Murder in Lascaux

by Betsy Draine

  Yes, I thought so. The line was moving. We were approaching a sheltered overhang with a cement staircase leading down into the ground. The crowd pressed in, and in another moment we were milling around inside a dark antechamber with illuminated wall displays and diagrams. The guide, a young woman, began her introduction. She described the construction process for Lascaux II and went over the history of the real Lascaux’s discovery and the reasons for its closing. She pointed out that only the Hall of Bulls and a section of the Axial Gallery had been reproduced in Lascaux II. We were invited to consult the wall diagram if we wanted to get a sense of the entirety of the cave, which was of course much larger than the replica. I tuned out the rest of her spiel as I studied the map, trying to trace the sections we had visited three days ago and to situate them in relation to the Hall of Bulls.

  It was obvious at a glance that there were significant sections of the real Lascaux we hadn’t visited during our tour—in other words, any number of hiding places where a killer might have been concealed. There were in fact two passageways leading into the Hall of Bulls. One led from the Axial Gallery, but we had gone most of the way through that one, and I remembered it as too narrow to have shielded a person from view. The other passageway, though, led to the Nave, a much larger area, which we had entered briefly but never explored. Beyond the Nave was still another gallery, and off to the side was the mysterious pit containing the falling man and the bison. What better hiding place for a killer who was planning to leave a duplicate of the pierced bird as a calling card?

  Soon we were herded into the faux Hall of Bulls, forty or fifty of us pressed together as if in a crowded elevator. Familiar outlines of bulls and horses surrounded us, but the magic I felt at seeing the authentic art was gone. Besides the crowding, what made the experience so different from the original was the impact on the senses. Lascaux is a natural cave, smelling of earth and stone. Its limestone walls are glossy, whereas the walls of Lascaux II are made of polyester resin and have a dull matte finish. The floor is concrete, the air paper-dry from the anodyne air-conditioning. Yes, the murals are replicated in their proper spatial relationships. The lines and colors are right; even the bulges in the walls are reproduced down to the last centimeter. It’s very well done but— like all copies—lifeless.

  Lifeless: the thought drew me back to the murder. Toby, I could see, had barely glanced at the paintings. He was trying to find his approximate position in the real Hall of Bulls before it had gone dark. I jostled my way toward him until we were pretty close to our original locations in the cave. We imagined Gounot in front of us near the entrance and then the others behind us. Yes, there was room enough for Gounot to have circled around us, but how much time would he have needed to get behind us, strangle Malbert, and return to his place before being discovered? I remembered Gounot fumbling in the dark for a replacement battery for his lamp. Might that have been a cover for his movements? How much time had actually passed before the lamp had been made to work again? Several minutes, at least. And yet I felt sure Gounot had not doubled back on us. No, I concluded, whoever killed Malbert had stalked him from behind, had emerged stealthily from some hiding place deep in the cave.

  “What about David?” asked Toby. We were back outside again, comparing notes. Toby agreed Gounot could not have outflanked us without attracting attention, but he reminded me David had been closest to the victim and need not have emerged from some lair.

  “I just can’t accept that,” I said.

  “I’m only pointing out that, in terms of logistics, eliminating Gounot leaves only David as a suspect, along with anyone else who may have been hiding in the cave before we went in.”

  “Do you mean Marc?” I asked.

  “Yes, Marc. He could have acted on his own or as Gounot’s accomplice, but ‘could have’ isn’t the same as evidence. The same goes for Fernando.”

  I sighed. “So that leaves us pretty much where we started.”

