by J. G. Sandom
The hotel was not very crowded. Koster had gone out to visit a girlfriend, so Lyman ate a poor meal by himself and read about the cathedral in his Baedeker. After dinner he sat in what the concierge’s wife referred to as the “reading room,” flanked by a salesman from St. Malo and the owner of a local shoe store, and watched the interview of a famous rock star on the television.
He tried not to think about the case, but he found that his mind kept wandering back to Hadley and his orchids, to George lying on the bedroom floor beside that pool of blood and glass, to that image of Pontevecchio swaying in the current of the Thames. When the interview was finally over, he bid his companions bonne nuit and went to bed.
That night he dreamt that he was floating on a subterranean stream, the sound of rushing water whispering about him, the darkness broken only by a distant light. It was as if he had been drifting through this passageway forever.
Occasionally he tried to reach out for the sides, but either his fingers slipped against the surface, or the surface wasn’t there. He closed his eyes and let the current spin him gently. There was a groan of twisting metal in the distance. The water lapped against his chin, splashed against his lips. That’s when he felt his hands caress the soft side of a body floating right beside him. The skin gave way to bone beneath his fingertips. The face rolled over into view and Lyman saw it was his son’s face, pale as a new moon, bloated and distorted by the brine. Lyman kicked to free himself, to swim away, and bones gave way beneath him. There was another groan of metal and the water bore him to the ceiling as the destroyer slowly slipped beneath the waves, until there wasn’t any ceiling left, no room to breathe, no air and no way out.
Lyman woke to the sound of movement on his balcony. He opened his eyes. The hotel room was lit by streetlights, cool and exact, revealing the twin beds with their threadbare bedspreads. On the other side, beyond a little card table, stood the French doors leading out onto the balcony. Lyman pulled his blankets up, trying to ignore the pounding of his heart.
Perhaps he had just imagined it. Perhaps it was just a footfall on the street below. He dropped his head back on his pillow. A shadow wavered on the wall. He heard the distant clicking of a moped, the sudden frequency transition. He lifted his head once more and turned to see the outline of a man’s face pressed up against the window, his two hands cupped about his eyes on either side, his shoulders pushing at the glass.
In an instant Lyman was on his feet. He rolled across the floor to his suitcase and felt inside for the butt end of his Smith and Wesson 10.38. Then the shadow was gone.
Lyman lowered his gun. Someone was shouting. Glass shattered. The noise was coming from next door, from Joseph Koster’s room.
Lyman opened his door slightly, to check the hallway.
It was clear.
He stepped outside, keeping his back against the wall. The shouting was louder now. He held his gun up with both hands before his face, the muzzle pointed at the ceiling. Then he took a deep breath, trying to concentrate on the gun sight. It was a trick his uncle had once taught him years ago, and it still helped to steel his nerves. He took another breath, turned to the side and lunged against Koster’s door.
The wooden frame gave way with a crash. Lyman almost lost his balance, steadying himself at the last moment with his left hand. A man was standing at the foot of Koster’s bed. He was dragging the American by his hair across the floor. It was the man in the brown suit, the tall man who had been watching them at the cathedral.
Lyman shouted out a warning. The stranger released his grip, and the American fell to the floor. Lyman aimed his weapon at the stranger’s face. It was lean and handsome, the eyebrows plucked—like two small cuts above his eyes—the thick dark hair combed back. He could have been a Spanish businessman, an Argentinian doctor. Then he was gone.
Lyman jumped after him. The stranger had vanished through the French doors onto the balcony, but now the balcony was empty. Someone was honking a car horn in the street below. Lyman saw a pair of black Mercedes-Benzes and then, only inches from his face, the fingers of the stranger wrapped about the railing.
Lyman reached over and pointed his gun down at the stranger’s face. “Don’t be a bloody fool,” he said. “The game’s up.”
