After the Crash

by Michel Bussi

Genres: Suspense; Literary Fiction; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

Hailed as a, “novel so extraordinary that it reminded me of reading Stieg Larsson for the very first time” (Sunday Times), a near-million copy bestseller in Europe—centered on a tragic plane crash in the Alps and the mystery surrounding its only survivor, an infant girl.

A night flight from Istanbul bound for Paris, filled with 169 holiday travelers, plummets into the Swiss Alps. The sole survivor is a three-month-old girl—thrown from the plane onto the snowy mountainside before the fire rages through the aircraft. But two infants were on board. Is the miracle baby Lyse-Rose or Emilie? Both families step forward to claim the child—one poor, one powerful, wealthy, and dangerous.

Filled wtih delicious twists and riveting psychological suspense, After the Crash is an electrifying story of a two-decade mystery, secret love, and murder—perfect for the readers who swarmed Stieg Larsson, Gone Girl, and The Girl on the Train.

Release date: January 3, 2017

Publisher: Hachette Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

Now you know everything.

Crédule Grand-Duc lifted his pen and stared into the clear water at the base of the large vivarium just in front of him. For a few moments, his eyes followed the despairing flight of the Harlequin dragonfly that had cost him almost 2,500 francs less than three weeks ago. A rare species, one of the world’s largest dragonflies, an exact replica of its prehistoric ancestor. The huge insect flew from one glass wall to another, through a frenzied swarm of dozens of other dragonflies. Prisoners. Trapped.

They all sensed they were dying.

Pen touched paper once again. Crédule Grand-Duc’s hand shook nervously as he wrote.

In this notebook, I have reviewed all the clues, all the leads, all the theories I have found in eighteen years of investigation. It is all here, in these hundred or so pages. If you have read them carefully, you will now know as much as I do. Perhaps you will be more perceptive than I. Perhaps you will find something I have missed. The key to the mystery, if one exists. Perhaps…

For me, it’s over.

The pen hesitated again, and was held trembling just an inch above the paper. Crédule Grand-Duc’s blue eyes stared emptily into the still waters of the vivarium, then turned their gaze toward the fireplace, where large flames were devouring a tangle of newspapers, files, and cardboard storage boxes. Finally, he looked down again and continued.

It would be an exaggeration to say that I have no regrets, but I have done my best.

Crédule Grand-Duc stared at this last line for a long time, then slowly closed the pale green notebook.

He placed the pen in a pot on the desk, and stuck a yellow Post-it note to the cover of the notebook. Then he picked up a felt-tip pen and wrote on the Post-it, in large letters, for Lylie. He pushed the notebook to the edge of the desk and stood up.

Grand-Duc’s gaze lingered for a few moments on the copper plaque in front of him: CRÉDULE GRAND-DUC, PRIVATE DETECTIVE. He smiled ironically. Everybody called him Grand-Duc nowadays, and they had done for some time. Nobody—apart from Emilie and Marc Vitral—used his ludicrous first name. Anyway, that was before, when they were younger. An eternity ago.

Grand-Duc walked toward the kitchen. He took one last look at the gray, stainless-steel sink, the white octagonal tiles on the floor, and the pale wood cabinets, their doors closed. Everything was in perfect order, clean and tidy; every trace of his previous life had been carefully wiped away, as if this were a rented house that had to be returned to its owner. Grand-Duc was a meticulous man and always would be, until his dying breath. He knew that. That explained many things. Everything, in fact.

He turned and walked back toward the fireplace until he could feel the heat on his hands. He leaned down and threw two storage boxes into the flames, then stepped back to avoid the shower of sparks.

A dead end.

He had devoted thousands of hours to this case, examining each clue in the most minute detail. All those clues, those notes, all that research was now going up in smoke. Every trace of this investigation would disappear in the space of a few hours.

Eighteen years of work for nothing. His whole life was summarized in this auto-da-fé, to which he was the only witness.

In fourteen minutes, Lylie would be eighteen years old, officially at least… Who was she? Even now, he still couldn’t be certain. It was a one-in-two chance, just as it had been on that very first day. Heads or tails.

Lyse-Rose or Emilie?

He had failed. Mathilde de Carville had spent a fortune—eighteen years’ worth of salary—for nothing.