  “Pretty much. Do you feel like checking out the shop?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  The shop on the grounds of Lascaux II was well stocked with prehistoric paraphernalia, everything from T-shirts with images of bulls, to Lascaux ashtrays, models of dinosaurs, and children’s picture books on cave art. While Toby slowly spun a rack of postcards, I was drawn to the back of the shop, where a large color poster of “the scene in the pit” caught my eye. There it was hanging on the wall, larger than life-size, its details much sharper than in smaller photographs. What was its meaning? The wounded bison with its entrails dragging; the spindly man in profile falling backward, arms flung out; the bird or effigy of a bird on a stick, either planted in the ground or dropped from the dying man’s hand? I peered more closely and now noticed with surprise that the man in profile was shown with an erection. That was puzzling enough, but so was the fact that his nose looked more like a beak, suggested by two horizontal dashes. Stylistically, his nose was the mirror image of the beak of the bird on the stick, which faced in the opposite direction. Was the man wearing a mask? Were his hands really bird’s feet? The Birdman— the word popped into my mind. Who or what was he? And why did the artist who otherwise was so sparing of anatomical detail depict him as sexually aroused?

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” said Toby, who had quietly crept up behind me and was nuzzling my neck. “You wonder what the old boy was doing before the bison interrupted him.”

  “Okay, wise guy, maybe the artist simply wanted to indicate the person’s sex.”

  “Well, he certainly did that,” said Toby, with a Groucho Marx wag of the eyebrows. “Speaking of which, there’s something I’ve been meaning to bring up since we got here.”

  “Cut it out,” I laughed in spite of myself. “There’s a time and a place for everything.”

  “True. But we do have a room,” said Toby, nibbling my ear. “And plenty of time. It’s Midsummer’s Eve, the longest day of the year.”

  8

  THAT’S WEIRD.”

  “What?”

  It was later—close to ten and still not yet dark. We were reading in bed. Toby had a paperback mystery, and I was browsing through the book about the Cathars that I had borrowed from the baron’s library.

  “What’s weird?” repeated Toby.

  “I’ve been looking through this book, trying to find out whether the Cathars had any special iconography, you know, symbols or images that would be used as motifs in their art.”

  “And?”

  “And as far as anyone knows, they had almost no art of their own. There are only a handful of artifacts that anyone’s ever associated with the movement. One was the Cross of Toulouse, which has what looks like the tips of little crowns on each of the four points. I know I’ve seen that image before. I think it’s carved on the lintel of the stable doors where we park our cars. And it also looks like the motif on the family china.”

  “So the family is interested in historical symbols. What’s so strange about that?”

  “Well, here’s the thing. The other image was a bird, a dove in flight with outstretched wings. An archaeologist studying the Cathars found a small stone sculpture of a flying dove in the ruins of Montségur, which was where the believers made their last stand in 1244. The pope’s army laid siege to the citadel, and when it was over they burned two hundred heretics at the stake.”

  “Awful,” said Toby. “What were they fighting about?”

  “What religious fights are always about, power and ideas.”

  He nodded, pursing his lips.

  “But listen. What I’m trying to tell you is that it’s strange that the Lascaux artists and the Cathars and whoever murdered Monsieur Malbert all used the bird as a symbol of something. I’m trying to figure out if there’s a connection.”

  “How can there be a connection between Lascaux and the Cathars? We’re talking about a difference of thousands of years.”

  “I know that. It’s just curious, that’s all.”

  “Or weird, as you said.”
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  “Yes, weird.”

  Toby rolled over and propped his head on his hand. He walked the fingers of his other hand across my shoulder. “Okay, what else have you found out?”

  “Well, the origins of the sect are obscure, but their stronghold was here in this part of France, extending south to Marseille. The Church did such a good job of wiping them out that there aren’t many traces left of their culture. But at the time they were considered a real threat to Rome.”

  “How?”

  “Basically, they thought everything connected to the material world was corrupt, including the Church, and they wanted to become spiritually ‘pure’ or ‘perfect.’ By the way, that’s where their name comes from, the root of the Greek word ‘catharsis,’ meaning ‘purification.’”

  “Wait a minute, that’s what the old baron was going on about, something about ‘the pures’ and the Catholic Church.”

