House of Corruption (22 page)

Yet the further he traveled, the worse he felt.

I do not believe in coincidence.

He had first encountered Doctor Stronheim at the University of Vienna, a prominent biology and philosophy instructor at the time, back in the day when Savoy’s family lived in Berne and still bore the ancestral name
Soloveichik
. Ernst proved a man of keen intellect and reason, but maintained enough of a rebellious curiosity to expand his thinking beyond the narrow-mindedness of academia. From the very start, the two men got along famously. In time, Stronheim guided and supported him, encouraged him to follow any path he wished to take.

Savoy saw no such support from his own father.
You betray your name and your people and your history
, his father had said, soon after the family’s arrival in London. Artémius Soloveichik had announced he would become Artémius Savoy and, even worse, baptized in the Catholic Church.
You betray God himself, clamoring after their false messiah
.

Years later, Savoy wondered if guilt and fear contributed to his decision. Jews were objects of derision, even in progressive London, when many men and women changed their names to avoid the anti-Semitism boiling beneath the surface. Following his father’s angry claims there came more words, raised voices, his mother weeping. It ended when Savoy left his family’s house vowing never to return.

He did not see his father again until he watched his coffin lowered into the ground. Even then, he watched from a distance.

Blazes, but he missed the old man.

Why think of his father now?

Within an hour he arrived upon a high ridge overlooking the sea; at the end of a long driveway stood a gabled cottage. Weeds choked the front lawn, the worn fence leaning too far, the front steps strewn with drifts of sand. He had never seen the place looking so shabby. Ernst usually employed a housekeeper to maintain the house when he was away. When Savoy knocked, the front door pushed inward.

“Ernst?”

He walked inside, cautiously. It was the smell that struck him—bitter, like spilled milk. Dust frosted the chairs and sofas of the parlor, cobwebs stretching between the bedposts in the master bedroom. Flies flitted about in the kitchen above a tin of rotten herring, the floor scattered with rat pellets and tiny bones.

He entered Ernst’s study. Books and papers, textbooks and tomes and first-edition books—dumped from the many bookshelves, shredded, torn apart, the floor ankle-deep in ruined papers and broken artifacts. A statue of the Egyptian god Horus, dated from the fifth dynasty, had been bludgeoned against the wall and beheaded. Savoy rushed to the hearth in horror, discovering in the ashes the charred remains of a 500-year old hand-lettered Latin page from the Book of Psalms.

He sat down in Ernst’s great leather chair, overwhelmed. If this was the work of thieves, then why the vandalism? Professor Stronheim had the dubious habit of examining—and often discrediting—many religious artifacts around the world. His stern rebuttal against a piece of the true cross, found at the Santo Toribio de Liébana monastery, led to many critics accusing him of blasphemy. Could one of them have done this?

You don’t believe that, do you
?

Savoy left the study and descended into the basement, down where Ernst kept more fragile manuscripts in the cool, consistent dark. Lighting a lantern he discovered even more bookshelves broken, cast down, their contents as ruined as the rest. A larger shape, heaped against one bookshelf, caught his attention.

A rotten corpse lay on the floor.

It was the remains of an old woman, long dead. He guessed it was the housekeeper. Her neck had been snapped rudely to one side, her mouth agape with a surprised expression. Savoy pressed his sleeve against his nose—he had discovered the source of the stink—feeling as if a lending room of the Library of Alexandria had been torn apart and the librarian found dead.

For what purpose? Why destroy Ernst’s prized collection, kill an innocent old woman and leave her to rot? To discover Reynard’s whereabouts?

No, he reasoned. It was more than that.

“What did she say?” he said to himself. He considered the previous night, of Kiria’s testimony of the horrors aboard the
Kalabakang
. “‘...As if a deliberate malice had been manifested upon them.’”

It was late afternoon when Savoy arrived back at Cassis Station, only to find a telegram waiting at the ticket office:

NOTRE DAME DE LA GARDE STOP MEET THERE NOW GRANT

He went immediately to the basilica the moment his train arrived in Marseille. By the time he arrived, the church grounds were already swarming with uniformed officers. Police carts littered the drive. An ambulance with four horses waited on the far side of the yard, and beside it a man in a white coat conversed with two policemen. Another officer guided two mastiffs on taut ropes; the dogs sniffed and barked and tugged at their leashes as they made a slow and careful search along the grounds.

