The Sixth Key(113)

‘How did you know the key in the pond belonged to the tabernacle?’ Rahn asked.

‘Just a hunch.’ She smiled. ‘When Abbé Grassaud arrived unannounced to see Cros, I feared he might ask questions about me, so I hid in a room nearby. I overheard Grassaud tell Cros he wanted the list and if he didn’t give it to him he had ways of getting it – sooner or later. Cros was very upset after Grassaud left and wanted to see Deodat.’

‘So Grassaud knew about the list, that’s why he was so anxious to look at it. Cros suspected you by the time of our visit, didn’t he?’ Rahn said. ‘That’s why he gave us the veiled clue.’

‘I didn’t need to know that word sator to find the key to the tabernacle,’ she pointed out to his annoyance.

Irene Adler to the core!

‘Wait a moment, mademoiselle,’ Rahn said. ‘Didn’t Deodat know that Cros had no family?’

‘No. Cros kept that to himself all those years in the seminary. Apparently he didn’t like to be pitied,’ she said.

Rahn seethed. ‘So, you’ve had your eye on the treasure, haven’t you?’

‘Like you, perhaps?’ she answered icily. ‘But unlike you, I don’t want it for myself. The Cathar treasure belongs in a museum. Not in the hands of a brotherhood of greedy priests.’

Rahn sat up. ‘Which brotherhood?’

‘You and Deodat think yourselves very astute but neither of you noticed one very important clue in the church at Bugarach. In fact it was staring you right in the face!’

Yes, he remembered having a feeling that he had missed something.

‘What did we miss?’ he said. ‘Come – out with it!’

She smiled wider again. ‘You didn’t notice the walls?’

The realisation hit him like a candlestick. ‘The anchor and the snake?’

‘With one difference – the S in the anchor is entwined with an R and topped with a crown. The Royal Serpent Rouge, or Golden Crista, as some call it.’

Rahn stared.

Those eyes peeking out from their dark curtain were smiling.

‘So Cros must have been a member of Association Angelica!’ Rahn concluded. ‘And that is why he had those symbols painted on the walls of his church!’

‘Wait a minute!’ La Dame’s unlit cigar played at the corner of his mouth. ‘You’re both drawing rather a long bow. A symbol on the wall of a church doesn’t automatically make its abbé a member of a secret order. The symbol could have been there long before he arrived at Bugarach.’

‘That’s true,’ Rahn conceded, deflated, looking out to the trembling trees.

‘All right, but what about that parchment the madame gave you?’ Eva asked.

He took it out and looked at it. ‘I’m convinced the master word is locked in the line that Saunière worked out.’

La Dame lit his cigar, took a puff and, gratified, said, ‘Surely whoever encoded it wouldn’t have been stupid enough to have placed the master word and the message in the same parchment?’

‘I agree with you, La Dame, this is not how it’s usually done, the master word or combination of words is usually kept separate from the cipher for obvious reasons. However in this case the family Perillos may have feared it would become lost or forgotten over time and so, they could have encrypted it in the cipher as insurance. That’s what I would have done . . . Let’s see if I’m right.

‘Now, Saunière had deciphered this much:

Jevousle gue cetindice dutres or qui apparti entaux seign eursderen nes etce stlam ort. Lefeur evele

I bequeath to you this clue to the treasure that belongs to the lords of Rennes. It is death. Fire reveals it.

La Dame nodded. ‘But, my dear Rahn, I thought you said that all those priests have already tried every word in that deciphered part to crack the code but to no avail. What do you propose to do?’

‘It could be something very simple,’ Rahn said, ‘so simple it was overlooked. It is death . . . fire reveals it – that has to be a clue! But what kind of clue, I don’t know. This is the rest:

XOTDQTKWZIGSDGZPQUCAESJ

XSJWOFVLPSGGGGJAZ MQTGYDCAXSXSDRZWZRLVQAFFPSDAPW MITMZSKWZHRLUCEHAIIMZPVJSSI POEKXSXDUGVVQXLKFSVLXSSWLI PSIJUSIWXSMGUZVVQZRVQSJKQQYWDQYWL


‘It’s getting desperately cold, Rahn, why don’t we go to a hotel? You’ll think better by a warm fire, I assure you.’ La Dame was rubbing his hands together. ‘The mademoiselle would like to go somewhere warm, wouldn’t you?’

‘Not particularly,’ Eva answered.

‘I know it’s cold, La Dame, but you must steel yourself, we have to solve this puzzle,’ Rahn said, obstinately. ‘Before something else happens.’