Joe pointed a gnarled index finger at her. “I can see you turning pale,” he said, laughing. “Don’t be afraid, I’m talking in metaphors. Mont-Saint-Michel isn’t the lair of melancholic people; I just … decode souls. That being said, I’m often wrong.”
At that, he laughed even more. “I haven’t frightened you, anyway?”
“No, it would take more than that. And since I’ve been here, I’m beginning to stop jumping at the slightest thing.”
“Really? That is preferable; this village is full of indefinable sounds, especially at night. So if you are becoming accustomed—”
“I’m not afraid of sounds, but jokers.”
Joe frowned. Marion swallowed. Now that she had started, she couldn’t go back. And besides, the old man inspired confidence in her.
“The day after I arrived, I found an envelope in my house, well, the one I’m living in. Someone who wanted a bit of amusement, in the form of a riddle. It was no more than a game to wish me welcome … and to test me, I think.”
“Test you? What makes you say that?”
“A simple practical joker would have wished me welcome directly in the envelope, and merely placed it inside the house. But in this case, I had to decipher a code and go out onto the Mount to find out the real meaning of the message.”
Joe nodded. “It’s original. And you had the determination to follow it through to the end. Congratulations.”
“I had nothing else to do.” Her reply fell like a guillotine, cleaving the air. They remained silent for a moment. Eventually, Marion put down her cup and stood up.
“Thank you for everything.”
“If I may permit myself to paraphrase your joker: welcome here, to my home. Now that you know where I live, do drop in and pay me a visit.”
Marion said goodbye and stepped out into the cool wind, which was whistling along rue Grande. She walked down the paved road to the little staircase that skirted around the parish church, then along the edge of the cemetery to her door.
On the way, she thought of Joe. About his agreeable presence, his smiling, trusting face, and about his age. She didn’t understand why she liked him so much. He was at least eighty, even if his bearing was such that he looked thirty years younger.
She left her coat in the hall and switched on the lights in the living room.
It took her less than five seconds to notice it.
It was flaunting itself there, like an insult to her privacy.
A large envelope, lying on the sofa.
21
The same paper as in the first message.
This time, there was no riddle.
No game, either.
Nothing but a request. Almost a warning.
Because you were the first person to visit us in a long time, I wanted to play with you. I note with surprise that you have happened upon something that belongs to me. That was in no way planned in our little game, a game whose only goal was to amuse us both on this immense, over-tranquil rock. But hardly had the game begun when it ended. For by appropriating what is mine, you have offended me. I know that this was not your wish, so I am inclined to put things behind us straightaway. On the sole condition that you give me back my possession. Place it this evening in the place where you found the welcome message, at the Gabriel Tower. And we shall call it quits. Hoping to be your friend, once this misunderstanding has been rectified.
There was no doubt as far as Marion was concerned that the possession in question was the diary. She hadn’t come into possession of anything else since her arrival.
She returned to her trench coat and took the notebook from one of the pockets.
Its cracked leather cover was cold to the touch. The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym stated the title in old gilded lettering. In the long run, it was becoming even stranger than a work by Poe.
And the bizarre nature of its contents was echoed in reality, noted Marion. Like the book found by the hero of Michael Ende’s novel The Neverending Story. Who hadn’t dreamed of possessing a book that really opened onto another world?
Marion opened the cover and flicked through the worn pages.
The magic of this text had been in operation since 1928, and was stretching out its inky arms so far that it had even altered time this winter, more than seventy years later.
Who knew that she had found the diary?
Brother Damien.
On the evening of the discovery he had dropped in to see her. The diary was on the hall table, and his eyes had lit on it. Although he had said nothing, perhaps he had recognized it. In that case, the entire brotherhood might know about it.
There was Ludwig the night watchman, too.
She had bumped into him on her way back from Béatrice’s place. The book was under her arm; he could have seen it.
In fact, anybody could have written those letters.
Marion went into the kitchen for a glass of water.
If she must follow a process of elimination, she could strike Joe from the list of suspects. He had been at Tombelaine that afternoon, and then with her. And the letter had been placed in her house while they were together. The Mount was sufficiently small for people to watch her comings and goings; if she was seen leaving, it was easy to get into the house.
That was perhaps the solution to the problem.
The author of these letters had a key. And the brotherhood had copies of them, according to Sister Anne.
If she must continue her process of elimination, Marion chose to retain only the men of the religious community. In the last letter, the French text contained no feminine word endings—it spoke of being votre ami rather than amie. This could be a decoy. For the moment, Marion continued with her original logical method.
Five people remained.
Brother “Wrong Way” Damien, permanently excited and apparently sporty.
Brother Gaël, the youngster of the group. Timorous.
Brother Christophe, “Brother Anemia.” Perpetually slow and out of breath.
The old and unpleasant Brother Gilles and finally, the great manitou of the whole bunch: Brother Serge, with his almost disturbing physique.
All the same, she was suspecting men of the Church.