Savoy found Grant at the outer rim of the organized chaos, away from a modest crowd of people trying to catch a glimpse, sitting on a stone bench. Grant handed him a rolled up newspaper, the evening edition of
La Provence
:

Expatriate sought in brutal slaying of woman and child
.

Savoy read the article, then read it again. He read it a third time. Police had arrived at the high tower, led by a tip from a confidential source. They discovered Reynard with a dead girl at his feet, blood on his clothing, and the remains of a headless woman splattered near the basilica’s foundation. Police had heard the woman scream as she fell. Reynard allegedly assaulted two officers and had been shot trying to escape across the roof. He had fled into the church’s lower cellars, where investigators were scouring the scene.

Even worse, as Savoy’s stomach turned to ice, Reynard had been named as the likely suspect—his description confirmed by Sergeant Etienne Pourry. 

Savoy rubbed between his eyes. “Have the police spoken to you?”

“Yes,” Grant said. “Miss Carlovec and I both.”

“Where is she now?”

“Having supper.” He lowered his voice. “She didn’t tell them everything. She and Mister LaCroix had a quarrel, ‘round midnight. Soon after he left the hotel.”

“Did she tell the police?”

“Not that I know.”

Savoy stood watching, not seeing much of anything. Every fiber wanted to see the crime scene for himself, to examine every bit of evidence that might exonerate Reynard. He knew the author of this scandal. Thinking about her, or him—
what shroud might it wear today?
— filled him with dread. He would never forget that bodiless head and spine float through the Metairie darkness. Horrible.

First the
Kalabakang
, Stronheim’s ruined home and dead housekeeper, and now this tragedy. He felt the chess pieces as they moved inexorably around him.

23

Kiria sat eating supper, alone.

She tried to look and act older, more important, than she felt. She wore a khaki-colored dress with a puffy bodice and ankle-length skirt, her shoulders draped with a lacy shawl more appropriate for her grandmother, and for once her hair was tied up in a tight bun. She felt dowdy and unattractive, and maybe that was the point. She had nearly finished her humble repast—tea, cantaloupe, a croissant—at one of the outdoor tables in front of the
Café Jardin
.

Perhaps she was being foolish. Did the threat of another nightmare warrant such girlish behavior? Wasting time, eating slowly, burning away the hours? Sitting alone in a darkening city was no option. Returning to her hotel room, she told herself, did not mean she had to sleep. She could read a book or write a letter—something productive, instead of sitting at a lonely café feeling sorry for herself.

She had not seen Monsieur LaCroix all day. Mister Savoy had gone to visit a friend and Mister Grant…well, Mister Grant did whatever Mister Grant did. They all seemed focused on their own agendas so she decided to do the same, taking in a few sights, doing a little shopping, acting as if she had a purpose and that she had never, ever, seen those sights aboard the
Kalabakang
. She refused to look at a newspaper or even look at a
gendarme
so long as she was in Marseille, so disgusted she was at the experience the day before.

She paid her bill and left, walking slowly along the sidewalk. She liked the cold wind biting on her face, how it made her earlobes numb and cheeks tingle. The sensation made her feel more alive, if only to keep awake, to keep from dreaming.

A young woman approached from the opposite direction. She was no older than nineteen, dressed in plain clothes and a ragged overcoat. She held a baby against her chest, a thin cotton blanket draped over its little body. When the wind came stronger the mother leaned in and held the baby closer. Kiria felt a sudden urge to hold the child, smell it, to feel its skin against her neck. The woman glanced but did not meet her eye. Poor women never looked her in the eye.

“Excuse me,” Kiria said in French. “It is very cold.”

The woman slowed. “
Oui, madame
.”

Kiria removed her lacy shawl. “Take this.”

“Oh no,
madame
. I’ve nothing t’pay you.”

“A gift,” Kiria lifted the shawl. It smelled like her perfume.

“I’m not a beggar,” she said.

Kiria smiled. “Your baby is so precious, I imagine he could use it.”

