The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense Read online

  A Secret Worth Dying For …

  Jac L’Etoile has always been haunted by visions of the past, her earliest memories infused with the exotic scents that she grew up with as the heir to a storied French perfume company. These worsened after her mother’s suicide until she finally found a doctor who helped her, teaching her to explore the mythological symbolism in her visions and thus lessen their painful impact. This ability led Jac to a wildly successful career as a mythologist, television personality and author.

  When her brother, Robbie—who’s taken over the House of L’Etoile from their father—contacts Jac about a remarkable discovery in the family archives, she’s skeptical. But when Robbie goes missing before he can share the secret—leaving a dead body in his wake—Jac is plunged into a world she thought she’d left behind.

  Traveling back to Paris to investigate Robbie’s disappearance, Jac discovers that the secret is a mysterious scent developed in Cleopatra’s time. Could the rumors swirling be true? Can this ancient perfume hold the power to unlock the ability to remember past lives and conclusively prove reincarnation? If this possession has the power to change the world, then it’s not only worth living for . . . it’s worth killing for, too.

  The Book of Lost Fragrances fuses history, passion and suspense in an intoxicating web that moves from Cleopatra’s Egypt and the terrors of revolutionary France to Tibet’s battle with China and the glamour of modern-day Paris. This marvelous, spellbinding novel mixes the sensory allure of Perfume with the heartbreaking beauty of The Time Traveler’s Wife, coming to life as richly as our most wildly imagined dreams.

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE BOOK OF LOST FRAGRANCES

  “Resonates with spirit, blending myth with reality, tragedy with triumph, pain with joy. You’ll find yourself questioning everything you believe—and wanting more.”

  —STEVE BERRY

  “An utterly engrossing thriller that weaves together reincarnation, ancient Egypt, international intrigue and a lost book of fragrances. Elegantly written, with unforgettable characters and flawlessly realized international settings . . . will leave you with powerful feelings of revelation, wonder and the infinitude of human possibility.”

  —DOUGLAS PRESTON

  “A simmering brew that mingles the erotic sensuality of Patrick Suskind’s Perfume with the dark and timeless obsessions of Rider Haggard’s classic She.”

  —KATHERINE NEVILLE

  “A bewitching brew of history and suspense, as well as a deeply felt love story that transcends time, The Book of Lost Fragrances had me spellbound from the very beginning . . . will live on in your heart long after you turn the last page.”

  —ANNE FORTIER

  “One of those rare novels that reminds us of the beauty and enormous complexity of the human soul. . . . This novel is a marvelous discovery.”

  —JAVIER SIERRA

  “Clever, with beguiling characters, a wonderful mixture of suspense and pace and good old-fashioned storytelling, and the research never gets in the way of the plot.”

  —KATE MOSSE

  M. J. ROSE is the internationally bestselling author of eleven novels, including The Reincarnationist, The Memorist and The Hypnotist. She is a founding board member of International Thriller Writers and the founder of the first marketing company for authors, AuthorBuzz.com. She lives in Connecticut and can be reached at www.mjrose.com.

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  JACKET ILLUSTRATION BY JULIANA KOLESOVA

  ENDPAPER PHOTO (PERFUME BOTTLES) © SYLVAIN GRANDADAM/GETTY IMAGES

  AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY KELLY CAMPBELL

  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER

  The Book

  of

  Lost Fragrances

  Also by M. J. Rose

  FICTION

  Lip Service

  In Fidelity

  Flesh Tones

  Sheet Music

  Lying in Bed

  The Halo Effect

  The Delilah Complex

  The Venus Fix

  The Reincarnationist

  The Memorist

  The Hypnotist

  NONFICTION

  Buzz Your Book (with Douglas Clegg)

  ATRIA BOOKS

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Melisse Shapiro

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Atria Books hardcover edition March 2012

  ATRIA BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

  Designed by Jill Putorti

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rose, M. J.

  The book of lost fragrances : a novel of suspense / M. J. Rose.—1st Atria Books

  hardcover ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Perfumes industry—Fiction. 2. Missing persons—Fiction. I.

