Being blind, or nearly blind, had its advantages. Without the gift of sight, the other senses became much enhanced. That was the prisoner’s experience and had been over forty years. Smell, hearing, touch, memory were all sharpened in ways that who had eyes to see would never experience. Olivier Laverne determined he was being held in a basement because of the level at which the many street noises were reaching him. Given that there was rarely any time of absolute quiet, day or night, he surmised that his prison must be somewhere in the industrial and commercial part of Hartley. Or was it even that town? Could he have been tricked into getting off at some other station? Halifax? Leeds? Wakefield? Anywhere?

Laverne thought back to his journey. There had been the train from Paris to the coast; then the ab...

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