The Sixth Key

by Adriana Koulias

  ‘Pandora’s Box,’ Rahn said, about to lose his temper.

  ‘Yes!’ La Dame said cheerfully, oblivious to Rahn’s escalating vexation. ‘That’s it! Pandora’s Box! So, if you’re not, you know . . . do you mind . . . if I . . . um . . . partake of the apples of Hesperides?’

  ‘If you what?’

  ‘If I were to . . . take a bite from that apple, so to speak!’

  Rahn lost his temper and thumped the table. ‘La Dame! Will you get your mind out of those London Cut pants and concentrate on what matters, for God’s sake! What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came looking for you,’ he said, a little taken aback, ‘and you might treat me with a little kindness considering I have that information you wanted. I couldn’t get a hold of you on the number you gave me, so I came here. You told me you were at Rennes-le-Château. Besides, I really had no choice in the matter . . . because of an unfortunate event.’

  The boulangerie was quiet. There were only two other patrons. La Dame called the waiter over and ordered another pot of coffee.

  Rahn leant in. ‘What unfortunate event?’

  La Dame bit into his last mouthful of croissant, licked his fingers and rubbed his hands together before saying, between chews, ‘I spent most of yesterday looking up Masonic emblems at the university library and when I returned to my dormitory I found something rather distasteful.’

  ‘I dread to think,’ Rahn said, sarcastically.

  ‘Well, your mind is in the gutter, Rahn! No, I found that a colleague had been murdered in my absence.’

  Rahn blinked these words in. ‘Murdered?’

  La Dame nodded, satisfied, as if the mere act of speaking had released the genie from the bottle and had made him someone else’s concern.

  ‘Murdered, by whom?’

  ‘I don’t know but whoever did it they certainly know how to slice a throat from ear to ear.’ He grimaced. ‘Disconcerting – not to mention messy. But the point is, dear Rahn, it could have been me. So much for my comfortable life!’ he said. ‘Please remind me not to help you again.’

  The waiter brought a new pot of coffee. La Dame took a silver flask from his pocket and poured some brandy into his cup. ‘I can kiss my life goodbye now,’ he said sourly, offering the flask to Rahn, who nodded in commiseration and poured two nips into his own cup.

  ‘I am now, as they say, a hunted man!’ La Dame said theatrically.

  ‘Sorry, La Dame,’ Rahn said, dejected, worried. ‘I wonder if I could have made a bigger mess of things if I’d tried.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that!’ La Dame replied and the two of them clinked cups.

  Rahn had a thought. ‘Wait a minute, how do you know the murder is related to me?’

  ‘Well, it’s like this, Rahn.’ La Dame paused for effect. ‘The poor wretch couldn’t stand the noise of the music master’s snoring – which, like a discordant instrument, comes right through the walls – so he asked me if I would swap rooms with him. As you know, I sleep like a log.’ La Dame took a good sip of his brandied coffee and gave a silent ahh! before continuing: ‘Charity does have its advantages. Luckily for me I didn’t have time to change our names in the register before they had closed for the night.’ He looked at Rahn with bleary eyes and croissant crumbs on his moustache and beard, more crumbs on his suit. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

  Rahn swirled the brandy and coffee grounds around and around, hoping to mine some wisdom from them. He saw only coffee grounds. ‘Well, corpses are piling up, La Dame. Four in total if you count Monti, and who in Heaven knows what they’re doing to Deodat right now, as we speak.’

  ‘Who do you think has him?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ Rahn sighed. ‘There are several who are after this treasure, I think, whatever it is.’

  ‘Treasure? You mean the grimoire, don’t you?’ La Dame said, his mouth full again.

  ‘A great deal of water has flowed under that bridge since we last spoke.’ Rahn poured another coffee from the pot, applying the last contents of the flask liberally before taking a good sip. Everything went a little out of focus and the world seemed a better place. ‘I suppose I should fill you in.’

  ‘What?’ La Dame said.

  Rahn realised by the look of him that he had been more focused on the contents of the flask than in what Rahn was telling him. ‘Will you pay attention, for God’s sake!’

