The Winter Ghosts - By Kate Mosse Page 0,41

vanquished.

The borrowed boots were lying beneath the table. Had I kicked them off when I’d returned to the room? I could see they were pristine. No evidence that they had been worn outside, certainly not in the snow. The toes had no tell-tale stains of frost or dew. I felt the turn-ups on my trousers. They, too, were dry.

‘Look, I remember quite clearly walking to the Ostal.’ I spoke slowly, carefully placing one word in front of the other, as a drunk considers each step before taking it. ‘I followed your map to the letter. Across the square, along the passageway to the left of the church—’

‘The left? You should have gone right.’

I kept talking. ‘Well, it served me just as well in the end. I did linger a moment at the crossroads, a bit of a labyrinth in that quartier behind the church, as you’d warned me, but pretty soon I got my bearings—’

‘Crossroads, monsieur?’

‘—and found the Ostal with no difficulty. There was quite a crowd there, everyone dressed up for the fête, as you had promised, so it’s quite possible, don’t you think, that you simply missed me in the crowd.’

Her expression was beginning to alarm me. Sympathetic, but genuinely worried. I had seen such an expression before on the face of the ward sister at the sanatorium on the evening I was admitted. An inexplicable gulf, now as then, between the logic of my world and of theirs. I steamed on all the same.

‘I’m relieved to see you didn’t come to any harm in the uproar, Madame Galy. I was worried you might have been hurt.’

‘Hurt, monsieur?’

‘Fabrissa said not to worry. Part of the tradition of the fête, I suppose, but I don’t mind telling you, I was taken in. It looked real enough. But, of course, that was much later. Perhaps you had gone already.’ I knew I was talking too loudly and too fast, but I couldn’t help myself. ‘A pleasant chap, by the name of Guillaume Marty, took me in hand, introduced me to . . .’ I faltered, trying to recall the names. ‘Two sisters, a widow, Na Azéma . . .’

Madame Galy was silent. She had given up trying to reason with me. My confidence cracked a little more.

‘ . . . and a husband and wife by the name of Authier, yes, and so many of your other neighbours. But most of the evening I spent in the company of a charming girl.’ I hesitated, suddenly shy. ‘Fabrissa. Do you know her?’

I met Madame Galy’s stare and saw pity in her eyes. A sharp memory of Mother that day in the restaurant near Piccadilly, and the contrasting look upon her face. Not pity then, but distaste. I blinked, furious that such a worthless memory, and one of many such, still hurt me.

I tried again.

‘A most striking girl, with long dark hair worn loose. Pale complexion. The most astonishing grey eyes. You must know her.’

Madame Galy shifted. ‘I know no one of that name,’ she said.

‘Well. Well, maybe she came as someone’s guest?’

Before the words were out of my mouth, I knew that was unlikely. If Fabrissa had come with someone else, would she have talked to me all night? Would she have left with me?

‘Then again, she might,’ I mumbled to myself. ‘If she liked me.’

I remembered something else, proof of a kind. ‘My coat,’ I said vigorously. ‘I left it in the lobby of the Ostal. When the brawl started, in my hurry to get us away, I forgot all about it. It must still be there.’

She held her gaze steady. ‘Your coat is still hanging on the hook by the front door where I myself hung it up to dry yesterday evening.’

‘Well, someone must have brought it back for me,’ I shot back, though, in truth, the fight had gone out of me. I couldn’t make sense of things. Madame Galy’s evidence contradicted my recollection of the evening. What more could be said?

‘Fabrissa must have found it and brought it back,’ I muttered. Where was she now?

I was shivering. My feet were suddenly painful on the bare floorboards. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling my ribs beneath the thin tunic.

Madame Galy put her arm around me. ‘You should lie down, monsieur.’

‘Someone must know her,’ I said, though I allowed her to steer me off the chair and towards the bed. She turned away as I took off my trousers, then she lifted the eiderdown and I obediently climbed