Chasing Ghosts by Madalyn Morgan (best fantasy books to read .txt) 📕

‘We’ll see about that!’ Antoinette looked sternly at Auguste. ‘He had the flu in December, which wouldn’t clear up. We were worried that it would turn into pneumonia. Our doctor agreed with us and we had father admitted to hospital. He is better now. He is recuperating in a residential home for elderly people.’

‘The residents are mostly ex-military men from the 1914-18 war - and a good percentage of them are Jewish.’ Auguste laughed. ‘He’s having such a good time with all the other old boys, he doesn’t want to come back here.’

‘I do not think it is that, at all,’ Antoinette said to Claire, ‘It’s more that he doesn’t want to be here without my mother.’

‘I can understand that,’ Claire said.

‘Yes,’ Antoinette said, wistfully. ‘I can too.’ She gazed at the empty chairs by the fire.

‘This room, well the whole house, looks very different to the last time I was here,’ Claire said. ‘The room is hardly recognisable. The light in the centre of the ceiling is on and the curtains are still open. Something that would not have been possible during the war.’

‘And not a dust sheet in sight,’ Antoinette said. ‘I shall show you the rest of the house later. You won’t recognise it.’

‘If it hadn’t been for the tall arched window that Eric told me to look for before I came to Paris the first time, which has stayed in my mind, I wouldn’t have recognised the outside of the building with the new shutters and balconies at street level.’

‘And not one broken window,’ Antoinette added.

Their reminiscing was interrupted by a young woman carrying a tray with coffee, cups and saucers, and a cake. Antoinette introduced her as Gabrielle, the daughter of a friend from Marcheroux in the Loire Valley. ‘Gabrielle is staying with us while she is at the Sorbonne.’

Gabrielle laid the refreshments on the table, said how do you do, and shook Claire’s hand. Turning to shake Thomas’s hand, she blushed scarlet.

‘She insists she must help Antoinette in the house when she isn’t studying,’ Auguste said.

‘To earn her keep,’ Antoinette added, ‘as if she needed to.’ She smiled at the pretty girl.

‘We have lost our daughter to the Université de Genevveat. Mélanie will be there for another two years, but we have gained Gabrielle.’

‘And thank goodness we have. With Éric working every hour God sends at a hospital in the city, and Auguste lecturing at the university, I would become a lonely old spinster.’ Gabrielle smiled. ‘And,’ Antoinette said, ‘with the study-work she brings home, she keeps me on my academic toes.’

Gabrielle looked at Thomas and blushed again.

‘So, Éric works at the hospital?’ Claire said. ‘I should love to see him.  Will he or Mélanie be home while I’m here.’

‘Mélanie doesn’t travel back from Geneva often, but Éric occasionally comes home at weekends.’

Over dinner Claire told her friends how erratic Alain had been, how he was eventually diagnosed with shell shock, and how the doctor on the aerodrome in England suggested he went to Canada to a hospital that specialises in nervous disorders. ‘Apparently,’ Claire said, ‘shell shock is not uncommon.’

‘It is a mystery why some otherwise strong men are affected, others not at all.’ Auguste shook his head. ‘What Alain must have suffered…’

‘And seen,’ Claire said. ‘He didn’t talk about the Gestapo prison much, but… Anyway, the base doctor referred him to a Swiss psychiatrist named Professor Lucien Puel.

‘At first Alain seemed to be getting better. He responded well to Professor Puel’s treatment, but then he began to go backwards.’ Claire told them about his nightmares, and how he often called out for Simone in his sleep. ‘It is Simone I’m here to find,’ she told them. ‘Find her and I might find Alain.’

‘Simone is a popular name in France,’ Thomas said. ‘Finding this woman will be virtually impossible.’

‘What if I told you she had been a member of the Resistance?’

Thomas raised his eyebrows. ‘That would make it easier. Do you know which cell?’

‘No. And it gets worse.’ Claire looked from Thomas to Antoinette and then to Auguste. ‘In the letter Professor Puel wrote to Alain’s commander he said there was a German agent in the prison, a woman, and her name was Simone. The professor said it was his professional opinion that the German agent known as Simone had turned Alain during the time they were together.’ Claire took a faltering breath. ‘He said Alain was suffering from guilt, not because he had to leave the woman behind, but because he had betrayed his fellow prisoners by divulging details of their escape plan to the Germans.’

Neither Antoinette or Auguste believed Alain would work for the Germans. But it was Thomas who made the best argument in her husband’s defence. ‘Captain Mitchell was shot. He could have been killed--’ Thomas stopped speaking mid-sentence, put his forefinger to his lips, and deep in thought looked into the middle-distance.

‘What is it, Thomas?’ Claire asked.

‘There was a woman, a German spy whose code name was Simone. But she was not in the prison at Saint-Gaudens when Captain Mitchell was there.’

‘How do you know?’ Claire asked.

‘We had intelligence confirming she was in Périgueux prison.’

‘So was Alain at first, then they moved him. They could have moved her as well.’

‘They didn’t.’

‘How can you be sure?’ Antoinette asked.

‘Because she never came out of Périgueux.’ Thomas looked across the table at Claire. ‘The Germans kept it quiet to save face, but she died in Périgueux. An accident, they said.’

‘An accident?’

Thomas shrugged. ‘The official line was she fell down a flight of concrete steps and broke her neck.’

The four friends sat in shock. Then Antoinette put her hand on Claire’s arm. ‘It is obvious,’ she said, ‘Professor Puel has made a mistake.’

A huge mistake. One