The Inquisitor's Key (21 page)

“Sure,” I said. “Maybe we can figure out the connection.”

“Maybe we can even figure out where Stefan hid the bones,” she said. “Wouldn’t
that
be swell, if we could find them.”

“I’m not so sure, Miranda. Maybe those bones aren’t meant to be found. Maybe they’re like the Hope Diamond—bad luck for anybody who tries to possess them.”

“Oh, that’s bullshit,” she said.

“Stefan might disagree with you,” I pointed out.

“I don’t mean bullshit about the bones; I mean bullshit about the Hope Diamond. All that stuff about the curse—it’s bogus. All those lurid tales of murder and madness and suicide? Hype conjured up to boost the diamond’s mystique and jack up the market value.”

“Remind me never to ask you about Santa Claus,” I retorted. “But seriously,
none
of it’s true? Nobody who owned it met a bad end?”

“Well, okay, there’s King Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette; I guess the guillotine wasn’t the greatest way to go.” She
winced. “But it does beats crucifixion.”

“No kidding. So here’s the thing I don’t get. I thought I had the medieval mystery all figured out: This fourteenth-century monk, Meister Eckhart, pisses off people high in the theocracy. He’s attracting a big following, the people love him, and the ruling priestly class feels threatened, so he’s put to death. Sound familiar? Remind you of anybody else? Anybody from, oh, say, the first century?”

“There might be a parallel or three,” she conceded.

“And somehow this painter, Simone Martini, sees Eckhart’s body,” I pressed on. “And
he
sees the parallels to Christ, so he creates this image, this pseudo burial shroud. Maybe he’s moved by what he sees, or maybe he’s just greedy, just cashing in on the trade in relics. Either way, the theory works. It fits the facts—or it
did
until the damn C-14 test said the bones are two thousand years old.”

She studied my face. “Let me get this straight. You’re disappointed about that?”

“Confused,” I said. “Frustrated, I guess.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know. I liked the theory. Liked the story I was spinning.”

She frowned. “Liked it better than the possibility that they really
are
the bones of Jesus?” I pondered that, and while I was pondering, she pounced. “I don’t believe this. You’re
jealous,
aren’t you?”

I drew back; it felt almost as if she’d slapped me. “What on earth do you mean? Jealous of who?”

“Jealous of
Stefan
. You’re afraid that he was right after all—that he really did make the greatest find ever.” She shook her head, the disappointment in her eyes unmistakable. “He’s dead, Dr. B; you’re alive. You’ve got no reason to envy Stefan, and no need to be petty. If those
are
the bones of Christ, so what? It
doesn’t make you any less, and it doesn’t make Stefan any
more
. It’s pretty clear he was up to no good. But just think—what if he was up to no good with the actual, for-real bones of Jesus Christ? How totally amazing! Can’t you
see
that?”

My mind reeled and raced, seeking how best to defend myself. Then, almost as clearly as if they’d been spoken aloud, I heard the words of Meister Eckhart:
Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure.
But what would that mean, what would that be? What
would
I do, if I were my best self right now? I was so surprised at the answer that I laughed out loud. “Thank you,” I said. Her eyes narrowed, and I saw her bracing for the next salvo of sarcasm. “No, I mean it. Thank you. You’re absolutely right.” Was this really me talking? “I cared more about my pet theory than about the truth. That’s wrong—one of the cardinal sins in science. And yeah, I probably wanted to look smarter than Stefan, be righter than Stefan.”

“Why?”

“Dunno. Maybe I wanted a little sip of schadenfreude. Maybe I was desperate to impress you.”

She shook her head again, but this time, as she did, she began to smile. “Sometimes, for such a smart, impressive guy, you can be
so
dumb,” she said. “But hey, that was good work you did just then.”

I took a deep breath, blew it out. “So. Let’s rethink this. If the bones really
are
first century, and they’re linked to the Shroud, does that mean the Shroud’s authentic after all? Was the carbon dating of the Shroud botched?”

“What, three separate labs all got it wrong, and all by thirteen hundred years? No way.”

“What about the invisible-patch theory, then? You think maybe the labs tested fabric from an invisible medieval patch?”

“Give me a break; the Shroudies are
so
grasping at straws there. Besides, I think Emily Craig’s right about the image. I
think it was created by a terrific artist in the Middle Ages using that dust-transfer technique she described. It’s simple, and it’s credible. And that pseudoshroud she did of her friend was pretty damn convincing. Emily’s no Giotto or Simone Martini, but she proved her point.”