Grand-Duc returned to the desk and poured himself another glass of Vin Jaune. From the special reserve of Monique Genevez, aged for fifteen years: this was, perhaps, the single good memory he had retained from this investigation. He smiled as he brought the glass of wine to his lips. A far cry from the caricature of the aging alcoholic detective, Grand-Duc was more the type of man to dip sparingly into his wine cellar, and only on special occasions. Lylie’s birthday, tonight, was a very special occasion. It also marked the final minutes of his life.

The detective drained the glass of wine in a single mouthful.

This was one of the few sensations he would miss: the inimitable taste of this distinctive yellow wine burning deliciously as it moved through his body, allowing him to forget for a moment this obsession, the unsolvable mystery to which he had devoted his life.

Grand-Duc put the glass back on the desk and picked up the pale green notebook, wondering whether to open it one last time. He looked at the yellow Post-it: for Lylie.

This was what would remain: this notebook, these pages, written over the last few days… For Lylie, for Marc, for Mathilde de Carville, for Nicole Vitral, for the police and the lawyers, and whoever else wished to explore this endless hall of mirrors.

It was a spellbinding read, without a doubt. A masterpiece. A thrilling mystery to take your breath away. And it was all there… except for the end.

He had written a thriller that was missing its final page, a whodunit in which the last five lines had been erased.

Future readers would probably think themselves cleverer than he. They would undoubtedly believe that they could succeed where he had failed, that they could find the solution.

For many years he had believed the same thing. He had always felt certain that proof must exist somewhere, that the equation could be resolved. It was a feeling, only a feeling, but it wouldn’t go away… That certainty had been what had driven him on until this deadline: today, Lylie’s eighteenth birthday. But perhaps it was only his subconscious that had kept this illusion alive, to prevent him from falling into utter despair. It would have been so cruel to have spent all those years searching for the key to a problem that had no solution.

The detective reread his final words: I have done my best.

Grand-Duc decided not to tidy up the empty bottle and the used glass. The police and the forensics people examining his body a few hours from now would not be worried about an unwashed glass. His blood and his brains would be splashed in a thick puddle across this mahogany desk and these polished floorboards. And should his disappearance not be noticed for a while, which seemed highly likely (who would miss him, after all?), it would be the stench of his corpse that would alert the neighbors.

In the hearth, he noticed a scrap of cardboard that had escaped the flames. He bent down and threw it into the fire.

Slowly, Grand-Duc moved toward the mahogany writing desk that occupied the corner of the room facing the fireplace. He opened the middle drawer and took his revolver from its leather holster. It was a Mateba, in mint condition, its gray metal barrel glimmering in the firelight. The detective’s hand probed more deeply inside the desk and brought out three 38mm bullets. With a practiced movement he spun the cylinder and gently inserted the bullets.

One would be enough, even given his relatively inebriated state, even though he would probably tremble and hesitate. Because he would undoubtedly manage to press the gun to his temple, hold it firmly, and squeeze the trigger. He couldn’t miss, even with the contents of a bottle of wine in his bloodstream.

He placed the revolver on the desk, opened the left-hand drawer, and took out a newspaper: a very old and yellowed copy of Est Républicain. This macabre set piece had been in his mind for months, a symbolic ritual that would help him to end it all, to rise above the labyrinth forever.

The detective glanced over at the vivarium, where the dragonflies were making their dirgelike rattles and hums. The power supply had been off for the last thirty minutes. Deprived of oxygen and food, the dragonflies would not survive the week. And he had spent so much money buying the rarest and oldest species; he had spent hours, years of his life, looking after the vivarium, feeding them, breeding them, even employing someone to look after them when he was away.

All that effort, just to let them die.

It’s actually quite an agreeable feeling, Grand-Duc thought, to sit in judgment on the life and death of another: to protect only in order to condemn, to give hope in order to sacrifice. To play with fate, like a cunning, capricious god. After all, he, too, had been the victim of just such a sadistic deity.

Crédule Grand-Duc sat on the chair behind the desk and unfolded the copy of the Est Républicain, dated December 23, 1980. Once again, he read the front page: “The Miracle of Mont Terrible.”

Beneath the banner headline was a rather blurred photograph showing the carcass of a crashed airplane, uprooted trees, snow muddied by rescue workers. Under the photograph, the disaster was described in a few lines:

The Airbus 5403, flying from Istanbul to Paris, crashed into Mont Terri, on the Franco-Swiss border, last night. Of the 169 passengers and flight crew on board, 168 were killed upon impact or perished in the flames. The sole survivor was a baby, three months old, thrown from the plane when it collided with the mountainside, before the cabin was consumed by fire.

