The Sixth Key(79)

‘They found him on the Day of the Dead – tomorrow it marks forty-one years. It happened in 1897.’ She leant her corpulence over her plate and looked at her audience. ‘He never left the door of the presbytery open and he only let people he knew into the house. So, whoever it was that did it, knew him.’

The mother-in-law with no teeth burst into silent tears and reached for a napkin to dry her eyes but this only made Madame Corfu perversely determined to finish the story.

‘Whoever it was that did what?’ Eva asked, those dark eyes staring from beneath that fringe. It was amazing to Rahn how easily she moved from detached to vulnerable, from disinterested to full of awe.

‘Whoever it was that killed him of course, my dear! I know, because my aunt lives in Coustassa. She was a young woman when it happened. Apparently, he was frightened by something and took to being a hermit, refusing to leave his presbytery and barring the door to all.’

‘What was he afraid of?’ Rahn pushed aside his plate.

‘For a long time,’ she continued, ‘he was obsessed by something, he didn’t tell his family what it was but when they found his diary they saw that he had written over and over in it about having discovered something valuable. At any rate, on that fateful night someone broke into the presbytery – it was somewhere around midnight, on the cusp between All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. There was not a thing stolen, there was even money in the house left undisturbed.’ She crossed her arms. ‘The police said it was a mystery.’

‘How was he killed?’ the girl dared to ask.

Madame Corfu bent back that large head. She had been waiting for that very question. She was poised and ready, sharpening her words on the tip of her tongue before looking at them again with brilliant eyes. ‘He was butchered with an axe!’

‘Good God!’ The words escaped from Eva unbidden and she immediately put a hand to her mouth.

The old woman with no teeth sobbed into her cake and the husband made a frown that would have withered a weed.

The madame smiled a red smudge and shrugged. ‘Well, some say it was a fire poker, but there was no murder weapon found. Whatever the murderer used, it did the job and it made a big mess! Bang! Bang! Bang!’ She thumped her closed fist three times on the table so suddenly and with such vigour that it made every person jump. The old woman got up and took herself out, crying.

Monsieur Corfu threw his hands up in the air. ‘I’ve had enough!’ he said, and hurled his napkin onto the table before leaving the dining room.

The madame calmly watched her husband leave the room. Rahn knew she would not stop now, not while she still had an audience. ‘He was struck thirteen times in the back of the head!’ she continued with a fiery eye. ‘There were bits of brain all over the stove and on the floor – even on the walls! Apparently there was so much blood that the gendarmes were slipping about. Anyway, the interesting thing is what they found.’

‘What did they find?’ Rahn took a breath in, engrossed.

‘His slippers were placed next to his head, his arms were crossed over his chest and one leg was bent under him. A tidy fellow, whoever did it! And the only evidence he left was a packet of Tzar cigarette papers beside the body. On the packet, the murderer wrote two words: Viva Angelina,’ the madame ended, triumphantly.





29


More Watson than Holmes

‘You suspect someone?’

‘I suspect myself.’

‘What!’

‘Of coming to conclusions too rapidly.’

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Adventure of the Naval Treaty’


In the bedroom Rahn paced up and down like a caged lion in front of the small hearth. The fire glowed but its warmth was meagre against the draughts spawned by the Devil’s Wind.

‘What do you make of it?’ Eva said.

‘Your uncle’s list has something to do with the book of Pope Honorius or, as they call it, Le Serpent Rouge. As Deodat would say, it is elementary.’

‘Really? Are you certain you’re not jumping to conclusions?’

He told her the phone call to Paris had been to a friend whom he had asked to look into Jean-Louis Verger. He informed her of what La Dame had found out about the connection between Le Serpent Rouge and the murder of an archbishop. He told her about the group Abbé Grassaud had mentioned at the hermitage, which was known as the penitents; and that Verger was rumoured to have belonged to this group at the time he committed the murder.

‘And now I’m quite certain that Saunière also had something to do with that group.’

‘What makes you think that?’

He stopped his pacing to look at her. ‘Because when I was alone with Madame Dénarnaud, she said these words: “Penitence, penitence – remember that!”’