The Templars' Last Secret

by Martin Walker

  He ignored the question. “This is a straightforward case of identifying a woman who fell to her death and best left in the hands of Commissaire Jalipeau and the Police Nationale. With any luck, our work on this is done.”

  “Oh yes?” Amélie’s voice was mocking. “You have a scout camp being opened next week financed by a wealthy Jewish woman and the Muslim scouts have decided to boycott it. And at the same time you find an Israeli woman dead while painting something on the wall of your château that seems related to an Arab-Israeli dispute over Jerusalem. And you’re telling me that all these things aren’t linked?”

  “I very much hope not. And it’s not my château.”

  “I know it’s not your damn château, Bruno, but that’s not the point,” she snapped at him. Then she sighed loudly and gazed at the ceiling as though willing herself to be calm. “There must be a connection here. We just have to find it.”

  “You may be right, but so far I don’t see it,” he said evenly. Bruno noted her use of the word “we.” He accepted that Amélie was a gifted researcher who had saved him hours or even days of work. But she was not a policewoman, and he’d already bent some rules in letting her become so involved in the case.

  “May I use your printer?” she asked.

  “So long as it’s official.”

  “It’s some material about this Jerusalem controversy and the testament that I want to look at more carefully.”

  She looked at the printer and the cable that linked it to Bruno’s desk computer and shook her head. “The first recommendation in my report will be to get all you municipal policemen up-to-date with technology. This printer must be ten years old. I’ll have to e-mail you the documents and let you print them out.”

  To change the subject, he asked how her dinner with the local Socialists had gone. She glared at him for a moment, and then her face did not exactly relax, but it softened. Bruno had the impression that she was trying to focus on an object that was at the same time very close and yet far away.

  “They were sweet and welcoming in a rather formal way, but not what I think of as political comrades,” she said slowly, groping for the right words. “They actually talked of ‘the workers,’ here in a town without factories. When I asked them what they did, they were pharmacists, teachers, insurance agents or employees of the mairie. None was under forty and most were older. I didn’t have the heart to tell them they were classic members of the petite bourgeoisie.”

  “I don’t think they get many visitors from the national headquarters, even from its youth wing. How did they react to your idea for a youth section of the party?”

  “They said it was a great idea but wanted to know what the youth section was meant to do, supposing they could actually start one. I think they expected me to give them a detailed plan and hold their hands while they got started.”

  Bruno nodded. He had not expected anything different. “Well, let’s go and see one of our local youth projects that might interest you, although it’s not political. I’ve got to go check on this scout camp that has to be ready by the end of this week. You’ll need to change your shoes again.”

  “You mean the one that you don’t think could possibly be linked to this Arab-Israeli business?” she asked him, a mocking tilt to her eyebrow.

  “You don’t have to come,” he said.

  “Yes, I do,” she retorted, picking up her bag. “It’s my job.”

  Chapter 12

  At the hilltop village of Audrix, Bruno paused to show Amélie the view over the valley before turning off onto the plateau where the springtime green was dazzling. He plunged down what had once been a hidden turn into a deeply rutted country lane flanked by bruised and broken vegetation that testified to the passing of many heavy trucks. He made a mental note to get some gravel laid here to fill the ruts before Yacov’s inspection visit. He stopped the car as he came over a small rise. Below them unfolded the hollow containing the old farm and the restored barn, the roofs gleaming with new solar panels. A long stretch of pasture sloped down to the stream and a bathing place below the small waterfall. Beside the stream was a long stretch of flat ground, with a net rigged for volleyball and two goalposts installed to make a soccer field.

  Two men were unloading army surplus tents from a truck. Bruno caught the sound of an electric drill coming from inside the farmhouse as he pulled up. The men with the tents stopped to stare as Amélie climbed out of the van, followed by Balzac. She waved at them and Bruno greeted them and went into the farmhouse. He found Arnaud, a local carpenter, fitting cupboards and bookshelves into the alcoves on either side of the fireplace in the room that was designed to be the office. The other room on the ground floor was a large kitchen and dining area, with a new bathroom installed in a lean-to at the rear. Upstairs was a bedroom for the caretaker and his wife and another across the landing for visitors.

