But whatever all this was, and however odd it seemed, it was nothing to do with him, and Luisa appeared to be all right. Michael went quietly back up the steps and closed the door softly. Somewhere in the house a clock chimed the half hour past midnight. He was wide awake, and the prospect of lying restlessly in the old bed was not inviting. Could he put in another spell of work? Yes, he could. And if he left the library door ajar he would be able to see and hear Luisa emerge from the cellar. He still had a nagging concern about her – which was absurd, since she most likely descended to that underground room on any number of nights, and appeared to have done so without any noticeable harm. But he would like to be sure.
The library was warm and friendly. Michael switched on the desk lamp, reached for his notebook, and opened the file containing the Charterhouse letter from Chuffy. That part of the file did not, however, appear to contain any more nuggets, and after a quarter of an hour of turning over the faded, dog-eared pages, he abandoned it, and picked up another one. The contents of this looked older, but most of the documents were in French, and Michael, aware of his imperfect knowledge of the language, sighed at the thought of struggling with more translating. Perhaps Luisa would let him take everything back to Oxford where someone in Modern Languages would most likely zip through the papers with contemptuous ease.
But on the first of the pages were three words that sparked his interest. Liège. Holzminden. And Leonora.
Those three again, thought Michael. Are they linked? Leonora’s certainly linked to Liège. But Holzminden seems linked to Stephen and can’t be anything to do with Leonora. Or can it? I’d better remember this isn’t an ancient mystery I’m uncovering, it’s just a fact-finding task. And it’s the Choir I’m supposed to be pursuing, with Leonora as a subtext.
Probably, the pages would only lead down a cul-de-sac, and most of the file would be on the lines of Chuffy’s letter, or a collection of dull missives from some French connection of the Gilmore family, which somebody had thought worth keeping. But Michael thought if he was going to be burning midnight oil while his hostess wrote up her journal below stairs, this would be as good a place to start as any.
The clipped-together pages with the reference to Liège and Holzminden were written in a graceful hand, but Michael saw right away that it was not a form of French that would be easy to translate. It did not seem to fit into the category either of straightforward French or of the Flemish form spoken in parts of Belgium – although he was not sure if he could differentiate one from the other. I can’t do it, he thought, torn between annoyance and disappointment. Then he looked at Leonora’s name again, which appeared several times on the first page, and he remembered the Holzminden sketch and Stephen, and the impression that there was something here worth pursuing gripped his mind again. He would make a stab at this letter, because, after all, he had managed a fairly respectable translation of the letter to Sister Clothilde earlier. If nothing else, he might be able to pick out a few phrases and see if it was worth going on. He reached for the French–English dictionary again.
Stephen’s letter had conveyed no sense of what Nell called a friendly hand from the past, but the letter in front of him felt different. Michael had the illogical impression that he might like the writer.
The opening sentence was relatively easy. It translated as, ‘I write this a little for myself but also for anyone who may one day read this, my own account.’
So far so good. Michael moved slowly down the page, making frequent use of the dictionary, at times finding it difficult to get at the meaning. French was not the writer’s native language, and at times he – it was certainly a ‘he’ – had not used or known the right word. But by the time Michael reached page two, the rhythm of the writing was starting to fall into place.
The carriage clock chimed one o’clock, but Luisa had not yet come back upstairs, and Michael thought he would stay with this odd, intriguing narrative a little longer. It was half-past one when he sat back and regarded the rough translation he had made so far. He had no idea if it could be believed or if it was some long ago attempt at a work of fiction. The places and the dates seemed genuine, although that did not prove anything, because how many novelists took a genuine historical event and hung their story on to it?
He began to read through his translation, double-checking some of the words against the dictionary. He had made several guesses and a few assumptions, and he had skipped some sections which appeared to be descriptions of irrelevant places or people, but in the main he thought he had grasped the gist of the narration.
After the initial opening sentence, the writing was vivid and a remarkable picture started to unfold.
Five
I must explain, from the very beginning, that I was never a small-time thief. I’ve always thought – and worked – in a large way.
I have never understood why people steal inferior items. It is just as difficult – and equally risky – to steal the cheap or the tasteless as it is to steal the valuable and the elegant.