The Devil's Bed

by Doug Lamoreux

  He transferred her to a temporary resting place, an extended tray, this time with a tad more grace, then covered Vicki's corpse with a sheet. Durand rolled the tray in, secured the numbered door, and removed his gloves with a rubbery snap.

  It had been one hell of a day. As he entered his office, Durand wiped the fatigue from his eyes – and lowered his hands to find it wasn't over. Colonel Blanc was pitched back in his chair, hands behind his head, his boots atop Durand's desk blotter.

  “Comfortable?”

  “I was an hour ago,” Blanc said. “Now I just want to go home.”

  The whiskey bottle Durand kept secreted in a lower drawer stood beside the Colonel's feet. He'd obviously gone a-hunting. The surgeon felt his ire rising – and squelched it. Butting heads with Blanc was an exercise in futility. Why bother? Durand smiled and reached for the bottle. “Drink, Colonel?” The bottle was nearly empty. The surgeon returned it to the desk and eyed Blanc vacantly. Still, he kept his tongue.

  “I helped myself.” There was no apology and no further explanation. “The autopsies; what took so long?”

  “I had four bodies.“

  “You sit on your ass six months a year. What did you find?”

  “I won't have toxicology back for weeks.”

  “I know that. I'm not asking for toxicology. I'm not asking for inquest findings. And I'm not that bitch Laurent looking for a story. You've been a surgeon for thirty years and you've had these bodies for five hours. Tell me what you know.”

  “Tell us both, monsieur le doctor.”

  Blanc looked past Durand with a scowl. It disappeared, and he jumped to his feet, as the magistrate came through the door.

  Judge Dupont flicked his mustache in annoyance as he took in the doctor, the gendarme, and the near empty bottle. He dressed Blanc down with the hammer drills he called eyes, then mentally erased him, and aimed the fierce orbs at Durand. “Yes?”

  The doctor sanded his eyes again. “I was about to say, magistrate, that all four are homicides; all with multiple lacerations, punctures, blunt trauma…”

  “The murder weapon?”

  “Weapons, your Excellency, plural. Multiple double-edged blades; swords, actually. Perhaps more than one.”

  “How many?” Blanc asked.

  The magistrate checked Blanc peripherally, but let the question stand.

  The doctor threw his hands into the air with a frustrated exclamation. “Two or three. Several knives, also doubled-edged. A square blunt instrument and a pointed blunt instrument.”

  “We found a heavy hammer with a pick end?”

  Durand shrugged. “I have yet to see the collected evidence. I find it interesting… most of the wounds were not immediately lethal.” The magistrate and Colonel traded questioning looks. “They were tortured; their killers more interested in the victims' bleeding than in their dying.”

  “Why?”

  “Not my department.”

  “Guess,” the magistrate ordered.

  “Sadistic mania? Ritual? I haven't a clue, your Excellency.”

  “That's incredible,” the Colonel said with a disbelieving air.

  “No. That was the credible part.” Durand offered the last of the whiskey to the magistrate. Dupont twisted his lips in disgust, his mustache in impatience. Durand drank the dregs, exhaled the fumes and said, “All of the victims… were bitten.”

  “Bitten? What do you mean bitten?”

  “They're covered in bite marks. The American girl was bitten once; a ripping wound in the throat. The others - all over. And no, I don't know how many. It will take a forensic dentist and much study. But the bites go completely through the sub-dermal layers of skin – deep into the flesh.”

  “Are these sex murders?” the judge demanded.

  “No. The American girl, eh, has some suggestive bruising, but there was no penetration. The torn clothing… Perhaps there was an attempted molestation that was not consummated for some reason.”

  “Her attacker was interrupted?” the Colonel offered.

  “If rape was a motive!” Durand shrugged. “Neither of the other women showed any indications.”

  “If it wasn't sexual,” the Colonel asked. “Why were they bitten?”

  “The blood of all four of the victims has gone missing.”

  “For God's sake,” the judge erupted. “The blood of the mother and daughter is splashed from one end of their cottage to the other. I saw it.”

