The Sixth Key(112)

‘Odd,’ La Dame answered.

‘It’s a rebus, La Dame, a Roman puzzle. Deodat and Cros were fond of bewildering each other with them. Deodat and I had been talking about rebuses the day he was taken, that’s how we came to the relevance of the word sator. Let me see . . . a ship . . . navem. Without stern or prow, without beginning or end . . . is navem without N or M . . . ave!’

‘Ave?’ La Dame said, popping an unlit Cuban into his mouth.

‘It means greetings. I send you greetings . . . backwards . . . or back-to-front greetings.’ ‘Odd,’ La Dame said again, stroking his beard. ‘That’s what it means!’ Rahn said, suddenly illuminated.

‘What?’

‘Ave backwards is Eva.’ He turned to her. ‘You, mademoiselle!’

‘Me?’ she said.

‘Yes, you! I suggest that whoever has Deodat has made him write something that I could recognise as having been written only by him, and Deodat, the crafty man that he is, has written me a warning in Latin. A warning against you! You must be in on it!’ He formulated his theory as he spoke. ‘Madame Dénarnaud intimated that you were not what you seemed. And now I realise why Abbé Cros appeared to act strangely around you. He was fearful, that’s why he waited until you were out of earshot to whisper to Deodat that he wanted something from the church. That’s why he wrote down sator, and not tabernacle, because he figured you wouldn’t know what it meant. Everything you’ve told me has been a lie, isn’t it true?’ He was elated at having solved two mysteries with one stone – the mystery of the Latin note and the mystery of the girl – but at the same time he was also affronted for being treated like a fool. And then it struck him. ‘You’re just like The Woman!’ he said, aghast.

La Dame began a solemn nod of agreement.

‘What woman?’ Eva said, indignantly.

‘The Woman!’ La Dame said to her. ‘Irene Adler! “A Scandal in Bohemia”?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

La Dame leant in, savouring her attention. ‘Well, she was the only woman, nay the only person, ever to have outwitted Sherlock Holmes. Whenever Sherlock spoke of Irene Adler it was always under the honourable title of The Woman.’

‘Honourable! I wouldn’t say that!’ Rahn blurted out, annoyed. He proceeded then to take up the reins of the conversation. ‘This leads me to ask two questions, mademoiselle: who are you, and whom are you working for?’

She paused, glanced at the two men calmly, and said, devoid of emotion, ‘Don’t go jumping to conclusions, Otto. It isn’t what you think.’

‘No?’ Rahn said.

‘No. You see, some time ago I moved into the house with Cros. He had no family because he was an orphan,’ she said. ‘He was also paralysed, couldn’t speak and, to make matters all the more simple for me, he lived a long way from the township of Bugarach. No one asked questions and no one came to visit him, except for your friend Deodat Roche, and Abbé Grassaud. Who was to know that I was not his niece, returned from Paris to keep an eye on him?’

‘I would appreciate it, mademoiselle, if you would just get to the point,’ Rahn said, realising his feelings were hurt.

She raised one brow very high. ‘Years ago, Abbé Cros came to Paris. At the time I was working temporarily for his lawyers as a secretary and so I knew everything there was to know about his affairs. He was very wealthy, you know, but his wealth was transient: large sums of money would appear and disappear in and out of his account, as if by magic, one might say. I was also terribly intrigued by his funeral arrangements and his elaborate design to keep anyone from knowing where he would be buried, even his lawyers. The more I looked into this priest, the more I was convinced that he had found a store of Visigoth treasure at Bugarach, and that he was planning to bury himself with it.’

‘How do you know so much about the Visigoths?’ La Dame said.

‘I’m a student of archaeology, with a special interest in them. I was just earning some money working as a secretary, before coming here to work on my dissertation.’

‘So that’s why you knew so much about Bugarach and its history,’ Rahn said.

‘That’s right. I’ve been studying it. I guessed that the abbé’s wealth must have come from something he found, perhaps in the church. When he fell ill I saw an opportunity to quit my job and come to the south. Since he already knew me, it was easy for me to say that I had been sent to sort out some of his more mundane affairs, to settle his books and pay any outstanding bills. I fired his maid and hired a new one and from that time on I became his niece.’