The Sixth Key (17 page)

When Rahn came to his senses he found a face staring down into
his. He remembered words . . . something to do with a book, an author and a
master . . . but nothing more.

He sensed he was being spoken to but this was
just a distant murmur. He felt a gentle slapping on his cheek. His shoulder
ached and his head felt like a bowl of jelly.

He heard Deodat say, ‘Wake up, Rahn!’ and then
someone was trying to lift him to a sitting position. He could see a face. He
put two and two together and made five – five beautiful faces.

What is Louise Brooks doing here? Am I on a
film set?

‘You were coming at me like a maniac!’ Louise
Brooks kindly informed him.

He thought he sensed a note of humour in her
voice.

What an
actress!

The five faces became one and he held his
skull to prevent them from separating again.

‘What happened?’ he said to her.

‘I’m afraid I had to hit you,’ she answered.

He muttered, ‘Of course. What did you use, a
train?’

‘A candlestick, actually.’ The grin was
somewhat proud.

This isn’t Louise Brooks; it’s the abbé’s
niece!

‘But I didn’t hit you as hard as I could
have.’

He gave a perfunctory nod of his head, which
made his temples creak. ‘I’m very glad of that, I’m sure.’ He sat up and was
helped to his feet by Deodat while the world spun, a jumble of light and
mirrors. They sat him down on a pew and he nursed his wounds, feeling now
altogether like the highest grade of fool.

‘What are you doing here anyway?’ he said to
her, taking her in, her helmet haircut and the deep brown eyes that showed no
sympathy. She was dressed like a man, in pants, flat shoes and a black beret to
match.

‘I came to open the tabernacle,’ she said.

It took a moment for Rahn to reason this
through. How had she figured it out?

‘When they took my uncle away,’ she continued,
‘I had the pond drained.’

‘What pond?’

‘The pond in the garden – I had it
drained. Actually, we only had to drain it partially because we found it.’

‘Found what?’ He delicately touched the
throbbing lump on his head.

‘I had a hunch about my uncle’s obsession with
those fish. I wondered if it wasn’t the fish he was obsessed with at all, but
something else in that pond. It did seem to me as if he might have fallen in
looking for something. I found this.’ She showed them a key in the shape of a
cross. ‘I knew that it belonged to the tabernacle, so I came here to see what
might be inside it.’

Rahn looked at her expressionless face. She
was smart and he didn’t know exactly why he was annoyed by it, but he was.
Apart from the fact that she had occasioned the dull thumping at his temples,
she had a way of making him feel like a pimply-faced schoolboy, standing before
a headmistress. ‘So the key was at the bottom of the pond all this time?’ He
cleared his throat. ‘How did you find it? It must have been covered in scum and
algae.’

‘Not at the bottom, it was in a box placed on
an inner ledge set into the stonework. It looks like the sacristan never had it
on his ring of keys. Monsieur Roche told me how you figured it out, and I am
impressed! But what I don’t understand is why my uncle didn’t just write
“tabernacle” on that piece of paper if he wanted you to look there.’

She appeared so vulnerable, so lovely –
and yet there was that lump on his head. He winced. No, the girl was vicious,
and at the same time, terribly beautiful – a vicious beauty, a beautiful
terror. His mind was spinning and he contrived to make it stop.

‘So, did you find anything in the tabernacle?’
he said, after a moment.

‘That is the interesting part,’ Deodat
replied, sounding vexed. ‘There appears to be nothing in it out of the
ordinary.’

‘Impossible!’ Rahn cried, irritated in the
extreme. ‘Let me see!’ He got up and made his way to the altar, passing the
candlestick that Eva had so discourteously used as a weapon to assault him.
Luckily, it wasn’t made of solid brass and the brunt of the blow had been taken
by his shoulder and arm, which were both aching and no doubt bruised.

‘There’s a monstrance and a chalice,’ Deodat
said behind him, ‘a little box for the wafers, a spoon and a little bottle of
consecrated wine . . . some oil, but nothing else, I’m afraid.’

Rahn paused a moment to let his head settle.
It felt like one of those snow globes with an Eiffel Tower inside it. Someone
had shaken the globe, causing the tower to be obscured by snow, and moreover
there was a peculiar buzzing sound – as if a bee had found its way into
it and was having a hard time finding a way out. He took a candle from the
altar and peered inside the tabernacle, trying to concentrate, but his
intermittent double vision was disconcerting. He brought the chalice out
towards the candle. It was nothing special, made of bronze, as was the
monstrance. It was a poor church, after all. He removed the wine bottle and the
spoon and a bottle of oil as well as the box of consecrated wafers, which
looked to be made from wood. He then inspected the inside of the tabernacle and
found something strange: there was a symbol scratched and burnt onto the base
of it. He could just make it out. It looked like a double pentagram.

‘What’s this, Deodat, do you know?’