When Grand-Duc died, he would fall forward onto the front page of this newspaper. His blood would redden the photograph of the tragedy that had taken place eighteen years earlier; it would mingle with the blood of those one hundred and sixty-eight victims. He would be found this way, a few days or a few weeks later. No one would mourn him. Certainly not the de Carvilles. Perhaps the Vitrals would feel sad at his passing. Emilie, Marc… Nicole in particular.

He would be found, and the notebook would be given to Lylie: the story of her short life. His testament.

Grand-Duc looked at his reflection one more time in the copper plaque, and felt almost proud. It was a good ending: much better than what had gone before.

It was time.

He carefully positioned the newspaper in front of him, moved his chair forward, and took a firm grip of the revolver. His palms were sweaty. Slowly he lifted his arm.

He shivered, in spite of himself, when the cold metal of the gun barrel touched his temple. But he was ready.

He tried to empty his mind, not to think about the bullet, an inch or two from his brain, that would smash through his skull and kill him…

His index finger bent around the trigger. All he had to do now was squeeze and it would all be over.

Eyes open or closed?

A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead and fell onto the newspaper.

Eyes open. Now do it.

He leaned forward. For the final time, his gaze rested on the photograph of the burned-out cabin, and the other photograph of the fireman standing in front of the hospital in Montbéliard, carefully holding that bluish body. The miracle baby.

His index finger tightened around the trigger.

His eyes were lost in the black ink of the newspaper’s front page. Everything blurred. The bullet would perforate his temple, without the slightest resistance. All he had to do was squeeze a little harder, just a fraction of an inch. He stared into eternity. The black ink below him came into focus again, as if he were playing with the lens of a camera. This would be his final view of the world, before everything went dark forever.

His finger. The trigger.

His eyes wide open.

Grand-Duc felt an electric shock run through him. Something unimaginable had just happened.

Because what he was looking at was impossible. He knew that perfectly well.

His finger relaxed its pressure slightly.

To begin with, Grand-Duc thought it must be an illusion, a hallucination provoked by his imminent death, some kind of defense mechanism dreamed up by his brain…

But no. What he had seen, what he read in that newspaper, was real. The paper was yellowed by age, the ink somewhat smeared, and yet there could be no doubt whatsoever.

It was all there.

The detective’s mind started working frantically. He had come up with so many theories over the years of the investigation, hundreds of them. But now he knew where to begin, which thread to pull, and the whole tangled web came apart with disconcerting simplicity.

It was all so obvious.

He lowered his pistol and laughed like a madman.

He had done it!

The solution to the mystery had been here, on the front page of this newspaper, from the very beginning. And yet it had been absolutely impossible to discover this solution at the time, eighteen years ago. Everyone had read this newspaper, pored over it, analyzed it thousands of times, but no one could possibly have guessed the truth, back in 1980, or during the years that followed.

The solution was so obvious: it jumped out at you… but on one condition.

The newspaper had to be looked at eighteen years later.

Were they lovers, or brother and sister?

The question had been nagging at Mariam for almost a month. She ran the Lenin Bar, at the crossroads of Avenue de Stalingrad and Rue de la Liberté, a few yards from the forecourt of the University of Paris VIII in Saint-Denis. At this hour of the morning, the bar was still mostly empty, and Mariam took advantage of the quiet to clean tabletops and arrange chairs.

The couple in question were sitting at the back of the café, as they usually did, near the window, at a tiny table for two, holding hands and looking deep into each other’s blue eyes.

Lovers?

Friends?

Siblings?

Mariam sighed. The lack of certainty bothered her. She generally had a keen instinct when it came to her students’ love lives. She snapped out of it: she still had to wipe down the tables and sweep the floor; in a few minutes, thousands of stressed students would rush from the metro station Saint-Denis–Université, the terminus of Line 13. The station had only been open for four months, but already it had transformed the local area.

Mariam had seen the University of Paris VIII slowly change from its rebellious beginnings as the great university of humanities, society, and culture into a banal, well-behaved suburban learning center. Nowadays, most professors sulked when they were assigned to Paris VIII. They would rather be at the Sorbonne, or even Jussieu. Before the metro station opened, the professors had had to cross through Saint-Denis, to see a little of the surrounding area, but now, with the metro, that, too, was over. The professors boarded the metro on Line 13 and were whisked off toward the libraries, laboratories, ministries, and grand institutions of Parisian culture.

