said Gaston quietly. On the taxi ride back to the hotel, Gaston was quiet for a long time. “If anything happens to Lara, I’ll never forgive myself for dragging her here on this caper. I honestly thought she’d be fine. That it would be a nice diversion for her.”

  “We’ll find her,” said Ben. As the cab approached, Ben had an idea. “What do we know from the journal entries about the location of the circus?”

  “Nothing,” said Barrow.

  “Not true.” Gaston turned. “It usually needed a large vacant space—the space in front of Les Invalides… Bois de Boulogne.”

  “Exactly,” said Ben. “So we’re looking for a large open space within walking distance of the hotel.”

  “But it isn’t like this circus is on the street,” said Barrow. “Even if we find an open sp
ace—even if we find the correct space—it won’t help us.”

  “But it’s all we’ve got,” said Ben. “If I can get near Lara, I’ll find her.”

  Gaston turned to the cabdriver. They exchanged information for a few blocks. The driver took them up the Rue Favart to Place Boieldieu, where the Opéra-Comique had a large courtyard in front of the entrance.

  “I don’t think this is it,” said Ben. “Where else?”

  The cabdriver set off around the block and down the narrow streets to the Rue Vivienne. They pulled up in front of a building with pillars.

  “The Palais Brongniart,” said Gaston. “At night, this place is empty.”

  “How long would it take you to walk here from the hotel?” asked Ben.

  “About ten minutes.”

  “And you’d give yourself five minutes to spare, right?”

  “I would have,” Gaston echoed as he paid the driver. The three men walked over to the café across the street and stared at the Palais Brongniart with its imposing columns. “It’s a terrifying building at night. Let’s get some dinner and wait for it to get dark.”

  Ben looked at his watch. He was still on East Coast time, but it seemed to be nearing eight o’clock. He was very hungry and tired as hell.

  They asked for a table outside. As they were looking at their menus, they heard some commotion inside, near the kitchen. The waiter came by. “Apologies,” he began. “We had a homeless person show up about an hour ago. They’re trying to attend to her while we call the police.”

  Ben looked up. “Her?” He leapt from his seat.

  “Oui,” said the waiter, pouring water.

  Gaston pointed to Ben. “Il est gendarmerie. Peut-il aider?”

  The waiter shrugged and pointed back to the kitchen area with the empty bottle.

  Ben made his way back toward the kitchen, spinning around the tightly packed café tables. Gaston was behind him, assuring him that Ben was gendarmerie.

  “What is gendarmerie?” asked Ben, forming a path among the diners. “I should know.”

  “Police force in the smaller towns outside Paris. It fits you.”

  The back booth had been cleared and there was a girl lying in a ball with her back to them. The figure was a heap dressed in what appeared to be a pink swimsuit.

  “It’s a leotard,” said Gaston. “Like they wear in the circus.”

  “She does not know her name,” said the maître d’ in English. He sighed, disgusted.

  “Lara.” Ben reached down to touch the woman. Her blond hair was a tangled, dirty mess. He gently turned the woman over and saw Lara’s familiar features.

  She gazed up at him with a blank look.

  “She’s burning up.” Ben touched her face and then looked at Gaston. “Have them call an ambulance immediately, or we’ll take her to the hospital in a cab.”

  Gaston nodded and took off with the maître d’.

  While he waited, Ben sat on the floor so he could get a better look at Lara’s face. “It’s me, Lara. Ben. Do you remember me?”

  Lara stared blankly, rarely blinking.

  “I came as soon as I heard. You’ve been missing three days now. Do you know where you are? You’re in Paris.”

  The catatonic woman in front of him was a like a shell.

  A hand touched him. It was Gaston, who had now two ambulance attendants behind him. Had he really been sitting here with her for several minutes? Ben and Gaston stepped out of the way to let them attend to Lara.

  “She’s in shock,” said Gaston, translating the conversation between the two paramedics. They administered an IV and placed her on a stretcher, pulling it up to wheel it out. The trio followed the ambulance to the Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu in a taxi.

  It was as though time had stopped. In the empty waiting room next to him, a French game show blared, its laugh track grating until Ben finally went and turned it off with the remote. But the absence of the television only made him notice the hospital announcements that he couldn’t understand. He’d read Lara’s translations of Cecile Cabot’s journals twice now and was bleary-eyed, nodding off several times, but catching himself and forcing himself to stay awake to find out what happened next. Yet nothing happened next. They just sat around in silence. He guessed this qualified as a damsel-in-distress situation. And he had to admit, flying to Paris to rescue Lara had made him feel alive again. After what seemed like hours, with the three of them sitting on plastic chairs, a doctor finally emerged. Gaston and Barrow were engaged with the man, nodding gravely. Ben cursed himself for not studying French in high school. The doctor nodded and walked off.