  “I’ll be done before I leave this evening,” said Arnaud, putting down the drill and shaking hands with the visitors. “The caretaker and his wife already moved in, they’ve just gone to do some shopping. If you want to take a look around, I’ll put some coffee on.”

  Bruno went first to the old barn, which had been fitted out with tables and benches. A double sink occupied the rear wall with waist-high cupboards topped with work surfaces to one side and a large wood-fired stove and cooking range on the other. A staircase and an upper floor had been installed with more bunk beds, enough to sleep twenty or so people. Behind it stood a new barn for storage and a separate block for showers, rows of sinks and toilets. A long stretch of freshly turned earth showed where the array of septic tanks had been buried. With eight scouts to each of the big bell-shaped tents, the camp could house another hundred scouts and a dozen or more scoutmasters. There were stone fire pits for campfires, an old well that still functioned and a large terrace for outdoor eating that had a single basketball net at one end.

  Amélie followed Bruno down to the stream and the swimming hole. She dabbled her hand in the waterfall, swiftly snatching it away, saying it was too cold for her. They strolled back, Balzac snuffling alongside them. Bruno pointed out the land that was intended to be turned into a vegetable garden by the first contingent of visiting scouts, to help feed their successors later in the summer.

  “It’s idyllic,” said Amélie. “A pity that the Muslim scouts aren’t coming, but that’s their loss. Does the place have to be restricted to the scout movement? Some of my youth groups in the party would love to have a place like this to visit.”

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to ask Yacov when he comes. But Girl Guides will be coming, too. You saw the double facility in the shower block. I think the terms of the trust that was established to run this place limit it to scouts. Maya, the woman who’s funding all this, reckons the scouts saved her and her brother’s lives in the war.”

  “Good for her,” said Amélie. “I think this place is wonderful, a brilliant idea for a memorial. I just wish there was some way of making this available to all those kids in the high-rise ghettos around Paris.”

  “There is,” said Bruno. “They simply have to volunteer to join the scouts.”

  “But I never see scouts in the banlieues.”

  “Now there’s a project for your party’s youth group. Don’t you think it’s better to get kids out in the fresh air of the countryside learning things than sitting in some hall talking politics?”

  “Of course, but scouts are mainly all white, middle class.”

  “Not so. There are thirty million kids in the scout movement worldwide, and two-thirds of them are in the developing world. When this project got started, I thought I’d better find out something more about it. And did you miss what I said about scouts helping save Jewish kids in the war?”

  “No, I got that. And now who’s this?” She pointed to a car bumping along the rutted lane.

  “That’s Alain, the caretaker. He used to be a priest and left the Church to get married. He’s been a scoutmaster in Bergerac, and he and his wife
liked the idea of living here rent-free.”

  “Bonjour, Alain, madame,” Bruno said, and introduced Amélie. “I gather you moved in already.”

  “It’s a lovely place, and much better than the cramped apartment we had in Bergerac,” Alain replied. “We have the chance to make a garden, maybe start a small vineyard on that south-facing slope. And the scouts will keep us busy once they start coming.”

  Alain was a slim, wiry man of about fifty with gray hair and a ready smile. His wife, Anne-Louise, a kind-looking woman with an air of quiet competence, looked to be the same age. Bruno could never see them without thinking of the passion that must have brought them together and taken Alain from his vows in the priesthood. She had been working as a nurse when they met and then volunteered as a cleaning woman in Alain’s church.

  “Did you see Dr. Stern at the clinic in St. Denis?” Bruno asked Anne-Louise. He’d suggested that Fabiola might find it useful to have a trained nurse available, and Anne-Louise might appreciate some extra money in the winter when no scouts were expected. And it was a bonus for the camp to have someone on hand with medical qualifications.