  “Exactly. The Cathars were also known as the Albigenses because the sect was numerous in Albi, near Toulouse. The Count of Toulouse was one of the leaders of the movement.”

  “That ties in with the baron’s animosity about my map!” exclaimed Toby. “He mentioned Toulouse.”

  “It does, but we’re talking about a heresy that died out hundreds of years ago. The question is why the baron is still worked up about it. Here’s the only tie-in I can see,” I added. “As a result of the Albigensian Crusade, the South, which before then had been independent, was annexed to the kingdom of France. Political resentment can go back a long time. Remember the remark Guillaume made at dinner the other night about the Languedoc and the Parisians?”

  “Yeah. But you don’t think they’re still practicing the old religion here?”

  “It’s the politics I’m wondering about. I’m thinking about the hostility Guillaume has toward the northerners.” I reached behind me and plumped up the pillows.

  Toby shot me a sly glance. “You know, you’re awfully cute when you talk about politics.”

  “And you’re awfully cute when you lie there helplessly asking questions.”

  “I’m lying here helplessly only because I’ve had a long and fulfilling day, and I’ve earned my rest.”

  “You have.” I patted him on the knee.

  Toby sat up and punched his own pillows behind him. “So, what else did the Cathars believe, I mean besides that the world was corrupt? Hell, I believe that myself.”

  “Well. What really got them in trouble was they preached that the Devil, not God, made the world, and so the goal of life was to renounce the world, that is, to become pure—though only a few would be able to do it. Those are the ‘perfects.’ The rest of us will be reincarnated back into the world until we are able to attain perfection.”

  “Sounds more like Hinduism than Christianity.”

  “There’s definitely a tinge of Eastern philosophy to it,” I agreed. “But the Cathars did believe in Jesus. They saw him as a messenger from the world of pure spirit. Then they claimed the Devil created a false church to distort Christ’s message, and that was the Church of Rome.”

  “And oddly enough, the pope took umbrage on that point.”

  “He did. According to the sect, there would be other messengers in the world, and those would be the ‘pures,’ or the ‘perfects.’ To become one you went through a ceremony called the Consolation, and then you had to live like a saint, fasting, praying, avoiding violence, never swearing, never lying, never eating meat, and of course, no having sex.”

  “So much for us,” said Toby with a grin.

  “Not really. You’ll like this part. In practice, the Cathars were pretty casual about sex. There was no point rushing into the Consolation; you had to be strong enough to follow its demands, which is why it often took place as a deathbed conversion. Before that you were simply a follower and you could do pretty much what you liked, as long as you were kind.”

  “Hey, that doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “It did to the Catholic Church,” I said. “The Cathars reasoned that if all worldly practices were evil, then everything worldly was on the same plane. Like sex. All sex was sinful, so why was unmarried sex any worse than married sex? It wasn’t. Members of the sect married late, and their enemies accused them of licentiousness. In a way, since everything was forbidden, everything was allowed. That is, until you accepted the Consolation.”

  “You’ve got to hand it to them. So what happened at the Consolation?”

  “Nobody knows the details. The ceremony was kept a secret. The believers went to their deaths rather than reveal it, and if there were any written Cathar texts, the Church destroyed them. Most of what is known about the heresy was handed down by word of mouth and through trial records made during the Inquisition.”

  “And that was the end of the Cathars?” Toby slid his legs over the side of the bed and inserted his feet into his slippers.

  “As far as I know. But here’s something else. During the persecution of the heretics, there were two methods of execution. One was burning at the stake. The other was the garrote, and that’s how Malbert was killed.”

  “What do you make of that?” he asked, heading toward the bathroom.

  “I don’t know. But there could be a connection.”

  “Between Lascaux and the Cathars? I don’t see it.”

  “Neither do I. Yet.”

  Next morning, Toby was up early for him, and we walked to the twelfth-century church at Cazenac, admiring its gargoyles and wondering whether it had ever served as a Cathar sanctuary. Back in our room, we devoured the spice bread that Madame Martin brought with our coffee, and still we were hungry, having skipped dinner the night before. But we had been eating all too well on this trip, and today would feature a cooking-class lunch that was sure to make up any deficit in the calorie department.