“So, circling back to your snuff-film theory,” I said. “How do you reconcile that with the idea that the bones are thirteen centuries older than the Shroud?”

“I don’t. I can’t.” She shrugged. “But interesting symmetry, in an ironic way, don’t you think? If the Shroud of Turin’s a medieval fake, but the bones from the Palace of the Popes are the real deal?” Suddenly she grinned. “Hey, try this one. What if the Shroud’s not the world’s first snuff film but the world’s first forensic facial reconstruction? What if your guy Martini saw the bones of Jesus and decided to put the flesh back on them? Maybe Master Simone was a thirteenth-century version of your NCMEC pal, Joe Mullins?”

My phone warbled, echoing loudly in the stairwell. The last call I’d gotten at the library had been the TBI agent’s bad news about Rocky Stone, so I was already gun-shy; when I recognized Descartes’s number on the display, I felt a tightening in my stomach. “Inspector?”

“Oui, Docteur.”

“Does this mean the fish are biting? Has something come in on the fax machine at Lumani?”

“Ah,
non,
not yet. That is not why I am calling you. This is something else.”

I felt my body relax, and only then did I realize how tightly I’d tensed when I saw who was calling. “What is it?”

“Where are you? Something interesting has just turned up.”

“Again? This is a big day for interesting finds. Miranda and I are at the library.”

“I am at Beauvoir’s apartment. Not far away. I can be at the
library in five minutes.”

“Would it be easier if I came to the apartment?”

“It’s probably better if you don’t—one of the fish might be watching. It’s okay if he sees us questioning you. But it’s not good if it looks like you’re part of our team.”

“I understand, Inspector. I’ll see you here.”

“Meet me in the library courtyard. Without mademoiselle. Oh, and Docteur? Don’t look happy to see me.” Only after he hung up did I realize what he meant: One of the fish might be watching.

THERE WERE NO PARKING PLACES BESIDE THE LIBRARY
, but Descartes didn’t let that stop him. He pulled his car—a white Police Nationale sedan with lights and markings—onto the narrow sidewalk, practically scraping the passenger side against the wall of the adjoining building. It was the parking technique of choice—or necessity—in many of Avignon’s narrow streets.

I’d been waiting for him on a bench in the library’s courtyard. When he approached, I stood; I was about to stretch out my hand when I remembered his sign-off, so instead of a handshake, I offered him a scowl. “What do you want now, Inspector?” He raised his eyebrows, as if to tell me I’d gone a bit overboard, so I backed off. “What’s up?”

“This arrived at Beauvoir’s apartment a little while ago,” he said in a voice I felt sure could not be overheard. “Take a look.” He handed me a padded FedEx envelope. The lettering on the airbill was faint and smudged; it was easy to tell that it had come from the United States but hard to tell much more than that. Finally I deciphered “Miami,” and then—above that—two smeared words that looked like “Be Anal”: words, I realized with a start, that were probably “Beta Analytic.” The envelope was almost flat, but not quite, and I gave it an exploratory squeeze.
Through the envelope’s built-in padding, I felt something small and hard, like a pebble. Opening the envelope, I found, as the size and shape had suggested I would, a human tooth—a canine—its ancient enamel a dull grayish brown.

“I thought the carbon-14 testing would destroy the sample,” Descartes said. “How can they send the whole tooth back?”

“Apparently they only used one of the teeth. We sent two,” I said. I tipped the tooth out of the Ziploc bag and into my palm. “A molar, and this canine.” I held it up for him to see, and suddenly an electric jolt shot through me. “My God,” I breathed. “
Not
this canine.”

“What do you mean?” Descartes leaned closer to inspect the tooth.

“This isn’t the canine we sent.” I raised my palm closer to his face. “At least, it’s not the canine that I pulled from the skull.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because when I pulled the tooth, it broke. The root snapped off in the jaw. Look—this one’s perfect.”

He plucked the tooth from my hand gently, as if it were a gem, or a ripe raspberry he didn’t want to bruise. Holding it between thumb and forefinger, he turned it, scrutinizing it from every angle. “You are sure of this?”

“Absolutely.”

“You think there is some mistake at this laboratory? A mix-up?”

“No,” I said slowly, an idea dawning in my mind. An idea whose brilliance was matched only by its wickedness. “I think Stefan swapped the samples,” I said. “I think he traded the teeth I pulled for teeth from another skull. A skull he
knew
was two thousand years old.”