  “With all respect, magistrate, it isn't. The scene was horrid, no doubt, but the blood spilled does not equal what ought to be there. The bodies were drained but the blood is missing.”

  Dupont tugged on his mustache. “If your feet are rested, Colonel,” the magistrate said, “perhaps you'll find these murderers before they strike again?”

  Eighteen

  The reds of sunset bleeding into dark offered a stark background to the imposing St. Thomas Church. Brandy and Ray stared in silence. The yellowed stone, stained-glass, angular roofs, towering spires and circumambient wrought-iron drew one and repelled the other. She stood in awe of the power of God and he man's power to manipulate.

  Ray turned from the looming edifice to the lady reporter who'd brought them and said, “I just don't see the point in this?”

  “We're not even through the door!” Brandy turned to Aimee. “See? I told you.”

  “Told her what?” He bounced back to the reporter. “Look, I don't mean to be rude. We appreciate your help, but…”

  “I appreciate you,” Brandy cut in. “He doesn't appreciate anything.”

  “I stand corrected. You appreciate her.” Ray returned to Aimee. “My only interest is in who killed my sister. And, no, I don't give a damn about your local ghost stories.”

  It was a strange match. They were sparring - by hitting her. “Neither do I. You have questions without answers, monsieur,” Aimee said. “I have similar questions. Should we not seek these answers elusive?”

  Brandy took Aimee by the arm. “Forget him.” She tossed her hair and reshouldered her carpet bag. “We'll go.”

  “I didn't say I wouldn't go! I'm here.” The girls were already moving. By the time he finished his sigh, Ray had to hurry to catch up.

  Inside the heavy oak doors, Aimee and Brandy dipped their fingers into the font and crossed themselves. Ray merely crossed his eyes. Aimee nodded through the open double-doors, directing their attention across the decorated length of the church, to the priest, Father Clive Trevelyan.

  He was handing candy to a boy and girl at the front of the sanctuary. The altar servers, Brandy supposed, giggled and disappeared through a door in the aisle. The priest snuck a sweetie for himself as he watched them go. He turned to see he'd been caught. Trevelyan coughed the candy into a handkerchief as he started their direction.

  From the vestibule, the new arrivals saw three different things. Aimee saw a priest very like the Father in her own church in Paris which she'd left long ago and now visited rarely. Ray saw a black costume, stiff at the shoulders, tapering to a belly (beer, he assumed), tied at the waist; with buttons from the starched dog collar to the flowing hem near the floor. The square hat with pom-poms was precious. The uniform of the trade, Ray guessed, but he wouldn't be caught dead. Brandy looked beneath the clerical accoutrement, the biretta, the cassock. She saw a tall, aging man with a nervous step, a dark gray widow's peak, silver tufts at each temple, wild eyebrows and wire glasses that enlarged already big brown eyes and made him look like a barn owl. Trevelyan's voice, as he greeted them in French, disappointed. Brandy'd expected authority or wisdom, but again got nerves. They met, as a group, in the center aisle. Aimee introduced her small group, then asked if he spoke English.

  Trevelyan, at first unsure, finally blurted, “Yes.” More thought brought an amendment. “I speak English. And French. And Spanish. Italian, German, Portuguese. And just enough Tagalog to get into trouble in the Philippines.” Then, fearing he'd been indiscreet, tacked on, “but not enough, I'm afraid, to get out.” />
  It was, Brandy thought, like watching an old lady park a car; indecision in motion. She couldn't help but laugh. The rest, including Trevelyan, joined her. He had, in one sentence, toppled the wall between the mortals and the imposing Roman Catholic Church. Just that quickly, with a familiarity nearing goofiness, Trevelyan had gone from Father to father. Brandy liked him.

  “These are the visitors of whom I spoke on the phone,” Aimee said.

  “The Americans. Yes, I thought so.”

  “Does it show?” Brandy asked.

  “Not at all. Er, It's simply that… well, ah, only tourists walk the square at this time of the evening.”

  “Why's that?”

  “Because, er, the setting sun causes the shadow of the, eh, castle to fall upon the square.” The priest stared with menace. Dressed as he was, surrounded by the ancient iconography of the church, it had a disquieting effect. He waited a beat, then chuckled lightly. “It doesn't really, of course.”

