Read Chapter 17: The Last Letter

The retirement home hallway smelled of lavender and floor wax. Marie-Claire’s room was at the end, door ajar, and Camille could hear the old woman humming something soft and melodic—a lullaby, maybe, or a song from a radio broadcast sixty years gone.

Camille knocked on the frame. “Madame Laval?”

“Renée,” the woman corrected gently, turning from the window. The sapphire ring in Camille’s pocket seemed to grow warm, as if it recognized its former keeper. “You came back. I thought you might.”

Marie-Claire gestured to the chair beside her bed. On the small table rested a cedar box, its lid open, revealing a stack of yellowed envelopes tied with faded red ribbon. The top one was postmarked Nice, 3 November 1955.

“Julian’s letters,” Camille said, sitting down.

“All of them.” Marie-Claire’s voice cracked like old leather. “Every one he ever sent me. Except the ones that never arrived.”

Camille thought of the intercepted letters, the ones someone had stolen before Marie-Claire could read them. She kept that thought to herself.

“I want you to read the last one,” Marie-Claire said. “The one he wrote the night before the crash.”

“The night before?”

Marie-Claire nodded slowly. Her fingers trembled as she lifted the envelope from the box. The paper was thin, almost translucent with age. The handwriting was precise, elegant—a man who took care with his words.

“He mailed it from Lyon station,” Marie-Claire said. “He was on his way to Paris to catch the night train to Nice. He thought he’d be home the next morning.”

Camille took the letter carefully, handling it like a relic. The paper rustled like dry leaves. She unfolded it, and Julian’s voice seemed to rise from the page.

*My dearest Marie-Claire,*

*I write this from a café near the Lyon depot, waiting for the connection that will take me north. I should not be going at all—my leave was denied, and there is work enough in Nice to keep me occupied through autumn. But the telegram that arrived this morning insisted I return at once. It bore the Laurent crest, and it promised news of your father’s affairs that could not wait for the post.*

*I know what you will say. You have told me a hundred times that your father’s business is not my concern. And you are right—it is not. But the man who sent for me is not your father. It is someone who claims to speak for the Laurent family, someone who knows things about your father’s accounts that no outsider should know.*

*I cannot explain why, but my instincts tell me something is wrong. The telegram was too urgent, too specific. It mentioned details of your father’s dealings in Marseille that I have never seen written anywhere. I have a terrible feeling that I am walking into a trap.*

*If something happens to me, I want you to know that I was not running away. I was coming back to you. I was coming home.*

*I love you. I have loved you since the first time I saw you on the platform at Antibes, your hair catching the morning light, a book of poetry in your hands. I will love you until the last star burns out.*

*Yours, always,* *Julien*

Camille looked up. Her eyes burned. “He knew.”

Marie-Claire’s face was wet with tears she didn’t bother to wipe away. “He knew someone was luring him. And he went anyway.”

“Because the telegram used your father’s name,” Camille said. “Because it was about your family. He thought he was protecting you.”

“He was always trying to protect me.” Marie-Claire’s voice was barely a whisper. “Even from my own family.”

Camille turned the page over. There was a postscript, smaller than the rest, written in a tighter hand.

*If this letter reaches you and I do not arrive in Nice, go to the solicitor Philippe Moreau in Marseille. He keeps a copy of my will and a letter of instruction. There are matters concerning your father’s affairs that I have committed to paper, and Moreau knows how to reach me if the need arises.*

*Do not trust the Laurents, Marie-Claire. Not all of them.*

The signature beneath was hasty, almost impatient. As if Julian had written the postscript at the last moment before the train pulled away.

“Moreau,” Camille said aloud. “Julian mentions a solicitor named Moreau.”

Marie-Claire frowned. “I never heard that name. I never received this letter—not until after the crash, when his belongings were returned to me. The solicitor’s letter, if there was one, was never mentioned.”

Camille’s mind raced. The bank vault in Nice, the lockbox with the manifest. And now a solicitor in Marseille with a letter of instruction. Whoever had intercepted Julian’s letters had missed this one—or hadn’t thought to open it after the crash.

“There’s something else,” Camille said. “Julian’s last word to me, when he appeared on the train. He said ‘Moreau.’”

Marie-Claire’s eyes widened. “He spoke to you? From beyond?”

“He’s been appearing to me on the night train. He’s trying to finish something—to clear the record. He gave me your ring.” Camille reached into her pocket and held out the sapphire. Marie-Claire’s breath caught. Her hand shook as she reached for it, but she didn’t take it.

“Where did you get that?” she whispered. “I gave it to him the morning he left. It was my mother’s.”

“He wants you to have it back,” Camille said. “He never stopped loving you.”

Marie-Claire’s fingers closed around the ring. For a long moment she simply held it, her eyes closed. When she opened them, her gaze was clear.

“The solicitor in Marseille,” she said firmly. “Philippe Moreau. If Julian trusted him, then he is the key. The manifest in the bank vault will prove what Auguste Ravel did, but the letter Julian left with Moreau—” she hesitated, “—it may tell us why.”

Camille looked at the postscript again. *There are matters concerning your father’s affairs that I have committed to paper.*

“Your father,” she said slowly. “What did he have to do with the Compagnie du Midi?”

Marie-Claire’s face closed. “My father worked for them. He was a senior clerk in the accounting office. He died six months before the crash—a heart attack, the doctors said.”

“And Auguste Ravel?”

“I never met him. But Julian knew of him. He mentioned once that an engineer at the Compagnie du Midi had been asking questions about my father’s work. Questions about shipments that never appeared in the official ledgers.”

Camille’s pulse quickened. “Shipments.”

“That’s all I know.” Marie-Claire pressed the ring to her chest. “Julian never told me the rest. He was trying to protect me from whatever he discovered.”

The watch on Camille’s wrist ticked. The second hand swept past the 12, steady and relentless. She touched the warm metal, thinking of Julian’s face on the train, the way he had looked at her with such desperate intensity.

“I’m going to Marseille,” she said. “I’m going to find Philippe Moreau, and I’m going to find out what Julian knew.”

Marie-Claire studied her for a long moment. “You remind me of him, you know. The same fire. The same refusal to let go of a question until it’s answered.”

“I’m not letting go,” Camille said. “Not until the truth is out. Not until everyone knows that your Julian was innocent, and that my family—that some of them, at least—were not the monsters history made them.”

Marie-Claire nodded slowly. She opened her hand and looked at the sapphire ring glittering in the light. “He gave this to me the day we became engaged. I thought he carried it with him when he died.”

“He did,” Camille said. “He was holding it when the train went down.”

Marie-Claire closed her eyes. “Then it’s true. He was coming back to me.”

“He was,” Camille said. “Every letter he wrote, every mile he traveled—he was coming back to you. Someone stole those letters to make you think he never wrote them. Someone wanted you to believe he had abandoned you.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

Camille thought of the false telegram, the Laurent crest. Of her great-grandfather Henri, whose eyes Julian insisted had been kind.

“Someone who wanted to destroy your family,” she said. “Someone who knew that Julian was the only man who could stop them.”