The Sixth Key(55)

‘This seven-pointed star is found in the Book of the Seven Seals in Saint John’s Apocalypse. At each point there is an eye and a sign which denotes a planetary intelligence: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus; all together they stand for the Cosmic Christ. I’ve seen it before in the work of Rudolf Steiner; it can be used as a talisman to ward off evil, like the evil eye. The Templars also used it on their secret seal.’

Eva came to take a look.

‘Why would the abbé feel a need to scratch that symbol into a place that is holy anyway?’ Rahn said, unconsciously taking a swipe at the bee which now seemed to be somewhere beyond his line of vision. He searched the tabernacle, checking for a false compartment, and felt something at the top of it: it was a piece of paper stuck with tape. He worked at it carefully until it came away without tearing. It was a list of names and places.

He showed the others. ‘Do either of you recognise any of these?’

Jean-Louis Verger – Paris

Antoine Bigou – Rennes-le-Château

~

A J Grassaud – Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet

A C Saunière – Rennes-le-Château

A K Boudet – Rennes-les-Bains A

A Gélis – Coustassa

A L Rivière – Espéraza

‘Wait a minute! That’s the abbé I told you about,’ Eva said,

‘the one who visited my uncle a short while back, the Abbé Grassaud, from Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet.’

‘Do you think these might be the priests he was investigating?’ Rahn asked Deodat.

Eva raised her beautiful brows and turned to Deodat. ‘What is he talking about?’

‘Your uncle was investigating a number of priests in this area for the Vatican,’ Deodat informed her. ‘I don’t know exactly why, he talked in generalities about the church and the laws of the state. He seemed anxious to keep things quiet, so I complied. When he asked for me this week I thought he wanted to raise the matter again. Anyway, whatever it is, this list must have been important for him to hide it like that.’

‘I don’t understand,’ the girl said.

‘If you’re right and your uncle died trying to get the key to this tabernacle, it must have mattered a great deal to him,’ Rahn said, pointing out the obvious. It had the desired effect: Eva frowned and said nothing more.

Rahn looked about him. ‘We had better leave. It won’t be long before daybreak and it would be better if we weren’t found here like this.’

‘You’re right, dear Rahn, we would have to explain our actions and I think for the time being we should keep what we’ve found to ourselves – no sense in creating a scandal precipitously.’

Once outside, Rahn felt a great relief wash over him. The gibbous moon had set and the world was a playground of fog and damp vapours and shadows but there were too many thoughts running through his mind for him to notice it.

‘Go home, my dear, and rest,’ Deodat said, taking Eva to her car. ‘You will have a lot to do in the coming days, organising your uncle’s funeral . . .’

She got into the car as if she didn’t have a care in the world and said, through the open window, ‘There’s really not much to do. He arranged everything with his lawyers a long time ago; his body is to be interred somewhere secret, he didn’t want anyone to know where, not even me, and there is to be no funeral, nothing at all.’

Rahn thought this exceedingly strange but said nothing. He stood beside Deodat and said his goodbyes, watching the taillights of Eva’s car die away on the ribbon of road with a strange wistfulness in his heart. A vicious, terrible beauty!

He wiped his hands of dust and of the girl too. He had neither the time nor the inclination for girls, for as Sherlock Holmes would say, they were inscrutable – their most trivial actions could mean volumes and their extraordinary conduct could depend on a hairpin.

It was still dark and very cold when they climbed into the Tourster for the long drive back. Like the miners whose lives depend on it, years of potholing in the Lombrives had developed in Rahn an ability to sense danger and he could smell it now – there was certainly something fishy in this entire business.





20


Much Ado About Nothing?

‘Between ingenuity and the analytic ability there exists a difference far greater, indeed, than that between the fancy and the imagination.’

Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’


The sun was tinting the sky in watered hues by the time they finally arrived back at Deodat’s house at Arques. Madame Sabine was not home. On Thursdays she left early for the markets at Espéraza but she had left them breakfast, a freshly baked brioche and a pot of jam that tasted like heaven. They ate in the kitchen and at the same time tried to reason through their findings.