The Chaplin Conspiracy

by Stewart Ferris

  ‘Thank you,’ said Justina, drinking eagerly.

  ‘We checked your records, Ms Saunière. I am pleased to tell you that we are satisfied with what we found. Congratulations. You are our honoured guest. Tonight you will rest, for tomorrow we have much to share with you.’

  A look of surprise had spread across Rocco’s face too fast for him to suppress it and the Templar registered his reaction calmly.

  ‘Were you expecting a different outcome?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Rocco replied, trying to adjust his facial muscles to something akin to nonchalance and failing completely in his efforts. ‘I’m just pleased for Justina, pleased everything has worked out OK.’

  ‘Pleased, no doubt, for yourself, perhaps?’

  ‘Well, the alternative outcome would not have been my preference, I’m happy to admit.’

  ‘Good. Well, I’ll leave you the rest of the bottle. Someone will come by later to show you to your rooms.’

  With that, the Templar left. Before Justina or Rocco could say anything, they heard the sound of the key turning in the lock once again.

  ‘It’s horseshit,’ whispered Rocco. ‘There’s no way your ancestry would satisfy them so completely.’

  ‘No, he said it checked out,’ she protested. ‘We’re celebrating. He even called me Saunière.’

  ‘Justina, be realistic. This is important. See it from their side. There are so many holes in your family tree there’s no logical way that they can be sure you are who you think you are. You know it and they know it. When there is so much at stake they need absolute proof, not just probabilities. The kind of proof you can only get from DNA comparisons. To do that they would need to take samples from you and dig up Saunière’s bones. Has that happened? No. Do you really think it’s likely to happen? Justina, he’s locked the door! Why would he do that if he thinks you’re a Saunière?’

  Justina nodded slowly. Her dream of acceptance and respect and vast inheritance was crumbling. She couldn’t deny that the locking of the door was cause for concern.

  ‘Do you think they lied to win our confidence and stop us trying to escape?’ she asked.

  ‘You got it. I can’t think of any other reason why he would say that stuff and then not let us go. Someone may be coming here later, but not to show us to our rooms. It will be to kill us. So we have three options: break the window and jump into the river, break the door and make a run for it, or wait for them to come and finish us off.’

  ‘One and two,’ said Justina.

  ‘The window and the door?’

  ‘Yes. Smash the window. Get their attention by making them run outside to see if we’re in the river. Then break down the door and make a run for it while they’re distracted.’

  ‘I like your tactical thinking,’ said Rocco, picking up a weighty book. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Guess I’ll have to be.’

  He hurled the book at the centre of the largest pane in the window and winced as it exploded through the single glazing and crashed onto the rocks on the bank of the river. Then he waited until he could hear shouts and heavy footsteps echo down the corridor towards the exit to the terrace before throwing his bodyweight sideways on at the door, stressing the oak until it splintered and the lock mechanism gave way. Unsteady momentum threw him across the marble hall and he landed in a bruised heap against a mahogany side table. The front door of the house was in sight and Justina was already sprinting towards it. He picked himself up and followed her. They burst out as one into the rain-soaked street.

  ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’

  They turned around to face their inquisitor. Winnifred stood leaning against a car with its engine running. She held her knife in one hand, an umbrella in the other. She looked bored, as if she had been waiting for them for a long time.

  ‘She only has a knife,’ grunted Rocco, ‘we can outrun her.’

  ‘No,’ said Justina, walking towards Winnifred and standing beside her, sharing the shelter of the umbrella. ‘I don’t want to.’

  A crack of thunder made the already nerve-wracked Rocco jump out of his skin. He ran a few steps away from the women before pausing and shouting back, ‘Why would you side with Winnifred again?’

  ‘It’s nothing personal, Rocco. I need her,’ replied Justina. ‘Now I know there is something important waiting for me and I know how to get it, but I need Winnifred’s help. We still go fifty-fifty, right?’

  Winnifred nodded.

  ‘What’s changed?’ shouted Rocco, edging still further from them.

  ‘You made me realise. I need DNA. It’s the only proof they’ll accept. I need to get hold of Saunière’s bones. Thanks for everything, Rocco, but we need to go our separate ways now.’