  Even as I entered the dining room and said good morning to Roz, my stomach grumbled. She looked at me quizzically, but it seemed she had other things on her mind.

  “We missed you at the class yesterday,” she started. “And then in the afternoon, we looked for you before we set out for Cahors.”

  “I’m sorry. We should have mentioned that we decided to visit Lascaux II. Did you have a good day?”

  “It turned out that we did, even though we got a late start. Your Inspector Daglan gave Dotty the scare of her life, I must say.”

  From behind me, I could hear Dotty complaining energetically to Toby about “that inspector” and his “ridiculous notions.”

  With an effort, I remained attentive to Roz. I asked her what Inspector Daglan had said that upset Dotty, and then I remembered the inspector had asked us not to discuss our conversation with the other guests. Surely he simply meant not to talk to them before he had talked with them, but he might want us to keep mum about all we had discussed, even now. My dilemma was resolved by Patrick’s entrance. He walked over and joined us, and he and Roz began to recount the adventures they had with Dotty, exploring the old quarters of Cahors on foot and then driving to the train station to dine at the fashionable Restaurant Terminus. Patrick was thrilled to have tasted a great chef ’s take on southwest cuisine. Eagerly, he began comparing the dishes to those we had sampled at Le Beau Soleil.

  From then on, the focus stayed on food. Marianne entered the dining hall, passed out our menus for the class, and led us to the teaching table in the kitchen. I thought she avoided looking at either me or Toby. In her typically intense way, she launched right into a discussion of magret de canard, sliced duck breast, explaining that this signature dish of contemporary Dordogne cooking was still considered an abomination by traditionalists. Her own brother turned up his nose at the plate. Traditionally, she told us, duck was cooked on the bone, whether roasted, stewed, or fricasseed. That brought out the depth of flavor that distinguishes duck from chicken. In addition, the frugal way to cook a duck is to use every piece of it in the same meal. This business of selecting only the breast, for its tenderness, strikes the older generation as wasteful and pretentio
us. Nonetheless, deboned breasts of duck have become a staple of Perigordian cuisine both at home and in restaurants—and we were about to learn how to cook them perfectly.

  I looked around to see if Fernando had turned up today, but Marianne was doing this lesson solo. Her first step was to set up a cook-off, with each team assigned a different method for preparing the duck. Toby and I were instructed to grill our breasts, while Lily and David would roast theirs in the oven, and finally, Patrick, Roz, and Dotty would sauté theirs. Each method had its appropriate sauce: mashed cherries and vinegar for us, a tapenade of chopped olives and shallots for the Presses, and a berry sauce spiked with Grand Marnier for Patrick’s team. Marianne helped each group, but she also pointedly publicized our gaffes. This produced laughs, except in the case of Lily and David, who seemed clueless. Their duck breasts stuck to the roasting pan, which charred and ripped the skin, and their sauce looked like chunky tar. Marianne was unsparing. She called the Presses on every fault, and when David burned himself removing the pan from the oven, she rushed over, pushed him aside, and grabbed the pan from him.

  “This is the proper way to grasp a roasting pan,” she hissed. “Arms extended, and elbows bent, with the forearms held close to the chest.” Her tone was strident. It seemed unfair to criticize David for failing to execute a maneuver she hadn’t taught us. Marianne seemed to realize that quickly, but she had trouble lightening her tone. Her face stayed grim and her voice rasping as she apologized, “I’m sorry to make an example of you, David. But, class, this is most important. You must always address the stove respectfully, straight on, with your arms in position to perform any necessary action with strength. Shoulder blades flat on your back, spine straight, abdominal muscles taut.” She gave a disapproving glance at David’s girth. And then she made each of us practice lifting a pan in and out of the oven.