‘How did you know which books to press?’
‘I watched the footman, Sir. He came in here when he thought we weren’t looking and fiddled with the catch. I think he was trying to lock it so that no one could inadvertently trigger the mechanism. At least that’s what he told me.’
‘Do you mean he was worried for our safety? That the door might spring back and strike one of us unexpectedly?’
‘That was most likely it, Sir.’
Calque smiled. If he had read the Countess’s character rightly, that footman was for the chop. It was always a good thing to have a disgruntled employee cannoning around. Valuable information could be gleaned. Backs might be stabbed.
Calque ducked through the entranceway. He straightened up inside the room, then gave a low, appreciative whistle.
A large rectangular table formed the centrepiece of the room. Thirteen chairs were collected around it. On the wall behind each chair was a coat of arms and a series of quarterings. Calque recognised some of them. But they were not those of the twelve Pairs de France one would have expected, given the tenor of his present company.
‘This room hasn’t been opened since my husband’s death. There is nothing in here of any interest to your people.’
Calque ran his hand across the table. ‘Dusted, though. Someone must have been in here a good deal more recently than your husband’s death.’
‘My footman. Of course. Keeping the room tidy would form part of his duties.’
‘As would locking the doors if strangers come around?’
The Countess looked away. Madame Mastigou tried to take hold of her hand but found herself brushed off.
‘Lavigny, I want these heraldic shields photographed.’
‘I would rather you didn’t do that, Captain. They have nothing whatsoever to do with your investigation.’
‘On the contrary, Madame. I believe they have everything to do with my investigation.’
‘This room is a private place, Captain. A club room. A place where people of like minds used to meet to discuss serious issues in discreet and conducive surroundings. As I said, the room has not been used since my husband’s death. Some of the families to whom these coats of arms belong may even be ignorant of their presence in this room. I would be grateful for that state of affairs to continue.’
‘I see no billiard table. No bar. It’s a funny type of club room. What’s this, for instance?’ Calque pointed to a chalice, locked inside its very own tantalus. ‘And these initials engraved on it? CM.’
The Countess looked as though she had been bitten by an adder.
‘Sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s a roll of parchment here. With seals on it. It’s heavy, too. It must have wooden rollers or something.’
Calque indicated that the parchment should be spread out on the table.
‘Please don’t touch that, Captain. It is very valuable.’
‘I have a search warrant, Madame. I may touch anything I please. I will endeavour not to smear it with my fingers however.’ Calque bent forwards and perused the document.
The Countess and Madame Mastigou stood frozen against the interior wall of the sanctum.
‘Lavigny. Would you kindly escort the Countess and Madame Mastigou out of the room. This may take some time. And fetch me a magnifying glass.’
75
The first thing Sabir did when Bouboul dropped him back at the Maset was to light the fire for comfort. The night was cold and he felt an indefinable frisson overtake his body as he glanced up the corridor towards the place where Macron’s body had lain. Shaking his head in disgust at his own susceptibilities, he began the search for candles.
The old house seemed to echo back his footfalls as he padded round the room – so much so that he found himself curiously unwilling to venture further up the corridor towards the kitchen. After a desultory five-minute search he was relieved to discover three candles still lying on the floor, where they had been overset by the eye-man’s use of the fire extinguisher, two nights before.
Lighting them and then seeing his shadow reflected around the room like a torchlit danse macabre, Sabir wondered, not for the first time, how he had ever allowed Yola to persuade him to come back and use the Maset? The rationale was certainly there – for Les Saintes-Maries remained tightly sealed by the police in their search for the eye-man, with egress relatively easy and ingress more controlled.
But since he had last been here the Maset seemed to have transformed itself into a place of doom. Sabir now felt distinctly uncomfortable in using the location of someone’s brutal murder for what he understood might well turn out to be a flippant journey up a no-through-road. In fact it brought home to him, yet again, just how differently the Manouche viewed death when compared to the rather sentimental, post-Victorian way he still viewed it himself.
