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This story follows the first in Jenn’s Rediscovered series, Last Assault on Oak Island.
Lauren saw Elden to the entrance hall, returning his wave from the car as it rolled down the meandering drive. She smiled at the thought of traveling halfway around the world to meet a fellow countryman.
"Has Monsieur Grant left?" Madame Varlette's voice was anxious as she hurried to the door and looked out at the drive. She sighed as she stood beside Lauren. "I wished so to speak with him."
"I'm sure he didn't know."
"I'm sure he did not." She smiled, her beauty aged, but not lost. "Hamburg, is it?"
Lauren nodded. "Hotel Weinstadt, I believe he said."
They turned back to the mammoth hall. Madame Varlette took Lauren's arm in a friendly clasp.
"Don't tell my brother, but I'm looking for a collection of plates. They belonged to my husband's mother. A beautiful set. Stolen. My best silver, too, and the plates. An odd burglar, no?"
"Very odd."
Madame Varlette's eyes rose to the chandelier as the passed beneath it, her focus far away in remembrance. "Monsieur Vistoli's competition, these pieces. An Alsace house at the turn of the twentieth century. Andre Cartier was the artist. Full lead crystal, they were, much like today's Lalique." She looked to Lauren. "I thought perhaps Monsieur Grant could watch the market for them. Mother would love to see them again. I know it."
"You said it was a local house," Lauren recalled. "Is there any chance of finding another set with them?"
"None. They closed down in the 'Sixties, largely due to the Paris Lalique factory. I cannot even find them listed on the secondary markets."
A maid approached Madame Varlette and curtsied. The older woman put a hand up to stall her.
"Mr. Grant may be able to help," Lauren said.
"I have every confidence in him." Madame Varlette squeezed her hand. "Come take coffee with me this afternoon. I'll show you photos of the hall when it was alive."
"I'd be glad to." Lauren added she would have to make sure Carlos could free her. Madame Varlette nodded and turned to the maid with a quick smile.
The hall when it was alive, Lauren thought. The phrase conjured mixed emotions in her as she took the flared staircase to the second floor. Ballrooms swinging with music and dancing. Laughter echoing from the frescoed ceiling. Couples meeting clandestine behind embroidered tapestries. She shook her head. Maybe the last was a scene from movies she'd seen.
The wording also meant Madame Varlette now considered the hall dead. No more dancing. Only the quick clip of servants' heels bouncing off the flat walls. Madame Varlette was surely anticipating the auction. The chateau's last event.
Lauren wondered about the older woman's late husband, choosing to believe him a man of entertainment rather than dullness. She neared a drawing room with these thoughts, her preoccupation curbed when she heard the sole occupant's voice. She paused as the voice became clearer.
It was undeniably Reuben.
She pressed into a corner in the hallway.
"Ja, ja, Geil," came his low tone in perfect German. "Ja. Das Bernstein Zimmer."
Lauren focused sharply in the gilt-framed mirror across the hall. In it she could see Reuben, his back to her, the phone in his hand. It also meant he would see her if he turned around. She sunk to her heels in the corner, out of sight.
"Sehr gut."
For a fleeting moment her knees froze as he left the room. She held her breath, peeking around the corner as he disappeared down the opposite side of the hallway. She stood straight and sighed, smoothing her skirt.
So he did know.
She glanced at her watch, trying to decide where Carlos would be at the moment. She wasn't sure if what she heard actually changed anything, but it was good to know. Carlos would definitely want to know.
As she moved quickly down the hallway in the other direction, another stouter figure looked after her from his hidden vantage point. His eyes traveled up her legs, watching her dark hair sway as she retreated. The glass of gin met his lips as Reuben's phone conversation replayed in his mind.
Morrow knew just the man to contact.
Early that evening Osnewski hung his jacket over the security camera in the vault crypt. In the scant, dusty light, a gold and amber ring glinted on his thick middle finger.
The acidic air of the chamber made him cough. Living for fifty years in the Baltic Sea air had spoiled his lungs; any trace of dust and certain chemicals irritated him.
Besides, he was not the man for this. Rybak was. Why Andrew Morrow had called on him instead, Osnewski didn't know. At least he need only verify the possibility of the lost treasure room panels and make an attempt at purchase. The rest was not his concern. He liked his role as middleman and that was all.
He bumped into the credenza at the wall, muttered a lethal oath in Polish, and flicked on the pencil-size flashlight he had been supplied with for the task at hand. Morrow's idea of the necessary equipment fell far short of his own. The light was a toy.
As he approached the tarp at the end of the room, his suppressed cough burst out. He pulled a worn handkerchief from his pants pocket. He knelt at the crates, the handkerchief now covering his mouth as he muffled his cough, oblivious to the gouges in the floor.
He felt around at the crate's metal edge, wheezing as he breathed.
Morrow had better be right about this one.
