The Dave Bliss Quintet (14 page)

Rushing through the building, noting every feature with fervour while frantically scribbling page after page in his journal, he emerges back onto the parade square and takes the deepest, most satisfying breath of his life, knowing that he has the makings of one of the greatest literary mysteries of all time.

Now, looking back over the blue waters to Cannes and St-Juan, Bliss stands on the castle ramparts, his mind dancing with ideas for his book. Then, “
Crac!
” he exclaims even louder, as he realizes that not only has he found the plot for his novel, but, incredibly, he has simultaneously solved the ancient mystery of the citadel's most famous prisoner, a conundrum that has teased the minds of historians, researchers, chroniclers, writers, and philosophers for over three hundred years. Because this is the infamous prison that once housed the man in the iron mask — a man whose identity was such a closely guarded secret that even trusted jailers could never look on his face, or know his name, a man known only as “
l'homme au masque de fer
.”

It takes a few minutes for the answer to sink in, as he runs it around his mind checking for flaws, but no, it is so obvious as to defy logic that no one should have considered it before, although he can easily see why, realizing that every luminary who'd ever turned their mind to the identity of the man in the iron mask had failed simply because they had asked the wrong question. It takes a detective (with a little help from a daughter who happens to be a lawyer, he concedes) to know the right question, and, although he has yet to name the
prisoner, he gazes shoreward with the sagacious belief that he knows exactly where the answer lies.

Bliss savours the moment and takes a celebratory swig of Perrier as he looks out over the blue bay, knowing that not only has he solved this great mystery, but he has the means at his fingertips, and the time, to lay out his thesis in the form of a mystery novel to end mystery novels — a mystery novel that will take the publishing world and stand it on its head. And he opens a new page in his notebook and starts afresh.

It was July 13th in the year 1687. King William and Queen Mary of Orange sat on the throne of England, in place of the disgraced King James II. The Grand Alliance was forming for war with King Louis XIV, and the combined armies were moving against France in the north. But no fighting had reached the quiet Mediterranean village of St-Juan-sur-Mer, and, for the peasants tending a handful of scabby sheep in the olive groves and scavenging oysters and mussels from the beach, life had changed little from the time their parents and grandparents struggled to survive along the same shore. Kings, popes, famines, and wars had, for the most part, bypassed this quiet backwater of Provence.

Galleys, bargues, and fat-bellied fluyts, trading among the bustling ports of Marseilles, Toulon, and Genova, filled the bay with sails and shouts of encouragement to men at oars, but none put ashore at sleepy St-Juan.

In the heat of the midday sun, a man in kneebreeches and commoners' garb, calling himself François Couperin (a name he'd taken from a manuscript of harpsichord music he had found in the village's
tiny church), sat on the rocks thinking that, one day, when the war was over, this would be a good place to build a harbour.

Angélique, the buxom serving wench from the nearby hostelry, dodged the donkey carts trundling along the beachside track, her modest woollen skirt brushing the ground, whilst her maidenly corsage barely concealed her assets, and delivered a goblet of wine to Couperin.

“Zhat is a
bon télescope
you 'ave,” said Angélique, struggling with her English.

“Oui,” the man agreed, though added nothing as he paid her a few centimes for the wine, angry that she had so easily identified him as a foreigner.

As Angélique fought her way back to the inn, dodging a speeding musketeer on his charger, Fredrick Chapel — for that was his true name — took out a quill and pad and wrote in his journal:

The shiny facade of the Côte d'Azur is painted gaily across the skyline, and the set is finished with a spectacular backdrop of snow-capped peaks. Across the bay, a cluster of green islands swim in the perfectly blue sea. King Louis' fortress on the Île Sainte-Marguerite is now completed, and stands firm against invasion. A garrison of
légionnaires
are making their newly built home more comfortable, and in one of the prison cells languishes the man they call only “ l'homme au masque de fer.”

