Page 24 of The Midnight Carousel

‘I actually wasn’t paying attention,’ she admits. ‘For most of the ride, I was inside and at the front of the house.’

He makes a mental note to ask Agent O’Connell about Clementine’s horse.

Approaching the front, Laurent’s fingers trace over the raised diamond on the forehead while examining the four letters– e o t h – spaced around the sides.

For close to a minute, he turns his head from side to side, squinting while she also looks. Then he gets it.

‘It is a name– Théo– the son of the carousel’s creator, Gilbert, though it holds no relevance to the case, since the boy died years ago,’ Laurent explains.

‘If you remember from the interview, Victor, the nephew, was beheaded for his crimes. And now we must mete out the same punishment to his accomplice , ’ he adds, before realizing that he has voiced this last thought out loud.

Miss Marlowe’s face contorts.

‘But why would they do anything so… so…’ She pauses, clearly struggling for the correct word. ‘So appalling?’

It is a question he has asked himself many times over. An inheritance? Theft? Pure evil? Not one of these ideas explains why someone would take seemingly random persons from this ride. It feels like the answer is simultaneously in his sights and out of his grasp.

‘We have not ascertained the reason,’ he confesses, turning red. ‘But this new discovery might bring us closer. It is like working on a puzzle– each piece put in the correct place gives us a better idea of the full picture.’

Miss Marlowe takes one step forward and reaches out to touch the horse. Her fingers freeze mid-air, suspended inches from the mane.

‘Do you feel that?’ she asks. ‘The odd vibration?’

Laurent raises his hand in the air, holding it still. There is a faint breeze but nothing stranger. ‘Perhaps it is just the wind.’

Shrugging, she lets her hand alight on the mane. ‘Perhaps.’

Laurent begins to study the horse in detail, moving his hands from the shoulders to the haunches, tapping for hollows.

Miss Marlowe follows his example on the left flank.

While he kneels down to scrutinize the belly, she pulls the ears and the tail.

She seems to share his conviction that they are on to something.

But after several minutes, neither has found anything untoward.

He examines the control panel next. It is a mass of wires and incomprehensible connections.

Back in France, even expert technicians were unable to fathom the workings of this groundbreaking machine.

He steps inside the shadowy cylinder. As Laurent established in the evidence warehouse all those years ago, there is space in here for Victor and a victim.

An accomplice could also fit, at a pinch, all hidden from both riders and audience.

But it does not explain the link to the horse with the blue diamond: its position is not the nearest to the cylinder’s entrance.

In fact, the one in front would be more convenient for an abductor.

‘Perhaps I should ride the horse,’ Miss Marlowe shouts from the platform, as though she has heard his thoughts. ‘One of us might notice something no one else has seen.’

Stepping from inside the cylinder, he sees that she is already mounted on the golden saddle and gripping a set of reins. His eyes check the vicinity– they are alone here with no would-be abductors lurking. If he maintains sight of her at all times, she will be safe.

After pulling down the control lever, Laurent races to be by her side. He notes her enjoyment as the ride gathers pace. A split-second later, however, she looks on the verge of tears.

He must stop the ride.

With one eye still on her, he leaps back to the lever. He pulls up. Nothing happens. He pulls down. Nothing. Up. Down. Up. Down. The momentum is impossible to stop. At this rate, the only option might be to haul her off the horse.

He looks over to check on Miss Marlowe and is horrified to discover that in the seconds his focus was elsewhere she has swung out of view. It takes only a moment for a person to vanish into thin air.

‘Miss Marlowe! Maisie!’ he shouts over the crescendo of fairground music.

His heart is pounding as he scrabbles across the platform again.

The speed of the ride is picking up and the horses are now galloping fast. He dodges an orange stallion but is almost felled by a dappled pony.

His head swings this way and that, searching.

Think, Laurent, think. If he cannot catch up to the horse she is riding, maybe he should try to meet it head on.

He starts running in the opposite direction from the horses, darting between them, and, eventually, spots an auburn mane. To his horror, there is no rider.

‘Miss Marlowe!’ he shouts again, diving aside in time to avoid another horse crashing into him. He looks inside the central cylinder in case an assailant has dragged her in there.

But she is nowhere.

It seems like forever before the ride finally stops. Lost, Laurent stands by the auburn-maned horse for several minutes in the hope that she will suddenly reappear.

A sound leads him around to a small nook on the other side of the controls, where he finds Miss Marlowe, hunched over and her entire body shaking.

‘That horse. It’s… it’s’– she gasps between sobs– ‘it’s… cursed.’

Crouching next to her, he wears a look of sympathy. Curses and witchcraft are nonsense, of course.

‘There, there,’ he murmurs. ‘Slow, steady breaths.’

He waits while her breathing settles and then hands her his handkerchief. Presently, she sits up and wipes away her tears.

‘I saw something, Detective. Saw it like it was real. Something awful from childhood, as though I’d been taken back there.’

Talk of murder. Missing children. It is only natural that any person unaccustomed to hearing the grisly details of crime would become distressed, and believe they saw things that were not there.

Witnessing Miss Marlowe erupt into tears again, Laurent is ever more determined to find the answer, to tie up every loose end before anyone else is entangled in this mystery.