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

  Malachai was watching her. Waiting for a response.

  “Yes, we’re still close.”

  Sadness lurked in Malachai’s typically inscrutable brown eyes. What about this conversation was affecting him so much that he was letting his guard down? He’d never shown her this side of him. She’d never seen him in any kind of emotional distress. What was it? She knew he was unmarried and without children, but did he have a sibling? Was he estranged from a brother or sister? Or, worse, did he have a sibling who was ill or had died?

  For someone who’d been so crucial in her life for so long, Malachai had kept Jac woefully ignorant about his personal life. He’d paid attention to and kept up with her career, much the way she imagined a proud father might. But like many fathers, he shared little about himself other than news of his work.

  Malachai reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a deck of playing cards, and began to shuffle. Jac found the slapping sound familiar and annoying.

  “I’m not nervous,” Jac said.

  She knew firsthand that when he worked with young patients, he used tricks to relax them.

  He laughed. “Of course not, dear. Just a habit.” He held the deck out to her. “But please, indulge me.”

  Jac took a card, noting the elaborately colored fleur-de-lis pattern and fine gilt edges. He had a huge collection. All antiques.

  “These are beautiful.”

  “From the court of Marie Antoinette. I think the most beautiful cards I have in my collection are from France.”

  Jac shivered. It came from deep inside her, emanated out to the tips of her fingers, and raised the hair on the nape of her neck. She looked around for a reason for the sudden chill. The two windows on either side of Malachai’s desk were open.

  “Are you cold?” he asked. His lips were lifted in a curious smile, as if he knew something about how she was feeling that she didn’t.

  She shook her head. “It must have been the breeze.”

  “Of course,” he said, but he sounded as if he didn’t believe her. “Would you like me to close the windows?”

  “No, it’s fine.” She glanced into the small courtyard with its informal garden. The cherry, crabapple and dogwood trees were in bloom, and she enjoyed their faint, flowery scent. Her home in Paris featured a much larger courtyard that had functioned as a magical playground for her and her brother, an herb garden for the cook, and a natural laboratory for generations of perfumers who grew many of their own exotics.

  “You still have no curiosity about whether or not you’ve had any past-life memories?” Malachai asked, leaning slightly forward, acknowledging the intimacy of the question.

  “Still none.” Her answer came quickly. Even a little coldly. This was one area where she felt he sometimes overstepped his bounds. She hoped he wasn’t going to push her again. Jac wasn’t interested in the debate. She had enough of it with Robbie, who was a great believer. Nothing about the subject interested her.

  “So if I were to find one of these memory tools, you wouldn’t be curious to test it out?”

  “I respect you and what you do,” she said evenly. “I know the children who come to you are terribly unhappy and that you help them, and I’m proud that you can do that. Isn’t that enough? Do you need more than that from me?”

  “Can I tempt you with the mythology of the memory tools?”

  She wanted to object, but he’d mentioned the one subject that she couldn’t resist.

  “It is believed that four to six thousand years ago, in the Indus Valley, mystics created meditation tools to help people go into deep states of relaxation during which they would have access to past-life memories.” Malachai’s voice lulled her, as it had so long ago, and she settled into the story.

  “There were twelve tools—twelve being a mystical number that we see repeated all through various religions and in nature. Twelve objects to help pull memories through the membrane of time. I think, and other experts agree, that it’s quite possible two of these tools have been found in the past few years. The first was a cache of precious stones, and the second was an ancient flute made of human bone. Depending on what newspaper you read, what happened to those tools differs, but one thing I can assure you: both have been lost to research, and there’s nothing we can learn from either of them for now. It’s a travesty.”

  “How were they lost?”

  “Red tape. Ridiculous protocols. Accidents. Fate. Despite the fact that I spend my time helping people look back, I don’t believe in doing that in situations like this. What is past is past. I’m not going to lose any more chances to find the tools.” He paused and searched her face as if he were looking for something. When he resumed speaking, his voice had taken on more gravitas. “Over the past one hundred and fifty years, members of this society have heard about the tools, or met people who knew about them, or in some cases may have seen them or even owned them.” Malachai spread his arms wide, as if embracing the entire foundation. “One of the tools was a fragrance. And the stories I’ve heard about it are curiously similar to the family legend you told me about years ago.”

  “Which you believe is a serious piece of synchronicity.”

  “Which I know is. Nothing is an accident or a coincidence, according to past-life theories that go back though history, through the centuries, circling through cultures. If we were in the East, being skeptical about these moments that seem to be part of a bigger plan would be as unusual as questioning the wetness of water.”

  Jac knew better than to argue. She’d done it before. Malachai would start naming all the geniuses who’d believed in reincarnation over the centuries, starting with Pythagoras and moving up to Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford and Carl Jung.

  “If you could discover a scent that works like a memory tool, it would be worth a fortune.”

  He’d never seemed to care about money before, and she was surprised that he mentioned it. But then, so many aspects of today’s conversation were unexpected.