Glancing at his watch, Bliss is horrified to realize he's been so absorbed that he is within minutes of missing the day's last ferry sailing and risks spending the night on a beach under the stars. Momentarily, he is tempted, but then his stomach sends him rushing headlong down the winding path from the fort to the jetty.

The trip back across the bay is full of excitement and expectation for Bliss as he mentally works on his book. The
vent de midi
has kicked up a chop that stops him from writing, even spraying an occasional shower of warm sea over the passengers on the open bow, where he sits, eagerly looking forward to St-Juan. With his mind still on his amazing discovery, he focuses on the patch of headland where the Château Roger is slowly, and indistinctly, taking shape out of the greenery. Now that he knows where to look, his eyes easily find the roofs and even a trace of the great doorway, when, “
Crac!
Of course,” he cries, having solved yet another great mystery: the mystery of the missing entrance to the château's grounds.

The reason he could not find another entrance to the château was that, at the time it was built, the aristocratic owners and their noble guests wouldn't risk the dangers of the road; they would come by ship and anchor in the sheltered bay, while a
pinasse
would ferry them and their personal staff ashore. Then, carried from the beach in sedan chairs, they would process up through the ornamental gardens, full of statuary, fountains, peacocks, and swans — the air scented with orange and lemon blossoms — and finally on up the magnificent flight of white marble steps to the gigantic front door. Only the outdoor staff and local tradespeople would use the steep, dusty hillside tracks that were the haunts of robbers, thieves, and common criminals. (That's interesting, Bliss thinks,
realizing how little has changed over the centuries.) But the giant gates, as grandiose as they might have been, were simply the château's back entrance where the riffraff came and went.

Now, looking shoreward, all becomes clear, and Bliss realizes he's overlooked the obvious in his search for an entrance because of the simple detail that, at sometime in the past century, a strip of land lying just off the beach was appropriated by the government for the construction of the railway line and a modern road linking Cannes with Nice. Separated from the beach by the demands of mechanized transportation, with its most charming and practical feature throttled by pollution and noise, the château had died, and even the ostentatious back gate had become obsolete.

Arriving back at the apartment, with a hurriedly grabbed pizza, Bliss is bursting with excitement over his discoveries and phones Samantha.

“You'll never guess —” he starts, but she cuts him off and her voice falls.

“Oh shit! Don't tell me you've seen Edwards again.”

“No,” he begins, then brightens himself with the realization that he hasn't given Edwards a moment's thought all day. “No. I don't care about him anymore.”

“Good for you, Dad,” she says. “Getting out of that old cage at last.”

“I'm not ...” he protests, then lets it drop to ask her if she knows of the legend of Île Sainte-Marguerite.

“Sure,” she replies, “
l'homme au masque de fer
. I went there on a school trip — remember?”

He doesn't remember, but plays along and says, “That's right,” and goes on to explain that, in addition to finding Johnson, releasing Grimes's daughter from his
clutches, uncovering the secret of the château, and dealing with the young man in the cage, he is now working on solving the mystery of the man in the iron mask.

Samantha laughs. “Dad, that's five different cases.”

“I know,” he says. “The Dave Burbeck five.”

“Dave Burbeck?” she queries, unaware of his
nom de guerre
.

Putting down the phone, Bliss foregoes his usual evening stroll to L'Escale and concentrates on his book while the ideas are still fresh. In any case, Jacques is likely to be as capricious as the
gargali
turned out to be, and the thought of Hugh and Mavis expostulating on the reason for their failure to make the beach yet again irks him. This is their last night, he realizes, with a certain relief. It is also the last night for many others, as a raw batch arrive tomorrow for the weekend changeover. Saturday's crowd — pale, excited, even a little apprehensive — will pour into town loaded with cash and burdened with credit, and will be an easy target for the thieves and rip-off merchants who wait, like bears at a waterfall — though most will avoid the villains and rob themselves by overspending.

