Chapter 13
It had been days since Sam and Nina ran into Purdue and his sister at Heathrow airport. Without too much sharing of information as to their respective circumstances and such, Purdue and Agatha had elected not to return to Wrichtishousis, Purdue’s mansion in Edinburgh. It was too much of a gamble, since the house was a well-known historical landmark and known to be Purdue’s residence.
Nina and Sam were advised to do the same, but they decided otherwise. However, Agatha Purdue did ask for an appointment with Nina to secure her services in the search for something Agatha’s client was after in Germany. Dr. Nina Gould’s reputation as a German history expert would be invaluable, as would Sam Cleave’s skill as photographer and journalist in the recording of all discoveries Miss Purdue might uncover.
“Of course, David also pried his way in under the consistent reminder that he facilitated our location of you and this subsequent meeting. I shall let him have his ego stroked, if only to escape his incessant metaphors and hints as to the matter of his importance. After all, it’s his money we are traveling on, so why deny the fool?” Agatha explained to Nina as they sat at the large round table of a mutual friend’s vacant holiday home in Thurso, at the most northern point of Scotland.
The place was empty, save for summer, when Agatha and Dave’s friend, Professor Something-or-Other, resided here. Just outside town near Dunnet Head sat the modest double-story home, lopped onto the double-car garage beneath. In the misty morning the passing cars on the street looked like crawling phantoms outside the elevated living room window, but the fire inside kept the room very comfortable. Nina was enthralled by the design of the giant hearth she could easily walk into like a doomed soul entering hell. In fact, that was precisely what she imagined when she beheld the intricacy of the carvings of its black grid and the disturbing depictions in relief that framed the tall niche in the old stone wall of the house.
It was obvious by the nude bodies entwined with devils and animals on the relief, that the owner of the house was very impressed with Middle Age fire-and-brimstone images of heresy, purgatory, divine punishment of bestiality, and so on. It gave Nina the creeps, but Sam entertained himself by running his hands over the curves of the female sinners, deliberately to annoy Nina.
“I suppose we could investigate this together,” Nina smiled accommodatingly, trying not to entertain Sam’s juvenile exploits while he waited for Purdue to return from the house’s godforsaken wine cellar with something stronger to drink. Apparently the owner of the residence had a penchant for purchasing vodka from every country he frequented on his trips and storing the extra helpings he did not consume readily.
Sam took his place next to Nina when Purdue entered the room victoriously with two unlabelled bottles, one in each hand.
“I suppose a request for coffee is out of the question,” Agatha sighed.
“Not so,” Dave Purdue smiled as he and Sam took the appropriate glasses from the grand cabinet next to the doorway. “There happens to be a percolator in there, but I was in too much of a hurry to sample this, I’m afraid.”
“Not to worry. I’ll pillage it later,” Agatha replied indifferently. “Thank the gods we have shortbread and savory cookies.
Agatha emptied two boxes of cookies onto two dinner plates, uncaring if they broke or crumbled. She seemed as antique as the fireplace to Nina. Much the same air surrounded Agatha Purdue as the ostentatious environment, where there lurked certain arcane and sinister ideologies, unabashedly on display. Just as these ominous things lived freely on the walls and furniture carvings, so was Agatha’s personality — void of excuses or subliminal meanings. What she said was what she thought and there was a certain liberty to it, Nina thought.
She wished she had the manner to state her thoughts without consideration of repercussion that only came from knowing one’s cerebral superiority and moral distance from the ways society dictated people to harbor honesty while uttering half-truths for the sake of propriety. It was quite refreshing, although very patronizing, but Purdue had filled her in, a few days before, that his sister was that way with everyone and that he doubted that she was even aware of her unintentional rudeness.
Agatha refused the unknown alcohol the other three savored while she unpacked some documents from what looked like a school case Sam had early in high school, a brown leather satchel so worn that it had to be an antique. Some of the stitching had come loose on the side near the top of the case and the lid flipped open flaccidly from wear and age. The smell of it entranced Nina and she gently reached out to feel the texture between her thumb and the side of her index finger.
“Circa 1874,” Agatha boasted proudly. “Given to me by the chancellor of the University of Gothenburg, who later presided over the Museum of World Culture. Was his great grandfather’s, before the old bastard was killed by his wife in 1923 for buggery with a boy at the school where he tutored biology, I believe.”
“Agatha,” Purdue winced, but Sam held back a roar of laughter that even had Nina smiling.
“Wow,” Nina marveled, letting go of the case so that Agatha could replace it.
“Now, what my client asked of me, is to find this book, a journal purportedly brought to Germany by a soldier of the French Foreign Legion three decades after the Franco-Prussian War came to an end in 1871,” Agatha declared, pointing at a photograph of one of the pages from the book.
“That was the Otto von Bismarck era,” Nina mentioned while she scrutinized the document. She squinted, but still could not figure out what the messy ink noted on the page.
“It’s very hard to read, but my client insists that it is from a journal originally obtained during the Second Franco-Dahomean War by a legionnaire who was stationed in Abomey just before the subjugation of King Béhanzin in 1894,” Agatha recited her exposition like a professional narrator.
Her storytelling ability was astounding and with her perfectly placed enunciation and change in tone she immediately drew in her audience of three to listen closely to the interesting rendition of the book she was seeking. “According to lore, the old man who wrote it died from respiratory failure in a field infirmary in Algiers somewhere in the early 1900s. According to the report,” she passed them another old certificate from the field medical officer, “he was well into his eighth decade and had mostly lived out his days.”
“So he was an old soldier who never returned to Europe?” Purdue asked.
“Correct. In his final days he befriended the German officer of the Foreign Legion stationed in Abomey, to whom he gave the journal shortly before his death,” Agatha affirmed. She ran her finger over the certificate as she continued.
“In the days they spent together he amused the German national with all his war stories, all of which are transcribed in this journal. But one tale in particular was prevalent through the senile old soldier’s ramblings. During his duty in Africa, in 1845, his company was posted at the small holding of an Egyptian landowner who had inherited two farmlands from his grandfather and moved from Egypt as a young man to settle in Algeria. Now, this Egyptian man apparently had in his possession what the old soldier called ‘a treasure forgotten to the world’ and the location of said treasure was locked in the poem he penned later.”
“This very poem that we cannot read,” Sam sighed. He fell back in his chair and grabbed the glass of vodka. With a shake of his head he gulped it all down.
“That’s clever, Sam. As if this story isn’t confusing enough, you have to haze up your brain even more,” Nina said, shaking her head in turn. Purdue said nothing. But he followed suit and swallowed a mouthful. Both men groaned as they resisted slamming down the delicate glasses on the well-woven tablecloth.