  “What's that?” Brandy asked, her mouth suddenly dry.

  “The, eh, shadow of the cursed castle. It doesn't really fall on the square. It doesn't come within miles of it. Oh, but that's the local superstition.”

  Brandy and Ray traded looks; Ray's a deadpan suggesting he'd like to slap someone, Brandy's a plea that it not be the priest.

  “Eh, how can I help you? A matter of faith?”

  “No, no, no, Father. Not faith,” Aimee said, taking the lead. “It is more, we believe, a matter of… a hobby of yours.”

  “Really?” Trevelyan looked the church over and shook his head. “Oh, this is too formal a setting to discuss hobbies. Er, come with me.”

  He led them out and down a long hall.

  “You're not French?” Brandy asked as they walked.

  “Heavens no. British. Transplanted, oh, so long ago, even I barely remember.”

  He followed up with several favorable comments about the south of France, then apologized to his native Britain if he'd iterated there had been anything wrong with it. Trevelyan, apparently, liked both and disliked neither, yet seemed neither happy nor unhappy. He simply was. Sad, Brandy thought. The poor man was either without romance or awash in it, she didn't know which. Perhaps that's why he found satisfaction in studying long dead religious sects?

  They passed to a connected porch. The sun was gone but, above the tree tops, its final ribbon of red streaked the sky. Trevelyan searched his pockets. “Now, eh, what hobby of mine interests you?”

  “The Templars.”

  The priest paused in genuine surprise. “Oh. You are tourists.” He produced a key and resumed his step.

  “Why do you say that?” Ray asked, speaking for the first time.

  They reached the end of the hall. Father Trevelyan opened a door and, as he waved them in, said, “There are few in Paradis, er, courageous enough to express a curiosity, ah, even if they have one, concerning the Templar Knights.”

  Brandy, Ray and Aimee filed past him into the study and Trevelyan pulled the door closed. He removed his biretta, struck a match and lit an oil lamp on his desk. A golden glow flooded the room. “Please,” he said, gesturing.

  Brandy and Ray took chairs near the desk, and Aimee found a seat on a book-laden couch, in a room more museum than study. The walls and floor overflowed with framed paintings, weapons, religious artifacts, ancient armor, a suit of white linen (emblazoned with a Maltese cross), chain mail - and even a church bell, its cast bronze glistening, as the centerpiece of a wooden cabinet behind his desk.

  “Er, now then, the Templars.” Trevelyan said, his elbows finding the desk, his fingertips finding each other. “I confess, ah, I'm not certain where to begin. I know neither what you know nor what you're looking for.”

  Brandy didn't need to be asked twice. “Well, Father,” she said, “I'm here writing a thesis on burial practices and would have liked to pick your brain regarding the Templars. We see you're an expert. Of course, that's changed now. Aimee, I mean, Miss Laurent…”

  “Aimee is fine,” the reporter said.

  Brandy smiled. “Aimee, I assume, told you about Ray's sister?”

  “She did, yes. Er, I'm very sorry. Your sister… Ah, are you Catholic, Ray?”

  “No.”

  His tone required no follow-up. “What can I do for you?”

  “We need help,” Brandy blurted out. She apologized, laid her hand on Ray, then the dam broke. “I'm Catholic, Father, but that isn't why we're here. In the last twenty-four hours, we've gone from being tourists, to losing our sister, to being questioned about drug dealers, to practically being accused of murder. We've had guns pulled on us, been interrogated,” Brandy paused for breath. “This morning, an officer suggested that, if we weren't responsible, maybe the Templars were.”

  “The Templars?”

  “That's what he said.”

  The priest shook his head. “The Templar Knights, and their Order, er, have been dead for seven hundred years.”

  “We don't know from dead,” Ray said. “All we know is they were brought up in a discussion about my sister's death.”

  “And every time we mention them,” Brandy added excitedly, “or their castle, people whisper and cross themselves. I chased a couple right out of a café. And they were saluting us as if we were Nazis.”