It was all very well for him to sit here and fantasise about the nature of the prophecies – in reality there was a fair chance that the bamboo tube didn’t even contain them and would instead prove full of dust. What if the weevils had got in? Four hundred and fifty years was a long time for anything to survive, much less parchment.
He sat down on the sofa. After a moment he straightened up the French dictionary which he had brought with him until its edges accorded with the border of the table. Then he lined up his pen and paper beside the dictionary. Bouboul had loaned him a large-faced, gaudy watch and Sabir now laid this on to the table next to the other accoutrements. The familiar movements provided him with some measure of comfort.
He glanced back over his shoulder towards the corridor. The fire was burning well by this time and he began to feel a little more secure in his isolation. Yola would find the prophecies if anyone could. When she arrived at the Maset, he would take the prophecies, from her and send her straight back to Les Saintes-Maries with Reszo. He was fine alone here. He would have the rest of the night in which to translate and copy the prophecies. From that moment on he would not let them out of his sight.
Come morning, he would send the originals by courier to his publisher in New York. Then he would work on the copies until he had milked out their full meaning. With the prophecies skilfully interleaved with the story of their discovery, he would have a sure-fire bestseller on his hands. It would easily bring in enough to make them all rich. Alexi could marry Yola and end up Bulibasha and Sabir could write his own ticket.
Twenty more minutes. It couldn’t take longer than that. Then he would have one of the great untold secrets of the world within his grasp.
There was a crash from upstairs. Then silence.
Sabir sprang to his feet. The hairs on the back of his neck stood erect, like the spine fur of a dog. Holy heck, what had that been? He stood listening but there was only silence. Then, in the distance, he heard the approaching drone of a car.
With a final, furtive glance over his shoulder, Sabir hurried outside. It had probably only been a cupboard door falling open. Or maybe the police had moved something – a mosquito screen, perhaps? – and the wretched thing had stood there, teetering, until a gust of wind had finally finished off the job and blown it over. Perhaps the noise had even come from outside? From the roof, maybe?
He glanced up at the house as he stood waiting for the Audi to make its way up the track towards him. Hell. And now here was another thing – he’d have to come to a reckoning sooner or later with his friend John Tone about the theft of his car.
Sabir squinted into the headlights. Yes, there was Yola’s outline in the passenger seat. And that of Bouboul’s nephew in the driving seat beside her. Alexi was safely tucked up in his bed back in Les Saintes-Maries, with Sabir next door, in the guest bunk. Or at least that was what Sergeant Spola had been persuaded to think.
Sabir walked towards the car. He could feel the night wind pick at his hair. He motioned downwards with his hands, indicating that Reszo should douse the lights. As far as he knew, there were still policemen dotted all around the marshes and he didn’t want to draw anyone’s attention back to the Maset.
‘Do you have them?’
Yola felt inside her coat. Her face looked small and vulnerable in the light of Sabir’s torch. She handed Sabir the bamboo tube. Then she glanced towards the house and shivered.
‘Did you have any trouble?’
‘Two policemen. They were using the cabane for shelter. They nearly found me. But they were called away at the last moment.’
‘Called away?’
‘I overheard one of them talking on his cellphone. Captain Calque knows where the eye-man has escaped to. It is somewhere over towards St-Tropez. All the police are going there now. They aren’t interested in here any longer.’
‘Thank God for that.’
‘Do you want me to come in with you?’
‘No. I have the fire going. And some candles. I’ll be all right.’
‘Bouboul will collect you just before dawn. Are you sure you don’t want to come back with us now?’
‘Too dangerous. Sergeant Spola might smell a rat. He’s not as stupid as he looks.’
‘Yes he is.’
Sabir laughed.
Yola glanced once more towards the house. Then she climbed back inside the car. ‘I don’t like this place. It was wrong of me to suggest it as a rendezvous.’