  By the time he’d finished giving La Dame an update on current events, Eva had returned. She had changed her blouse, and was wearing a red sweater that left little to a man’s imagination. She had also applied lipstick and was wearing a hat over her short hair. She looked rather à la mode. She ordered a tea and sat down, ignoring La Dame.

  ‘So, let me see if I have it,’ La Dame said, giving her a smile. ‘You are in possession of a list of priests who were being investigated by this Cros fellow, you think in connection with the treasure of the Cathars – am I right so far?’

  Rahn nodded, gesturing for the waiter to bring another pot.

  La Dame added contemplatively, ‘And this treasure of the Cathars, you and Deodat have ascertained, contains something you call a key, which makes this Le Serpent Rouge or Grimoire of Pope Honorius III more potent. But you don’t know what it is.’

  ‘You’ve got it in a nutshell.’

  The pot arrived and was set down on the table.

  ‘This sounds completely absurd, you know,’ La Dame said, filling his cup again, plunging three teaspoons of sugar into it and taking the time to extract any last drops from his flask before taking an audible gulp. ‘Surprisingly good! Amazing how danger amplifies the senses. You know, Rahn, nothing makes one feel more alive than having a close shave with death!’ He threw an appreciative glance at Eva. Rahn rolled his eyes.

  ‘Now, as I was saying,’ La Dame went on, ‘a clue to the whereabouts of this key or treasure, had fallen into the hands of a priest at Rennes-le-Château, a certain Bigou. It was an encrypted parchment which no one has been able to decipher because the master word has been lost, right?’

  ‘So far so good.’

  ‘So who was it that made the parchment in the first place?’

  ‘It looks like it was the lords of Perillos, the most recent guardians of the Cathar treasure.’

  ‘And the parchment was then inherited by the Blancheforts and that is how it came into the hands of this Marie Hautpoul-Blanchefort?’

  ‘That’s right. By the look of it, the Hautpoul-Blancheforts were never able to decipher it.’

  La Dame paused to light a Cuban, taking the time to smile again at Eva, who behaved as if the chair he was sitting in was empty. ‘My apologies, mademoiselle, but in all the commotion my friend has quite forgotten his manners. My name is Alexis La Dame . . . lovely to meet—’

  ‘Not now, La Dame!’

  ‘All right, dear Rahn, keep your shirt on! I was just being polite. So, you think the police are after you because of Deodat’s disappearance and the dead man in the barn?’

  ‘I don’t know if the inspector heading the investigation into Abbé Cros’s death is what he seems.’

  ‘You think he’s one of them?’

  ‘I’m suspicious of him and the police.’ He sighed, passing a hand over his face. ‘What did you find out about the snake and the anchor?’

  La Dame’s smile was wide. ‘This is where I come in, thank you for reminding me of the most important part! Apparently that sign is often used on graves, so it has something to do with death and resurrection. It also has some connection with the Masonic thirty-third degree, which ties in with this hanged man business – something about traitors. Anyway, that sign was also used as a watermark to denote the work of a printer from Venice, a certain Aldo Manutius. Sometimes he made the snake look like a dolphin, but most of the time it looked like a sea dragon, or a serpent from the sea. Now, if one digs down deep enough, one finds that Manutius was also member of a guild that used that same sign as its emblem and its members had that sign tattooed onto t
heir right wrist, which would explain that man in the barn and his affiliations. I dug around a little and found a rare book entitled AA Cléricale – its history, its statutes, its mysteries. In it I learned that AA stands for Association Angelica and that supposedly they were the custodian angels, or one could say, the guardian angels of a big secret . . . this was the order behind the guild to which Manutius belonged.’

  ‘Yes, Madame Dénarnaud mentioned them, a circle of royalists. Their big secret is that they have a copy of Le Serpent Rouge – the Grimoire of Pope Honorius III.’

  ‘Well then, there is another more obscure and highly secret group called AGLA that is related to them. Did you know that?’

  Rahn sat back. ‘The symbol in the church!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In the church – along with the raven there was a sign drawn in blood. I forgot to mention that it spelt out AGLA.’

  ‘But here’s where your theory falls down,’ La Dame said, smugly.

  ‘What theory?’

