The Sixth Key (36 page)

There was the noise of a latch as the sacristy
door opened.

‘All right! I have to close the church now!’

Rahn hid the vial in his coat pocket. ‘A
wonderful specimen!’ he said to him.

‘The veil?’ The thin man came over to them.
‘No, it isn’t so rare. Other churches around these parts have them: Bugarach,
Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet . . . Brenac.’

‘Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet, that’s Abbé
Grassaud’s church?’ Rahn said, surprised.

‘Yes.’ The man’s face opened into a toothless
grin. ‘Do you know him? He grew up in this town. He went to seminary school and
was accepted into Saint Sulpice in Paris. He is a doctor of theology now. We
are very proud of him!’

Rahn tried to take this in and wondered if it
was coincidence or design. Saint Sulpice! Could Grassaud be a member of
Association Angelica?

They thanked the sacristan and left. Once
outside, Rahn felt both relieved to be out of the church and encouraged that
they were one step closer in their search. ‘We’ve got it!’ he said.

‘We’ve got what, dear Rahn?’ La Dame said,
whining. ‘We don’t know what it is yet.’

‘Well, I aim to find out. We need light to
have a look at this, and besides I think we deserve something to eat and a
glass of brandy. What do you say?’

All were in agreement. They took the road out
of the dismal little town and headed back to Granes. But they had only been
driving a short time when they came up behind a hearse travelling at a snail’s
pace over the mist-laden road.

‘What’s a hearse doing about at this hour?’
Rahn said.

‘It is rather odd!’ La Dame agreed. ‘Perhaps
it’s like the curious incident of the dog in the night time, Rahn!’

‘What?’ Eva asked.

‘From a Sherlock Holmes story – “Silver
Blaze”’ Rahn informed her.

‘What did the dog do?’ Eva said.

‘The dog did nothing,’ Rahn replied.
‘Actually, it didn’t bark when it should have and that was the curious
incident.’

‘In other words,’ La Dame added, ‘if something
is odd or curious, there may be a good reason for it.’

Rahn nodded. La Dame was right. The forest of
partially denuded trees stood sombre on either side of the narrow country road
and there was no way to pass the hearse safely – if someone came from
behind them, they would be trapped. Every now and again they would lose the
hearse around a corner, but they could still see the fog glowing from its
headlamps. The road narrowed even further and at this point headlights appeared
in the opposite direction. The hearse stopped and began to reverse, forcing
Rahn to follow until they had reached a point where the oncoming car could
squeeze past them.

‘I like this less and less,’ La Dame said.

‘Look, there’s a car behind us!’ Eva put in.

Rahn glanced in the rear-view mirror and
realised she was right. His heart did a double somersault. Once again that
potholer’s sense of foreboding had been on the mark. Could it be the black
Citroën?

‘What are you going to do?’ Eva said.

‘I don’t know!’ he answered tersely. But now
he realised that due to a peculiarity in the road he had lost sight of both
cars. He saw a turn-off on the right and knew this might be their only
opportunity, so he switched off his headlights and took the turn sharply.

This occasioned a cry from La Dame: ‘What are
you doing!’

‘Shut up, will you?’ Rahn said, concentrating,
his heart in his throat.

He drove the Peugeot only a little way by the
faint light of an unseen moon and switched off the engine. ‘We’ll wait here,’
he told them, ‘and for crying out loud, La Dame, don’t light up your cigar.
This could be nothing, or it could be something. The car behind us won’t know
he’s not following us for a while.’

‘What now then? You do realise that you must
be a suspect in five murders and one kidnapping? Not to mention the man at the
university!’ La Dame said.

Rahn hadn’t thought about it like that. It was
true! There was Abbé Cros, that man in the barn at Arques, Abbé Lucien, and now
those two Serbians lying dead in some desolate spot near Campagne-sur-Aude, and
if all this weren’t enough there was Deodat’s fate to take into account,
whatever that might be! He felt dismal, but there was nothing to be done about
it now. He had to concentrate. When he felt it was safe, he turned the key and
the lights came on again, illuminating the fog that, like a living thing, had
grown to like their company. He reversed the Peugeot back to the juncture with
the road to Granes and took to the road again, continuing until he found a
shoulder on the left with enough cover to hide behind. He stopped the car and
turned the engine off.

‘What now?’ La Dame cried.

‘Look, it’s like this, if that car was
following us, whoever is in it will soon figure out we’ve given them the slip
and they’ll come back looking for us.’

Sure enough, within moments of Rahn having
said this, the car drove past – it was the black Citroën. As soon as he
saw those tail-lights disappear, Rahn pulled out again and set off for Granes
at full speed, hoping the hearse was long gone.

At Granes they came to a little pension on the
Grand Rue that was still open. They parked the car around the back of the
building and met the owner of the establishment sitting at the front, smoking a
pipe. He was a portly man, with a long moustache and a short disposition. He
told them that there were two rooms available and that the kitchen was closed
but that his wife could warm up some leftover rabbit stew if this sounded to
their liking.