  “Yes, thank you,” she replied, and gave Bruno a warm smile that lit up her eyes and helped explain why Alain had fallen for her. “I’ll be doing regular shifts at the clinic in winter, and other times I’ll be on call if needed.”

  “Have you dealt with large numbers of teenage boys before?” Amélie asked. “They can be quite a handful.”

  “I’m accustomed to it, growing up in a church orphanage,” she replied. “Just like you, Bruno.”

  “I was in Bergerac. Were you there?”

  “No, at Mussidan, the place where all the fuss is.”

  “So you’ll have talked to Commissaire Jalipeau about the inquiry?”

  “No, just to one of his detectives. I told him I never knew of any sexual abuse, but one of the nuns was very cruel. She used to beat us with a bamboo cane.” Anne-Louise raised her right arm and brought it down fast, saying, “Swoosh.”

  “You still get nightmares about it,” said her husband, taking her hand.

  “Which nun would that have been?” Bruno asked.

  “The one who’s making the allegations, the alcoholic. Looking back, I’m sure she was drunk when she beat us. It was the priest, Father Francis, who finally stopped her and got her into a nunnery where they treated her for the drinking. He’s the same priest she’s making the allegations about. I said all this to the detective, and I’m sure he didn’t believe the dreadful stories she told about Father Francis. I can’t believe this case is still going on.”

  Bruno nodded. “Another priest who knew him said he found the stories hard to believe. But Jalipeau is a good man, a fine policeman, you can count on him. He’ll get to the bottom of it all.”

  An hour later, Bruno dropped Amélie at her hotel and drove to the riding school, stopping only to pick up some veal for dinner from the Oudinots’ farm. At the stables, he noticed Jack Crimson’s elderly Jaguar parked by the main house. He greeted Pamela in the office, said he’d join her shortly and then strolled up to see Crimson, who was sitting on the floor with his grandchildren, reading to them from an English book.

  “I’m making sure they don’t lose their British culture,” he said as the kids broke away to pet Balzac. “Do you know Winnie the Pooh?”

  “Of course, he’s very popular in France. We call him Winnie l’Ourson. Did you speak to the brigadier?”

  Crimson nodded. “He said he’d check it out and asked me to give you his regards. His first question was whether you were involved. You’ll be hearing from him, I think.”

  “So he’s taking it seriously? That’s good.”

  “He was planning to ask the French embassy in Israel how serious this business about the Testament of Iftikhar might be. I had to say I’d never heard of it until now, but the camel I talked with thought this argument about Jerusalem had surged beyond the historians into current politics. The Arab League and the Palestinians have put out statements questioning the Jewish origins of the city.”

  “It’s all a long way from the Périgord,” Bruno replied. “Why on earth do we have to get involved?”

  “First, because it’s the Middle East. Second, because it’s also the Holy Land. And third, because of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, named after a British and French diplomat who carved up the old Ottoman Empire in 1916. That was the year before Britain issued the Balfour Declaration promising to make Palestine a national homeland for the Jewish people. Between them, for better or worse, Balfour, Sykes and Picot created the map of the modern Middle East. We are now living with the consequences.”

  Bruno sighed and headed back to the stables, checking his watch. His guests were coming at seven. He could ride for maybe forty minutes. Miranda was not back with her pony trekkers, and Pamela said she was still busy with paperwork and he should exercise Hector alone. That was no hardship, thought Bruno as he saddled Hector and took him out through the paddock.

  Bruno believed that he did his best thinking on horseback, his conscious mind on the route and the horse, but some part of his brain ticking away at whatever bothered him. Right now it was this strange mixture of Templars, Crusaders, Jerusalem in history and Arab-Israeli politics, all focused on an Israeli peace activist and a medieval castle. The pieces did not fit together in a way that made any sense. If the woman had wanted to make a stir with her graffiti, there were far more prominent and better-known castles with their own Templar or Crusader connections. There was the hilltop fortress town of Domme, where some of the Templars had been imprisoned and carved crosses on the walls of their dungeon. A message daubed on the town walls would have been seen by many more people and would not have involved a dangerous climb.

