Free Sepulchre by Kate Mosse

In fact, ahead of schedule. She had spent ten days in England. Now she'd got nearly two weeks in France, Paris mostly, but she'd also scheduled a quick trip down to a small town in the southwest, Rennes-les-Bains. Hence the couple of days at the Domaine de la Cade.
    The official reason for the detour was that she needed to check out a lead about Debussy's first wife, Lilly, before heading back to Paris. If it had only been a matter of tracking down the first Mrs Debussy, she wouldn't have gone to so much trouble. It was an interesting piece of research, sure, but her leads were pretty tenuous and hardly essential to the book overall. But she had another motive for going to Rennes-les-Bains, a personal one. Meredith reached into the inside pocket of her purse and pulled out a manila envelope with DO NOT BEND printed on it in red. She slid out a couple of old sepia photographs, the corners dog-eared and bent, and a printed sheet of piano music. She looked at the now-familiar faces, as she'd done so many times before, before turning her attention to the piece of music. Handwritten on yellow manuscript paper, it was a simple melody in common time, key of A minor, the title and the date hand-printed in old-fashioned italic script at the top: Sepulchre 1891.
    She knew it off by heart - every bar, every semiquaver, every harmony. The music - plus the three photos she carried with it - was the only thing Meredith had inherited from her birth mother. An heirloom, a talisman. She was well aware the trip might turn up nothing of interest. It was a long time ago; the stories were faded. On the other hand, Meredith figured she couldn't be worse off than she was right now. Knowing virtually nothing about her family's past, needing to know something. For the price of the air ticket, it seemed worth it.
    Meredith realised the train was slowing. The rail tracks had multiplied. The lights of the Gare du Nord were coming into view. The atmosphere in the carriage shifted again. A return to the real world, a sense of purpose at the end of a shared journey nearly over. Ties straightened, coats reclaimed.
    She gathered up the photos and music, and her other papers, and slipped everything back into her purse. She took a green scrunchy from her wrist, twisted her black hair up into a ponytail, ran her fingers through her bangs, and stepped out into the aisle.
    With her sharp cheekbones, clear brown eyes and petite figure, Meredith looked more like a senior in high school than a twenty-eight-year-old academic. At home, she still carried her id if she wanted to be sure of getting served in a bar. She reached up to the luggage rack for her jacket and tote bag, revealing a tanned, flat stomach between her green top and Banana Republic denims, aware that the four guys across the aisle were staring.
Meredith put the jacket on.
     
'Have a good trip, guys,' she grinned, then headed for the door.
    A wall of sound hit her the second she stepped down to the platform. People shouting, rushing, crowds every place, waving. Everybody in a hurry. Announcements were blaring out over the loudspeakers. Information about the next departure, introduced by a kind of fanfare on a glockenspiel. It was totally crazy after the hushed silence of the train.
Meredith smiled, breathing in the sights, smells, character of Paris. Already she felt like a different person.
    Hoisting her bags high on each shoulder, she followed the signs across the station concourse and got in line for a taxi. The guy in front of her was shouting into his cell and waving a Gitane wedged deep between his fingers. Blue-white tendrils of vanilla-scented smoke twisted up into the night air, silhouetted against the balustrades and shutters of the buildings opposite.
    She gave the address to the driver, a hotel in the 4th arrondissement, on the rue du Temple in the Marais district, which she'd picked for its central location. It was good for the regular tourist stuff if she had time - the Centre Pompidou