The Sixth Key(34)

When she was quite gone, Deodat rubbed his face and sighed. ‘There goes a demon fallen to Earth to harass me,’ he murmured and poured the coffee, spilling a little on the tray in mischievous defiance. ‘Oh dear!’ he said merrily.

‘Why don’t you get rid of her?’ Rahn asked, feeling warm and contented.

‘What?’ Deodat shot him a horrified stare. ‘That woman is indispensible! She’s the only one who can find things in the infernal order she’s created. If I leave a book out, and turn around . . . pff! It’s gone in a moment! You have no idea how many things can be irretrievably lost in a house the size of this one! If I were to let her go it would take me the rest of my life to find everything she’s put away, and the old hag knows it too. She holds me by the collar like the Devil in Faust! Besides, the way she talks, one would think me near the end of the line!’

The truth was Deodat’s age was impossible to tell – he was one of those men who seemed perennially youthful in his body and yet eternally old in his soul, so that what one saw on the surface never seemed to match what one discovered within. Nevertheless, Rahn guessed he must be somewhere between forty-five and fifty-five. His hair was not fully grey and his face was as yet unwrinkled, and his quirks of behaviour and speech signalled a fount of energy that far surpassed many men half his age. In fact, Rahn had met him caving, in the circles of Antonin Gadal, that great Cathar historian, and Rahn came to learn that Deodat was a prodigious speleologist, a man who would drop everything to go potholing in godforsaken places. Rahn respected his wisdom and sagacity and his deep knowledge of the Cathars, which long ago had earned him the nickname ‘The Cathar Pope’, and a position as the magistrate of the small town of Arques. This was a profession that suited him well since he was rather addicted to mysteries, be they the confounding disappearance of a neighbour’s calf, or the perplexing theft of an old woman’s heirloom. The truth was that many years ago, Deodat had met Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The two men had hit it off and now Deodat told everyone that Doyle had modelled Sherlock Holmes after him – minus the sleuth’s various addictions to certain intoxicating substances, of course. But Rahn knew this was impossible, for Deodat would have been no more than a child when Doyle’s first story was published. Still, Rahn never contradicted him.

Deodat’s most striking features were a prominent lower jaw and a fearsome forehead that hung over deep-set blue eyes that were so dark as to be almost black. The profundity of those eyes was disquieting and had undone more than one criminal, simply because one could never be certain what Deodat was really looking at – the body or the soul. In the final analysis it was just that Deodat, like Holmes, was a clever observer, a ‘deducer’ with a keen eye for the slightest detail, and it was under that eye that Rahn now unwrapped the package from the Countess P.

Inside the box, beneath several layers of newspaper, was an Empire Pendulum Clock. It had sat on the piano on which he had played many a tune for the countess. He realised now that he had never really studied it in detail. The clock stood no taller than two hands and was elaborately worked in bronze ormolu. He sat back to look at it. It was made in the image of a naked man with a lion’s head. The body of the creature had four wings and two serpents entwined around it, and it sat on the globe of the world, which formed the bulk of the clock with its little Roman numerals. The creature held a key in one hand and a sceptre in the other. Upon closer scrutiny, Rahn observed the following words inscribed into the back of the clock:

This a tomb that has no body in it

This is a body that has no tomb round it

But body and tomb are the same

‘Ugly, isn’t it?’ Deodat said, as Rahn set the clock down again on a small table. ‘The countess was an unusual woman and she liked unusual things. She had a pertinacity that infuriated me, but I was rather fond of her, as you know. Do you remember the first time we all met?’

‘It was at Montsegur on the night of the solstice.’ Rahn smiled to think of it. ‘All four of us were there: me, you, La Dame and the countess; all invited to observe that sunrise. We had to climb that mountain to the fortress in the dark.’

‘And the poor countess in those shoes – highly impractical if you ask me!’ Deodat exclaimed.

‘The fire we built was so great it lit up the night.’

‘And we sat by it eating bread dipped in fish ragout, my favourite dish,’ Deodat said, relishing the memory. ‘We listened to one another reciting poems for hours.’

‘And we uncorked a battalion of bottles!’ Rahn added.