Sepulchre by Kate Mosse

at home in Paris, in Debussy's city. Everything had been so crazy leading up to her departure, she could hardly believe she was actually here. She sat still a moment, just enjoying the scene and being right at the heart of things. Then she got out her map and spread it out on the table. The corners draped and crackled over the edge like a colourful cloth.
    She tucked a few strands of hair that had come loose back behind her ears and perused the map. The first address on her list was the rue de Berlin, where Debussy had lived with his parents and siblings from the early 1860s until he was twenty-nine years old. It was just around the block from the apartment of the Symbolist poet Stephane Mallarme, where Debussy had attended the famous Tuesday afternoon salons. After World War I, like many French streets with German names, it had been renamed and was now the rue de Liege.
    Meredith followed the line with her finger to the rue de Londres, where Debussy had taken a furnished apartment with his lover Gaby Dupont in January 1892. Next came an apartment in the tiny rue Gustave-Dore in the 17th, then just around the corner to the rue Cardinet, where they lived until Gaby walked out on him on New Year's Day 1899. Debussy remained at the same address for the next five years with his first wife, Lilly, before that relationship too broke down.
    In terms of distances and planning, Paris was pretty manageable. Everything was within walking distance, helped by the fact that Debussy had spent his life within a relatively small area, a star-like quartet of streets around the Place d'Europe on the boundary of the 8th and 9th arrondissements, overlooking the Gare Saint-Lazare.
    Meredith ringed each of the locations on the map with black marker pen, looked at the pattern a moment, then decided she'd start at the furthest point and work her way back in the direction of the hotel.
    She packed up, struggling to get the map to fold in the right place. She finished her coffee, brushed the buttery flakes of croissant from her sweater and licked her fingers one by one, resisting the temptation to order anything else. Despite her slim and lithe appearance, Meredith loved food. Pastries, bread, cookies, all the stuff that nobody was supposed to eat any more. She left a ten-euro note to cover the check, adding a handful of small change for a tip, then set off.
    It took her just short of fifteen minutes to reach the Place de la Concorde. From there she turned north, up past the Palais de la Madeleine, an extraordinary church designed like a Roman temple, then along the Boulevard Malesherbes. After about five minutes she turned left into the Avenue Velasquez towards the Parc Monceau. After the roar of traffic on the main thoroughfare, the imposing dead-end street seemed eerily silent. Plane trees with variegated bark, mottled like the back of an old man's hand, lined the sidewalk. Many of the trunks were tagged with graffiti. Meredith glanced up at the white embassy buildings, impassive and somehow disdainful, overlooking the gardens. She stopped and took a couple of photos, just in case she didn't remember the layout later.
    A sign on the entrance into the Parc Monceau announced winter and summer opening and closing hours. Meredith walked through black wrought-iron gates into the wide green space, immediately finding it easy to imagine Lilly or Gaby or even Debussy himself, hand in hand with his daughter, strolling along the generous pathways. Long white summer dresses swirling in the dust or ladies sitting beneath brimmed hats on one of the green metal benches set all along the edges of the lawns. Retired generals in military uniform, and the dark-eyed children of diplomats rolling wooden hoops under the watchful gaze of their governesses. Through the trees, she glimpsed the columns of a folly in the style of a Greek temple. A little further away there was a stone pyramid icehouse, fenced off from the public, and marble statues of The Muses. Across the