The Sixth Key (24 page)

‘La Dame, it’s me! I don’t have much time and
I can’t talk openly,’ Rahn whispered into the phone in the hall of the
presbytery while Eva kept the young priest distracted in conversation in the
sitting room.

‘Rahn!’ La Dame sounded excited. ‘Burn my
beard! Listen, you won’t believe what I’ve found out about Jean-Louis Verger!
Simply the most incredulous and odd things!’

‘What?’

‘Apparently he was an interdicted priest. Do
you know what that means?’

‘No.’

‘He was under investigation by the
Inquisition. That was back in 1856, but here’s the clincher: a year later he
murdered the Archbishop of Paris, one Marie Auguste Dominique Sibur, in broad
daylight!’

‘What?’

‘Yes indeed! According to reports it was the
only murder of its kind. It looks like Verger was an opponent of the doctrine
of the Immaculate Conception and also wanted to put an end to celibacy for the
clergy – a cause any man in his right mind can understand. But as you
might guess it did not go down too well with his peers. The story goes that on
the first afternoon of the novena of Saint Genevieve in January 1857, he
entered a church while it was full of worshippers, and boldly walked up to the
archbishop to thrust a rather long knife into his gut, crying out “Down with
the goddesses!” He was found guilty, of course, but here’s the important point
– the verdict was pronounced on the seventeenth of January.’

‘The seventeenth of January?’

‘Odd, isn’t it? That’s the same day as the
feast day of Saint Sulpice.’

‘I don’t know what you’re getting at, La
Dame.’

‘Well isn’t that the same date that’s on the
notebook of that Monti fellow?’

‘Of course! Yes!’ Rahn remembered.

‘Well, at any rate he was sentenced to death
but right to the end he was convinced that Napoleon was going to pardon him. I
guess he was convinced that the sun rises in the west too. Now, here’s another
interesting thing: have you heard of Éliphas Lévi; they called him the Magus?’

‘Yes, I know of him.’

Deodat had hidden Cros’s list of priests in a
book written by Éliphas Lévi.

‘Well, Verger met with him a year before he
killed the Archbishop of Paris.’

‘What?’

‘Yes, he went to see Lévi looking for –
wait for it, Rahn, are you ready? A grimoire. Yes! He wanted to conduct a magic
ritual apparently, and needed one.’

‘Don’t tell me . . .’

‘I think you’ve guessed it. He was looking for
The Grimoire of Pope Honorius III – Le Serpent Rouge!’

Rahn was speechless.

‘Lévi couldn’t help him but Verger didn’t give
up. He must have continued asking around because he found one at a bookseller
in Paris.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Well, Lévi wrote a book called The Key of the
Mysteries, in which the entire affair is discussed. In that book he says he
discovered, long after Verger was executed, that the man had found and obtained
a copy of the grimoire from an antiquarian bookseller that Lévi knew.
Interestingly, the grimoire was never seen after Verger was executed, it simply
disappeared. Lévi assumed that Verger must have used the grimoire to conjure
demons of protection so that he could do the dastardly deed of killing the
archbishop. But there’s another possibility. He may have been afraid for his life.
At his trial, Verger stated that the Inquisition was out to destroy him because
of something that he had in his possession and that certain people, whom he
could name, were responsible for the machinations against him. Could the Church
have been after that grimoire, Rahn?’

‘Oh, this is astounding, La Dame!’

‘And it gets more astounding. You know that
society you asked about, the Society for the Reparation of Souls? Well,
apparently Verger belonged to them . . . some refer to them as the penitents.’

‘What?’ Rahn caught his breath. ‘This is just
too fantastic to be true!’

‘Yes. They were a nasty lot, dabbled in the
cult of the dead
– you know, graveyard services, masses for
the dead, that sort of thing. Their cry was “Penitence, Penitence!” It was an order
founded by a man called Joseph-Antoine Boullan, apparently a brilliant
theologian. I don’t know many details except to say that Boullan began to
experiment with new methods of exorcising demons. He prepared concoctions out
of Eucharistic wafers mixed with excrement and urine.’

Rahn paused: The consecrated wafers in the
tabernacle . . . the Sign of the Lamb . . . so Cros had been protecting the
wafers from black magic!

‘It’s also rumoured that Boullan made a nun
pregnant and that she subsequently gave birth to a child in secret, a child
Boullan is said to have summarily sacrificed on the high altar.’

Rahn gasped. ‘A priest! Sacrificing his own
child on an altar!’

‘Yes, diabolical, isn’t it? Anyway, the child
was never found, nor was any incriminating evidence, but the black masses
continued. To cut a long story short, Boullan was publicly disavowed during an
ecclesiastical trial but His Holiness Pope Pius eventually pardoned him –
after which he simply started a new order and continued as before.’

Rahn thought this through, touching the lumps
on his head as if a little delicate prodding might make his thinking clearer.
‘Saunière was involved with this order of penitents.’

‘Who is Saunière?’

‘Never mind. It looks like Monti, Crowley, the
Church, the Freemasons, Lévi – everyone was after this grimoire.’

