Given my ragged look, I hesitate to knock on any doors or approach any of the people that come out. Also, on the off chance that Kurt is monitoring who calls Stella, I’d rather not contact her from somebody’s private line and put them at risk.
My stealthy tour of the Morgins reveals that it doesn’t have a police station. On the plus side, I didn’t see Kurt’s men anywhere. They must be combing the forest. My other promising discovery is that the village has a post office inside a supermarket.
I stay hidden until it opens at seven, and go in.
Problem is Kurt’s men took my wallet when they searched me. Fortunately, there’s a workaround. The postmaster informs me I can place a reverse charge call to a French cell phone number. Without wasting another second, I dial Stella’s.
She picks up at once. “Oui, allô?”
“It’s me, Darrel.”
“Darrel? What are you…? Where are you now? Are you all right?!”
“Yes. Are you? I’m just calling to warn you that I won’t—”
“Listen,” she interrupts me, her voice hot and urgent, “Your colleague, Samson, he knocked on my door late last night and relayed an important message for you.”
“What message?”
“He said in case you reach out, I must tell you that they have the key.”
That can’t be.There is no way MESS or Nikolai’s squad could’ve found and attacked Kurt’s convoy and intercepted the key!
Stella carries on, “He told me I must persuade you to call Theodor, who will explain everything. Will you call him?”
While I still don’t see how they were able to snatch the key from Kurt, a seed of doubt has been planted.
“I will,” I say to her. “You have my word.”
We hang up, and I make a second collect call to Theodor.
DARREL
Istep out of my bank and pause for a moment at the top of the stairs, gazing at the blue sky and breathing in the fragrant spring air of Pombrio. It’s been a month since I stood at the edge of a cliff, ready to check out. But then Stella saved my life.Again.
When I called Theodor, his relief that I was alive—and free—was immense. He assured me that the info about the key wasn’t a ruse to pull me back from the brink. He told me that as soon as Kurt’s helicopter had taken off, Charlie had sent all the pics she’d snapped to Arthur Rosace. She’d even made a video while I held the key by its shaft and rotated it!
Charlie had told herself that her “documentation” might serve a purpose in the absence of the actual key and help me somehow.
The PI immediately forwarded Charlie’s files to Nikolai who passed them on to the royals. Without delay, Prince Theodor invited the principality’s best locksmith to the royal palace and tasked him with reproducing a key from Charlie’s video and photographs. The quality was good, and all the angles covered enough to capture the key’s details clearly and accurately.
Using top-notch software, the locksmith was able to extract the key’s measurements and create a precise 3D model. He then made a key from it, focusing solely on the bit, and leaving the shaft and the head plain for now. That key fit into one of the interconnected locks.
The mission to retrieve the fifth key had been a success. Kurt hadn’t won this round. We had.
I waited in Morgins, shaken and still doubting, until a helicopter from Mount Evor picked me up and delivered me to my parents’ house in Pombrio. As soon as I was fed and presentable again, I went to the palace. Theodor personally took me to the impenetrable vault and invited me to insert the brand-new key into the lock.
Lo and behold, it fit!
After the exhilaration of the moment subsided, I said to him, “There’s one aspect that doesn’t make sense.”
“That the key was made by the fairy Mélusine? I think it’s a marvelous story!” Theodor smiled.
The soon-to-be dad smiles a lot more than he used to these days.
“I think so, too,” I said. “It isn’t the fictional Mélusine story that bothers me. It’s the one linked to Queen Charlotte of France. It sounds plausible, but I don’t see how the Montevor keys, made for the Montevor vault, could’ve belonged to a French queen.”
He squinted his good eye at me. “Do you recall the part of the story in Charlotte Gotteland’s manuscript where Queen Charlotte gives the keys to her niece instead of her own daughter?”