‘Where else could we have used? This is by far the most convenient.’
‘I suppose so.’ She raised her hand uncertainly. ‘Are you sure you won’t change your mind?’
Sabir shook his head.
Reszo eased the car back down the track. When he was near the road he switched the lights back on.
Sabir watched their glow as it disappeared over the horizon. Then he turned back towards the house.
76
Captain Calque leaned back in his chair. The document laid out before him made no earthly sense. It purported to have been written on the express instructions of King Louis IX of France – and it was, indeed, dated 1228, two years after Louis had ascended to the throne, aged eleven. Which made him just thirteen or fourteen years old at the time he was credited with its conception. The seals, however, were definitely those of Saint Louis himself and of his mother, Blanche of Castile; in those days, trying to fake such a thing as a royal seal would have seen you hung, drawn and quartered, with your ashes used for soap.
Three other signatures were appended beneath those of the King and his mother: Jean de Joinville, the King’s counsellor (and, alongside Villehardouin and Froissart, one of France’s greatest early historians); Geoffrey of Beaulieu, the King’s confessor; and William of Chartres, the King’s chaplain. Calque shook his head. He had studied de Joinville’s Histoire de Saint Louis at university and he knew for a fact that de Joinville would have been no more than four years old in 1228 – the others, well, it wouldn’t take him long to find out their ages. But it suggested that the document – which appeared to grant a charter and cognisance to an association called the Corpus Maleficus – had been, in some sense at least, post-dated.
It was at that point that Calque remembered the chalice locked inside the tantalus, with its initials of CM. The coincidence, particularly in this hidden room, with its revocations of secrets, plots and cabals, struck him as an unlikely one. He glanced again at the document in front of him.
Grunting with concentration, he turned the document over and scrutinised its reverse side through the magnifying glass. Yes. Just as he’d suspected. There was the faint imprint of writing on the back. Backwards writing. The sort a left-hander might engineer if called upon to write in the manner of an Arab – that is to say from right to left. Calque knew that in medieval times the left side was considered the side of the Devil. Sinister in connotation as well as in Latin nomenclature, the concept had been carried across from the early Greek augurs, who believed that signs seen over the left shoulder foretold evil to come.
Calque drew the document nearer to the light. Finally, frustrated, he held it up in front of him. No dice. The writing was indecipherable – it would take an electron microscope to make any sense of it.
He cast his mind back to the Countess’s words during their first meeting. Calque had asked her what the thirteenth Pair de France would have carried during the Coronation and she had answered: ‘He wouldn’t have carried anything, Captain. He would have protected.’
‘Protected? Protected from whom?’
The Countess had given him an elliptical smile. ‘From the Devil, of course.’
But how could a mere mortal be expected to protect the French Crown from the Devil?
Calque could feel the gradual dawning of some sort of understanding. The Corpus Maleficus. What did it mean? He summoned up his schoolboy Latin. Corpus meant body. It could also mean an association of people dedicated to achieving one end. And Maleficus? Mischief. Evildoing.
A body devoted to mischief and evildoing, then? Impossible, surely. And certainly not under the aegis of the saintly Louis, a man so pious that he felt that he had wasted his day if he hadn’t attended two full Masses (plus all the offices) and who would then drag himself out of bed once again at midnight to dress for matins.
Then it must mean a body devoted to the eradication of such things. A body devoted to undermining the Devil.
But how would one go about such a thing? Surely not homeopathically?
Calque stood up. It was time to talk to the Countess again.
77
Achor Bale lay where he had fallen. His wound had opened again and he could feel the blood pulsing weakly down his neck. In a moment he would move. There might be something in the kitchen with which to staunch the bleeding. Failing that, he could go out to the marshes and collect some sphagnum moss. In the meantime he would lie here on the floor and recuperate. Where was the hurry? No one knew he was here. No one was waiting for him.
Outside the house there was the crunch and hiss of a car.