  Title.

  PS3568.O76386B66 2012

  813‘.54—dc22

  2011014137

  ISBN 978-1-4516-2130-3 (print)

  ISBN 978-1-4516-2149-5 (eBook)

  To Judith, who dwells in possibility

  Reader’s Companion

  In this e-book you will find a Reader’s Companion of additional content, including sample chapters from M. J. Rose’s previous books.

  Click through the Table of Contents and enjoy these special bonus features!

  Thank you for purchasing this Atria Books eBook.

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  Contents

  Reader’s Companion

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one
<
br />   Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Glossary of M. J. Rose’s Research

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Book of Lost Fragrances back story

  Lip Service opener and excerpt

  Infidelity opener and excerpt

  About the Author

  About Atria

  Ask Atria

  But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.

  —MARCEL PROUST, REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST

  Prologue

  China Tells Living Buddhas To Obtain Permission

  Before They Reincarnate

  Beijing

  April 4, 2007

  Tibet’s living Buddhas have been banned from reincarnation without permission from China’s atheist leaders. The ban is included in new rules intended to assert Beijing’s authority over Tibet’s restive and deeply Buddhist people.

  For the first time China has given the Government the power to ensure that no new living Buddha can be identified, sounding a possible death knell to a mystical system that dates back at least as far as the 12th century.

  China already insists that only the Government can approve the appointments of Tibet’s two most important monks, the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. The Dalai Lama’s announcement in May 1995 that a search inside Tibet . . . had identified the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, who died in 1989, enraged Beijing. The boy chosen by the Dalai Lama has disappeared.

  Excerpted from an article in the Times (UK) by Jane Macartney.

  Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

  —CARL JUNG

  One

  ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT, 1799

  Giles L’Etoile was a master of scent, not a thief. He had never stolen anything but one woman’s heart, and she’d always said she’d given that willingly. But on this chilly Egyptian evening, as he descended the rickety ladder into the ancient tomb, each tentative footstep brought him closer to criminality.

  Preceding L’Etoile had been an explorer, an engineer, an architect, an artist, a cartographer, and, of course, the general himself—all the savants from Napoléon’s army of intellectuals and scientists now stealing into a sacred burial place that had remained untouched for thousands of years. The crypt had been discovered the day before by the explorer Emile Saurent and his team of Egyptian boys, who had stopped digging when they unearthed the sealed stone door. Now the twenty-nine-year-old Napoléon would have the privilege of being the first man to see what had lain lost and forgotten for millennia. It was no secret that he entertained dreams of conquering Egypt. But his grand ambitions went beyond military conquests. Under his aegis, Egypt’s history was being explored, studied and mapped.

  At the bottom of the ladder, L’Etoile joined the assembled party in a dimly lit vestibule. He sniffed and identified limestone and plaster dust, stale air and the workers’ body odor, and a hint of another scent almost too faint to take in.

  Four pink granite columns, their bases buried under piles of dirt and debris, held up a ceiling painted with a rich lapis lazuli and a silver astronomical star chart. Cut into the walls were several doors, one larger than the others. Here Saurent was already chiseling away at its plaster seal.

  The walls of the antechamber were painted with delicate and detailed murals, beautifully rendered in earth-toned colors. The murals were so vibrant L’Etoile expected to smell the paint, but it was Napoléon’s cologne he breathed in. The stylized motif of water lilies that bordered the crypt and framed the paintings interested the perfumer. Egyptians called the flower the blue lotus and had been using its essence in perfumes for thousands of years. L’Etoile, who at thirty had already spent almost a decade studying the sophisticated and ancient Egyptian art of perfume making, knew this flower and its properties well. Its perfume was lovely, but what separated it from other flowers was its hallucinogenic properties. He’d experienced them firsthand and found them to be an excellent solution when his past rose up and pushed at his present.

