‘Oui,you can trust me, Anais.’ I feel the truth in his words. There’s a sincerity about Noah and I only hope my intuition about him is correct. If I take him at face value, he’s sensitive, wise and often soulful, but then so was Francois-Xavier. Is Noah the real deal? I wish I knew for certain because I feel a flutter in my heart when we share time together as nice as this.
‘Merci. There’s one other thing. We found a typewriter on the desk under a stack of papers. There was a piece of paper in the reel that said:Keep my soul in peace. Keep my last manuscript safe.’
At that, his eyebrows shoot up. ‘There’s a hidden manuscript from a writer of the twenties that hasn’t seen the light of day?’
I nod. ‘And I believe she was someone of note, due to other notebook entries she made.’
I catch Noah up about what I’ve read so far in the personal journals and offer them to him to read in his own time.
‘Did she date the journal entries?’
‘The ones I’ve read so far were all written in the year 1924.’
He rubs his chin, thinking. ‘And she alludes to being traditionally published before that date?’
I nod. ‘Oui, she talks about varying publishing success with a range of books and then there’s excitement about a “runaway” novel that superseded expectations, but there’s never mention of the title of the book; she just refers to them as “the summer novel” or “the novel set on the coast”, so there’s not much to go on.’
‘Getting published back then was difficult. Rare. Especially for women, who often used a pseudonym, which we know she did. Still, there’s enough here for us to start making notes of points to research later. And her husband, no ideas who he was?’
‘A “brutish bull of a man with an intolerable countenance” if I remember correctly.’
We share a smile.
‘The sad thing is,’ I say, ‘from what I can gather, once she escaped her marriage, her royalties were still going directly to him, hence her desire to cease publishing. Why would that be? Why couldn’t she retain her own royalties?’
We lapse into silence, reflecting on it all. ‘Oui, why?’ he muses, eyes sparkling from the mystery of suite nineteen.
‘She escaped to L’Hotel du Parc and promised herself she would never write another word that her controlling husband would benefit from. She lived here and wrote in these notebooks for her own enjoyment. L. L.’s family must have protected her privacy here, but how did she afford to live? Surely their generosity didn’t equate to paying her living expenses as well as her private suite.’
Noah rubs the back of his neck. ‘We can investigate who L. L. was. Surely there’s a record if they were a prominent family. We’ll learn more as we sift through all these papers. The other notebooks in the desk. Even the novels that lie scattered about might offer up a clue.’
I pick up a book from the desk. Inside is a notecard filled with reflections of what she enjoyed about the novel, and what she didn’t.
‘Yes, perhaps we’ll find more here. It’s strange; I want to unearth her secrets, but it feels like sacrilege, delving through her dusty papers, rifling through her private journals. Suite nineteen has been kept locked up for all this time, and it feels like we’re intruding.’
Noah surveys the room. ‘The big question is, why was the room hidden away?’
‘Oui.’
‘While I understand your reservations about rifling through her suite, don’t you get an overwhelming sense thatyou’rethe exact right person to uncover her secrets? A writer yourself, who inherently understands why she wants to keep her last manuscript safe. You could quite possibly solve a literary mystery, the fate of this escaped author and share her last works.’
There’s a hush, a sense that the room itself is holding its breath. How can that be? Is she here, somehow, stuck until we right the wrongs done to her? There’s that one gnawing concern…
‘That would mean going against her wishes to keep it safe.’ I blush when I recall I had considered selling the manuscript when JP told me the budget would blow out because of the need to reseal the windows. It had simply been panic taking over. I’d never really do it – would I? Not for my own financial gain, at any rate. ‘But what does she mean by that?’
‘I take it to mean she didn’t want her husband to get his hands on it or profit from the royalties from it.’
There’s a faint echo, as if the words inside this room have a pulse. Is she showing us the way or is this mystery making me a whimsical mess?
Noah runs a hand over the lace quilt cover. ‘Do you think they left the hotel, the author and L. L., but planned to come back, and that’s why they had the wall made?’
‘Why not just lock the rooms?’
‘It’s a mystery.’
We spend the next little while going through papers and diaries, jotting down points of interest to delve into further.
Juliette and I walk along Rue de Seine holding umbrellas aloft. ‘Timothee and Zac got the Père Noël job. Kiki found work in a bistro as a dish hand. I’m still doing the walking tours, but they’re not generating much income with the weather like it is and Christmas approaching.’
