Description:
Guided by the coded message in the sheet music, Inspector Morel follows a trail that leads him outside Paris — to Saint-Cloud. There, at an abandoned estate, the silence speaks louder than words, and someone else is already waiting.
Chapter 7: Saint-Cloud Shadows
The drive to Saint-Cloud was slow, winding through a fog that clung to the Seine like a veil. Morel’s old Citroën coughed with each gear change, its headlights barely cutting through the mist. But the coordinates matched. And he knew better than to ignore music written in Morse.
He turned onto a narrow private road flanked by bare trees, their branches clawing at the sky. At the end: an iron gate, half open, rusted through. Beyond it stood a dilapidated manor, once grand, now decaying under years of ivy and silence.
He parked the car a few meters away and approached on foot.
The wind had picked up, carrying the distant smell of burned wood and wet soil. As he stepped through the gate, he could hear it — a faint sound from inside the house.
A piano. One note, repeated. G… G… G…
He pushed open the main door. It creaked like a warning.
Inside, the grand hallway was dark except for the pale light of a single candle flickering atop a piano in the drawing room. A woman sat there, back turned, playing a broken melody with one finger.
She didn’t flinch when he stepped in.
“Sophie,” he said.
She paused. Then turned slowly.
Her face was older than in the photo, but unmistakable — sharp cheekbones, fierce eyes, lips tight with control.
“You’re late, Lucien,” she said, voice cold. “Or maybe you weren’t supposed to find me at all.”
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
She smiled. “That’s what kept me alive.”
He stepped closer. “They’re coming for you.”
“I know,” she said. “They’ve already been here once. That’s why I left the code.”
She opened a small drawer beneath the piano bench and handed him a folded page — yellowed, frayed. Another sheet of music.
“This one they didn’t find. It has the names.”
Morel unfolded it slowly. Not a composition, but a ledger. Scrawled in musical notation, but translatable with the right eye.
Politicians. Agents. Collaborators.
He felt the weight of it instantly.
“This could burn half the embassies in Paris,” he muttered.
Sophie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Which is why they won’t let me live much longer.”
A sound outside — gravel shifting under shoes.
Morel’s hand went to his revolver.
Sophie stood, calm. “There’s a passage under the stairs. It leads to the river. Take the file. If I don’t follow…”
“You’re coming with me.”
“No,” she said, firm. “You can still move. I’ll only slow you down.”
A window shattered down the hall.
Morel grabbed the page, then her hand. “We go together. Or we die alone.”
She hesitated. Then nodded.
As they slipped through the secret door, the house echoed with footsteps and the low whisper of foreign voices.
The game was no longer about a missing violinist.
It was now a race against a machine built on silence, lies — and unfinished music.