  She could see the wheels turning in the priest's head. His eyebrow kicked up a fuss and he laughed loudly. Once he regained himself, he said, “Forgive me, please. That is not a Nazi salute. It is called the, er, mano fica. You double together the fingers and insert the thumb between the fore and middle digit.” He demonstrated. “It is an ancient guard against the evil eye.”

  “The evil eye?” Ray frowned and crossed his muscled arms.

  “Would it be fair, Mr. Kramer, to say you're, eh, not a believer?”

  “I've never done the whole God thing.”

  “Are you superstitious?”

  “It's all horsesh…” Ray caught himself or, more accurately, caught Brandy's eye and put on the brakes.

  Trevelyan smiled. “For hundreds of years sailors refused to carry a woman on board or even to set sail on a Friday. There are ten thousand superstitions.”

  “People don't think like that anymore.”

  “Don't they? I would be willing to wager your mother, certainly your Grandmother, when she spilled salt, gathered a pinch and threw it over her left shoulder. What actor, today, will utter 'Macbeth' inside a theater? And don't you, situation permitting, go round rather than walk beneath a ladder? Or hesitate when a black cat crosses your path? Or fret when you break a mirror?”

  “What's that got to do with the Templars?”

  “To discuss the Templars,” Trevelyan said, rising, “it will be necessary to alter your perceptions. This is not the States. And, here, it is not the twenty-first century.”

  Through a window, on the far side of the study, the last of the sun's light faded like dying embers behind the hills. Darkness overtook the corners of the room and only the lamp prevented its settling over all. The priest lifted the window and a cool autumn breeze followed him back to his desk.

  “Paradis is not the City of Lights. It is a lonely village.” Trevelyan's nervous vocal ticks disappeared as he entered his area of expertise. “Unlike Paris, when the sun sets here, it isn't replaced by electric lights. There's little music and no revelry. With the exception of a few candles and a few prayers it is quiet and dark.” He slowly turned the valve on the oil lamp. The glow dimmed, the shadows grew. “Imagine what actual darkness and real silence are like.” He closed the valve. The lamp went out. “The darkness is all encompassing. The silence gives way to a symphony. But who or what are the musicians?” The night-sounds, the chirps, calls and cries of nocturnal creatures, the flapping of night wings washed in through the open window.

  Trevelyan struck a match, starkly underscoring his face with shadow and startling his guests. “What is that old poem? Something about… corpses riding beasts; corpses wandering graveyards. I'm sorry, ah, my
memory fails me. All but the last stanza; that I remember.” And he recited in a deep and resonant voice:

  “Creatures God had never planned,

  Creatures never taught to die.”

  Surrounded by the symbols of the church, the remnants of religious war, lit by the doubtful flicker of a single match, the priest appeared to have a ghost story to tell. His visitors looked nervously from one to the other.

  “This, you must understand, is the land you've come to, a breeding ground for age-old superstitions.” He relit the lamp, chasing the gloom back to the corners and the fear from their hearts.

  “All of us here in Paradis have heard the 'bogie stories' concerning the Templar knights. Of their Black Masses, their blood sacrifices, their curses and threats of revenge from the grave. With the ruins of their castle in the mountains above, the locals are inundated with it from childhood.”

  “But it is just a legend,” Brandy asked. “Right?”

  The priest shrugged. “All legends are based, in part, on fact. The Templars are no exception. They traveled broadly throughout the known world. They met and lived with many peoples; believers, non-believers. It seems likely, to make in-roads, some non-Christian rites were assimilated into their Masses.”

  Trevelyan crossed the room to a large painting.

  It was a handsome portrait of a knight in a flowing white cloak, brown tunic, and chausses (armor leggings) with a sword in his powerful right hand. He had a head of untamed hair, perhaps cut before a campfire with his own dagger, and a mustache and goatee that added to his darkly sinister aura. He bore a likeness to the Russian monk Rasputin, but 'madness' was far from Brandy's mind. The bold knight stared defiantly over his shoulder. He was every woman's dream; white knight and black knight in one. Brandy was drawn. Framed in gold, the portrait featured a plaque bearing the knight's name, the year '1136' and, in French, 'Grand Master of the Knights of the Temple'.