‘She saw someone.’
‘She thinks she did, but it was far too dark.’
Von Mahler’s expression was firm in resolve, but what the hell …‘I’m going to have to speak to her, Colonel. You can’t refuse. Maybe you could with my partner, but not with me, my friend. Not with me.’
‘Perhaps, then, you had best read this. It’s from Gestapo Mueller in Berlin but was forwarded to me via Gestapo Boemelburg in Paris.’
GEHEIME
Achtung. The Avignon murder under investigation by St-Cyr and Kohler is an internal matter for the French to settle. No assistance is to be given.
HEIL HITLER
‘Then it’s up to them, is it,’ asked Kohler, ‘and the Cagoule they control?’
Some men would never learn. ‘Though it will sound lame, and it was myself who requested the two of you, my hands are tied. I’m sorry, but apparently the Reich has far more need of them than it has of you and St-Cyr.’
Kohler sighed heavily at the ways of the Occupation, and for a moment devoted himself entirely to Nino. Then he looked up, took his time, and said, ‘At the conclusion of our last investigation, Colonel, my partner and I filled Gestapo Boemelburg’s car with loot we had recovered. All my boss really wants is to make certain he keeps it.’
‘And the others? The rest of Gestapo Paris-Central, the SS of the avenue Foch, the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston, and, yes, Gestapo Mueller?’
‘Want an end to us, but obviously they’ve not heard Louis is no more.’
‘No more? But he’s at the morgue as I told you. I saw de Passe let him out of the car not two hours ago.’
Alone with the body of Mireille de Sinéty and the things she had worn, St-Cyr tried to concentrate. There was so little time. There was the threat of the Cagoule — de Passe and the others would have to put a stop to Hermann and himself. They’d have no other choice, not after what had happened at the mill, and yet … and yet time had to be taken. ‘You are demanding it of me,’ he said to her shrouded corpse. ‘You expect me to put my mind back into the very early Renaissance and to think as one would have then, but I have to tell you that that order book you kept with the glyphs as a shorthand is sadly with my partner in the car.’
Spread out on one of the pallets was the jewel-and-enseigne-studded belt with its talismans and tiny silver bells. The aumônière sarrasine was there but he had emptied the purse and had fanned out its contents.
Taking up the tin of sardines, he asked himself why, if she had known Dedou wasn’t to be at the Palais, had she included it? The thing was entirely out of keeping with the rest of her costume, but she must have had a reason. Hope perhaps, that after all, the boy would come. Some reason anyway. Or two, or three, he reminded himself. ‘For that was the way of things. The little games one played in those courtly days, but you weren’t playing a game, and neither are my partner and I.’
The dirk, the sewing kit, scissors and keys were there and he had to ask himself, as he had when first encountering her body, why had she not used the dirk to defend herself? There really had been virtually no sign of a struggle. Signs of hide and seek, the hunt, the chase, of course; the prayers on her knees also, and in the Chambre du cerf, the Pontiff’s study, which had direct access to his bedchamber next door …
‘Ah nom de Dieu,’ he breathed. ‘That first Mireille must have gone to that same chamber late at night to beg His Eminence Clement the Sixth for mercy.’
Unsettled by the thought, for it implied again that history really was repeating itself, he looked at the belt.
‘You knew which of them would kill you. It’s all here in front of me, isn’t it? Bishop Rivaille — was it him? Was it Simondi or that one’s wife? Was it one of the singers — Genèvieve Ravier perhaps, or her lover, or Marius Spaggiari? Xavier?’ he asked. ‘The Cagoule?’
High on her left hip she had pinned her own sign, that of the House of Balance in gold, its weighing pans upended as if the hand-held balance had been flung far up into the heavens to hang suspended there for ever. And from its pans had been strewn the cabochons of meaning, the jade and lapis lazuli, moss agate, chrysoprase, amethyst, ruby and malachite — opal, too, and coral and jet. Beautiful things, lovely things, but …
The fleurs-de-lis brooches that had fastened her mantle were next to the coins, as were the fine gold neckchain and two of the three rings she had displayed there, since she couldn’t have worn any more of them on her fingers. Rings given in friendship or exchanged perhaps to celebrate some event, for people did that sort of thing during the Renaissance. But had the hair in the bishop’s ring really matched that of Adrienne de Langlade? Would it ever be possible to lay the two side by side under a microscope?
Rivaille had recovered the pendant box. He practised flagellation and there was the image of a tiny silver martinet on her belt and directly above the sign of the Goat, a Capricorn.
Again, as before, he noticed that the Archer’s arrow was pointed at this sign, but beyond the goat there was a moonstone cabochon over which was a cluster of pearls, each in the shape of a teardrop.
She couldn’t speak, he couldn’t seem to put his mind completely into the framework of her own. Anxiety … the threat of the Cagoule … were interfering.
‘The keys,’ he said when Hermann came to find him. ‘I’ve been the world’s biggest fool, mon vieux. Keys meant far more to those of the Renaissance than they do to us today.’
‘None of those keys would have been a damned bit of use to her, Louis.’
‘But that’s just it! Keys could and did signify many other things. That the subject’s heart was locked up, that her thoughts and loyalties were true, her faith in God still resolute.’
‘She wanted others to unlock things,’ said Kohler softly. ‘She knew she might not survive.’
‘I just wish you had brought along her order book. I’m missing something obvious, Hermann. I know I am. She’d have smiled gently at me or laughed, but then … ah,’ he shrugged. ‘She wouldn’t have laughed, would she?’
‘The sign of the two fishes is often repeated.’
‘Merde, what an idiot I am! The two fishes … The label on the sardine tin. The sign of a Pisces — is this why she had it in her aumônière? Not to give to Dedou at all, but to tell us a Pisces had killed her?’
‘Genèvieve Ravier?’ muttered Kohler. ‘Hey, the sign of the Virgin, with wheat stalks in hand, is also often repeated.’
‘Idiot, that’s not just the Virgin; that’s the Gleaner, the winnower of facts!’
Kohler pointed to the martinet, Louis said, ‘The Goat, I think.’
The bishop and Adrienne de Langlade. ‘There’s a tiny triangle in gold that’s formed of letters.’
‘C, A, M, A, E, L,’ said Louis, ‘with the C alone and in the upper corner. That is the name those of the Renaissance would have used for the Angel that rules the planet Mars which, in turn, ruled the House of the Scorpion.’
‘Simondi?’
‘Or his wife?’
‘Why not tell me what happened at the mill with de Passe? You scared the hell out of me. You know that, don’t you?’
Louis appeared to pay no heed.
‘Her gimmel ring links lapis lazuli with a saffron-yellow topaz, which is one of the stones of the Archer, Hermann. Her gown was of the same shade.’
‘Dédou, then. Now quit keeping me in suspense about the mill.’
‘Inadvertently de Passe confessed to having been present when Adrienne de Langlade was drowned. He had tried to tell me Brother Matthieu was responsible for both killings.’
‘And?’ hazarded Kohler.