  Shouts erupted from the Templar house. Rocco ran into the increasingly heavy downpour while the women screeched in the opposite direction in the car Winnifred had already stolen. In the central square of the town Rocco spotted Charlie’s van, its wipers thrashing against the torrential downpour. Behind him another car approached, sliding as it turned. Someone was driving at an inappropriate speed for the conditions, as if they were in a rush, as if they had a potentially toxic mix of adrenaline and testosterone surging through their veins. The camper van halted and the sliding door roared open ready to accept the soggy figure of Rocco. Behind him, an arm appeared through the open window of the chase car. A pistol loomed unwelcomingly through the rain, on the end of that arm.

  ‘Dr Strauss, I heartily recommend that you consider a rapid ingress—’ Ratty began.

  ‘Get in!’ shouted Ruby, pulling Rocco by the arm and whipping the door closed behind him.

  Charlie hit the accelerator with the full weight of his right leg, not that it made a noticeable difference given the vehicle’s limited power and fully laden state. A sound like a firecracker caused heads to turn to the rear.

  ‘Thunder?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘The direction and brevity and tonality of the sound are more likely to indicate the discharge of small firearms,’ said the Patient, ‘though I am by no means an expert in this field.’

  ‘Come on, Charlie,’ called Rocco, ‘can you make this thing go faster?’

  ‘Not with you guys all slowing me down back there!’ he retorted.

  ‘Maybe if you hadn’t stolen so many archaeological remains?’ suggested Ruby.

  The cracking noise happened again, followed immediately by a closer sound of snapping and splashing, accompanied by a foul odour. Ratty opened the door to the bathroom at the rear.

  ‘Goodness,’ he exclaimed, almost choking in air thick with bleach and sulphur. ‘The gentleman’s room has exploded.’

  ‘Close the door, Ratty, and get down,’ said Rocco. ‘That toilet took a bullet for us!’

  The blurry lights of Rennes-les-Bains now faded behind them, and the road became twisty as it followed the river higher into the valley. The constant bends made it harder for the pursuing car to line up any shots, but the occasional lightning bolts gave no one cause for complacency. In places it was difficult to tell where the waterlogged road finished and the swollen river began. Charlie strained his eyes to see through wipers that were flicking water left and right with hypnotic regularity. As he turned into each corner the headlights of the Templar car caught his mirrors and dazzled him. He blinked and willed his eyes to bore through the rain to pick out the edges of the road.

  Lightning sprayed the night with colour for an instant, so close they could feel it vibrating through the roof of the van. Another turn in the road and Charlie’s eyes failed him. There was no indication of where the road should be. He braked hard and sent the van skidding sideways towards the oak tree that moments ago had crashed across their path, obscuring the road completely. Charlie recovered the direction briefly, made the necessary connections in his brain to realise what had happened, and looked for options to avoid smashing into the tree.

  There was only one. The river. He swerved hard left and felt his stomach surge with nauseating
weightlessness as the van left the road and cascaded through bushes and rocks down to the roaring torrent. The screams of fear and abuse coming from behind him had no effect. They were all passengers of fate. None of the van’s controls served any further purpose.

  The initial impact with the water stalled the engine. For a second or two it seemed as if the van was stuck, lights still on, wedged against a smooth boulder.

  ‘Charlie, turn off the lights!’ shouted the Patient, recovering from the shock fast enough to realise there was more than one source of danger. Charlie did so robotically, no longer fully aware of his surroundings.

  Dark water oozed into the cab, but the volume of air remaining inside created powerful buoyancy. The river backed up against the van, lifting it and turning it until it began to lurch downstream, backwards, takings its screaming occupants on a terrifying ride across unseen rocks.

  The water rose incessantly inside the van. It splashed across everyone’s faces each time a boulder temporarily arrested or altered the vehicle’s progress. Now when they stopped it seemed to take longer for the pressure build-up of the river to lift them clear. The van was getting less buoyant by the second.

  ‘We’ll drown if we stay put!’ shouted Ruby. ‘Next time the van stops, we have to get out and get to the riverbank. Try to make it to the woods on the right, not to the road on the left. Those maniacs might be waiting for us.’

