Ice Claw (16 page)

Sophie Fauvre either was in love with Max Gordon or wanted to kill him.

The nondescript entrance to the Château d’Antoine d’Abbadie could easily be missed by passing motorists. There were no big signs demanding attention, and the château wasn’t visible from the road. Bobby drove the van slowly under the canopy of trees that lined the narrow tarmac drive. A parking area, denoted by coconut-mat fencing, was on the right-hand side after about a hundred meters. There was one other car parked, with German license plates, and Max could see a
middle-aged couple, obviously tourists, waiting farther ahead, where he could just make out the edge of the gray stone building. That must be the entrance.

“Wait here. I’m going to check it out and make sure this is the right place,” Max said.

The bare branches of the tree canopy still obscured the building, but now Max could see its shape. A black slate roof capped the stone walls. The château wasn’t that big but it had the look of a small medieval castle, some ramparts on the one side, about three stories high, while the nearer side looked like a more typical French château. This d’Abbadie bloke must have had a lot of fun, Max thought, because it was all a bit nineteenth-century Disney. But there was also a creepy feeling. Chimeric gargoyles, imaginary creatures from mythology, snarling or laughing, Max couldn’t tell, glared down at him from the corners of the building. Mythical equivalents of scrapyard dogs.
No entry!
they snarled silently.

He stopped in his tracks. Facing him on the building’s huge stone wall was a massive snake, a giant anaconda, sculpted into the stonework. Its body squirmed, twisting in a big
S;
its tail curled in a figure eight, head facing upwards. Heart thumping, knowing this château was the key to Zabala’s death, Max walked another few meters to the front of the building. The site of the photograph he had found in Zabala’s hut was revealed. Eight front steps, broad at the base, narrowed as they ascended to the double-studded red front door. The Gothic arch, cut off in that photograph, was joined together beneath a statue of a shield and a sword. Another snake twined itself along the blade to the handle. Two palm trees shielded the entrance.

Crocodiles gazed blindly at him, one each side, straddling a low balustrade that ran down the steps. Their chiseled tails curled upwards towards the door, mouths agape, front legs gripping the stone, as if ready to strike.

Max’s jaw clenched so tightly it ached. He’d experienced crocodile attacks before, and these lifelike creatures made him shudder. Max’s dad had taken him to ancient tombs in Egypt. Crocodiles were revered as part of the pantheon of gods. Max remembered that the crocodile deity was called Sobek and was believed to have emerged from the “Dark Water” to create the world. He also guarded the dead. These two crocodiles guarded the portal to a hidden world.

Max stepped between them towards the entrance, half expecting them to come to life, to whip their heads around and strike. But the creatures held within the stone sculpture lay silent as he approached the château and its secret.

“You pay extra for a guided tour, which we don’t need, and it’s about half price if you’re under thirteen,” Max told Sayid as he pushed the wheelchair towards the entrance. The van had merged into the coast-road traffic, with a promise from Bobby to return in a few hours when they called him. “So, you’re under thirteen if they ask. I can’t get away with it but you can.”

“I thought I looked older than that,” Sayid moaned.

“No. In fact, you look about ten.”

“Ten!”

Max laughed. “Well, you behave like a ten-year-old. Now shut up and look stupid if they talk to you. That shouldn’t be too difficult.”

The small window at the side of the front door showed an office, where a middle-aged man, who minutes earlier had been thinking only of going home to the fish lunch his wife
had prepared, now looked with anguish at the fair-haired boy trying to pull another youngster in a wheelchair up the steps. It was not worth offering to help and risking an injury to his back, the man reasoned; besides, the boy looked strong. But how would the youngster view the château in a wheelchair?

“Not exactly geared for disabled access,” Sayid said, wincing, as Max jammed the wheels up another step.

“Yeah, well, I’m hoping it’ll help us fool him later. I have a plan.”