Mariam turned toward the counter to fetch a sponge, casting a furtive glance at the intriguing young couple: the pretty blond girl and the strapping, spellbound boy. She felt almost haunted by them.

Who were they?

Mariam had never understood the workings of higher education, with its modules and examinations and strikes, but no one knew better than she what the students did during their break time. She had never read Robert Castel, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, or Jacques Lacan, the star professors of Paris VIII—at most, she might have seen them once or twice, in her bar or in the campus forecourt—but nevertheless she considered herself an expert in the analysis, sociology, and philosophy of student love affairs. She was like a mother hen to some of her regulars and an advice columnist to others, helping them through their heartaches with professional skill.

But despite her experience, her famous intuition, she could not fathom the relationship between the couple at the window.

Emilie and Marc.

Shy lovers or affectionate relatives?

The uncertainty was maddening. Something about them didn’t fit. They looked so alike, yet they were so different. Mariam knew their first names: she knew the first names of all her regulars.

Marc, the boy, had been studying at Paris VIII for two years now, and he came to the Lenin almost every day. A tall boy, good-looking, but a little too nice, like a disheveled “Little Prince.” Daydreamy, and somewhat gauche: the kind of provincial student who still didn’t know how things worked in Paris, and who lacked the money to look cool. As for his studies, he wasn’t a fanatic. As far as she understood, he was studying European law, but for the past two years, he had seemed very calm and thoughtful. Now Mariam understood why.

He had been waiting for her. His Emilie.

She had arrived this year, in September, so she must be two or three years younger than he.

They shared certain traits. That slightly low-class accent, which Mariam could not locate, but which was indisputably the same. And yet, in Emilie’s case, the accent somehow seemed wrong; it did not fit her personality. The same could be said of her name: Emilie was too ordinary, too bland for a girl like that. Emilie, like Marc, was blond and, like Marc, she had blue eyes. But while Marc’s gestures and expressions were clumsy, simple, unoriginal, there was a je-ne-sais-quoi about Emilie, a strikingly different way of moving, a kind of nobility in the way she held her head, a purebred elegance and grace that seemed to suggest aristocratic genes, a privileged education.

And that was not the only mystery. In terms of money, Emilie’s standard of living appeared to be the very opposite of Marc’s. Mariam had a knack for evaluating, in an instant, the quality and cost of the clothing worn by her students, from H&M and Zara to Yves Saint Laurent.

Emilie did not wear Yves Saint Laurent, but she wasn’t far off. What she was wearing today—a simple, elegant orange silk blouse and a black, asymmetrical skirt—had undoubtedly cost a small fortune. Emilie and Marc might be from the same place, but they did not belong to the same world.

And yet they were inseparable.

There was a complicity between them that could not be created in only a few months at the university. It was as if they had lived together all their lives, perceptible in the countless protective gestures that Marc made toward Emilie: a hand on her shoulder, a chair pulled out for her, a door held open, a glass filled without asking. It was the way a big brother would behave toward a little sister.

Mariam wiped down a chair and put it back in position, her mind still churning over the enigma of Marc and Emilie.

It was as if Marc had spent the previous two years preparing the ground for Emilie’s arrival, keeping her seat warm in the lecture hall, a table near the window in the Lenin. Mariam sensed that Emilie was a brilliant student, quick-witted, ambitious and determined. Artistic. Literary. She could see that determination whenever the girl took out a book or a folder, in the way she would skim confidently over notes that Marc would take hours to master.

So, could they be brother and sister, in spite of their social differences?

Well, yes. Except that Marc was in love with Emilie!

That, too, was blindingly obvious.

He did not love her like a brother, but like a devoted lover. It was clear to Mariam from the first moment she saw them together. A fever, a passion, completely unmistakable.

Mariam did not have a clue what this could mean.

She had been shamelessly spying on them for a month now. She had glanced furtively at the names on files, essays, placed on the table. She knew their surname.

Marc Vitral.

Emilie Vitral.