Lauren's visit to Madame Varlette's private drawing room earlier that afternoon was brief. The rich coffee had barely cooled to drinking temperature when a maid relayed that Carlos needed her. No sooner had she met the curator than he had been called away by Madame Chatillier on what the older woman deemed pressing business. Lauren sighed as Carlos left. The tag team of moments left little private conversion between them.
She had stood forlorn in the small parlor near a second floor study, deciding it was ungracious to be seen by Madame Varlette so soon after having to excuse herself from coffee. She wished Carlos had passed on Madame Chatillier's demands.
That was only half the reason she abandoned the curator on the patio in care of Lady Eldicott and the anti-fragrant Madame Poussin later that evening at dinner. After their non-meeting that afternoon, Lauren hadn't been able to get Carlos alone for more than a few seconds—not long enough to tell him what she had leaned.
She had toyed with the grilled oysters, estimating the andalouse sauce and deciding her mom's simple gremolata still her first choice. She nibbled at the curried fruit and hard rolls until concluding she had played at an informal dinner guest long enough.
Within moments she had excused herself, smiling sweetly at Carlos' threatening look of dismay at entertaining the other women at their table single-handedly.
She pretended not to notice and slipped away.
She stopped off at her room to change clothes, and then made her way quietly and quickly to the chateau's underground. Elden was gone and with him went any legitimate justification to venture into the crypt again. Equipped with what she decided essential, she descended deeper into the vault until all sounds from above ceased. Even Madame Chatillier's tone was eventually eclipsed by the distance.
She found herself in the main vault, its stone arches curving overhead in her flashlight's short beam. In the light, the surrounding cupboards, hutches, and tall cases took odd forms, shadows elongating as she moved, making her steps hasten.
For several silent moments she studied the stone floor, her panic ebbing until she encountered the gouges. She followed them to the crypt, again aware of the sharper smell of the air inside as she opened the heavy door.
She moved in silently, passing more cupboards and the credenza, to the tarp-covered mass beyond. She looked cautiously to the door, seeing and hearing no one, and then knelt and lifted the edge of the canvas. The light shone on a metal corner parting at the seams, but not open enough to see into the crate.
She examined it closer, rubbing the packed blue-white clay from where it had collected in the loosened corner elbow. She stopped, looked at the floor, then at the clay.
She wedged her fingers into the crate, the metal pinching her knuckles as she forced them. Inside she felt something that had the texture of parchment, of rounded, flattened discs and various shapes. She carefully withdrew her hand. She didn't pull one out, unwilling to destroy the thin wrappings.
Sighing, she leaned her cheek to the floor and directed the light into the crate.
The dark interior exposed little, save a dusty haze and grayish-brown, furry-covered objects. She reached in and tentatively scratched the side of one with her fingernail. She caught her breath. Beneath the flashlight, a deep, orangey root beer color glowed lowly, its brilliance a mere sliver, like a thin crescent of cognac.
Lauren sat back up and shut off the light. An excitement rose in her that left her immobile. It was there.
The Amber Chamber was really there.
She hadn't entirely been convinced until that moment, even with Elden's sample and Reuben's phone call. She smiled wide, stifling a squeal of delight. Carlos was right. She stood up and lifted the tarp just enough to see five metal crates clustered against the wall. The smell of the chemical grew stronger. She lowered the tarp and settled it as it had been.
The Duke didn't have the whole chamber, she knew, but he had at least one wall. She dusted off her knees and turned on the flashlight again.
Following the gouges to their origin within the underground storage room was less appealing than she cared to admit. They led deeper into the vault, and she flinched at every scurry of the assorted rodents the light found. Beady yellow eyes and angry chatter from the critters made her nerves edge higher. The snap of a trap brought a stunted rodent shriek, rattling Lauren's anxiety in another direction. The gouges detoured into a corridor that sank lower into the earth and she paused before turning the next corner. She took a deep breath and looked into the small and narrow empty chamber.
Here the crates had rested for some time. She studied the five rusted rectangular outlines on the pale gray floor. At one corner a deposit of the blue-white clay had dried to a soft powder. Condensation shone on one wall and she recalled what Elden had said about the workmen mentioning a drier room. She looked back down at the gouges and followed them out to where they had departed to the secondary corridor.
The light's beam spotlighted only a few yards into the main passageway. Wooden storage crates and cabinets clustered around on either side. She continued on, the gouges before her. This time they led farther down for twenty minutes until she came to the outside wall of fieldstone and cement.
She halted before an arched doorway in the wall, letting the light travel over the double doors before her. They would lead directly into the earth outside, beyond the mammoth house, meaning the underground chambers were larger than the chateau's foundation. The etched bronze doors had been inlaid with copper and silver in a menagerie of small panels depicting the Archangel Michael and the baptism of St. John. The once glittering doors were now green with patina and tarnished with neglect.
Her hand closed around one of the round, silver door pulls, surprised that the unlocked door opened both easily and without a creak of the hinges.
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