In the poorly lit
kitchen, having consumed what was left of a delicious stew, La Dame sipped at
his brandy and puffed on a Cuban, looking almost like his old self, except for
the split lip. Eva sipped at her tea and Rahn unrolled the little yellowed
parchment he had taken out of the vial. It was another encrypted message and it
looked similarly constructed to the last:

VITA

XWNSOILSV

YIGSGIVRJQQDZLBEP

‘So, what’s the master word?’ La Dame asked,
sitting forward to see.

Rahn took out his Vigenère Square and looked
at it.

‘Vita. It’s the only intelligible word and
besides, it fits: life and death, vita and mors.’

Rahn
wrote ‘vita’ underneath the cipher and used the Vigenère Square again to
decipher each let
t
er.‘Coustassa!’ Rahn said.

‘The church of Abbé Gélis! Yes, of course it’s
on the list!’

He deciphered the second line:

‘
Inside the cross of God
. . . You know
what this means? We have to go to Coustassa and we’ll have to go there now. You
heard what that Serbian said 0about tonight – think of Deodat!’

Despite protestations from La Dame, they left
Granes discreetly, and headed north to Coustassa via Campagne-les-Bains, where
the Serbians had accosted them. Rahn kept to the back roads, his eye on the
rear-view mirror looking out for the Citroën.

He was glad to reach the town of Coustassa
without incident.

The village appeared to be worn out and in decline
and, like its church, looked for the most part to be sleeping except for a
house here and there showing a light at its window. A fine rain fell and all
three were wet and trembling by the time they got to the church. Their mood did
not improve when they found it locked. Rahn took out his knife, and selected
from its assortment of gadgets a suitable device and put it into the lock,
moving it around this way and that. It didn’t work. He heard Eva sigh beside
him.

‘Here, let me,’ she said and took the penknife
from his hand with an air of authority that was infuriating. ‘A lawyer’s
secretary has to learn one or two unconventional skills.’

She moved the knife deftly until there was an
audible click.

‘Bravo!’ La Dame
whispered.

Rahn grunted. ‘What kind of lawyers did you
work for?’

‘The ordinary kind – the kind that don’t
always obey the law.’

Inside, the only light came from the votive
candles and the perpetual flame at the altar. Rahn reconciled himself to
entering another church even though the thought of it made his every muscle and
sinew scream for him to stop. He told himself that Deodat was still alive and
that each step closer to the treasure was a step closer to Deodat. Keeping this
firmly in his mind, he walked down the short nave, opened the little gate and
took the three steps to the sacred space before the altar. Here the rabbit stew
came to life, thumping its feet in his stomach as he took himself to the cross.
His anxiety made his chest feel like a squeezed lemon.

Inside
the cross of God
. . . The cross on the altar looked to be solid and fixed.
There was no way of removing it without making noise. Behind the altar there
hung a large picture of Christ on his cross, a terrible rendition of His death
that had been darkened by centuries of candle smoke. Rahn went to it now and
inspected it. As he did so he thought it through:

Vita was the master word in the second
parchment – the word for life in Latin.

The next clue was,
inside the cross of God
.

Could it mean that the clue was hidden inside
that painting depicting death? If so, then someone had a sense of humour! He
inspected the painting and noted that part of the canvas had been pulled away
from the frame at the bottom left-hand corner. His heart sank. It looked like
someone had beaten them to it. If there had been a clue here – it was
gone.

‘I think we’re too late,’ he said.

‘Too late for what?’ La Dame asked.

‘The clue is missing.’

‘But that doesn’t make sense,’ Eva said.
‘Saint-Just-et-le-Bézu was intact and that was the second clue, the second
parchment. To find this parchment they would have needed to have found the
first and second parchments,’ Eva said.

‘I don’t know, maybe it was Gélis?’ Rahn said.
‘Maybe he started tearing apart his own church, like Saunière did. It certainly
looks renovated.’

‘Then this may not be the original painting,’
Eva pointed out.

Rahn told La Dame to bring him a candle and in
the meantime pulled the painting away from the wall a little. ‘Look at this.
The original wall surface is still behind the painting. It must have always
been here and they renovated around it. Now, if Gélis did find something hidden
in it, he could have sold it to Cros. That would explain the money they found
in his presbytery. It would also explain why Saint-Just-et-le-Bézu is intact.
Cros could have used the clue in this church to find the clues in the other
four churches and it may have been enough to point him in the direction of the
treasure.’

‘So it’s gone and he has been buried with it,’
Eva said. ‘In that case I was right, Cros had been so secretive about his
funeral arrangements because he wanted to hide the treasure in his coffin.’

Rahn felt the blood drain from his head. ‘This
has been for nothing and now Deodat will be killed – or worse!’

‘Listen, Rahn,’ La Dame said, ‘something
doesn’t add up. If I’d found the treasure I wouldn’t bother to hide the list
and guard it so keenly. I’d be sunning myself on the Côte d’Azur, with a bottle
of Luis Felipe and affectionate friends to keep me company.’