Sayid looked at his friend, who gave him an encouraging smile in return. Max’s plans usually meant trouble. Sayid had told Max he didn’t want to be left out—but he knew he needed a degree of bravado he would find difficult to muster.

Max turned and looked at the German couple, who were already halfway up the steps.

“Bitte?”
he called gently towards the stout man, whose face lit up with relief at hearing his own language—someone asking for help. He immediately walked back to Max and took control of pulling Sayid up the steps.

Max’s German was fairly basic—he was better at understanding than speaking the language—but he could pull off a good accent, and his limited vocabulary would be enough to achieve what he needed. The German tourist spoke rapidly. Max only grasped about one word in three, but he quickly assured the tourist that everything was OK.
“Alles ist in ordnung.”

By the time they reached the studded door it seemed as though they had known each other for years. Just what Max had hoped for.

Max groaned.

The German turned.
“Was? Was ist los?”
he asked.

The tourist’s concern for the boy seemed genuine as Max shook his head sadly. The look on his face said everything. He didn’t have enough money. The stout man waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, turned back to the ticket seller and, using sign language, indicated he was paying for everyone.

Sayid looked over his shoulder at Max. What a clever ruse. How did Max get away with things like that? The Frenchman smiled, ushering “the German family” inside.

The ticket seller, by way of appeasing his guilt, as well as protecting the floors and the banisters, and avoiding the risk of walls being scraped, agreed to Max’s leaving the wheelchair in the entrance hall. Sayid got himself onto his crutches as Max tucked it into a darkened corner. The wheelchair would play its part later.

Black walls decorated with an ornate design of bright blue and gold enamel panels made the place seem like a miniature royal palace. Max thanked the German man for his generosity and tried to look appreciative when he explained that the chapel they now gazed at was a private place of contemplation for Antoine d’Abbadie and his wife, Virginie, and that the scientist-astronomer, who died in Paris in 1897, lay buried with his wife in a crypt under the altar.

Max saw the ticket seller go back into the office, thanked the German for his explanation and pointed the couple towards another room as he eased Sayid away.

“Come on, Sayid. We need to get around faster than a tourist.”

Sayid was well practiced on the crutches and quickly
developed a swinging momentum as they moved towards the next room.

“Blimey, hang on. I can’t keep up!” Max laughed.

It wasn’t true, of course, but it made Sayid feel less of a hindrance than he thought he was. “Where do we start?” he said.

“Dunno yet. We’ll check down here first. There’s a load of stuff about Ethiopia,” Max said as they walked beneath richly painted scenes of ancient Abyssinia, as it was then known. “If Zabala spent who knows how many years working here, then maybe it means something.”

They stepped into a bedroom. The decor was overpowering. The four-poster bed seemed small compared to the lavish surroundings. Arabic letters flitted across large canvas panels.

“What does that say, Sayid?”

Sayid looked at the delicate calligraphy. “Er, not sure. Something about … Oh, hang on, it’s an old Arab proverb. My granddad was always saying things like that: ‘Never throw stones in your own drinking well’s water.’”

Max looked blank.

Sayid shrugged. “I think that’s what it says. Whatever that might mean.”

“Well, ‘Don’t do anything stupid close to home, as it’ll come back on you!’ Or ‘Make sure you’re connected to water.’ How would I know?” Max said.

“You’re the one looking for clues!”

“That’s not one of them, I’m sure. Come on.” Max moved quickly to another room, keeping an eye out for the ticket seller, but there was no sign of him, and he couldn’t hear the Germans anywhere either. He could see the edge of
the parking lot through a window. Their car was still there. Good, that meant he didn’t have to do what he’d planned just yet. He entered the château’s dining room. Wood-paneled to shoulder height, buffalo skins on the wall and Antoine d’Abbadie’s family motto boxed next to his coat of arms. It was a Latin inscription.

“What’s that say?”

“Erm … it’s Latin….”

Sayid groaned. He knew Max’s ability on the subject.