  As if anticipating her question, Malachai said, “The money doesn’t matter to me. It would be yours. Enough for you to ensure the future of the House of L’Etoile. All I want is the memory tool.”

  “To help the children?” Jac was certain there was more to his need. She wanted to know what it was.

  “Of course.” He frowned. “Do you doubt that? I’ve spent my life trying to help them.”

  She’d never suspected him of doing anything untoward; never doubted he had any but the most moral and principled motives. What was it about this conversation that suggested otherwise?

  Jac lifted the flask to the light. An inch of rainbow appeared on Malachai’s white shirt cuff. She moved the glass container, and the rainbow leapt onto the wall.

  “Was there anything in the letters about this formulation? Do you know what they based this scent on?” she asked.

  “The letters I found are between two members of the society: one in New York and another who lived in France. The Frenchman wrote about a perfumer he’d met in Paris who had a remnant of an ancient scent that he believed was a portal to past lives. The foundation funded his efforts to create a new scent based on that remnant.”

  Jac nodded. “Back then that would have required a lot of guesswork and a fair amount of luck. If it was an ancient Egyptian scent, it would have been seriously diluted by the nineteenth century. Essences lose their potency over time. And quite a few ancient sources were extinct by the nineteenth century. Even if you smelled them, you wouldn’t have been able to name them or find them.”

  Malachai was staring at her.

  “What?”

  “I never told you it was an ancient Egyptian scent.”

  Somewhere in the building, a telephone rang and a door closed. Jac had been so intent on their conversation, she’d forgotten there were other people here. She shook her head, got back to the facts.

  “Even if I wanted to help you, Malachai, the mess in this bottle isn’t even a starting point. It’s a group of four or five ordinary es
sences.”

  “But they are a starting point,” he insisted. “The perfumer was working from some formula, Jac. I have a case with eleven versions of this same base.”

  “You didn’t tell me that. Eleven versions of this scent. And why eleven? That’s an odd number.”

  “There’s room for twelve in the case.”

  “One broke?”

  “Or maybe one held a memory tool and someone took it.”

  She shook her head. “It’s a myth. You’re the one who taught me that myths are a culture’s collective dream. Small stories about individuals that, out of the thousands told, were the ones that clicked with the most people because of the patterns in our collective unconscious. As the stories are handed down, they change, grow, become more extravagant and magical. Like stalactites in a cave that start out as one drop of water.”

  “Robbie and Griffin both warned me that you’d be hard to convince. I told them they were wrong; that you’re more open minded. I suppose I was wrong.”

  Jac put her hands on the chair’s carved lion’s-head arms. Her fingertips pressed into the grooves. “Griffin?” She tried to keep her voice even, to make it sound like a normal, off-the-cuff question.

  “Griffin North. Your brother’s friend. I thought from the way he spoke about you that you two knew each other.”

  Hearing Griffin’s name out of context confused her. “Yes, I do know him. Knew him. I haven’t seen him in a long time. You know him?”

  “Robbie introduced us a few months ago. Griffin wanted to do some research in our archives for a book he’s writing. Robbie came to visit him here about two weeks ago. It was just a marvelous piece of synchronicity that Griffin showed Robbie the case of perfume flasks. I’d forgotten about them a long time ago.”

  “I didn’t know Robbie saw Griffin when he was in New York.”

  It was difficult for Jac to keep up a pretense at conversation. Griffin worked here? Was he here now? Had that been his phone ringing? Had he closed the door she’d heard shut before?

  She’d come across the book he’d written when it first came out. Stood in the store and read the flap copy and his bio. So she knew he lived in New York and Egypt, worked on an important dig near Alexandria, was married and had a child. But those were very public things.

  The color of the walls in the office where he worked, the street he walked down to go home at the end of the day, the view from his window when he looked up from his research—those were details to which she wasn’t privy. She resented being given information about him without wanting it. At the same time, she was jealous of Robbie and Malachai. Of the room in this building that absorbed Griffin’s breath and the chair that held his body. Jac knew better than to indulge in the delicious pain of remembering him. Of wondering who he’d married. How old his son or daughter was.

  Griffin had hurt her. Left her. People who left you once—even just once—were not ever to be trusted again.

  “I’m sorry.” She stood up. It had nothing to do with Griffin working here. It was preposterous even to imagine there was a fragrance that could help you remember past lives. She’d been telling Robbie that since they were children. And if there was, she was not about to start playing at being a perfumer after all these years.

  Malachai stood too and came around his desk to escort her out. She didn’t believe in any god, but she started a fervent prayer that she wouldn’t run into Griffin.

  “So nothing I’ve said makes you even a little bit curious,” he asked.

  She laughed. “I don’t have the luxury of being curious.”

  “What if I could promise you the three million you need to pay off the banks? Would you accept my offer then?”

  “Are you offering that?”

  “Would it make a difference?”

  “Even if I was capable of doing it, I don’t have the time it would take. I need to raise the money now.” The desperation in her voice matched the desperation in his eyes.

  “Will you at least promise me you’ll consider it? Think of what it would be like to prove a myth like this.”