  ‘You told me just now in your account of events that you thought the young Abbé Lucien was a part of the desecration of that church. If he was, he doesn’t belong to this group AGLA. You see, members of this order are like a Catholic mafia: they go right to the top. They are strictly forbidden to do anything to bring attention to themselves – on pain of death. So whoever made that sign in the church you described, could not have belonged to AGLA.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Rahn said. ‘Perhaps that young abbé was warning us about AGLA – now it makes sense! He might be a member of the penitents and that’s what Madame Dénarnaud was trying to tell me the night of the storm. Penitence, penitence ... watch out for that raven! But then how did I work out the way into the crypt by using that clue – was it just a coincidence?’

  ‘Everything is connected, Rahn, as they say.’ La Dame shrugged, grinning at Eva. ‘Interestingly,’ he continued with emphasis, ‘Association Angelica allowed the admission of women and laymen into its ranks and that’s how that printer Manutius got to be a member without being a Jesuit.’

  Rahn took out the list and put it on the table for La Dame.

  ‘See here? Abbé Bigou and Abbé Boudet of Rennes-les-Bains were members of Association Angelica.’ He wrote the order’s initials beside their names. ‘The same order that safeguarded the Grimoire of Pope Honorius III, or Le Serpent Rouge, the book I was sent here to find and the same one Monti was looking for. Saunière wasn’t a member and neither was Gélis. But the man in the barn had the tattoo of the anchor and the snake on his wrist so he was also a member. Jean-Louis Verger, on the other hand, belonged to the penitents.’

  Jean-Louis Verger – Paris 1857 — Penitents

  Antoine Bigou – Rennes-le-Château — 1781 AA

  ~

  A J Grassaud – Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet 1886

  A C Saunière – Rennes-le-Château 1885

  A K Boudet – Rennes-les-Bains 1885 — AA

  A A Gélis – Coustaussa murdered 1897

  A L Rivière – Espéraza refused last sacrament 1915

  ‘But the walls of the church at Rennes-le-Château are covered with that symbol?’ Eva said.

  ‘Isis the veiled goddess speaks!’ La Dame cried jovially.

  ‘That was no doubt Bigou’s work,’ Rahn said, ignoring him.

  ‘So we know of at least two groups that have a copy of Le Serpent Rouge – Association Angelica and the penitents,’ Eva said. ‘And now they want the key, the Cathar treasure whose secret location is encrypted in that parchment.’

  ‘Yes.’ ‘I don’t understand, old boy,’ La Dame said, ‘does Deodat’s life depend on you finding Le Serpent Rouge or the treasure?’

  ‘I don’t know…perhaps both,’ he answered.

  At this moment a boy came into the boulangerie and walked towards them carrying a note. ‘For you, messieurs,’ he said.

  Rahn opened it.

  ‘What does it say?’ La Dame asked.

  Once more, Rahn felt the hairs stand up on the back of his head. He turned to look out of the window. Parked outside was a black car, a Citroën.

  Eva frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘This is Deodat’s handwriting! Don’t look now, but there’s a car parked outside. The same car, I think, that I saw at Bugarach near Maison de Cros. Something’s been bothering me.’ He formulated his thoughts. ‘Why did Cros fall into the pond looking for the key, when he’d already told us the clue? We could have opened the tabernacle eventually, even without a key. We could have picked the lock or broken into it with enough time. What if he didn’t fall into that pond at all? What if the man outside in that car killed him while we were at the church?’ He gave them a significant look.

  La Dame slipped his flask into his pocket and said, ‘Perhaps the best recourse is to find the back door to this establishment.’

  THE ISLAND OF THE DEAD

  38

  Dead or Alive?

  ‘I secretly felt that I feared him, and could not help thinking the equality which he maintained so easily with myself, as proof of his true superiority’

  Edgar Allan Poe, ‘William Wilson’

  Venice, 2012

  ‘So have you worked it out yet?’ the Writer of Letters said, sitting back.

  I smiled but he didn’t smile in return. My earlier anxieties having been mollified by Rahn’s troubles, I found myself turning congenial. ‘What, precisely, should I have worked out?’

