The Sixth Key(43)

The boat of Hercules travels to the Underworld towards the rising sun . . . the Underworld is the realm of death . . . the wheel of fortune represents each man’s destiny which ends in death . . . but this boat is travelling away from the rising sun, it’s moving away from death.

‘ ... it also affects his ability to understand the meaning of things.’

The wheel . . . turns one way . . . and it reverses . . .

‘For instance, he would not know what a toothbrush is, and would just as likely use it to comb his hair – he can’t connect the item with its purpose, so I guess he wouldn’t know symbols either, even words can come out back to front.’ She looked around. ‘I can’t think what my uncle could want from the church. What was that word he wrote down – Sator? Do you know what it means?’

‘Sator means sower, creator, reaper,’ Rahn said automatically, still thinking.

‘It’s Latin,’ Deodat informed her. ‘But I may have to look up what other meanings there are, then we may understand what Eugene was trying to tell us.’

‘My uncle told me about your library. Apparently it’s full of heretical texts, the most comprehensive in all of the Languedoc. You know, he does think very highly of you, despite what he calls your strange leanings.’

‘And I think fondly of him too, despite him being as stubborn as an old goat. Speaking of him, I think we should get you back. We’ve kept you from him long enough.’

Rahn was grateful to follow the others out of the church and once outside felt as if he had surfaced from a near drowning. But on the drive back to Maison de Cros he had the strangest sensation that he had missed something important in the church, and this caused him to drive in silence all the way to the turn-off, trying to think of what it might be. By then it was late afternoon and the sun was tilting its light over the unforgiving landscape, creating ominous shadows in various shades of purple. He looked for the black car but it was gone.

When they arrived at the house there were a number of parked cars in the driveway and the housekeeper came bursting out of the great double doors in tears. After that Rahn and the others were swept up in a concert of cries, lamentations, imprecations and gesticulations that had no meaning whatsoever until they came to the garden, where they found the source of the mayhem – and, oh, what a frightful sight it was!





14


Murder Most Foul

‘My God!’ stammered he, unable to control his emotion,

‘What do you say – a crime?’

Emile Gaboriau, The Mystery of Orcival


The old abbé was lying on the grass. His clothes were saturated, his hair was plastered over a bloated face turned to one side, and his milky eyes stared wide and horrified, as if they had seen the face of the Devil himself. Rahn wondered if it was true that one could glimpse the image of the murderer frozen forever in the eyes of the murdered. He staggered a little to think on it, he had seen more death in one week than many men see in a lifetime and he was realising that his nature was a delicate one when it came to such things.

There were several gendarmes walking around and in a moment two ambulance men arrived to place the old abbé on a stretcher and take him away. A sad sight, Rahn thought. The girl seemed in shock as she accompanied her uncle’s body into the house. At this point a short, pale little man walked towards them. He had thick brows and a wiry moustache that cut across his long pock-marked face like a dash.

He lifted his crumpled Panama hat with the tip of a finger in greeting and said, ‘Good afternoon, messieurs, Inspecteur Guillaume Beliere, of the Brigade Spéciale of the Parisian Police Judiciaire.’ He took a crushed packet of cigarettes from the inside pocket of his jacket, revealing the gun at his belt. He shook one out and lit it without taking his eyes off Rahn. Rahn held the gaze and tried to hide his disquiet. The man seemed to be the antithesis of those detectives in the novels that he loved, like Gaboriau’s detective Monsieur Lecoq. Such a man analysed clues, employed the marvels of modern science and solved crimes by using logic and reason. Such a man, he imagined, never wore crumpled suits, and his sensitive probing fingers would be popping peppermint lozenges into his mouth, not holding a cigarette with a nicotine-stained thumb and forefinger, looking as if he had slept with an empty bottle of rum under one arm.

‘You knew the deceased?’ the inspector said after a perfunctory cough, looking from Deodat to Rahn.

‘The abbé was more than an acquaintance, he was a friend, actually,’ Deodat said, officious and annoyed. ‘He asked to see me and we came today but he was unwell. We were gone only a couple of hours.’