Were they exempt from all failings or vices, for all that?
Marion shook her head emphatically. The writer of this letter was hiding among those five.
And now? What was she going to do?
“If you want your book back, you’re going to need more than a letter you’ve sneaked in behind my back, old chap,” she announced out loud.
She was annoyed by this cowardice, disguised as a mystery.
Not only was she not going to abandon the diary in the middle of the great outdoors, but she wasn’t going to give it up at all.
And that evening, when the coward would be waiting outside, in the cold, for her to go out and give back the book, she would be comfortably sitting here, reading it.
And if he wanted to get his hands on it, he would have to show his face to her, and ask her for it.
Then she would see what ought to be done.
She had had enough of secrecy and jokes.
At the start, that riddle and the intrusion into her lodgings to check her things—all of that was almost amusing in context. But with this, he had gone a little too far.
She might be a stranger on this mount, but they would have to accept her.
Nobody had a choice; least of all her.
22
Jeremy Matheson and Azim had dinner together in an Italian restaurant on Boulevard Sulliman Pasha.
Azim ate hungrily, proud of the significant advance he had made in the investigation. “It’s not a legend anymore; we now know that it is real!” he exclaimed, with his mouth full.
“All the same, Azim, we are not going to believe the wild imaginings of two … cranks, as a basis for conducting our investigation! You have said as much yourself, the first man was under the effect of drugs when he thought he saw that … ghoul!”
“I agr
ee that we must review what he said with a grain of salt, but he definitely saw something that evening; I gazed upon the fear in his eyes, and both men’s descriptions tally.”
“Common popular imagery. They have the same references, the same myths; so when one of them mistakes a cripple escaping with his plunder for a monster, the others do the same.”
“Listen, we may have a chance to trap this thing, or whatever it is, if we station some of our men in that district. The shopkeeper told me he spotted it three times in three weeks, each time when he had gone out onto his roof at night to smoke. He’s an insomniac.”
Jeremy drank the rest of his wine in a single gulp. Then he shook his head. “I am not going to mobilize thirty men at night for one or two weeks, on the pretext that a crazed insomniac thinks he’s seen the monster that haunted his childhood. We have more important things to do.”
“Such as?”
“Tomorrow morning, we have a meeting at the Keoraz Foundation, with its director.”
Azim remained silent, seething with frustration. “How do you know this foundation?” he asked eventually.
Jeremy gave a composed smile as he wiped a piece of bread around his plate. Azim had the impression that his English colleague had been expecting to arrive at this question since the start of the meal. He finished chewing, taking his time, before pushing away his plate, and saying softly, “Because of a woman, my friend.”
Azim was about to raise a glass of water to his mouth, but he halted, one hand on the crystal stem.
“Some time ago, I fell in love with a woman who is today the wife of the patron who created that foundation.”
“Mr. Keoraz?”
Jeremy played with his napkin as he spoke. At the mention of Keoraz’s name, Azim saw his grip on it tighten so much that his knuckles whitened.
“The very same. He is the paymaster; it is he who fills the foundation’s coffers, but there is also a director, Mr. Humphreys.”
“And you are still in contact with this woman?”
“If you can call it contact. But I am as knowledgeable about this foundation as Jezebel is benevolent toward it, and I confess that for her, I too played a part.”
“You?”
The image of the solitary, taciturn Detective Matheson everyone knew did not sit well with that of a Jeremy in love and doing good works with underprivileged Cairo children.
“Yes.… It lasted a few months in the autumn and winter of 1926, and then we parted.” He opened his heart in a lower voice, with less assurance in his body, and fell forward, one elbow on the table.
“How long ago did you separate from this woman?” asked Azim.
“January last year, a little more than a year ago. She met her husband at a New Year’s Eve celebration, a dinner organized by the foundation’s patron for all his volunteers.”
“Were you among them?”
Jeremy nodded, his eyelids blinking.
Azim’s lips vanished inside his mouth as he replied. “Whatever the case, it is a coincidence that is going to help us,” the little man remarked.
“In the final analysis, the English community in Cairo isn’t as extensive as all that; it’s clear that at some point one will have to carry out an investigation into one’s close acquaintances. I don’t call that a coincidence, no more than a ‘foreseeable inevitability.’ By the way, congratulations on identifying the boy; I found out just now, when I called in at the office.”
“I called to see the family, to inform them of the death. The foundation is in all cases the common point among the victims, there is no doubt about that.”
Jeremy wiped a hand across his face. His features were drawn. When the waiter came within reach, he hailed him and ordered more wine.
“May I ask a service of you, Azim? Until tomorrow morning, we shall not speak further about all this, if you would be so kind.”
Azim took the request like a lash from a whip. It was their work, and Jeremy had expressly demanded to work on this investigation.
The presence of this Jezebel woman in the investigation had something to do with this sudden discomfort, Azim could have sworn to it.
“As you wish,” he replied.
Jeremy poured himself another large glass of wine and drank half of it in a single swallow.
