The head tilted again and the brows arched slightly. He took a moment to think on it, while he let his entire weight rest on his heels. ‘Gone?’
‘To Bugarach, to visit the old church,’ Rahn put in.
Those wet eyes fell on Rahn. The inspector smiled without showing his teeth. ‘For religious reasons?’
‘Not in the strictest sense,’ Rahn said.
‘No?’ The man squinted through the smoke, holding the cigarette in the corner of his mouth.
‘Can you tell us, inspector, what has happened here?’ Deodat brought his authority as a magistrate to bear on the moment.
‘A terrible accident, I’m afraid.’ But the flat tone suggested he didn’t find it quite so terrible. Perhaps he had seen worse ways to die. ‘The maid was inside answering the phone. When she returned, she found the abbé in the pond. He must have tipped the wheelchair over. No one knows how it happened. The poor woman couldn’t get him out. He was strapped to the chair and too heavy for her, you see,’ he said, taking a long drag of his cigarette. ‘A dead weight.’
Rahn felt Deodat bristle beside him.
‘How in the devil could he have tipped the wheelchair?’ Deodat said. ‘The man was paralysed – he could hardly move his lips!’
The inspector gave an uninterested sigh. ‘Who knows? Perhaps it was a fit or an involuntary spasm? The maid said he was a stroke victim, so this may have been another stroke. The clinical autopsy will reveal more. I will need to take your names.’ He turned to Rahn. ‘You, monsieur, you are a foreigner?’ Rahn felt the burning interest in those eyes. ‘Can I see your papers, your passport?’
Rahn searched his jacket and brought them out of his wallet, dropping a card.
The inspector picked it up and read it before giving it back. ‘Serinus?’ he said.
The blood rushed from Rahn’s head. ‘A business associate.’
‘Serinus is the genus name of the canary, isn’t that so?’ The skin around those bloodshot eyes wrinkled.
Rahn hadn’t thought about it and now he hesitated. ‘I believe you’re right, inspector.’
‘May I?’ He reached for Rahn’s papers.
‘Of course.’
‘So, from Berlin, is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see, and you are staying here in the south for how long?’
‘A week or two.’
‘And your accommodation?’
‘He’s staying with me,’ Deodat put in, about to lose his formidable temper.
‘And you might be?’
‘Deodat Roche, Magistrate of Arques, that’s who I am! And I’d like to know, inspector, what you are doing here, so far from Paris and in my jurisdiction?’
Inspecteur Beliere lifted that brow again, not at all perturbed. He touched his hat in deference and said, ‘Forgive me, magistrate, I did not know who you were. I am staying at Carcassonne for a small time, investigating something in connection to a group called La Cagoule. Have you heard of them?’
‘Of course,’ Deodat said, ‘everyone has heard of them.’
‘Yes, the journalists have made certain of that,’ the inspector said, blinking. He took a drag of his cigarette and let it sit a thoughtful moment in his lungs before spilling it out in a cloud around his face. He looked as if he was about to turn philosophical but instead he continued with a certain hesitation, ‘We have information that has led us here. In fact, it was by sheer coincidence that I was at the gendarmerie at Carcassonne when the call came in about the deceased. I had nothing else to do . . .’ He showed small, yellowed teeth. ‘ . . . so here I am!’ He looked at Rahn. ‘Are you Monsieur Rahn, the celebrated author?
I think I have read your book!’
This struck Rahn. ‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ the other man said, with a concentrated frown. ‘The Sons of Belessina, the Troubadours, Esclarmonde de Foix – the great Cathar Perfecta, and Montsegur.’ He took one last drag, threw the cigarette down and stepped on it. ‘I’m rather fond of the Cathars and the Templars, it’s a little hobby of mine. I read in my spare time. There is more to us police than making arrests and filing reports, you know. I thought when reading your book that only a strange twist of fate could lead a German to know more than the French about their own history.’
‘One could look at it that way.’
‘You say in your introduction, if I’m not mistaken, that it was Péladan who inspired you? I find that very interesting. Wasn’t he a Rosicrucian, an occultist?’
Rahn’s book had only sold five thousand copies and so, the fact that this man had read it, in itself, was an oddity. Moreover, out of all the things mentioned in his book, the inspector chose to touch on Péladan, for whom Monti had once worked. Rahn felt Monti’s notebook burning a hole in his pocket. This had to be the inspector’s calculated way of letting him know that he was aware of his visit to Pierre Plantard.