But ultimately, that did not help. The logical supposition was that they were brother and sister. But then what about those incestuous gestures? The way Marc touched Emilie’s lower back… Or perhaps they were married. She was only eighteen: very young for a student to marry, but not impossible. And, of course, it was technically possible that they just happened to have the same name, but Mariam could not believe in such a coincidence, unless they were cousins or belonged to a more complicated kind of family, with stepparents or half siblings…

Emilie seemed very fond of Marc. But her expression was more complex, difficult to read. She often seemed to stare into space, particularly when she was alone, as if she were hiding something, a deep sadness… It was that melancholy that gave Emilie a subtle distance, a different kind of charm from that of all the other girls on campus. All of the boys in the Lenin stared hungrily at her, but—probably because of that reserve—none of them dared to approach her.

None except Marc.

Emilie was his. That was why he was here. Not for his courses. Not for the university. He was here purely so he could be with her, so he could protect her.

But what about the rest? Mariam had often tried talking with Emilie and Marc, chatting about any old subject, but she had never learned anything intimate. But one day, she was determined she would find out their secret…

She was cleaning the last tables when Marc raised his hand.

“Mariam, could you bring us two coffees, please, and a glass of water for Emilie?”

Mariam smiled to herself. Marc never drank coffee when he was alone, but always ordered one when he was with Emilie.

“No problem, lovebirds!” Mariam replied.

Testing the water.

Marc gave an embarrassed smile. Emilie did not. She lowered her head slightly. Mariam only noticed this now: Emilie looked awful this morning, her face puffy, as if she hadn’t slept all night. Was she worrying over an exam? Had she spent the night revising, or writing an essay?

No, it was something else.

Mariam shook the coffee grounds into the bin, rinsed the percolator, and made two espressos.

It was something serious.

As if Emilie had to give Marc some painful news. Mariam had witnessed so many conversations like that: farewell dates, tragic tête-à-têtes, with the boy sitting alone in front of his coffee while the girl left, looking embarrassed but relieved. Emilie looked like someone who had spent the night thinking and who, by early morning, had made her decision and was ready to accept its consequences.

Mariam walked slowly toward them, the tray in her hands bearing two coffees and a glass of water.

Poor Marc. Did he have any inkling that he was already doomed?

Mariam also knew how to be discreet. She placed the drinks on the table, then turned and walked away.

Marc Vitral waited a few moments for Mariam to move away. Then he bent down over his backpack, which he’d left on the floor next to his chair, and took out a small cube wrapped in silver paper.

“Happy birthday, Emilie,” he said cheerfully.

He handed her the package.

Emilie rolled her eyes.

“Marc!” she scolded him. “You’ve wished me happy birthday three times in the last week. You know I don’t need all that…”

“Shhh. Open it.”

Frowning, Emilie unwrapped the present. Inside was a piece of silver jewelry: a complicated-looking cross, with each arm ending in a little diamond shape, except for the top one, which featured a large circle surmounted by a crown. Emilie held the cross in her hands.

“You’re mad, Marc.”

“It’s a Tuareg cross. Apparently there are twenty-one different kinds. One shape for each city in the Sahara. This one is from Agadez. Do you like it?”

“Of course I like it. But…”

Marc went on, unstoppable: “Apparently, the diamond shapes represent the four cardinal points. Whoever gives someone a Tuareg cross gives them the world.”

“I know the legend,” Emilie whispered softly. “‘I offer you the four corners of the world because you cannot know where you will die.’”

Marc smiled, embarrassed. Of course Lylie already knew all about Tuareg crosses, just as she knew about everything. There was silence for a moment. Emilie reached out for her cup of coffee. Instinctively, Marc did the same. His fingers moved toward hers, hoping they would touch. Suddenly, Marc’s hand stopped dead. Lylie was wearing a ring. It was gold, beautifully wrought, and set with a pale sapphire; a magnificent antique, and undoubtedly worth a fortune. Marc had never seen it before. He stared at it in confusion for several seconds, overcome by the jealousy he always felt when confronted with something that seemed to distance him from Emilie. Finally he managed to stammer: “That… that ring, is… is it yours?”

“No. I stole it this morning from a shop in the Place Vendôme!”

Marc still felt floored and his eyelid fluttered slightly. The Tuareg cross he had given her had cost him all the money he’d earned from two days and three nights working as a switchboard operator for France Telecom, his student job, but it looked like cheap junk compared to that ring. And Lylie had already put the African jewel back in its canvas box, whereas the ring sat proudly on her finger.

He forced himself to swallow a mouthful of coffee, then said: “That… your ring… was it a birthday present?”