“She.”

“Even better.”

The young mother’s expression softened. She took the shawl from Kiria’s hands, draping it over her baby and off her shoulder, smoothing her hand around the contour of the baby’s back.

“God bless you,” she said.

***

Savoy and Grant waited until dark.

It took twenty minutes of skirting walls and skulking up stairs, but in time they managed to slip undetected across the esplanade. The basilica’s front doors were, for the moment, left unlocked for those watchmen on patrol; Savoy led Grant inside and they passed through the dark chapel. Twice they ducked as heavy footsteps approached and the beam of a flashlight flew past.

They found steps descending into the lower crypt. A scattering of votive candles still burned here now, flickering, their meager light leaving the arched chamber heavily shrouded. Savoy took the largest candle and examined the room. They saw chalk markings where investigators had made notes along the floor: blood droplets here, torn fabric there, traces of hair and dead skin.

Savoy’s heart felt like an iron stone.

It was too soon. It had to be.

“He came here on his own volition,” he said, “or he was compelled. He had an urgent reason to ascend the tower. He encountered the Lady, the police arrived, and Reynard fled to this point. Here, the trail goes cold.”

He stopped beside a large metal grate. “This grate’s been moved.”

“Down there?”

“Possibly.”

“They would have found him.”

Savoy set down the candle and, with effort, pulled the grate from its place. “I doubt they would assume anyone foolish enough to do so…but then, they have never met Reynard.”

At his silent request, Grant removed a small, flickering votive and tossed it into the shaft. It fell ten feet to land on a hard-packed, rocky floor.

“As I suspected,” Savoy said. “The foundation of this church is much older than the building. Ancient sewers crisscross beneath the old city, linking three of the oldest churches and down to the sea. It stands to reason the only exit, save traipsing out the front doors, was down here.” He knelt and sat at the shaft’s edge, dangling his feet into the hole.

“Seems a stretch,” Grant said.

“Shall we see for ourselves?”

“You must be joking.”

Savoy gave him a blank stare. “You keep saying that.”

They dropped into a musty passage of fitted stone, black as pitch, leading straight and deep below the church.

The tunnel to their left, Savoy guessed, led north. Reynard knew the city’s general plan; the best course would to go right and head seaward. The way was gentle but sloped gradually lower with each step. Occasionally another passage emerged but Savoy kept them straight. Once he paused, cupping the light, and examined the floor. The stone floor revealed no footprints. A trickle of fetid water flowed in the same direction they walked, so they were indeed heading toward the sea. At this rate, Reynard would have his choice of at least two of the churches’ basements and multiple exits to the Mediterranean shore.

The passageway turned and wove in no discernable direction, sometimes becoming so narrow they had to walk single file. Above their heads stretched many cobwebs and pale, spidery roots, the air thick and dry, but when Savoy inhaled a faint, coppery aftertaste coated his tongue.

A noise echoed—they stopped.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Grant whispered.

Another sound came, closer, like breaking sticks.

They emerged into a chamber of fitted stone, the walls dripping with moisture. Three exits led straight, left and right. Savoy lowered the candle; dozens of oily rats scattered at their feet, carpeting the floor, and dozens more squirmed from countless nests piled along the walls. Heaps of earth and straw lay in unclean hillocks, carpeted with pellets and little bones, the air stinking of urine and sewage and the dusty stink of vermin.

Rats coalesced into a wave, rushing toward them. One rat became three, and three became a dozen, and the dozen became a hundred. The men moved aside, disgusted, as the host of vermin passed over their feet, scrambling and pushing into the tunnel where they had come. One large rat crawled on Grant’s boot and started up his leg. He kicked and retreated into the center of the chamber.

Savoy coughed, impulsively brought his arm to his mouth to ward aside the revulsion. The candle dropped, bounced, and died.

Darkness overwhelmed them. Grant sucked in a breath.

Savoy bent down and reached around his feet, recoiling when oily shapes slid past his hands. He commanded himself to stay calm. He reached into the pocket of his coat and rummaged, finding his matchbook, his quivering hands flexing to strike another match, another match—just strike another match and,
yes, that’s it
, relight the candle and—