  “I’m the perennial skeptic. That’s what you used to call me. Now you’re asking me to believe on faith in something that’s a dream.”

  “What if you’re wrong, Jac? What if it’s not a dream?”

  Nine

  PARIS, FRANCE

  MONDAY, MAY 23, 10:15 A.M.

  Griffin had never seen such expensive poupées, as the French called them, and he knew his wife would object. But Therese wasn’t here. And the image of his daughter opening the box and seeing this Parisienne doll was impossible to resist. At six years old, Elsie had blond hair like her mother and gray-blue eyes like his. She was a serious child who played piano dazzlingly well. Probably prodigy material, though he and Therese had agreed not to pursue the stressful virtuoso path. He’d lost enough of his own childhood to know how important having one was.

  All the more reason that his heart ached so for his girl; he worried about how the possible divorce would affect her. Of course, he couldn’t protect her completely, but he didn’t have to be the one to bring the darkness into her life, either. If he and Therese broke up, he wouldn’t be abandoning Elsie the way his own father had abandoned him, but the result wouldn’t be all that different.

  There was a small brochure by the cash register—the history of the store presented in five languages. Maison des Poupées had been on that corner for more than a hundred years. There seemed more respect in Europe for rituals and institutions. New wasn’t revered quite as much here as it was back at home.

  Home.

  Well, that almost worked, Griffin thought to himself ruefully. He’d managed to push his thoughts to the transitory nature of the universe but still wound up right back with his little girl nonetheless.

  He’d been a reluctant father. And it hadn’t taken years of therapy to understand why. But on top of his apprehension about repeating his father’s mistakes, Griffin had been worried. Therese didn’t want to move, and he was committed to spending at least five months a year in Egypt. His time out of the country put a strain on their marriage. How much worse would that strain be with a child in the equation? Therese had persevered. And in time won.

  From his first days as a parent, Griffin had been surprised at the intensity of his feelings for Elsie. He’d told Therese that it was like he was walking around with his heart outside of his body.

  The shop girl emerged from the back room carrying a large gift box. “Voila, Monsieur North,” she said, handing him the elaborately wrapped parcel.

  He arranged to have it delivered to his hotel, the Montalembert, later that afternoon, and then walked the three narrow blocks to Rue des Saints-Pères, where, nestled between two antique stores, was L’Etoile Parfums.

  During the summers he’d spent with Robbie and Jac in France, their grandmother had entertained him with stories about the family history going back to prerevolutionary Paris and Jean-Louis, the glove maker who learned about fragrance in order to scent the leather he sold from this very building. Opening the front door, Griffin listened to the fanciful bell that announced him. Could it be the very same bell that had tolled during Jean-Louis’s life?

  Lucille, the manager, looked up from the magazine she was reading to say good morning. She stood out—starkly modern in a monochromatic black shift, black high heels, and a black scarf—in the eighteenth-century store. All the walls were paneled in mottled antique mirror. The ceiling, too, was mirrored. The corners were decorated with pink-tinged fat angels and flowers in a mélange of pastels, painted in the style of Fragonard. The four small Louis XIV desks scattered around the room were originals, as were the smattering of chairs with avocado-green velvet seats and the glass and rosewood cabinets filled with antique perfume paraphernalia. Oversize bottles of each of the house’s forty fragrances—factice bottles, Robbie had called them—lined mirrored shelves, with the signature fragrances front and center. Blanc, Verte, Rouge, and Noir had all been created between 1919
and 1922, and were still considered among the top ten scents of the entire industry, alongside such classics as Chanel No. 5, Shalimar, and Mitsouko.

  Lucille told Griffin that Robbie was waiting for him and pushed open one of the mirrored panels that lined the room. Griffin walked through the false door and hurried down the secret corridor that connected the store to the workshop. It was narrow, dark, and undecorated; poor in contrast to the two areas it connected.

  He knocked.

  “Entrer.”

  Griffin pushed open the door.

  Even after spending the past four days working with Robbie, Griffin marveled at the centuries-old workshop. It was like stepping inside a kaleidoscope of light and scent. Thousands of bottles of sparkling liquids in all shades of yellow, amber, green and brown glittered and shimmered in the morning sun.

  A set of French doors opened onto a lush and almost overgrown courtyard. It was a lovely scene until you looked closely and realized that there was paint chipping by the door frame and the blooming flowers and verdant trees outside were in serious need of a gardener.

  Robbie sat at his desk, reading his computer screen, tapping his foot restlessly, a frown creasing his forehead.

  “What’s wrong?” Griffin asked.

  Even in the face of the crisis confronting him, Robbie had remained tranquil, handling his problems with an equanimity that Griffin found not only admirable but also almost implausible. This was the first time he’d seen his friend genuinely nervous.

  “I got back the chemical analysis of the pottery shards.”

  “Were they able to identify any of the ingredients?”

  “Yes.” Robbie gestured to the screen. “They found trace amounts of at least six essences impregnated in the clay. Of those, only three are identifiable, and they’re the three I’d already guessed.”