Deodat put on his reading glasses and came
over to take a look and said, ‘What in the
devil?
It’s the sign of the lamb – the intelligence of the sun!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘This seven-pointed star is found in the Book
of the Seven Seals in Saint John’s Apocalypse. At each point there is an eye
and a sign which denotes a planetary intelligence: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars,
Mercury, Jupiter, Venus; all together they stand for the Cosmic Christ. I’ve
seen it before in the work of Rudolf Steiner; it can be used as a talisman to
ward off evil, like the evil eye. The Templars also used it on their secret
seal.’

Eva came to take a look.

‘Why would the abbé feel a need to scratch
that symbol into a place that is holy anyway?’ Rahn said, unconsciously taking
a swipe at the bee which now seemed to be somewhere beyond his line of vision.
He searched the tabernacle, checking for a false compartment, and felt
something at the top of it: it was a piece of paper stuck with tape. He worked
at it carefully until it came away without tearing. It was a list of names and
places.

He showed the others. ‘Do
either of you recognise any of these?’

Jean-Louis
Verger – Paris

Antoine
Bigou – Rennes-le-Château

~

A J
Grassaud – Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet

A C
Saunière – Rennes-le-Château

A K
Boudet – Rennes-les-Bains A

A Gélis
– Coustassa

A L Rivière –
Espéraza

‘Wait a minute! That’s the abbé I told you
about,’ Eva said,

‘the one who visited my uncle a short while back, the Abbé
Grassaud, from Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet.’

‘Do you think these might be the priests he
was investigating?’ Rahn asked Deodat.

Eva raised her beautiful brows and turned to
Deodat. ‘What is he talking about?’

‘Your uncle was investigating a number of
priests in this area for the Vatican,’ Deodat informed her. ‘I don’t know
exactly why, he talked in generalities about the church and the laws of the
state. He seemed anxious to keep things quiet, so I complied. When he asked for
me this week I thought he wanted to raise the matter again. Anyway, whatever it
is, this list must have been important for him to hide it like that.’

‘I don’t understand,’ the girl said.

‘If you’re right and your uncle died trying to
get the key to this tabernacle, it must have mattered a great deal to him,’
Rahn said, pointing out the obvious. It had the desired effect: Eva frowned and
said nothing more.

Rahn looked about him. ‘We had better leave.
It won’t be long before daybreak and it would be better if we weren’t found
here like this.’

‘You’re right, dear Rahn, we would have to
explain our actions and I think for the time being we should keep what we’ve
found to ourselves – no sense in creating a scandal precipitously.’

Once outside, Rahn felt a great relief wash
over him. The gibbous moon had set and the world was a playground of fog and
damp vapours and shadows but there were too many thoughts running through his
mind for him to notice it.

‘Go home, my dear, and rest,’ Deodat said,
taking Eva to her car. ‘You will have a lot to do in the coming days,
organising your uncle’s funeral . . .’

She got into the car as if she didn’t have a
care in the world and said, through the open window, ‘There’s really not much
to do. He arranged everything with his lawyers a long time ago; his body is to
be interred somewhere secret, he didn’t want anyone to know where, not even me,
and there is to be no funeral, nothing at all.’

Rahn thought this exceedingly strange but said
nothing. He stood beside Deodat and said his goodbyes, watching the taillights
of Eva’s car die away on the ribbon of road with a strange wistfulness in his
heart. A vicious, terrible beauty!

He wiped his hands of dust and of the girl
too. He had neither the time nor the inclination for girls, for as Sherlock
Holmes would say, they were inscrutable – their most trivial actions
could mean volumes and their extraordinary conduct could depend on a hairpin.

It was still dark and very cold when they
climbed into the Tourster for the long drive back. Like the miners whose lives
depend on it, years of potholing in the Lombrives had developed in Rahn an
ability to sense danger and he could smell it now – there was certainly
something fishy in this entire business.

The sun was tinting the sky in watered hues by
the time they finally arrived back at Deodat’s house at Arques. Madame Sabine
was not home. On Thursdays she left early for the markets at Espéraza but she
had left them breakfast, a freshly baked brioche and a pot of jam that tasted
like heaven. They ate in the kitchen and at the same time tried to reason
through their findings.

‘It’s strange,’ Deodat said. ‘I wonder what he
was investigating and why he went to such lengths to conceal the list?’

‘It must have been controversial, perhaps even
dangerous; after all, someone wanted it enough to kill the sacristan.’

‘But, my dear Rahn, we
don’t know that for certain! It is a capital mistake to theorise without all
the details because one begins to twist the facts to suit theories, instead of
twisting theories to suit facts.’

‘You can quote Sherlock Holmes all you want,
but if he were here, I’m certain he would connect the sacristan’s death to that
list of priests the abbé was investigating.’

‘What makes you so certain of that?’

