The Watcher in the Shadows Read Free Page B

scarcely recognise her own husband. From that point on she stopped speaking, and looking into her eyes was like gazing into a bottomless well. Alexandra Jann was twenty-six at the time. She had never again left Cravenmoore.
    The Sauvelles listened in silence to Lazarus’s sad account. Obviously distressed by his memories and the two decades of solitude, he nonetheless tried to play down the matter by shifting the conversation to Hannah’s mouth-watering tart. But the sorrow in his eyes did not go unnoticed by Irene.
    It wasn’t hard for her to imagine why Lazarus Jann had escaped into a place of his own making. Deprived of what he most loved, he had taken refuge in a fantasy world, creating hundreds of creatures with which to fill the deep loneliness surrounding him.
    As she listened to the toymaker’s words, Irene realised she would no longer be able to view Cravenmoore as the magnificent product of a boundless imagination, the ultimate expression of the genius that had created it. Having learned to recognise the emptiness of her own loss, she knew this place to be little more than the dark reflection of the solitude that had overwhelmed Lazarus during the past twenty years. Every piece of that marvellous world was a silent tear.
    By the time they had finished dinner, Simone Sauvelle was quite clear about her obligations and responsibilities. Her duties would be rather like those of a housekeeper, a job that had little to do with her original profession as a teacher. Nevertheless, she was prepared to do her best in order to guarantee a good future for her children. Simone would supervise Hannah’s chores and those of the occasional servants; she would be in charge of all administrative work and the maintenance of Lazarus Jann’s property; deal with suppliers and shopkeepers; take care of the post; and guarantee that nothing and nobody would intrude on the toymaker’s withdrawal from the outside world. Her job also included buying books for Lazarus’s library. Her employer had made it clear that her past work as a teacher had been one of the reasons he’d chosen her over other candidates with far greater experience in housekeeping. Lazarus insisted that this was one of her most important responsibilities.
    In exchange for her work, Simone and her children would be allowed to live at Seaview and she would receive a more than reasonable salary. Lazarus would take care of Irene and Dorian’s school expenses for the following year, at the end of the summer. He also promised to cover the costs of university degrees for both children if they showed the ability and the interest. For their part, Irene and Dorian could help their mother with whatever tasks she assigned them in the mansion, as long as they respected the golden rule: never to exceed the boundaries the owner had laid down for them.
    To Simone, considering all the misery of the previous months, Lazarus’s offer seemed like a blessing from heaven. Blue Bay was an idyllic place to start a new life with her children. The job was very desirable and Lazarus was evidently a kind and generous employer. Sooner or later, luck had to come their way. Fate had sent them to this remote location, and for the first time in a long while Simone was prepared to accept what it was offering her. In fact, if her instincts were correct, and they usually were, she perceived a genuine warmth flowing towards her and her family. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that their company and their presence at Cravenmoore could help soothe the immense solitude in which its owner seemed to live.
    Dinner ended with a cup of coffee and Lazarus’s promise to a stunned Dorian that, if he wished, one day he would initiate him into the mysteries of the construction of automata. The boy’s eyes lit up, and for a brief moment Simone and Lazarus’s gaze met. Simone recognised in his look a trace of loneliness, a shadow she knew only too well. The toymaker half-closed his eyes and stood up quietly,