‘Yes, he came here and saw a priest who knew something about the grimoire.’
‘Interesting,’ Deodat said, sitting down.
‘Why?’
‘Well, tomorrow I’m due to visit a priest myself, Abbé Cros.
He’s retired and lives at Bugarach; we played chess once or twice a week for many years. He is a very erudite man but he’s had a run of bad luck – a stroke left him paralysed very recently, and he isn’t well. The point is, before he was paralysed he came to see me. From our conversation I gathered that he had been investigating something for the Vatican for a long time. He didn’t want to tell me anything in detail. It sounded to me like he had found something untoward and that he seemed rather afraid. At any rate, I have seen him once or twice since and he has never mentioned it again. Only two days ago, his niece called saying that he has asked to see me urgently and I said I would visit him at the earliest opportunity, which is tomorrow. Why don’t you come with me? We could ask him if he knows anything about this grimoire – perhaps he is the priest Monti saw when he came here. Stranger coincidences have been known to happen.’
Rahn agreed, though at the time he couldn’t know that he was taking another fork in the path of his destiny.
13
Of Fish and Men
‘In the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish.’
Ovid
That night Rahn slept fitfully. Dreams of screaming children woke him early, covered in sweat. He got up and padded to the kitchen to make coffee, feeling a little unnerved. The wood-fired stove hummed lazily and he threw two good logs in and sat at the table. He tried to keep warm while he read Monti’s notebook. Now and again he paused to watch the world outside the window coming to life. The sun was rising and as a child full of night terrors he had always associated it with the return of normality. But were nightmares the reality and normality just a dream?
In that little kitchen with only the sounds of the fire and the pendulum clock for company, he thought things through. He wondered what Deodat would say if he told him the whole truth: that he was working for a madman on whose whim he had travelled to France; that in the meantime one man was already dead because of the grimoire; and that he suspected he was being followed by agents of a certain Serinus, whose true identity he didn’t know. He didn’t want to contemplate what Deodat would say if he told him about Wewelsburg. Rahn would never forget that crypt of death and those poor wretched children. Had he placed his friend in harm’s way by coming here? He was certain of it and he told himself the only honourable thing to do was to keep Deodat completely out of the picture and to leave Arques as soon as possible. After all, he knew the Pyrenees better than many French men and it would not be hard for him to find a good hiding hole in the mountains. But as he thought this he was also, quite paradoxically, thinking of reasons why he should stay put because he and Deodat shared one fault: they were like hunting dogs whose noses could not be prevented from following their prey once trained on the scent of a fox. The lust for the chase had seized them. He sighed. What to do, what to do?
Deodat came into the kitchen looking fresh in a casual suit with a blue silk handkerchief in the pocket and a tie to match, disturbing the flow of Rahn’s thoughts. He was the sort of man who always dressed impeccably, except when potholing; at those times, one could easily mistake him for a vagabond.
The pendulum clock in the drawing room struck seven.
‘The Countess P still controls time, even from beyond the grave,’ Deodat said, in a jovial mood.
Rahn smiled. It was true, the old dame did like to have the world march to her rhythm and now he’d inherited the clock, every hour on the hour, she would command his thoughts!
As soon as they had finished breakfast, Deodat herded Rahn out of the house at an inelegant pace and led him out to the barn, where in a perfunctory fashion he unveiled the Tourster. The great animal had been slumbering beneath a grey dust sheet and was in perfect condition: gleaming black with a beige top; tyres painted white; and chrome wheels polished to a mirror finish. Rahn felt joy to see it but it was temporary, for the car had been the Countess’s favourite toy and he felt sad to think she would never sit in it again.
‘You know,’ Deodat said, touching it with a fond air, ‘the Countess never allowed her German driver near it after you were gone. Do you remember that unsightly golfing outfit and the half belt jacket he always wore? Your countrymen have no taste,’ he said, looking at Rahn’s attire with paternal fondness. ‘I see you’re still wearing that lucky fedora. The same you risked your life to rescue from that ravine?’