  The lotus wasn’t the only floral element in the paintings. Workers took seeds from sacks in storerooms in the first panel and planted beds in the next. In the following panel, they tended the emerging shoots and blooms and trees and then in progression cut the flowers, boughs, and herbs and picked the fruit. In the last, they carried the bounty to the man L’Etoile assumed was the deceased, and laid it at his feet.

  As more plaster fell and chips hit the alabaster floor, Abu, the guide Saurent had brought, lectured the men about what they were seeing. Abu’s recitation was interesting, but the odors of perspiration, burning wicks, and chalky dust began to overwhelm L’Etoile, and he glanced over at the general. As much as the perfumer suffered, he knew it was worse for Napoléon. So great was the commander’s sensitivity to scent, he couldn’t tolerate being around certain servants, soldiers, or women whose smell disagreed with him. There were stories of his extended baths and his excessive use of eau de cologne—his private blend made of lemon, citron, bergamot and rosemary. The general even had special candles (they lit this dark chamber now) sent over from France because they were made with a wax obtained by crystallizing sperm whale oil that burned with a less noxious odor.

  Napoléon’s obsession was one of the reasons L’Etoile was still in Egypt. The general had asked him to stay on longer so he could have a perfumer at his disposal. L’Etoile hadn’t minded. Everything that had mattered to him in Paris had been lost six years before, during the Reign of Terror. Nothing waited for him at home but memories.

  As Saurent chipped away at the last of the plaster, the perfumer edged closer to study the deep carvings on the door. Here too was a border of blue lotus, these framing cartouches of the same indecipherable hieroglyphics that one saw all across Egypt. Perhaps the newly discovered stone in the port city of Rashid would yield clues as to how to translate these markings.

  “All done,” Saurent said as he gave his tools to one of the Egyptian boys and dusted off his hands. “Général?”

  Napoléon stepped up to the portal and tried to twist the still-bright brass ring. Coughed. Pulled harder. The general was lean, almost emaciated, and L’Etoile hoped he’d be able to make it budge. Finally, a loud creaking echoed in the cavern as the door swung open.

  Saurent and L’Etoile joined the general on the threshold, all three of them thrusting their candles into the darkness to enliven the inner chamber, and in the flickering pale yellow light, a corridor filled with treasures revealed itself.

  But it wasn’t the elaborate wall drawings in the passageway, the alabaster jars, the finely ca
rved and decorated sculptures, or the treasure-filled wooden chests that L’Etoile would remember for the rest of his life. It was the warm, sweet air that rushed out to embrace him.

  The perfumer smelled death and history. Faint whiffs of tired flowers, fruits, herbs, and woods. Most of these he was familiar with—but he smelled other notes, too. Weaker. Less familiar. Only ideas of scents, really, but they mesmerized him and drew him forward, tantalizing and entreating like a lovely dream on the verge of being lost forever.

  He ignored Saurent’s warning that he was entering uncharted territory—that there could be booby traps, serpents coiled and waiting—and Abu’s admonitions about lurking spirits more dangerous than the snakes. L’Etoile followed his nose into the darkness with just his single candle, pushing ahead of the general and everyone else, hungry for a more concentrated dose of the mysterious perfume.

  He walked down the highly decorated corridor to an inner sanctuary and inhaled deeply, trying to learn more from the ancient air. Frustrated, he exhaled and inadvertently blew his candle out.

  It must have been all the deep breaths, or perhaps the pervasive darkness. Maybe it was the stale air that made him so dizzy. It didn’t matter. As he battled the vertigo, his awareness of the scent became more powerful, more intimate. Finally, he began to identify specific ingredients. Frankincense and myrrh, blue lotus and almond oil. All popular in Egyptian fragrances and incenses. But there was something else, elusive and just beyond his reach.

  Standing alone, in the dark, he was so deep in concentration he didn’t hear the footsteps of the rest of the party as they came closer.

  “What’s that odor?”

  The voice startled the perfumer. He turned to Napoléon, who’d just entered the inner chamber.

  “A perfume that hasn’t been breathed for centuries,” L’Etoile whispered.