  “That didn’t sound good.” Ben put his hands in his pockets and steeled himself for the worst.

  “It isn’t.” Gaston looked defeated.

  “She has a raging fever,” explained Barrow. “They aren’t sure if it’s an infection, but right now she isn’t responding to antibiotics or anything they’re giving her. She’s on IVs and is dehydrated terribly, plus she’s in shock.”

  “I want to see her,” said Ben.

  Barrow shook his head. “They’re trying to limit her guests right now. They are afraid it could be sepsis.”

  Gaston walked off, looking for a pay phone.

  He was probably calling Audrey, Ben thought. Poor bastard. That was a call no one should have to make.

  Barrow sat down on the chair. They’d taken over an entire family waiting area where the scholar pored over the composition books, particularly the passages about coming and going from the circus and Cecile not feeling well. Ben had draped himself heavily in the chair across from him.

  They’d all memorized the story told within the three composition books, looking for some clue as to what might have happened to Lara in Le Cirque Secret, not that anyone in the hospital would have believed them if the answer had been spelled out in its pages.

  In fact, Ben could hardly believe it himself. While the journals were fantastic tales of another dimension, part of him still had to consider that this was entirely fiction. The Ouija board that had led him to Desmond “Dez” Bennett was something he couldn’t explain away, though; nor did he have a rational answer for the ritual killings in Kerrigan Falls. At heart, Ben Archer was a rational man, so buying into this whole otherworldly answer was challenging, and without talking to Lara he couldn’t make that leap. There was a distinct possibility that Lara had been kidnapped by the same person who had chased her—a human person. Only Lara could clear this up, and the only way she could do that was to wake up.

  “She said it was hard on the body, traveling back and forth.” Barrow pointed to the line in the notes.

  Gaston was back and slid into the seat beside him. “Yeah, but while that circus operated for two years, hundreds of people traveled to and fro without harm.”

  “Not for three days they didn’t,” said Ben, interrupting the theory-building going on between the two.

  “Do we think he would come if we called him?” said Barrow. He turned to the men, and it was clear from the steady gaze that met their eyes that he was serious. “When Giroux was dying, Cecile called him. We could try to call him.”

  “And Giroux died anyway, and all Cecile got was a fucking carousel.” Gaston put his head back and studied the ceiling.

  “I hate waiting.” Though exhausted, Ben couldn’t relax and was in and out of his chair, pacing.

  “That won’t help, you know,” said Gaston. “Unless you want to polish the floor with your shoes.”

  Ben Archer felt powerless. He was a man who needed control over his environment. Now here he was, in Paris of all places, waiting for Lara to wake up and considering that, as time went on, the possibility of her recovering was becoming smaller and smaller. Over the PA system, a woman’s voice called for doctors and the occasional code bleu in French. He hated the fact that he didn’t even understand the fucking language in this country. He rubbed his neck, which was aching. His entire body felt sick, flu-like. He hadn’t slept for more than forty-eight hours
.

  “I’m going to go to the hotel and get a shower, maybe a nap,” said Gaston. The man had deep lines on his face and dark circles under his eyes. Though he consumed a steady diet of espresso and Toblerone, Gaston’s clothing hung on him. “You should consider doing the same thing. You look terrible.”

  Ben’s bag was still packed, and he hoped he still had a hotel room to check into. “I’ll catch the next shift,” said Ben. “You go.”

  After Gaston went back to the hotel, Ben settled into the chair, watching a French-language dub of Blow-Up. Soon he was fast asleep.

  The elevator dinged and the cleaning crew moved through, mopping and scrubbing chairs, waking Ben. He checked his watch. It was six in the morning. He’d been asleep for five hours.

  The sound of heels on the polished floor caused him to stir. He looked up to see Audrey Barnes passing him. Her face looked tense, almost unrecognizable, and her focus was on the hall in front of her.

  It was a curious thing to see. She walked with confident intent down the empty hallway in front of her, past the nurses’ station and to her daughter’s exact room.

  As though she’d known precisely where to find her.

  For twenty-four hours, Lara teetered between life and death. There was no light, only the dull black behind her closed lids. The pain made everything fuzzy.

  There was a voice in the distance, soft but urgent. Lara, get up. Get up.

  But that voice didn’t know about the chills. The chills were so severe that the sheets hurt anytime they shifted against her limbs. Her arms were glistening with sweat—a chilling sweat like the dew on a cold glass. She shivered and prayed to be unconscious, temporarily or permanently, it did not matter to her one way or the other.

  As they’d left the circus, she’d taken Cecile’s hand. That was all it required for Cecile to fully absorb into her. But then, her body had been carefully crafted to match Cecile’s own.

  Except Althacazur had been wrong.