Every Saturday evening, Bliss sat on the promenade watching them — the first-timers and northerners, clutching sweaters and anoraks as they explore the promenade, wary of the balminess of the night air, unwilling to accept the reassurance of travel agents, and especially distrustful of tour operator's brochures. “Remember that dung heap they sent us to in ...” they say, in bitter memory of a fivestar hellhole that prompted them thereafter to cart umbrellas, sweaters, laxatives, purgatives, diuretics, and rolls of toilet paper wherever they go.

As for Marcia, her daughter, Morgan Johnson, and the man in the cage, they can wait. He has more important plans; he has “
d'autres chats à fouetter
,” as Jacques would say, though whipped cats are not exactly what he has in mind.

Opening a fresh bottle of Côtes de Provence, he picks up his binoculars and confirms that neither the château nor the island's fortress has evaporated into the realms of castles in the air, and he sets his mind to work as he recalls his visit to the prison.

Stepping into the notorious cell, Bliss found himself in the mantle of a modern-day Doctor Watson. “Well, Holmes, what do you make of it?” he imagined himself saying, as he peered out of the triple-barred window, but, not expecting to uncover any evidence in the indigo waters of the Mediterranean, he turned back to the room.

For a cell, the room was expansive by any prison's standard, more like a spacious drawing room with a pleasantly situated window and proportionately high ceiling. Opposite the window, on a stretch of wall pierced only by the door, were the faded remains of several murals. The central and most dominant fresco depicted a lineup of shadowy figures, across a stage perhaps, with one figure kneeling and the suggestion of an audience in the foreground. Another picture, showing a furnished room with a single man standing in the light of the chandelier, had a window not unlike the window of the room in which Bliss stood, and he found himself drawn questioningly back to the large aperture, with the feeling that it looked out on more than just the sea — imagining that it was some kind of window into the past. Maybe the artist had left a clue to his identity, he mused, as he again looked out over the bay and saw St-Juan-sur-Mer in the far distance.

Spying nothing of interest, he returned to the room itself, but the floor, ceiling, and other walls bore no clues that he could find without the aid of a magnifying glass, and, though Holmes might have chided him for the oversight, he didn't possess one.

A laminated notice board screwed to one wall informed him that, despite three hundred years of investigation, the identity of the prisoner remained a shadowy enigma, and that more than sixty names had been proposed for the unfortunate who'd been imprisoned in the room for eleven years, from 1687 to 1698. However, it was the accompanying list of possibles that Bliss found most intriguing. Headed by the usual suspects of disassociated royalty, the king's brother and half-brother, various dowagers, dukes, and counts, the list also included the enigmatically vague suggestion,
“une femme.”

“A woman,” Bliss mused with a smile, figuring that whoever came up with that solution had hit a pretty wide target.

“Nabo the Negro” also caught his eye, but it was the unnamed “Son of Cromwell,” that intrigued him most and set his plot in motion.

“Come on, Watson,” he said to himself in the guise of Holmes. “Give me your thoughts. What can you deduce?”

“Well … the first thing is the size. This isn't a cell — this is more like a hotel room — and one with a better view than most. And look at the murals — this was a man who knew luxury. I wouldn't mind wagering this room was stuffed with furniture and draperies.”

“And from that, you deduce what, my dear Watson?”

At that point, he was stumped. What did that prove? Nothing. Only that the proponents of the excommunicated royalty theory were probably correct. “But what
about you, Holmes,” he asked, turning the tables in his mind. “What would you look for?”

“Simple, my dear Watson — the one fragment of evidence overlooked by everyone else, of course.”

“But this room has been pored over by thousands of intrepid investigators for three hundred years in search of clues. What could possibly have been overlooked? And who knows what evidence has been removed, lost, contaminated, or destroyed in three centuries?”

“But you, Watson, are yourself overlooking one critical fact.”

“And what is that, Holmes?”

“It is elementary, my dear Watson. You've had a wealth of experience in dealing with prisoners, have you not?”

“Indeed I have — even my own daughter accuses me of being such.”

“Quite — so what does that tell you about the man who resided here?”