  ‘The question of what you’re doing here, of course. I believe that was the first question I put to you.’

  I hesitated and he gestured with a hand. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘I realise that you can’t really answer that until you know something about me and I’m afraid I haven’t been totally truthful with you. Now, I’m prepared to “come clean”, as they say.’

  He was coming clean? I wanted to trump him, to show him that I was one step ahead of his game. ‘I do hate to spoil your plans, but I’ve already seen through the role you’re playing.’

  ‘You have?’ he said, looking pleasantly surprised.

  ‘Yes, I believe so.’

  ‘Well, you can’t spoil my plans because I don’t have any plans. They are all yours – the plans – you see? But I’m comforted that you’ve started to see through me. It was what I’d hoped for.’

  I held his eyes and they gleamed like pools.

  ‘Why would you hope for that?’

  ‘Because we are near the end and so by now you must be better acquainted with the character you’ve written for me. Am I right?’

  He was playing the game again. He had no intention of coming clean. But I would play along, because in spite of my host’s strange spirit of contradiction and the words of the woman at the grave earlier today, I liked the game more than I cared to admit. I looked at him with as much equanimity as I could muster. ‘You don’t give much away, but so far I imagine that it is an intelligent, somewhat eccentric character. I think you came here a long time ago, so long ago in fact, you’ve forgotten what it’s like to live in the outside world. Perhaps you were banished to this place, perhaps you were running from something? Whatever the case, what’s important is not why you are here, it is the fact that in the meantime you’ve had the opportunity to indulge in your first love, books. Erudition has always been dear to you and this library has become your labyrinth.’

  The Writer of Letters nodded his appreciation. ‘Go on.’

  ‘However,’ I continued, ‘as time passed you became like that man in the library of galleries, moving from one gallery to the next, all alone, looking for meaning while surrounded by the marginalia of death. Here, you came across Rahn’s story and because you have no story of your own, it became yours and you wanted to tell it. You thought that you could draw me here by promising to solve a puzzle, hoping that once I heard the story I would not be able to leave until it was finished.’

  ‘And is this so?’ the Writer of Letters asked.

  ‘Well . . . yes – but the point is, you beli
eve that somehow by telling me the story of Rahn you will also solve the puzzle of your life. Perhaps you will be allowed to leave this labyrinth then, because you have found a suitable replacement?’

  ‘And who will that be?’ The Writer of Letters sat forward, expectantly.

  ‘Well . . . obviously me!’

  ‘But how would I know you are suitable?’

  ‘I would have to pass a test.’

  ‘What test?’

  ‘I haven’t figured that out yet.’

  The Writer of Letters kept me waiting a moment and somewhere beneath the look in his eyes there was a hint of irony. ‘Perhaps I live only in your imagination. What do you think?’

  ‘Let me answer you this way,’ I said. ‘Aulus Gellius once asked, “When I lie and say I’m lying, am I lying or telling the truth?”’

  ‘That’s an unsolvable puzzle,’ he said.

  ‘And so is your question.’

  He laughed a little and I believe he was amused. ‘Have you heard of metatheatre?’

  ‘Where there is a play within a play?’

  ‘Yes, during the performance the actors allow the audience to see that they are playing roles. Shakespeare uses this device to create an illusion of reality, to make the audience draw closer to the play, to make them feel a part of its machinations.’ His dark eyes wrinkled slightly. ‘This collusion between audience and actor helps both to reach new heights because it suspends disbelief. To create a sense of reality based upon an illusion is an interesting paradox, don’t you agree?’ he asked.

  ‘When you put it like that, I have to say yes. But when the audience walks out of the theatre they return to the true reality. As I will do, when I leave here,’ I ventured to say.

  ‘Ah, but will you return to reality or just the allusion, an insinuation of reality?’

  I was confused. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, perhaps this has to do with the riddle: body and tomb are the same. Have you worked it out yet?’

  ‘I think you’re insinuating that I’m dead,’ I said.

  He paused. ‘On the contrary! Perhaps I’m alluding to the reality of your life.’ He grinned without humour. ‘We are very close to unveiling the reality. In metatheatre an unveiling usually precedes the final act of a catastrophe.’