Sepulchre (34 page)
Meredith narrowed her eyes. There was something about the girl's direct, bold gaze that drew her in, sending an echo slipping through her mind. A shadow of another photograph like it? A painting? The cards maybe? She dragged the heavy piano stool to one side and leaned in, racking her brains, but the memory refused to come. The girl was dazzlingly pretty, with tumbling locks, a pert chin and eyes that stared straight into the heart of the camera. Meredith looked back to the man in the middle. There was a clear family resemblance. Brother and sister maybe? They had the same long lashes, the same unswerving focus, the same tilt of the head. The other woman seemed less definite, somehow. Her colouring, her pale hair, her slightly detached air. For all her physical proximity to the others, she seemed insubstantial. There, but not there. As if, at any moment, she might slip from sight altogether. Like Debussy's Mélisande, Meredith thought, she carried a suggestion of belonging to another time and place.
Meredith felt her heart lock down. It was the same expression she remembered, looking up into her birth mother's eyes when she was little. Sometimes Jeanette's face was gentle, wistful. Sometimes it was angry, distorted. But always, on good or bad days, that same air of distraction, of a shifting mind settling elsewhere, fixed on people no one else could see, hearing words no one else could hear. Enough of this. Determined not to be disabled by her bad memories, Meredith reached forward and lifted the photograph away from the wall, looking for some kind of confirmation that it was Rennes-les-Bains, a date, any identifying marks.
Meredith felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, remembering the tomb at the far edge of the cemetery in Rennes-les-Bains: FAMILLE LASCOMBE-BOUSQUET. Now, on a photograph hanging on the wall, the two names joined once more.
She was certain the two younger figures were the Verniers, brother and sister, surely, rather than husband and wife, given the physical similarities between them? The older woman had the air of someone who had seen more. Lived a less sheltered existence. Then, in a shot, Meredith realised where she'd seen the Verniers before. A snapshot of a moment in Paris, settling the check in Le Petit Chablisien in the street in which Debussy had once lived. The composer looking down from the frame, saturnine and discontented. And beside him, his neighbours on the restaurant wall, a photograph of this same man, this same striking girl, although with a different and older woman.
Meredith kicked herself for not paying more attention at the time. For a moment she even thought about calling the restaurant and asking if they had any information about the family portrait they displayed so prominently. Then the thought of having such a conversation in French, on the telephone, made her dismiss the idea.
As she stared at the photograph, in her mind's eye, the other portrait seemed to shimmer behind it, shadows of the girl and the boy, the people they had been once and were now. For a second she knew - thought she knew - how, if not yet why, the stories she had been following might be interlinked.
She hung the frame back on the wall, thinking she could borrow it later. As she pushed the heavy piano stool back to its original position, she noticed the lid of the instrument was now open. The ivory keys were a little yellow, the edges chipped like old teeth. Late nineteenth century, she reckoned. A Bluthner boudoir grand.
She pressed middle C. The note echoed clear and loud into the private space. She looked round, guilty, but no one was paying any attention. Too wrapped up in their own affairs. Still standing, as if sitting down would commit herself to something, Meredith played the scale of A minor. Just a couple of low octaves in the left hand. Then the arpeggio with her right. The chill of the keys on her fingertips felt good. Like she had come home.
The stool was a deep mahogany with ornate carved legs and a red velvet cushion stapled to the lid by a line of brass studs. To Meredith, snooping around in other people's music collections was as interesting as running one's fingers along a friend's bookshelves when they stepped out of the room for a moment. The brass hinges creaked as she opened the lid, releasing the distinctive scent of wood, old music and pencil lead.
Inside was a neat pile of books and loose sheet music. Meredith went through the stack, smiling as she came across sheet music for Debussy's Clair de lune and La Cathédrale engloutie, in their distinctive pale yellow Durand covers. The regular collections of Beethoven and Mozart sonatas, as well as Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, volumes one and two. European classics, exercises, a little sheet music, a couple of show tunes from Offenbach's La Vie Parisienne and Gigi.
She let the lid of the stool fall shut with a guilty snap, then turned to see him smiling at her. He looked better this morning, good in fact. The lines of worry, of misery had gone from the corners of his eyes and he wasn't so pale.
'You sound surprised,' he said. 'Did you think I was going to stand you up?'
Meredith experienced a rush of embarrassment at jumping to the wrong conclusion. She didn't want to explain her other reason for being in Rennes-les-Bains - her real reason, she guessed - it just felt too personal. But how would Hal know what she'd been thinking about at the moment he arrived? He wasn't a mind-reader.