“But how is this possible? Where would he get such teeth?”

“Hell, he was an archaeologist,” I said. “He could have gotten them anywhere. A dig in Greece or the Middle East—a site he knew dated from the first century. The catacombs of Rome, where there are thousands and thousands of skeletons that age. Maybe even the Museum of Natural History in Paris; there’s a whole building there filled with fossils and bones.” I snapped my fingers. “I just remembered—the first night I was here, we were talking about C-14 dating. He mentioned something about Turkish goat bones from the first century. He might have teeth from that same site.”

“So he faked it?
Merde
, every case I get now involves a faker or a forger. Do you think he planned this
tout entièr
—the whole thing—a long time in advance?”

I opened my mouth to say yes, but I found myself shaking my head no. “No, actually I think it was a spur-of-the-moment idea,” I said. “I think he really did find the bones in the palace—the wall collapsed first, Stefan was called second. I think the only thing he faked was the C-14 test, once he found that ossuary. I think the inscription—the cross and the lamb—put the idea into his head.” A realization struck me: If Stefan had rigged the C-14 test, maybe the skeleton was medieval after all…and maybe the Shroud of Turin really was created in Avignon. “The skeleton Stefan found is significant,” I added. “But he wanted it to be the most important—and most valuable—skeleton in the world. Unfortunately, his plan worked too well, and it backfired on him.”

Descartes was staring off into space. I wasn’t sure he was following me, or even hearing me. “Inspector?”

“Excuse me for one minute, please.” He took out his cell phone and made a call. The only words I caught for sure were “
cherchez
” and “
appartement
.” Descartes listened a long while, then murmured, “
Ah, oui? C’est bon.
” When he hung up, his face was a mask, but his eyes were gleaming. “As you were talking, I remembered. In his apartment were some small glass jars containing bits of metal, pieces of pottery, small bones. And—this is what I called to ask them to look for just now—two teeth. A
dent de sagesse,
the tooth of wisdom”—he pointed at one of his third molars—“and a dogtooth, a canine, broken at the root,
exactement
as you describe.” He caught my gaze and held it. “Okay, I’m
leaving now. We should finish with a small fight.” He jabbed a finger in my chest. “You are not telling me everything, Docteur,” he said loudly. “I think you know where are these bones. I am watching you. And I can make things very bad for you if you give me a reason.”

He spun on his heel and walked toward the street. “Descartes,” I called after him. He stopped and looked back at me. “We saved your butts in World War Two,” I shouted. “If not for America, you’d be goose-stepping and eating sauerkraut.”

He resumed walking, and he raised both arms, his middle fingers extended. Unless it had a radically different meaning in France, the gesture needed no translation.

And the man claimed to be a lousy actor.

WHEN MIRANDA AND I LEFT THE LIBRARY AN HOUR
later, we persuaded Philippe to let us out a back door. We took a long, meandering way back to her hotel, detouring through the Rue des Teinturiers—the street of the tinters, the dyers. For centuries this was Avignon’s textile district, where the wools and silks for tapestries, vestments, courtiers’ cloaks, and ladies’ gowns took on hues of red, orange, gold, green, blue, violet, indigo. A small canal paralleled the street, and the buildings lining that side all had small bridges leading to their entrances. A smattering of ancient waterwheels, some still turning, offered picturesque reminders of the importance of waterpower to medieval industries. Miranda stopped to snap a waterwheel photo with her iPhone, then climbed the steps onto the small bridge beside it. Leaning on the stone balustrade, she peered down at the water. “Fancy a dip?” I called.

She shook her head. “Remember what Stefan said about
the pollution in the Rhône? This looks a lot worse. The water’s opaque.”

“Urban runoff,” I said. “Brake fluid, mop water, dog crap—not great for the water quality.”

“Imagine, though, what this must have looked like in 1350. If all these buildings were dyers’ shops? This water probably changed color every time somebody emptied a dye vat. Wouldn’t that be fun? The canal running fuchsia one minute, burnt orange the next? Like something out of
The Wizard of Oz
.”

“That’s a pretty image,” I said. “And Avignon did play the part of the Emerald City for most of a century.”

“We’re not in Kansas anymore, that’s for sure.”

A few blocks later, we wandered past the historic marker that mentioned the poet Petrarch and his unrequited love, Laura. Pointing it out to Miranda, I asked, “Do you know their story?”

“Petrarch and Laura? A little. He saw her at church and fell instantly in love. But it was doomed—she was married to someone else, I think—so he spent the rest of his life worshiping her from afar.”

