‘It’s devilish Mr Holmes, devilish!’ cried Mortimer Tregennis. ‘It is not of this world.’
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot’
A man approached, announcing in a tedious and perfunctory manner that he was the mayor and wanted to know what was going on.
When he saw what Rahn could see he cried, ‘Mon Dieu! Wicked priests! Wicked priests are born again as ravens! Saunière!’ He sank to his knees, crossing himself.
Rahn ignored him and concentrated on the scene before him. A black raven had been sliced open and its carcass was hanging from the crucifix by a cord tied around its neck. Below, on the altar, someone had placed a white cloth on which a symbol, a circle and a cross, had been drawn in blood. In each quadrant letters were drawn that when read clockwise formed the word AGLA.
Beside him, the mayor awoke to his civic duty and sent all the townspeople to their homes, commandeering two men to take down the bird and the white sheet and its contents and to burn them outside the town gates.
In the meantime Rahn looked for Abbé Lucien and found him at his presbytery, keeping company with the last person Rahn would have expected. It was Eva, looking spritely and, for all intents and purposes, not at all touched by their shared nocturnal ordeal.
‘Hello Otto, I woke earlier and went for a walk. I returned immediately when I heard the bells. What a terrible upset!’ she said, taking the kettle off the hob to make tea.
The abbé looked distraught and gestured for Rahn to sit at the table with him, perhaps the same table at which Saunière had once sat before his fire. Rahn acquiesced and, pushing aside his suspicions, tried to formulate his thoughts into questions.
‘She went too far this time! To desecrate a church on All Saints’ Day! Pure evil,’ the abbé said, shaking his head, his blond eyelashes batting nervously.
‘Who do you mean?’ Rahn said to him.
‘Madame Dénarnaud of course, who else?’ He blushed with anger. ‘I saw her last night. I was coming back from the mayor’s house on my way to the presbytery and I saw her at the church.’
‘What time was that?’ Eva sat down, her good-natured domesticity disappearing in the wake of a cool detached curiosity that made her brown eyes brilliant, like two burning coals.
‘Quite late; you see I ate at the mayor’s house, as I do every week. We usually play cards, a bit of harmless fun. It must have been well past midnight. It was raining and the wind was wild, as you know, and the woman looked wet through and I thought she might be sleepwalking because she is known for it. She told me she had been praying in the church but I doubted it. I offered to help her to the villa but she told me to go to Hell!’ He shrugged. ‘I would have locked the church, as I usually do before going to bed but I realised I didn’t have the keys, so I decided to leave it. The mayor is trying to call the police but the telephone lines came down in the storm.’
Rahn sat forward. ‘I doubt if Madame Dénarnaud could reach as high as the crucifix to hang the raven without help.’ But Rahn remembered the madame’s words: Beware of that raven. And he couldn’t deny that it all sounded suspicious. He rubbed his sore head. ‘Do you know why the mayor’s first impression on seeing the bird was to say that it was Saunière?’
The young abbé shrugged. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’
‘Abbé, what did Saunière find in that church?’
He looked up. ‘What has that to do with anything?’
‘All I know is, two men are dead in as many days and now this sign in the church—’
‘Two men?’
‘The Abbé Cros and another man.’
‘What connection could there be between the death of the Abbé Cros at Bugarach and this horrible desecration?’ He frowned then and something must have occurred to him, because he looked at both of them and said, ‘Who are you?
Why are you here?’
‘We want to know what Saunière found,’ Eva said.
‘Treasure hunters! I should have known.’
‘Listen,’ Rahn said, ‘some years ago Cros was investigating Saunière and a number of priests here in the Roussillon. He left a list of names. We think the investigation had something to do with what Saunière found here.’
‘I’ll tell you nothing at all!’ The abbé crossed his arms, as stubborn as a child.
‘But Abbé, if you don’t help us, a third man may die. A good friend of mine, the magistrate of Arques, and it will be on your head.’
The abbé put a shaking hand to his brow and seemed on the verge of tears. ‘Can I see the list?’