The drive and the grounds looked very different in daylight. October sun flooded the gardens, burnishing everything with intense colour. Meredith caught the smell of damp burning bonfires and the perfume of sun on wet leaves through the half-opened car window. A little further away, a more dappled light fell on the deep green bushes and high box hedge. Everything was outlined as if in gold and silver.
The road doubled back and twisted up on itself as it climbed through the wooded hills. There was every shade of green, every shade of brown, every hue of crimson and copper and gold, chestnuts, oaks, bright yellow broom, silver hazel and birch. On the ground, beneath the pines, huge cones lay as if left to mark the way.
'I remembered something I think will really interest you,' Hal said. She heard the smile in his voice. 'When I told my uncle I was going to be out this morning - and why - he reminded me that there are allegations of a connection between Debussy and Rennes-le-Château. He was unusually helpful, in fact.'
Hal laughed. 'OK, quick précis. The story is that Mary Magdalene was in fact married to Jesus and had children by him. After the Crucifixion, she fled, some say to France. Marseille, lots of places along the Mediterranean coast, all lay claim to being where she came ashore. Fast forward nine hundred years, to 1891, when it's alleged the priest of Rennes-le-Château, Bérenger Saunière, came across parchments demonstrating this bloodline of Christ, going all the way from the present day to the first century AD.'
Meredith went still. 'Eighteen ninety-one?'
Hal nodded. 'That's when Saunière began a massive renovation project that was to last for many years - starting with the church, but in the end gardens, graveyard, house, everything.' He stopped. Meredith felt him glance at her.
'The bloodline parchments were supposed to have been hidden inside a Visigoth pillar, way back when. Most locals think the whole thing was a hoax from start to finish. Records contemporaneous with Saunière don't mention any sort of great mystery associated with Rennes-le-Château, other than a dramatic increase in Saunière 's material circumstances.'
Hal nodded. 'The church hierarchy accused him of simony - that is, selling masses for money. His parishioners were more charitable. They thought he had discovered some cache of Visigoth treasure and didn't begrudge him, since he spent so much of it on the church and his parishioners.'
Hal turned his blue eyes on her. 'Nineteen seventeen,' he said, 'leaving everything to his housekeeper, Marie Denarnaud. It wasn't until the late 1970s that all the religious conspiracy theories began to surface.'
Since there was clearly no love lost between him and his uncle, Meredith wondered why Hal was sticking around now the funeral was over. One look at his face suggested he wouldn't welcome the question, so she left it.
'So, Debussy?' she prompted in the end. Hal seemed to pull his thoughts together. 'Sorry. There was supposed to have been a secret society formed to act as guardians of the bloodline parchments, the things Saunière may or may not have found in the Visigoth pillar. This organisation was alleged to have had some very famous leaders, figureheads if you like. Newton, for one, Leonardo da Vinci for another. And Debussy.'
'It is totally absurd. Debussy lived for his music. And he was not a clubbable person. Very private, very loyal to a small group of friends. The thought of him running some secret society. . .well, just plain crazy!' She wiped the corner of her eye with her sleeve. 'What's the evidence to support this bizarre theory?'
Hal shrugged. 'Saunière did entertain many important Parisians and guests at Rennes-le-Château around the turn of the last century - something else that fuelled the conspiracy theories - heads of state, singers. Someone called Emma Calvé? Ring any bells?'
Meredith thought. 'French soprano, around at the right sort of time, but I'm pretty certain she never sang a major role for Debussy' She pulled out her notebook and wrote down the name. 'I'll check it out.'
Meredith could hear the gentle teasing in his voice and liked it. 'Says the person who's spent half her life in a library. Real life is never so neat. It's messy. Stuff overlaps, facts contradict each other. You find one piece of evidence, think it's all going on. You've nailed it. Next thing you know, you come across something else that turns it all on its head.'
For a while, they drove on in companionable silence, both locked in their own thoughts. They passed a substantial farm and crossed a ridge. Meredith noticed the landscape this side of the hill was different. Not so green. Grey rocks, like teeth, seemed to push out of the rust-coloured earth as if a series of violent earthquakes had forced up the hidden heart of the world. Slashes of red soil, like wounds in the land. It was a less hospitable environment, more forbidding.
'It makes you realise,' she said, 'how little the essential landscape has changed. Take the cars and the buildings out of the equation, and you're left with mountains, gorges, valleys that have been here tens of thousands of years.'
'I couldn't see it last night. It all seemed too small, too insignificant to have been the centre of anything. But now. . .' Meredith broke off. 'Up here, the sheer scale of things is different. It makes it more plausible that Saunière might have found something of value.' She paused. 'I'm not saying he did or he didn't, only that it gives substance to the theory.'