Description:
Morel visits an old contact, Julien Mercier, a former codebreaker with a pianist’s hands and a memory full of secrets. As the melody is played aloud, hidden messages begin to surface — and so do old betrayals.
Chapter 6: The Code in the Keys
The Conservatoire de l’Ouest, tucked behind a line of withered plane trees near Avenue Mozart, looked more like an abandoned chapel than a music school. Its windows were fogged with time, and a rusted sign swung gently above the iron gate, groaning with each breeze.
Morel rang the buzzer twice. No answer. He pushed the gate. It creaked like a complaint.
Inside, the air was stale with varnish and chalk dust. The hallway was lined with fading portraits of composers — their eyes watching like witnesses.
He found Julien Mercier in the main hall, sitting alone at a grand piano with one hand resting on the keys and the other holding a cigarette trembling with age.
« Lucien, » he said without turning. « I wondered when the music would bring you back. »
Morel stepped closer. « Still playing, I see. »
Julien exhaled smoke toward the ceiling. « Still decoding the dead. » He gestured to the bench. « Sit. What is it this time? »
Morel unfolded the sheet and slid it onto the stand. « Play it. »
Julien adjusted his glasses. He scanned the notes, then looked up. « You know this isn’t just a composition. Someone wrote this to be heard by the right ears. »
« Yours? »
« Or Sophie Lemoine’s. We used this format during the war. She was one of us. Brilliant ear. Flawless timing. »
Morel’s eyes narrowed. “So she’s alive.”
Julien said nothing for a long moment, then placed his fingers on the keys.
The melody began — soft, haunting, drifting through the empty room like fog from another world. Then, halfway through the second measure, he slowed. Played a wrong note on purpose. Again in the next phrase. Then again. A pattern emerged.
He stopped playing. “There. It’s not music. It’s Morse.”
Julien reached for a pencil and began to mark the score.
Morel leaned over. The first phrase: « Violin is not the target. »
Second: « Intercepted at Saint-Cloud. »
Third: « Target is woman. Coordinates follow. »
Julien looked up. “This isn’t just a message. It’s an assassination order.”
Morel stood, the air tightening in his lungs. “Émile wasn’t the courier. He was the decoy.”
« And Sophie… » Julien added quietly, « is the one they’re after. »
Outside, thunder cracked above Paris, and the lights in the conservatory flickered.
The game had changed. Now it wasn’t about finding a missing violinist.
It was about saving a ghost — before the wrong people realized she was still alive.