Chasing Ghosts Madalyn Morgan (free e books to read txt) 📖

Lunch was delicious. The ham was succulent, large potatoes had been roasted in their jackets and there was a selection of small pastries stuffed with spicy meats and cheeses. In the centre of the table were dishes of pickled cabbage, onions and gherkins, and a large basket of crusty bread rolls, still warm from the oven.

When they had finished eating, Eleanor beckoned Claire with a flick of her head. ‘If you’ll excuse us?’ Both men said they would. ‘You’ll be going back to the study, Papa?’

‘Yes, but first I shall smoke a cigar while I tell Alain what happens now we have Beckman in our sights.’

‘Let us leave the men to it, Claire. You and I shall take the documents that I need to study before the trial to the music room.’ Claire thanked Guillaume, and then Esme, for the delicious lunch, got up from the table and followed Eleanor out of the room.

On the way to the study, Eleanor said, ‘While my father is not watching my every move, I shall show you my gymnasium, as he calls it.’ She laughed. ‘It is where I have my physiotherapy treatment. Come,’ she said, pointing to a door on her left. Claire opened the door and entered the room first, holding it open for Eleanor. When she had negotiated the doorframe and was safely inside, Claire let go of the door and it closed automatically.

At one end of the gymnasium was a thick padded mat that looked about ten feet square. There were weights on one side of the room and two parallel metal and wood rails on the other. Claire ran her hands along the top of the nearest rail.

‘They are for me to hold onto when I stand up,’ Eleanor said, ‘but I’m only allowed to stand when my physiotherapist and his assistant are here. I need two people to catch me if I fall.’ Eleanor laughed and wheeled herself to the beginning of the rails. ‘What they don’t know,’ she said, with a mischievous glint in her eyes, ‘is that I stand at these rails as often as I can when they are not here.’

Eleanor manoeuvred the wheelchair as close as she could to the nearest rail, put on the brake and pulled herself up. ‘Ta dah!’ she said as she stood and gripped one of the rails. She reached out and lunged towards the other rail, ‘Got you!’ she said, breathing heavily. ‘Now, what do you say to that, Claire?’

Claire wanted to say petrified. Instead, she applauded and stepped behind Eleanor in case she fell. ‘I’d rather you didn’t stand at the back of me, it puts me off my stride. If you know what I mean.’ Claire moved to Eleanor’s left. ‘I am quite safe. All the pushing myself about in the chair has made my arms very strong. They won’t let me down. Oh!’ she said, ‘but my legs might. Would you take the brake off my chair and push it nearer, so the seat is against the back of my legs? I think I need to sit down.’

Claire did so with relief and when the chair was in place behind Eleanor, she put the brake on again. Eleanor took her hands off the rails and dropped onto the seat of the wheelchair. ‘Damn!’ she said. ‘I managed twice as long yesterday.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Claire said.

‘Don’t be. I didn’t stand for long today, but I did yesterday, and I shall tomorrow.’

As she moved to let Eleanor pass her, Claire noticed a ballet bar. It ran along the four walls, two with floor to ceiling mirrors on them. She gazed at it wondering why Eleanor hadn’t had it taken down. Tears threatened and Claire cleared her throat.

‘I won’t let my father take the bar down.’

Claire was miles away. ‘Sorry?’

‘The ballet bar. Papa wants to take it down, but I plan to walk around the room one day. And when that day comes, the bar will come in handy to hang on to. Come on, let’s look at the documents. I think I’ve had enough exercise for one day.’

Claire carried Eleanor’s pile of papers from the study to the music room. Eleanor wheeled herself over to the piano and took a notebook and pen from inside the piano stool, before joining Claire by the fire.

Claire on one settee and Eleanor in her chair at the end of the settee opposite, looked through the papers that Heinrich Beckman had killed for. As she read each of them, Eleanor tutted and made noises of disgust. She asked Claire how the papers had come into her possession and Claire told her about meeting the murdered doctor’s grandfather. She omitted to say she was looking for her at the time. She told Eleanor how she had first met Thomas Durand in Paris, and how he had driven her to the prison and together they had met the late Lucien Puel’s grandfather and namesake.

Remembering the broken-hearted old doctor’s tears, Claire told Eleanor how he had found his grandson in the road, dying, after the beating Beckman had given him on the day the camp was liberated, the day Beckman had escaped.

Eleanor sat for an hour hunched over the documents, reading and making notes. Then she sat upright, stretched, and rolled her shoulders.

‘I’m so sorry you had to read them,’ Claire said, ‘they must have brought back horrific memories.’

Eleanor looked up, her eyes sparkling with anger and revulsion. ‘Day after day this monster, Heinrich Beckman, had me taken out of my hut and paraded in front of a dozen men; mostly Resistance members, patriots from our colonies - and occasionally a woman.’ Eleanor shook her head. ‘I was made to watch them as they were executed. The guards,’ she caught her breath, ‘showed no mercy. They would make the prisoners stand against the wall for sometimes as long as ten