Island of Doom: Hunchback Assignments 4 (The Hunchback Assignments) by Arthur Slade

Colette said, patting Modo’s hand before she let it go. “Emmanuel will watch over us.”
    “Where is here?” Octavia asked. “And who is Emmanuel?” Modo had not yet let go of her hand.
    “We are in the southern bell tower,” Colette explained, “and Emmanuel is the bell above us.”
    “How do you know the way so well?” Modo asked.
    “As a youth I explored,” she said. “It was a game I played, to hide from the priests and my father. He would bring us here every Sunday. I would do my—what do you call it?—
sneaking
during the services.”
    “So began a lifetime of sneaking,” Octavia noted.
    Colette clicked on her petite lumière and Octavia let go of Modo’s hand as though she’d been caught with hers in a sweet biscuit jar.
    “Now, let us have a look at those documents.”
    Modo pulled the crumpled mess from his jacket and smoothed the papers out on the floor. Colette bent over to examine them, but Modo covered them with his hand. “There were documents about you, Colette.”
    “Oh,” she said. “And what did my kind bureaucratic friends have to say?”
    Modo cleared his throat. “There was a report on your mental faculties, including a description of your stay in an asylum.”
    “Oh, that,” Colette said. “Yes, I
rested
, as they like to say.” But she wasn’t quite able to make it sound inconsequential.
    “She was in a madhouse?” Octavia said. “We’ve been following a madwoman around on a merry chase?”
    “The proper term is
sanatorium
,” Colette said indignantly. “I was put there against my will. I—I really didn’t need it. They wanted my job. My desk. My soul.”
    “Soul?” Octavia echoed.
    “Everything,” Colette hissed. “Everything I’ve fought for! They’ve taken it all away.”
    She was shaking. Modo placed his hand on her cheek. “I’ve been inside those so-called madhouses,” he said. “Not everyone there was mad.”
    “No. Not everyone,” Colette agreed, “though the man who believed he was Jesus Christ and Napoleon was certainly unhinged.”
    “Our debt is paid,” Modo said. “Not that I ever thought you owed me.”
    She shook her head. “It is kind of you to say so, but it is far from paid.”
    “Well,” Octavia huffed. “If you two lovebirds are done we had better read these files or nothing will be solved or paid.”
    Colette flipped through the pages. “Conjecture upon conjecture. Useless agents! And, wait—” She picked up a page, her eyes flitting back and forth across it. “No, my apologies, there is nothing.”
    “But there must be
something
,” Octavia said. Colettegathered up the documents and held them out to Octavia, her eyebrows knitted in despair. “I can’t read French, you know that.”
    Modo took them and leafed through, trying to hide his desperation. He used his pocket lucifer to study every page carefully. “I was interrupted,” he said. “If I’d had more time, I might’ve found something of use.”
    “Then we’ve come all this distance for nothing,” Octavia said.
    Colette sniffed. “We cannot stay in Paris, that much we know. Perhaps we should visit Nanterre—we may find others who remember your parents, Modo.”
    “But that will take days,” Modo said. “And the Deuxième Bureau will expect us to go there. They will have eyes everywhere.”
    “I am aware of that. I suggest we sleep. Perhaps in the morning an answer will come. We will want to leave before sunrise.”
    Modo sighed and nodded. They gathered what soft things they could find—they were lucky enough to discover a few cloth sacks—and made their beds on the cold stone.

17

More Meat, Please
    L ime, his pistol and knives hidden by a greatcoat, strode past the medieval ramparts that surrounded the outskirts of Montreuil-sur-Mer. The hut he was searching for was along the road to Étaples, if the drunks in the town pub could be believed.
    The town lay on the banks of the Canche river and Lime hated the place. He had grown up in the