For a second, Azim had the firm conviction that the Englishman was hiding something from him. But as quickly and strongly as it had come, that certainty mutated into doubt, then faded away.
* * *
The headquarters of the Keoraz Foundation stood on the long and broad sharia Abbas, where its neighbors were a Catholic church and the building housing the telegraph and telephone company.
It was early morning and there were many vehicles about, zigzagging between the streetcars and filling the still-cool air with the raucous cries of their beautiful machinery.
Once again, Jeremy found the contrast striking.
Between one city to the west, rich and Western, and its eastern—and far more chaotic—counterpart. One was made up of a well-spaced-out network of perpendicular streets, with European architecture, sidewalks planted with decorative shrubs, buildings as tall as they were modern, and shops worthy of Paris, London, or Milan. Whereas the other city spread out under the tents of the bazaars, a sinuous maze, interwoven with as many blind alleys as there were narrow streets, and a place whose dwellings had not changed for several centuries, reflecting the different Muslim cultures that had succeeded one another in Cairo. The first city was clean, had no smell, and was, by contrast, well-to-do; when evening came, the restrained laughter of the young English people mingled with the rowdier mirth of the French and the Italians. The second city was dusty, and smelled of leather, exotic flavors, the sweat of a heaped-up mass of humanity, whereas when night fell, the song of the muezzins brooded from the top of their minarets over a horizon of roofs as jumbled as an angry sea. One was economic and political, the other as mystical as it was historic.
Humphreys, the director of the Keoraz Foundation, greeted the two detectives in his office, on the top floor. He was a forty-year-old Englishman, powerfully built with a bushy beard, and in every respect except his personality, he resembled Professor Challenger, whose exploits the famous Arthur Conan Doyle had recounted in his novels.
Without asking them, and despite the early hour, he poured out two brandies, one for himself and one for Jeremy, while Azim received a glass of water.
“So, tell me, what can I do for you?” he asked, sitting behind his overladen desk.
“As I explained to you yesterday on the telephone, it concerns the children of your foundation.”
“What you have told me is terrible. You mean to say there is a child-killer here, in Cairo? Do you have any leads?”
Jeremy shielded himself with a hand gesture, signifying that he could go no further. “The investigation is under way,” he replied. “Have you found the children’s files, as I asked you to do yesterday?”
The director laid a finger upon a slim pile of folders. “Everything is here, all four little ones.”
“You have consulted the files, I should imagine. Have you any remarks to make? We are seeking any link among them, or any unusual detail.”
Humphreys tightened his fingers, which let out a series of sharp cracks. They were deformed by arthritis. “No, nothing. Or at least … a few details, look.”
He slid the cardboard folders toward the English detective.
Humphreys seized his glass and savored the bouquet of his brandy before trickling a mouthful down into his throat. He had swiveled around to face the window, and was now gazing at the bell tower of the church.
“Although we didn’t meet at the time, I remember that you were among our volunteers, Detective.”
Jeremy looked up from the files to study the director as he continued: “I … I don’t see how to tell you this, but … well, perhaps you don’t remember, but those four children whose folders we are examining were all in your classes, Mr. Matheson.”
/> Azim frowned. He examined his colleague, whose eyes widened more than was necessary.
“Excuse me?” stammered the English detective.
“Yes,” Humphreys went on, “it is as I thought, you had not noticed. They all passed through your hands, when your name was put forward to conduct our reading sessions. I can see that you don’t remember; look, I understand, there are so many of them, and to many of us, they all look the same.”
Jeremy opened the folders rather roughly to examine the few typed pages they contained. He passed from one child to the next with growing unease.
“Is it an important detail?” asked the director.
Jeremy straightened up and fixed him with a steady gaze.
“What do you think?” he retorted coldly.
Sweat had inundated his brow in the space of a few seconds.
Azim dragged his chair forward until he could rest his elbows on the edge of the desk, and politely demanded, “Could you draw up a list for us of all the children in Detective Matheson’s classes, please?”
Humphreys scrutinized the small, turbaned Egyptian before looking for his English colleague’s reaction, awaiting confirmation or a veto. The director visibly had little regard for “locals,” Azim noted. For a man heading a foundation designed to help street children, this was disturbing. Yet another politician who’s accepted a post for the benefit of his own future, rather than for love of the work, he mused.
Jeremy indicated his approval of Azim’s idea with a movement of his index finger.
“Good; I should be able to obtain it for you by Monday or Tuesday. I say, now that I think about it, there could be a link. We—the foundation—reported a burglary back in January. And … the strangest thing is that nothing was stolen. The back door was forced to gain entrance to the premises and the offices. The crook must have expected to find plenty of cash; I remember that a door had been broken down in order to get into the room where our safe is kept.”
“Was much money stolen?” asked Jeremy.
“No, the safe clearly proved to be beyond his means; he didn’t even open it! Two broken locks for that!”
“Is there nothing else in that room?” demanded Matheson.
The Cairo Diary Page 14