Max hesitated. “I think it says ‘Life is but smoke.’” The phrase immediately reminded him of his African Bushman friend, whose people believed that life was a dream and one day we would all wake up in the real world.

“Do you think it might be a clue? Life is smoke. I mean, we’ve got Latin sayings, Arab verses, it could be any of these things,” Sayid said.

“Like that, you mean?” Max pointed at the backs of the dining-room chairs surrounding the marquetry inlaid table. They were covered in green velvet, but on each one was an Arabic letter. Max stood back, walked around the table. “What do they mean?” he asked Sayid.

“I’m not sure, Max.”

“What? Suddenly you can’t spell?”

“It’s Amharic. Ethiopian.”

The German spoke in English. He was in the doorway, smiling as Max spun round, instincts suddenly wary. When he had left the tourist couple at the chapel, it would have been natural for them to carry on their tour on that side of the château. And Max believed he would have heard even the softest of footfalls across the hall and down the passageway.

Why so silent? Perhaps Max had been distracted by Sayid and all the different languages on display.

“I thought you were English, though your German accent is good,” the rotund man said, smiling at Max. He gestured with the tour pamphlet for the château. “If you get the letters on the chairs in order, they spell out a warning: ‘May traitors never be seated at this table.’” He gave Max and Sayid another smile and handed Max the pamphlet. “We have another one. Enjoy the tour, boys,” he said, ushering his wife into the corridor.

Sayid slumped onto one of the dining-room chairs and rubbed his aching leg. “Well, traitors not being welcomed to nosh might be something.”

Max shook his head. “This is all window dressing. None of it concerns us. If Zabala worked here for all those years, he would have been involved in the science bit. There’s a library and observatory upstairs.”

He checked the corridor. The Germans were just going into one of the other rooms, so he and Sayid turned into the main hallway, where the carved, wooden-banistered stairs began.

“Come on,” Max said. “Piggyback time.”

As he pumped his legs up the stairs, the extra weight stretched his tendons and muscles, but it was effortless; the knowledge that he was getting closer to where Zabala had spent his working life boosted his strength.

On the upper landing there were huge paintings of tribal chiefs from Ethiopia dressed in white robes, with spear-carrying warriors protecting them, the whole tableau set against a deep blue sky. The vibrancy of the château’s decoration
seemed so out of place when compared to the rough simplicity of how Zabala had lived on the mountain. Max reminded himself that Zabala became a monk after he stopped working here, because of his failure to convince everyone that something terrible was going to happen. The Academy of Sciences ran the château after Antoine d’Abbadie’s death, so Zabala would have had the full weight of the French scientific community against him when he failed to prove that Lucifer—whoever that was—would cause some kind of mass destruction. A Basque outsider, a man consumed by his failure, but eventually murdered because his prediction must finally have some validity. Who would benefit from stopping Zabala’s theory becoming known?

Distorted shadows lengthened across the walls. The dark wood sucked in what natural light was left to the day. Arabian shields and swords, once held by warriors, adorned the walls. Antelope trophy heads stared in dumb fear, gazing sightless over the flamboyant neo-Gothic castle they would never have seen in their natural lives.

Max suddenly found all the paintings and decorations overpowering. The weight of color on the walls and ceilings oppressive, like a clown’s face overladen with makeup, concealing misery beneath a false smile. They turned a corner into another room.

“Wow!” Sayid said in amazement.

Bare floorboards; a long, solid-looking table sat square in the middle of the room, bearing a few relics of scientific machinery and an old manual typewriter. Charts, files and folders were neatly stacked in custom-built bookshelves from floor to ceiling. An explorer-scientist’s lifetime’s work. The
darkness, from the almost black timber of the ceiling, swallowed the very top shelves of books. This was getting close to where a scientist or researcher could stay in splendid isolation and concentrate on the complexities of his or her project. No overkill on decoration here. It was as if Max and Sayid had stepped behind a façade and found the true heart of the château. Was this where Zabala’s secret lay?