Sepulchre by Kate Mosse Page B

glass of wine.
    She crossed the street. The menu was chalked up on a blackboard on an easel on the sidewalk. The large glass windows were modestly covered by lace half-curtains so she couldn't see inside. She pushed down the old-fashioned handle and a shrill bell jangled and clattered. She stepped inside and was met instantly by an elderly waiter with a crisp white linen apron tied around his waist.
'Pour manger?
    Meredith nodded and was shown to a table for one in the corner. Paper tablecloths, clunky silver knives and forks, a bottle of water waiting on the table. She ordered the plat du jour and a glass of Fitou.
    The meat - a bavette - was perfect, pink in the centre and with a strong black pepper sauce. The Camembert was ripe. While she was eating, Meredith looked at the black and white photographs on the walls. Images of the quartier in days gone by, the staff of the restaurant standing proudly outside, the waiters with black moustaches and crisp white collars and the patron and his matronly wife in the centre in their starched Sunday best. A shot of one of the old trams on the rue d'Amsterdam, another modern one of the famous tower of clocks on the front concourse of the Gare Saint-Lazare.
    Best of all, though, was a photograph she recognised. Meredith smiled. Above the door to the kitchens, beside a studio portrait of a woman with a younger man and a girl with a mass of tumbling hair, was a copy of one of the most famous photographs of Debussy. Taken at the Villa Medici in Rome in 1885, when he was only twenty-three years old, he glowered out of the picture with his distinctive, frowning dark expression. His black curly hair was short over his forehead, and with the beginnings of a moustache, the image was immediately recognisable. Meredith was intending to use it as the illustration on the back jacket of her book.
    'He lived in this very street,' she said to the waiter, while she punched in her PIN code. She gestured at the photo. 'Claude Debussy. Right here.' The waiter shrugged, uninterested, until he saw the size of the tip. Then he smiled.
CHAPTER 11
    The rest of the afternoon went according to plan. Meredith worked her way through the other addresses on her list, and by the time she got back to the hotel at six, she'd visited everywhere Debussy had ever lived in Paris. She showered and changed into a pair of white jeans and a pale blue sweater. She loaded the photos from her digital camera to her laptop, checked her mail - still no money - had a light supper in the brasserie opposite, then rounded off the evening with a green cocktail at the hotel bar that looked gross but tasted surprisingly good.
Back in her room, she felt the need to hear a familiar voice. She called home.
'Hi, Mary. It's me.' 'Meredith!'
     
The catch in her mother's voice brought tears to Meredith's eyes. She felt suddenly a long way from home and very much on her own. 'How are things?' she asked.
    They talked for a while. Meredith filled Mary in on everything she'd done since they'd last spoken, and all the places she'd visited already since arriving in Paris, although she was painfully aware of the dollars mounting up every minute they chatted.
She heard the pause long distance. 'And how's the other project?' Mary asked.
     
'I'm not thinking about that right now. Too much to do here in Paris. I'll get on to it when I reach Rennes-les-Bains after the weekend.'
    'There's nothing to worry about,' Mary said, the words coming out in a rush, making it obvious how much it was on her mind. She'd always been supportive of Meredith's need to find out about her past. At the same time, Meredith knew Mary feared what might come to light. She felt the same. What if it came out that the illness, the misery that had overshadowed her birth mother's entire life, was there in the family stretching way back? What if she started to show the same signs?
'I'm not worried,' she said, a little snappy, then felt immediately guilty.
     
'I'm good. Excited more than