“They were never together?”

“Only in his dreams. Well, and his poems.”

“DO YOU KNOW THE STORY OF PETRARCH?” ELISABETH
and Jean looked up from their wineglasses and nodded in unison.

I’d dropped Miranda at her hotel after an early dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant near the clock tower—couscous, grape leaves, hummus, and eggplant; not my favorite fare, but Miranda liked it. The last of the daylight was fading as I entered the sanctuary of Lumani’s garden, and Elisabeth and Jean were sharing a bottle of red wine. A candle burned on the small table between them, and the wine in their glasses glowed like liquid rubies.

“Petrarch,
oui,
” she exclaimed. “A famous poet
pastoral
.”

“Pastoral? Like a pastor, a priest?”

Her brow furrowed, then brightened. “Ah,
non
. Like sheeps. Shepherds and maidens. Petrarch loved the countryside.”

“And Laura? What do you know about his lady love?”

“She was very young,” said Jean, “and very beautiful. Almost as beautiful as Elisabeth.” She reached out and laid a hand on his cheek. “She was married to a French nobleman. Petrarch loved her, but could not have her.”

“
Une tragédie,
” said Elisabeth. “For him. But very lucky for us. He wrote many poems about her. He invented the sonnet, the love poem, just for her.” She pursed her lips, thinking, then held up a finger. “
Ah!
Wait here. I will come back.” She hurried across the courtyard to their house; a moment later she returned, holding a small book aloft as if it were a prize. “I have a book of Petrarch’s sonnets. A gift from Jean years ago.” She leaned down and kissed the top of his balding head—a simple gesture that spoke volumes about the easy, entwined intimacy of their lives.

She flipped pages in the book; some, I noticed, were dog-eared, including the page where she stopped. “Listen. This is the poem he wrote when Laura died. He had loved her for twenty years by this time. He wrote in Italian; this is in French, which I will try to put into English for you—sorry if the translation is not good.” She scanned the page, mentally trying out a word here, a phrase there, then held up a hand theatrically and began to read.

She stopped, then wiped a tear from each eye. “Such sweetness, and such sadness.”

“You say he loved her for twenty years?”

“More than that. He loved her for twenty years while she was alive. But then she died, during the Black Death. Still he loved her, after she died. He kept loving her, and writing about her, for the rest of his life—twenty-five, thirty more years.”

“But he never got to be with her?”

“
Non,
never. She was married. She refused all his advances. We don’t even know if they ever talked together.”

“That seems foolish,” I said. “He wasted his life sighing for a woman he could never have instead of looking for a love that he
could
have.” I gestured at the two of them. “Like you and Jean.”

“But he was pledged to the church,” she pointed out. “He was not supposed to have
any
woman.”

“He was doubly foolish, then, to obsess about her for his whole life.”

She gave me an odd look then—a look both critical and pitying. “Ah,
monsieur scientifique
—does your heart always obey the orders of your head? Have you never been foolish in the thing you wanted or the person you loved? Have you never loved unwisely, never grieved too much for someone you lost?”

Her question blindsided me. I felt light-headed and reached out to steady myself on the trellis beside me. Years before, when my wife, Kathleen, died of cancer, I’d retreated from people for two years, burying myself in my work. Then, just as I felt myself beginning to come alive again—just as I started falling in love with Jess Carter, a beautiful medical examiner from Chattanooga—Jess was killed. Then there was Isabella, with whom I’d had a brief romantic encounter, and who’d died in Japan when
the tsunami struck the coast where she was staying. And now? Now I was struggling with my feelings for Miranda, a young woman who, because of her age and position, should be as off-limits to me as Laura was to Petrarch.

Elisabeth reached out a hand and laid it on my arm. “I spoke too strongly,” she said. “I think I have reminded you of something painful. I am sorry. Please forgive me.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s all right. It’s my fault. What do I know about what’s foolish and what’s wise, or what’s the best way to cope with pain? When I’m in pain, I study a skeleton. When Petrarch is in pain, he writes a poem. Most people prefer his way to mine. And who can blame them?” I gave her a rueful smile; she returned it with one of warmth and kindness.

“You find poems and stories in the bones,” she said, and Jean nodded. “Good night.” She gave my cheek a quick kiss, took her husband’s arm, and walked with him across the courtyard into the golden light spilling from the windows of their home.

I wondered if it was too late in life to take up writing sonnets.