‘Perhaps it would be easier, Rahn, if you just
told me who wasn’t after it!’

‘Good work, La Dame. Listen, why don’t you
take a room in a little hotel outside Paris and lay low; the bill’s on me
– and keep your head down.’

‘What for? What’s going on?’

‘Look, I didn’t want to tell you –
something terrible has happened. Deodat was kidnapped early this morning, I
think . . . at least I hope, because he has just disappeared, his house was
ransacked and a man tried to kill me but someone killed him before he could
finish the job. This is becoming dangerous and I would feel better if I knew
you were somewhere out of the way.’

‘What? Are you joking? Someone tried to kill
you? This isn’t funny, Rahn!’

‘I wish I were joking, La Dame, but to put it
mildly, I’m deadly serious.’

‘Where are you?’

‘In a strange little backwater called
Rennes-le-Château.’

‘What are you doing there?’

‘This is Saunière’s village and I believe I’ll
get to the bottom of this tiresome thing soon. At least I hope so – for
Deodat’s sake, not to mention my own.’

The voice at the other end of the line was
nervous. ‘All right, I’ll take a room at the university, you know the number .
. . call me there in a couple of hours, by then I should have an answer for you
about that sign. You know what, Rahn? Seems like Cervantes was right after
all.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Hell must be paved with priests’ skulls!’

They made their way back to Madame Corfu’s
house, with the wind beating its fists into their faces, both of them grateful
to have a place to stay for the night. Rahn indulged in an overdue wash, a
shave and a change of clothes. Afterwards, he met Eva at Madame Corfu’s table
and he had to admit that she looked rather more than fetching.

For her part, Madame Corfu was dressed in her
best blue dress and fake pearls, and presided over the table, opposite her
sour-faced, unshaven and scruffily clad husband. The mood was sombre and they
ate in silence – a surprisingly tasty plate of mushrooms
à la Languedocienne
followed by a
cassoulet
washed down with a bottle of
Carignan. Afterwards the madame served a dessert cake made of wine and they
savoured it, while outside the wind whipped up a frenzy, thrashing the limbs of
the trees whose woody fingernails scratched at the shuttered windows.

The madame broke the silence. ‘This is the way
it is. Some days before it blows, it is calm just like you saw today. The air
is clear, dry as a stick, a dryness that makes the palms itch, and then from
nowhere – it comes! And you know, it stays for days. The noise of it is
so incessant it drives people mad, that’s why some call it Les Vent des Fous.
Around these parts, they call it the Devil’s Wind, but I call it the Wind of
Death because there is a legend that when the wind blows, someone will die,’
she said this, as if it pleased her immensely. ‘And if it storms . . . well.’
She left the rest open to their interpretation.

Monsieur Corfu grunted. The old woman who sat
opposite Rahn chewed her food with her gums, making the occasional sucking
sound and drooling over her chin.

‘I hear that you saw Madame Dénarnaud,
Saunière’s old housekeeper, this afternoon?’ the mistress broached. ‘Did she
tell you anything of interest?’

‘Not very much, I’m afraid,’ Rahn answered
evasively, rubbing a stain from his knife with a serviette.

‘That cagey old bird!’ She could hardly
contain the malice in her voice. ‘I thought as much.’

‘What does she have to be cagey about?’ Eva
asked, open faced, sweet.

She is
good at this
, Rahn observed.

‘Oh! There is much! Isn’t there, Marcel?’

‘Just gossip!’ Monsieur Corfu dismissed,
between spooning food into his mouth and chewing.

Madame Corfu ignored him and considered her
guests. There was a raised brow. ‘Did she tell you that she was the priest’s
lover? Of course she didn’t . . . but it’s true. She lived with him for years.
Everybody knows what they got up to, the two of them in that presbytery –
together!’

‘In the presbytery – didn’t he live in
the villa?’ Eva asked.

‘What? No, the villa was meant to be a home
for retired priests – his circle of friends.’

‘Who in particular?’ Rahn asked.

Madame Corfu regarded Rahn with a pregnant
smile, full of teeth and gossip. ‘Did the old woman mention the renovations to
the church?’

‘A little,’ Rahn said.

‘Did she say what the bell-ringer found?’

‘No.’

‘Well, he hated the renovations and fussed
like an old woman, tidying up after the workmen and telling them to be careful.
Anyway, apparently one night he was descending the stairs from the bell room
and found that one of the wooden pillars that held up the pulpit had been moved
a little and that he could see inside it. There was something hidden there.’

‘Madame Dénarnaud told us that Saunière found
something in a stone pillar under the altar,’ Rahn countered.

‘Oh yes, but that comes after,’ she said with
relish. ‘The bell-ringer found something in one of the wooden balusters, which
he handed over to Abbé Saunière. In any event, whatever it was it must have
made Saunière curious because he asked the bell-ringer to help him look around
the rest of the church – something about removing the altar and, as the
story goes, upon doing so they found bones and other things, perhaps coins
glinting in the hollow beneath the stones. Treasure? Who could say?’