  ‘I estimate that drowning is statistically more probable if we exit the vehicle under conditions such as these!’ countered the Patient, raising his voice to be heard above noises that equated to being inside a washing machine. ‘The run-off from the mountains of the lower Pyrenees is feeding this river. It’s already far higher than usual, it’s faster than usual, and it will contain hidden perils such as trees, bicycles and anything else it has swept up in its path. We must increase the vehicle’s buoyancy and wait for rescue.’

  ‘He’s right,’ called Rocco. ‘Find any container, seal it, and put it into the low level cupboards. Tupperware, bottles, bin liners, sample bags, blow-up dolls – whatever you can find. The trapped air will keep us higher above the water line.’

  ‘Guys!’ shouted Charlie from the front while holding on tight to the steering wheel as the van rocked from side to side. ‘He was kidding about the doll, OK?’

  They opened lockers and grabbed anything with potential to extend their time afloat. Bottles of water were emptied into the sink, resealed and stuffed in the lowest cupboards. Bin liner balloons were tied with knots and pushed into the underseat closets. Anything capable of containing air was requisitioned for the cause.

  ‘Pressure may cause the weaker vessels to burst,’ explained the Patient, ‘especially when the battle between the air and the water intensifies. When we can no longer rely on the presence of sufficient breathable air inside this vehicle, that would be an appropriate time to take our chances in the river.’

  ‘No shit,’ said Scabies, serenely attempting to light a roll-up cigarette amid the soaking chaos. ‘I always fancied trying white water rafting. Quite a laugh, really. Anyone want to go again after this?’

  The van rose and spun around again, this time bumping downstream nose first. The accompanying screams suggested more fun than fear. The occupants were rapidly adjusting to their situation and making the best of it. Ratty spotted lights ahead, windows and street lamps. The river had returned them to their starting point.

  ‘I say! Look!’ he called out. ‘Civilisation. Well, I appreciate that’s a relative term in this part of the world, but a welcome sight, nevertheless. I can see the church on the left.’ He pointed. Those with access to the rain-streaked windows on the left of the van tried to spot it. ‘We seem awfully close to it.’

  ‘You’re right, Ratty,’ said Scabies, giving up on his unlightable cigarette. ‘The churchyard is gone. Well, I mean it’s right beneath us. The river’s flooded it. This happened before, about twenty years ago. Loads of graves got washed away.’

  The van slammed to a violent halt. The sliding door deformed inwards by several inches, the glass in its window exploded in a shower of diamonds and the passengers fell in an embarrassed pile on top of each other.

  ‘Whoa! What was that we hit?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘I reckon it’s a grave stone,’ said Scabies. ‘We’ve come to rest on someone’s tomb.’

  With the van wedged solidly against the headstone the water level began once more to rise, reaching above the seats for the first time. A buoyancy bag beneath the water line burst and a plastic bottle top popped open. The van settled an inch lower and the river flowed in faster.

  ‘I think now might be a suitable moment to venture forth,’ suggested Ratty.

  ‘We’re on the wrong side of the river,’ said Ruby. ‘The woods are too far across the water. We only have the road and the church and the start of the town centre here on left. They’ll find us easily. But I don’t think we have any choice. We have to take the shortest route to dry land.’

  ‘Ruby’s right,’ said Scabies. ‘Let’s head for the church. It’s the closest building and there’ll be no one inside right now.’

  ‘But, according to the literature on the subject,’ said the Patient, ‘the church is kept locked owing to the large number of tourists and grail hunters.’

  ‘Better not let me get washed away out there then,’ said Scabies.

  ‘You have a key for this church?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘It’s not so difficult,’ he replied. ‘Anyone can borrow the key if they ask the caretaker up the road. I just took the liberty of making a copy last time I was here so that I wouldn’t have to bother him again.’

  ‘The sliding door thingy is jammed,’ said Ratty, ‘so I propose—’

  He stopped himself when he noticed everyone else had already started to climb out through the front passenger window.

  ‘Everyone hold on to each other!’ shouted Ruby. ‘The current is really strong!’