Emilie lowered her eyes. “Sort of. It’s a bit complicated… Beautiful, though, isn’t it?”

She paused, trying to find the right words.

“I’ll explain it to you, don’t worry, at least not about this ring…”

Emilie put her hand on Marc’s.

Don’t worry. At least not about this ring…

The words reverberated inside Marc’s head. What did she mean? Lylie looked awful this morning, as if she had not slept all night, even though she was trying to smile at him. Suddenly, as if she had made an important decision, her eyes lit up. She took a few sips of coffee then bent down over her schoolbag. She pulled out a notebook with a pale green cover and slid it across the table toward Marc.

“Now it’s my turn, Marc. This is for you.”

Marc felt another wave of vague anxiety rise within him.

“What is it?”

“Grand-Duc’s notebook,” Emilie replied instantly. “He gave it to me the day before yesterday, the day after my birthday. Well, actually, he left it in my mailbox, or got someone else to leave it there. I found it in the morning.”

Marc cautiously touched the notebook with his fingertips. His eyelid was fluttering again.

That notebook. Grand-Duc’s investigation… Now he understood. Emilie had spent the last two days reading and rereading it. The eighteen-year investigation carried out by that mad old private detective. A lifetime’s work. Emilie’s lifetime. Almost to the day.

Some fucking birthday present!

Marc looked for clues in Emilie’s expression. What truth had she discovered in the notebook? A new identity? A calm acceptance of everything, at last? Or nothing at all? Only questions without answers…

Emilie was not giving anything away. She was too good at this game. She poured a few drops of water into her coffee, her little ritual, and drank it slowly.

“You see, Marc, he did give it to me in the end, just like he always promised. The truth. For my passage into the adult world.”

Emilie laughed nervously. Still Marc did not pick up the notebook.

“And…?” he asked. “What does he say, in this notebook? Anything important? Do you… do you know now?”

Emilie looked away, out through the window, where small groups of students were crossing the Paris VIII forecourt.

“Know what?”

Marc began to feel exasperated. The words formed in his head but he did not say them aloud: Know what that stupid detective was paid, for so many years, to find out! Know who you are, Lylie. Who you are!

Emilie played distractedly with her ring.

“Well, now it’s your turn. You need to read it, Marc.”

Marc’s mind was in turmoil. He picked up the notebook and heard himself say: “All right, little dragonfly. I’ll read your damn notebook…”

He was silent for a moment, then added: “But what about you? Are you OK?”

“Yes, don’t worry. I’m fine.”

Emilie sipped her coffee again. She looked as if she were forcing herself to drink it.

“Did Grand-Duc leave a note?”

“No, nothing. But it’s all in the notebook.”

“And…?”

“It’s better if you read it yourself.”

“So where is Grand-Duc now?”

Emilie’s eyes clouded over again, as if she were hiding something. She made a show of looking at her watch.

“Are you leaving already?”

“I don’t have classes this morning, but you do. At ten o’clock. Constitutional European Law. You have a tutorial with the young and fascinating Professor Grandin. I really have to go.”

Emilie poured the last drop of water into her coffee, drank the rest slowly, then bent down over her bag again.

“I… I have another present for you.”

She handed him a little gift-wrapped package, slightly larger than a box of matches.

Marc froze. He was filled with foreboding.

“You mustn’t open it now,” Emilie continued breathlessly. “Only after I’ve gone. One hour later. Promise me? It’s like hide-and-seek: you have to give me time to disappear. So close your eyes and count to, let’s say, a thousand…”

Emilie seemed to be putting all her energy into convincing Marc that her request was just some foolish lovers’ game, but Marc was not fooled.

“Promise?” Emilie insisted.

Resigned, Marc nodded. They looked at each other for a long time. Emilie blinked first.

“No, you won’t do it. You’re stubborn, Marc, I know you. You’ll tear into it as soon as my back is turned.”

Marc did not contradict her. Emilie lifted a slender hand.

That damn ring sparkled in the light.

“Mariam?”

The landlady reacted instantly, as if she had been watching them, just waiting for such a command. She stood in front of Marc and Emilie’s table.

“Mariam, I have a favor to ask you. I want to leave this package with you. You must give it to Marc in one hour, and not a moment sooner! Even if he begs you, bribes you, or blackmails you. And, now that I think about it, you must send him off to his class in one hour, too—room B318!”

Mariam looked at the p