Rahn swirled the brandy and coffee grounds around and around, hoping to mine some wisdom from them. He saw only coffee grounds. ‘Well, corpses are piling up, La Dame. Four in total if you count Monti, and who in Heaven knows what they’re doing to Deodat right now, as we speak.’
‘Who do you think has him?’
‘I haven’t a clue,’ Rahn sighed. ‘There are several who are after this treasure, I think, whatever it is.’
‘Treasure? You mean the grimoire, don’t you?’ La Dame said, his mouth full again.
‘A great deal of water has flowed under that bridge since we last spoke.’ Rahn poured another coffee from the pot, applying the last contents of the flask liberally before taking a good sip. Everything went a little out of focus and the world seemed a better place. ‘I suppose I should fill you in.’
‘What?’ La Dame said.
Rahn realised by the look of him that he had been more focused on the contents of the flask than in what Rahn was telling him. ‘Will you pay attention, for God’s sake!’
By the time he’d finished giving La Dame an update on current events, Eva had returned. She had changed her blouse, and was wearing a red sweater that left little to a man’s imagination. She had also applied lipstick and was wearing a hat over her short hair. She looked rather à la mode. She ordered a tea and sat down, ignoring La Dame.
‘So, let me see if I have it,’ La Dame said, giving her a smile. ‘You are in possession of a list of priests who were being investigated by this Cros fellow, you think in connection with the treasure of the Cathars – am I right so far?’
Rahn nodded, gesturing for the waiter to bring another pot.
La Dame added contemplatively, ‘And this treasure of the Cathars, you and Deodat have ascertained, contains something you call a key, which makes this Le Serpent Rouge or Grimoire of Pope Honorius III more potent. But you don’t know what it is.’
‘You’ve got it in a nutshell.’
The pot arrived and was set down on the table.
‘This sounds completely absurd, you know,’ La Dame said, filling his cup again, plunging three teaspoons of sugar into it and taking the time to extract any last drops from his flask before taking an audible gulp. ‘Surprisingly good! Amazing how danger amplifies the senses. You know, Rahn, nothing makes one feel more alive than having a close shave with death!’ He threw an appreciative glance at Eva. Rahn rolled his eyes.
‘Now, as I was saying,’ La Dame went on, ‘a clue to the whereabouts of this key or treasure, had fallen into the hands of a priest at Rennes-le-Château, a certain Bigou. It was an encrypted parchment which no one has been able to decipher because the master word has been lost, right?’
‘So far so good.’
‘So who was it that made the parchment in the first place?’
‘It looks like it was the lords of Perillos, the most recent guardians of the Cathar treasure.’
‘And the parchment was then inherited by the Blancheforts and that is how it came into the hands of this Marie Hautpoul-Blanchefort?’
‘That’s right. By the look of it, the Hautpoul-Blancheforts were never able to decipher it.’
La Dame paused to light a Cuban, taking the time to smile again at Eva, who behaved as if the chair he was sitting in was empty. ‘My apologies, mademoiselle, but in all the commotion my friend has quite forgotten his manners. My name is Alexis La Dame . . . lovely to meet—’
‘Not now, La Dame!’
‘All right, dear Rahn, keep your shirt on! I was just being polite. So, you think the police are after you because of Deodat’s disappearance and the dead man in the barn?’
‘I don’t know if the inspector heading the investigation into Abbé Cros’s death is what he seems.’
‘You think he’s one of them?’
‘I’m suspicious of him and the police.’ He sighed, passing a hand over his face. ‘What did you find out about the snake and the anchor?’
La Dame’s smile was wide. ‘This is where I come in, thank you for reminding me of the most important part! Apparently that sign is often used on graves, so it has something to do with death and resurrection. It also has some connection with the Masonic thirty-third degree, which ties in with this hanged man business – something about traitors. Anyway, that sign was also used as a watermark to denote the work of a printer from Venice, a certain Aldo Manutius. Sometimes he made the snake look like a dolphin, but most of the time it looked like a sea dragon, or a serpent from the sea. Now, if one digs down deep enough, one finds that Manutius was also member of a guild that used that same sign as its emblem and its members had that sign tattooed onto their right wrist, which would explain that man in the barn and his affiliations. I dug around a little and found a rare book entitled AA Cléricale – its history, its statutes, its mysteries. In it I learned that AA stands for Association Angelica and that supposedly they were the custodian angels, or one could say, the guardian angels of a big secret . . . this was the order behind the guild to which Manutius belonged.’