‘Well, my theory is this: I think someone
wanted that list, someone the abbé had confided in – like he confided in
you. That person knew the list was hidden somewhere in the church and when the
abbé fell ill he saw his chance. He accosted the only person who might know,
the one who had the keys to the church and knew it intimately – the
sacristan.’

‘And what if he didn’t know anything?’

‘In his desperation he may have handed the
keys to his assailant, hoping it would suffice. But the die was cast, his
tormentor had to kill him or risk being exposed.’

‘Yes, but why not go directly to the abbé and
make him divulge the location of the list? He was vulnerable, after all.’

‘I don’t know, but don’t forget the abbé
couldn’t even string a sentence together and had trouble even writing down one
word, not to mention the fact that there’s always someone with him because of
his condition. Perhaps whoever did it, didn’t want to threaten a priest. I
haven’t figured it all out yet.’

Deodat looked at Rahn and sighed. ‘As I said,
you’re simply twisting a few meagre facts to suit your theory.’

‘You might be right. But all that aside, you
have to admit, carving the sign of the lamb into a tabernacle is an unusual
thing for a priest to do.’

‘Yes, I agree with you on that score.
Especially considering that it’s an esoteric symbol, something most priests
would call
heretical, even witchcraft.’

‘And is it?’

‘In a way, yes, but it is white magic –
a protection from evil.’

‘Well, it appears that the abbé was no
ordinary priest.’

‘No, perhaps not, you might be right,’ Deodat
said. ‘My guess is, he was trying to protect the contents of the tabernacle
from something.’

Rahn drank down the last of his coffee. He was
pensive but it hurt his head to think. He felt for the lump and winced –
it was hot and angry. ‘Perhaps the sign of the lamb means the list is somehow
connected to the grimoire I’m looking for.’ He looked at Deodat. ‘I know it’s too
much of a coincidence, but maybe it isn’t a coincidence at all, but a design.
It might be a bit jumbled but there is some sense in it. Hear me out.

‘I was sent to France to meet Pierre Plantard
about a grimoire. I then find out that a man called Monti had come here to see
a priest about a grimoire. After that I meet a friend of yours who is a priest,
and his last word before he dies is connected to grimoires. The inspector, who
just happens to turn up to the scene of the abbé’s death, is searching for Le
Cagoule, a group connected to Alpha Galates and Pierre Plantard – through
whom I found out about the grimoire in the first place. It’s a snake biting its
tail. So, if you ask me, there are two common denominators in these strange and
seemingly disparate events – a priest and a grimoire.’

Deodat sat back to think on it. ‘No. Actually,
there is another common denominator: you, Rahn.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, of course. In all
your reasoning you’ve missed the most important link. You are the lead
character, you are in every scene!’

Rahn was struck by the truth in this and
though he had no idea what it meant, it gave him pause.

‘Don’t worry, Rahn, sometimes there’s a simple
explanation. Perhaps we are adding two and two together to make twenty-two?’

‘But if we are making too much of it and this
has nothing at all to do with grimoires, why did Cros write sator? Why not just
write tabernacle, as Eva pointed out? After all, sator is not an everyday word.
No, I think he wanted you to know where the list was kept, but not just that,
he also wanted you to know what the list was for, that it had something to do
with grimoires. That’s why he gave you that word. I surmise, therefore, that
the list has something to do with a grimoire – my grimoire!’

‘I think we should pay a visit to the Abbé
Grassaud, from Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet. After all, he is not only on our list,
but he also saw Abbé Cros recently.’

‘Where is that town?’

‘South of here, a couple of hours away . . .
Can I see that list again?’ Deodat said, reaching for it. ‘Cros may have told
Grassaud about the list and what it means. At this stage he is our best lead.’

He took a pad and a pencil and set about
copying the list. ‘It doesn’t hurt to have more than one copy. Put this copy in
your pocket, Rahn, and come with me.’

He followed Deodat to his library where he
slipped the other list into the pages of Éliphas Levi’s book. ‘We will leave
our friend here to guard the original.’ He replaced the book under E.

‘No one will think to look for it there,
except for Madame Sabine, perhaps.’

Rahn sighed. ‘You know, I feel rather strange,
like a puppet or a character in someone’s crazy plot.’

‘Your head has taken a good knock, dear Rahn,
and I’m not as young as I look. So I suggest before anything else, we should get
some sleep. After that, we’ll go to see Abbé Grassaud. What do you say?’

And so it was decided. Rahn went to his room
and closed the curtains to block out the early sun. He lay down feeling
drained. The bee was quiet now, but his head was thumping in time to his
thoughts on secret brotherhoods, magic squares, the names on that list, the
symbol of the lamb . . . until he fell into an uneasy sleep.

He dreamt he was in a tomb. It was
impenetrably dark, the cold went right to the bones and he was running out of
oxygen.