‘But doesn’t the bell-ringer know what they
found?’ Rahn asked.

She leant forward. ‘He was immediately sent
away and told to lock the church doors behind him.’ She gave a significant nod
as if to say, you see?

‘All he found were Lourdes medallions,
completely worthless, woman!’ her husband pointed out, wiping his dripping chin
with his wrist. ‘You’re making a temple out of an outhouse!’

She straightened her back, smoothing down her
ample décolletage. ‘Well, Saunière may have said that what he found was
worthless . . . But if so why did he continue to dig?’ She looked down at her
nails. ‘Night after night.’ She stretched out her hand. ‘Knee-deep in the
graveyard, digging up graves, moving the headstones, grave robbing.’ She looked
at Rahn. ‘And it didn’t end until the mayor finally demanded that the Bishop of
Carcassonne do something to put a stop to him and that diabolical madame.’

‘Madame Dénarnaud was digging in the
graveyard?’ Eva asked.

Madame Corfu drank down her wine imperiously
and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. She held their eyes, a master of
suspense. Rahn had to prevent himself from smiling.

‘She did everything with him, if you know what
I mean! Except that she didn’t go with him when he travelled – and he did
a lot of travelling too! The word is, he didn’t understand what he had found
and took it to some trusted friends, men of learning: Abbé Gélis of Coustassa;
and Abbé Boudet of Rennes-les-Bains.’

Rahn sat up. If he was not mistaken, these
were both on Abbé Cros’s list!

The husband glared at his wife, and waving a
piece of bread at her, said, ‘Don’t go talking nonsense!’

Defiance shone in her eyes and she raised her
double chin and pursed her lips. ‘Shut up! I’ll speak as I please!’ She turned
now to her guests with a pleasant smile.‘Do you want to know what happened to
Abbé Antoine Gélis?’

Rahn felt a shiver at what her tone implied
and, just like in a horror film, at that very moment, the wind howled and shook
the shuttered windows, making the fire flap its arms in the hearth like a dying
man.

‘They found him on the Day of the Dead –
tomorrow it marks forty-one years. It happened in 1897.’ She leant her
corpulence over her plate and looked at her audience. ‘He never left the door
of the presbytery open and he only let people he knew into the house. So,
whoever it was that did it, knew him.’

The mother-in-law with no teeth burst into
silent tears and reached for a napkin to dry her eyes but this only made Madame
Corfu perversely determined to finish the story.

‘Whoever it was that did what?’ Eva asked,
those dark eyes staring from beneath that fringe. It was amazing to Rahn how
easily she moved from detached to vulnerable, from disinterested to full of
awe.

‘Whoever it was that killed him of course, my
dear! I know, because my aunt lives in Coustassa. She was a young woman when it
happened. Apparently, he was frightened by something and took to being a
hermit, refusing to leave his presbytery and barring the door to all.’

‘What was he afraid of?’ Rahn pushed aside his
plate.

‘For a long time,’ she continued, ‘he was
obsessed by something, he didn’t tell his family what it was but when they
found his diary they saw that he had written over and over in it about having
discovered something valuable. At any rate, on that fateful night someone broke
into the presbytery – it was somewhere around midnight, on the cusp
between All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. There was not a thing stolen, there
was even money in the house left undisturbed.’ She crossed her arms. ‘The
police said it was a mystery.’

‘How was he killed?’ the girl dared to ask.

Madame Corfu bent back that large head. She
had been waiting for that very question. She was poised and ready, sharpening
her words on the tip of her tongue before looking at them again with brilliant
eyes. ‘He was butchered with an axe!’

‘Good God!’ The words escaped from Eva
unbidden and she immediately put a hand to her mouth.

The old woman with no teeth sobbed into her
cake and the husband made a frown that would have withered a weed.

The madame smiled a red smudge and shrugged.
‘Well, some say it was a fire poker, but there was no murder weapon found.
Whatever the murderer used, it did the job and it made a big mess! Bang! Bang!
Bang!’ She thumped her closed fist three times on the table so suddenly and
with such vigour that it made every person jump. The old woman got up and took
herself out, crying.

Monsieur Corfu threw his hands up in the air.
‘I’ve had enough!’ he said, and hurled his napkin onto the table before leaving
the dining room.

The madame calmly watched her husband leave
the room. Rahn knew she would not stop now, not while she still had an
audience. ‘He was struck thirteen times in the back of the head!’ she continued
with a fiery eye. ‘There were bits of brain all over the stove and on the floor
– even on the walls! Apparently there was so much blood that the
gendarmes were slipping about. Anyway, the interesting thing is what they found.’

‘What did they find?’ Rahn took a breath in,
engrossed.

‘His slippers were placed next to his head,
his arms were crossed over his chest and one leg was bent under him. A tidy
fellow, whoever did it! And the only evidence he left was a packet of Tzar
cigarette papers beside the body. On the packet, the murderer wrote two words:
Viva Angelina,’ the madame ended, triumphantly.