‘I’m afraid I had to hit you,’ she answered.
He muttered, ‘Of course. What did you use, a train?’
‘A candlestick, actually.’ The grin was somewhat proud.
This isn’t Louise Brooks; it’s the abbé’s niece!
‘But I didn’t hit you as hard as I could have.’
He gave a perfunctory nod of his head, which made his temples creak. ‘I’m very glad of that, I’m sure.’ He sat up and was helped to his feet by Deodat while the world spun, a jumble of light and mirrors. They sat him down on a pew and he nursed his wounds, feeling now altogether like the highest grade of fool.
‘What are you doing here anyway?’ he said to her, taking her in, her helmet haircut and the deep brown eyes that showed no sympathy. She was dressed like a man, in pants, flat shoes and a black beret to match.
‘I came to open the tabernacle,’ she said.
It took a moment for Rahn to reason this through. How had she figured it out?
‘When they took my uncle away,’ she continued, ‘I had the pond drained.’
‘What pond?’
‘The pond in the garden – I had it drained. Actually, we only had to drain it partially because we found it.’
‘Found what?’ He delicately touched the throbbing lump on his head.
‘I had a hunch about my uncle’s obsession with those fish. I wondered if it wasn’t the fish he was obsessed with at all, but something else in that pond. It did seem to me as if he might have fallen in looking for something. I found this.’ She showed them a key in the shape of a cross. ‘I knew that it belonged to the tabernacle, so I came here to see what might be inside it.’
Rahn looked at her expressionless face. She was smart and he didn’t know exactly why he was annoyed by it, but he was. Apart from the fact that she had occasioned the dull thumping at his temples, she had a way of making him feel like a pimply-faced schoolboy, standing before a headmistress. ‘So the key was at the bottom of the pond all this time?’ He cleared his throat. ‘How did you find it? It must have been covered in scum and algae.’
‘Not at the bottom, it was in a box placed on an inner ledge set into the stonework. It looks like the sacristan never had it on his ring of keys. Monsieur Roche told me how you figured it out, and I am impressed! But what I don’t understand is why my uncle didn’t just write “tabernacle” on that piece of paper if he wanted you to look there.’
She appeared so vulnerable, so lovely – and yet there was that lump on his head. He winced. No, the girl was vicious, and at the same time, terribly beautiful – a vicious beauty, a beautiful terror. His mind was spinning and he contrived to make it stop.
‘So, did you find anything in the tabernacle?’ he said, after a moment.
‘That is the interesting part,’ Deodat replied, sounding vexed. ‘There appears to be nothing in it out of the ordinary.’
‘Impossible!’ Rahn cried, irritated in the extreme. ‘Let me see!’ He got up and made his way to the altar, passing the candlestick that Eva had so discourteously used as a weapon to assault him. Luckily, it wasn’t made of solid brass and the brunt of the blow had been taken by his shoulder and arm, which were both aching and no doubt bruised.
‘There’s a monstrance and a chalice,’ Deodat said behind him, ‘a little box for the wafers, a spoon and a little bottle of consecrated wine . . . some oil, but nothing else, I’m afraid.’
Rahn paused a moment to let his head settle. It felt like one of those snow globes with an Eiffel Tower inside it. Someone had shaken the globe, causing the tower to be obscured by snow, and moreover there was a peculiar buzzing sound – as if a bee had found its way into it and was having a hard time finding a way out. He took a candle from the altar and peered inside the tabernacle, trying to concentrate, but his intermittent double vision was disconcerting. He brought the chalice out towards the candle. It was nothing special, made of bronze, as was the monstrance. It was a poor church, after all. He removed the wine bottle and the spoon and a bottle of oil as well as the box of consecrated wafers, which looked to be made from wood. He then inspected the inside of the tabernacle and found something strange: there was a symbol scratched and burnt onto the base of it. He could just make it out. It looked like a double pentagram.
‘What’s this, Deodat, do you know?’
Deodat put on his reading glasses and came over to take a look and said, ‘What in the
devil? It’s the sign of the lamb – the intelligence of the sun!’
‘What do you mean?’