‘Here, let me,’ she said and took the penknife from his hand with an air of authority that was infuriating. ‘A lawyer’s secretary has to learn one or two unconventional skills.’
She moved the knife deftly until there was an audible click.
‘Bravo!’ La Dame whispered.
Rahn grunted. ‘What kind of lawyers did you work for?’
‘The ordinary kind – the kind that don’t always obey the law.’
Inside, the only light came from the votive candles and the perpetual flame at the altar. Rahn reconciled himself to entering another church even though the thought of it made his every muscle and sinew scream for him to stop. He told himself that Deodat was still alive and that each step closer to the treasure was a step closer to Deodat. Keeping this firmly in his mind, he walked down the short nave, opened the little gate and took the three steps to the sacred space before the altar. Here the rabbit stew came to life, thumping its feet in his stomach as he took himself to the cross. His anxiety made his chest feel like a squeezed lemon.
Inside the cross of God . . . The cross on the altar looked to be solid and fixed. There was no way of removing it without making noise. Behind the altar there hung a large picture of Christ on his cross, a terrible rendition of His death that had been darkened by centuries of candle smoke. Rahn went to it now and inspected it. As he did so he thought it through:
Vita was the master word in the second parchment – the word for life in Latin.
The next clue was, inside the cross of God.
Could it mean that the clue was hidden inside that painting depicting death? If so, then someone had a sense of humour! He inspected the painting and noted that part of the canvas had been pulled away from the frame at the bottom left-hand corner. His heart sank. It looked like someone had beaten them to it. If there had been a clue here – it was gone.
‘I think we’re too late,’ he said.
‘Too late for what?’ La Dame asked.
‘The clue is missing.’
‘But that doesn’t make sense,’ Eva said. ‘Saint-Just-et-le-Bézu was intact and that was the second clue, the second parchment. To find this parchment they would have needed to have found the first and second parchments,’ Eva said.
‘I don’t know, maybe it was Gélis?’ Rahn said. ‘Maybe he started tearing apart his own church, like Saunière did. It certainly looks renovated.’
‘Then this may not be the original painting,’ Eva pointed out.
Rahn told La Dame to bring him a candle and in the meantime pulled the painting away from the wall a little. ‘Look at this. The original wall surface is still behind the painting. It must have always been here and they renovated around it. Now, if Gélis did find something hidden in it, he could have sold it to Cros. That would explain the money they found in his presbytery. It would also explain why Saint-Just-et-le-Bézu is intact. Cros could have used the clue in this church to find the clues in the other four churches and it may have been enough to point him in the direction of the treasure.’
‘So it’s gone and he has been buried with it,’ Eva said. ‘In that case I was right, Cros had been so secretive about his funeral arrangements because he wanted to hide the treasure in his coffin.’
Rahn felt the blood drain from his head. ‘This has been for nothing and now Deodat will be killed – or worse!’
‘Listen, Rahn,’ La Dame said, ‘something doesn’t add up. If I’d found the treasure I wouldn’t bother to hide the list and guard it so keenly. I’d be sunning myself on the Côte d’Azur, with a bottle of Luis Felipe and affectionate friends to keep me company.’
Rahn grabbed La Dame by the shoulders then and shook him with delight.
‘Steady on, Rahn! Have you lost your senses?’
‘No! The very opposite! I think you’re right, La Dame! Why not just destroy the list? Why was Grassaud after it, if it had no value? And why would Madame Dénarnaud say that the moment Abbé Lucien looked at it he would know what to do?’
‘There has to be something that we’ve missed!’ Eva said.
‘No, he always wanted someone to find the list, for a reason.’ Rahn took the list from his pocket. ‘After all, he gave us the clue to the tabernacle where it was kept.’ He moved closer to the candles to study it.
Jean-Louis Verger – Paris 1857 — Penitents
Antoine Bigou – Rennes-le-Château — 1781 AA
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A J Grassaud – Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet 1886
A C Saunière – Rennes-le-Château 1885
A K Boudet – Rennes-les-Bains 1885 — AA