  Charlie was the last to leave, reluctantly bidding his mobile home goodbye like a captain abandoning his sinking ship. The window was not designed to accommodate his frame, but the driver’s door opened with a little effort and he slipped out into the chilly river and grabbed the anonymous hand that reached out to him through the spray.

  ‘Nobody piss in the river, OK?’ asked Scabies, stumbling blindly over the invisible graves beneath the chest-deep water.

  ‘Oh,’ replied Ratty.

  ‘I can feel it getting shallower!’ called Ruby from the head of the line.

  ‘I can feel it getting warmer!’ quipped Scabies from behind Ratty.

  Hand in hand, like a group of schoolchildren, they emerged from the flood water and collapsed on the steps leading up to the church. Scabies jangled his keys until he found the one he was looking for. The vast wooden door of the church swung open and they piled inside. Scabies secured the lock behind them.

  The Patient located a cupboard containing cassocks and distributed them amongst the group.

  Finally safe and dry, they let the adrenaline in their systems drain. Eyes flickered and yawns spread contagiously. Within minutes, each person had claimed a strip of stone floor or a narrow pew and passed out.

  TUESDAY 14TH MAY 2013

  The rains had ceased hours ago, but it was only in the morning sunlight that the extent of the devastation could be appreciated. Sides of buildings had been washed away. A mediaeval bridge had almost vanished, its jagged footings protruding like snapped bones. The river had fallen to something akin to its usual height, revealing twisted and broken cars and caravans and trees and bodies.

  As in 1993, the churchyard had borne the brunt of the damage. The floodwaters had washed away a swathe of burial plots, both ancient and modern. A mangled Volkswagen camper van sat incongruously amid a patch of ground where most of the graves were still intact, but just two metres behind it the ground dropped bluntly down to the newly-expanded river. More than fifty sets of human remains had disappeared.

  Scabies turned the key in
the church door and peeked outside. Police and ambulance lights danced in the central square. A few stunned-looking people milled around.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered, tightening the belt on his trousers. Like the others, he didn’t plan to spend the day dressed as a choirboy. With their own clothes almost dry, everyone was now dressed normally.

  ‘If you’re venturing out in search of our petit déjeuner,’ said Ratty, ‘please could you omit the tired cliché of croissants to which those sickly-looking French types seem so addicted and see if you can persuade any local chef fellow to knock up some scrambled eggs?’

  ‘Scrambled eggs?’

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Ratty. ‘Not overly concerned about a sausage, splendid though it would be, but the eggs are not negotiable. Scrambled, remember, not raw or in a stew or served with some unfortunate gastropod or any other act of culinary barbarism to which these local chaps are habituated.’

  ‘I’m not getting breakfast,’ said Scabies. ‘I’m going to see what happened to the graveyard. Anyone want to join me?’

  Everyone rushed to the door apart from Ratty, who found that his damp leather jacket squeaked when he moved. He therefore walked at a pace that maintained the kind of low noise level more befitting to his status.

  ‘My van is still here!’ exclaimed Charlie.

  ‘It is, but half of the churchyard isn’t,’ said Scabies. ‘Come down to the river and see.’

  ‘That’s a bit macabre, isn’t it?’ asked Ruby. ‘There could be legs and arms and heads sticking out of the mud above the edge of the river. It’ll be gruesome.’

  ‘Remind me what your job is, Ruby?’ asked Scabies without waiting for an answer. ‘Oh, that’s right, you dig up old graves for a living.’

  ‘Only when they’re thousands of years old,’ she protested. ‘And I don’t do it for kicks or voyeuristic reasons. That’s all you’ll be doing down by the river.’

  Charlie stopped to inspect his van on the way to the river bank. The vehicle itself was a total write-off, but the interior showed no indication of human entry since the night before. That meant his stolen artefacts were still inside, buried under the brown silt that now covered every surface. Insurance was something other people did, of course, so selling those artefacts represented his only way of funding a new motorhome. He had no idea how he would go about selling them when he didn’t even have a place to store them, and the task of cleaning out the silt in order to find everything would make the retrieval process seem like an archaeological dig in its own right. He was tired and hungry. His donuts were ruined. The challenges ahead were daunting. He sat on the muddy grave and sobbed.