  And the dead woman had been more than two months pregnant, so she might have known or at least suspected her condition. Would an amateur have embarked on a nighttime climb knowing that? Above all there was the missing partner, the person who took away the rope and the paint and also must have put that horn by her hand to echo the ancient pose of some prehistoric Venus figure. And what was the dead woman’s motive? He chided himself for not calling her Leah; she was not just a body in the morgue, but a woman who had been alive, who had conceived a child. She deserved the respect of a name. But if Leah had been seeking publicity for some cause of Arab-Israeli peace, there were many better targets for her spray can.

  Bruno knew no more of the intricacies of Arab-Israeli relations than anyone who read the papers and listened to the radio. He had heard of the Peace Now movement and knew it carried little political weight in Israel and that the supposed objective of a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians was further off now than it had been when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat had shaken hands on the White House lawn. But that was about all he did know, except that there were various Palestinian factions, though he was far from clear about the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah.

  Suddenly he was aware that Hector was shaking his head with impatience. Bruno had been so lost in thought that he’d slowed to a walk, and Hector wanted more than that. Bruno loosened the reins and gave Hector’s sides a nudge with his heels. His horse almost bounded forward through the trees to the open country ahead, stretching out in that glorious, even stride that horse and rider enjoyed so much. All too soon, the ridge narrowed, and a thick hedge squeezed him toward the trees until Bruno was forced to dismount and lead Hector and Balzac back to the riding school.

  Chapter 13

  Bruno took the cheese from his fridge, and from his freezer removed the stock for the fish soup, which he’d made with the discarded shells and heads of shrimp from an earlier meal. He peeled a half kilo of shallots from his garden and put them in a saucepan with a little butter. He did the same with a half kilo of button mushrooms he’d bought in the market. He cut the kilo of veal into cubes and put them into his largest saucepan, covered the meat with water and put it on to boil before peeling a medium-sized onion and pushing into it
four cloves. He then jumped into the shower and changed into jeans and a sweater. He fed Balzac, put the frozen fish stock into the microwave to thaw and paused to consider. He planned fish soup, followed by blanquette de veau with rice, salad with cheese and pears poached in spiced wine for dessert. They would be four, since he’d invited Annette, the young magistrate based in Sarlat, to join them. She and Amélie would have a lot in common, and her presence would stop it feeling too much like a working dinner.

  He put one bottle of sparkling Bergerac rosé from Château Haut Garrigue and another of Pierre Desmartis’s white Bergerac Sec into the fridge and opened a bottle of Clos Montalbanie, a lighter red from Château de Tiregand that he thought would go well with the veal. The veal was starting to boil, so he turned down the heat, skimmed off the surface fat and then dropped in a chopped carrot, a rib of celery, the onion with its cloves and one of the bouquets garnis he made every few days. He adjusted the heat to let the meat simmer and then skimmed it again. Then he set the table, put out the champagne flutes, lit his woodstove and turned on the radio to hear how the local station was covering the events at Commarque. A reporter at the site was asking people what they knew about the place, and every answer he got was about the Templars and their treasure.

  His fish stock had almost defrosted, so he cut the cod he’d bought into small cubes. He put two large spoons of duck fat into the bottom of his favorite flameproof casserole and put it onto the heat. Then he peeled two potatoes and half-a-dozen cloves of garlic. He diced the potatoes and crushed the garlic with the back of his knife, mixed them together and tossed them into the casserole. He let that cook on low heat while he went out to the garden to pick some salad, washed and chopped it and put it to one side while he added the cubes of cod, the fish stock and a can of tomatoes to the casserole. He poured a large glass from the five-liter box of simple white Bergerac that he kept in the pantry, added it to the fish, stirred and tasted. A touch more salt was needed, and he adjusted the heat to a very low simmer.