For a moment the stranger remained motionless. Then he suddenly released his grip and lunged at Lyman’s hands, trying to pull him down across the railing. Lyman fired but the shot went wild. The stranger scrambled for another hold. Lyman tried to grab him by the collar of his shirt. He felt the material in his hands, and then the weight was gone.
The stranger almost seemed to smile as he flattened out against the darkness and fell without a sound two storeys to the street below. There was a sickening thud.
Lyman leaned against the railing, feeling the weight of the night across his back. His heart was pounding. He looked down at the gun in his hand, and noticed that he had jammed one of his fingers up against the railing; it was bleeding. He closed his eyes, trying to shake his fear, trying to push away the memory of Spendlove in that hallway back in London, the knife and Crosley’s screams… Shoot, Nigel, bloody shoot!
He heard a noise behind him. It was Koster trying to rise. “Are you all right?” said Lyman.
He helped the American to his feet. Koster brought a hand up to his throat and coughed. After a moment, he whispered, “I guess so.”
“He didn’t even scream,” said Lyman. “Come on, let’s find out who he was.”
“I don’t think I can make it.”
“Of course you can. Here. Let me help you.”
Lyman dropped his gun off in his room. Then they walked together down the steps and out through the lobby, which was bursting now with people. The gunshot must have woken every guest, thought Lyman, and he suddenly felt naked in his pyjamas. The concierge and his wife stood near the body of the stranger, trying in vain to contain the crowd of guests that had assembled in the street. It was a cold night and the condensation of their breathing rose up in a great cloud just above their heads. The concierge’s wife was shouting but Lyman couldn’t understand a word she said. The French seemed garbled, meaningless.
“Let me through,” said Lyman simply, and the crowd opened up before him.
The stranger seemed hardly changed by the fall. He lay face up, looking only slightly disconcerted. Lyman knelt down beside the body and began to search his pockets one by one, turning them carefully inside out. Nothing. He checked his belt. He ran his hands along his trouser legs. There was no identification of any kind. Lyman wasn’t surprised. The man had been a professional. Only a professional would not have screamed.
He moved beside the dead man’s feet, and stopped. The shoes. He saw them now as clearly as if he were still trapped inside his lift, back in England, trying to reach up through the grillwork to the floor above. In the dark. In the prison of his heart. As his son’s dog barked one last time at the night.
Chapter IX
AMIENS
September 15th, 1991
LYMAN REMEMBERED THAT AFTERNOON IN FALL, BESIDE the River Itchen with a hatch of gnats about his head and St. Catherine’s in the distance. He was fishing the shoreline of the chalk stream with a “governor,” a ground bee look-alike made from a woodcock wing with short red hackle legs and a body of peacock herl. The morning had been lively. He had already bagged a brace of grayling and a sullen trout when with a cast he found his line pulled from the reel behind him, as if he had snagged the fly on a tree branch or a bush. But when he turned to trace the line he saw it rise up like a kite string through the air, and at the top—a swallow with the false bee pinned to its breast, like a badge. Lyman worked it down as gently as he could, but whether from the rush to earth or from its struggle with the line, the bird was dead when he finally pulled it from the grass. Its neck had been broken.
As he and Joseph Koster walked from the police station toward the Amiens cathedral, Lyman reminded himself that each man faces death his own way just a little bit each day. On
ce he had kept vigil over a shoe-box for a week, guarding a dead sparrow from something he had thought he understood then, but which now he could not even recollect. Death had kept pace with him. After all, it was a part of his job. It was something that happened. But he had never managed to keep pace with death.
Lyman had always scorned the weekly speeches made by Chief Superintendent Cocksedge, the way they coaxed, the way they characterized the department as a rampart of society. Yet he knew that once he too had traced an even line between the men they brought in every week and the men who brought them in. The villains were the ones who killed, while he uncovered. That was his job. The courts brought them to justice. Except that the longer he traveled by it, the fainter the line grew, until now it had vanished altogether.
There was no one he could trust in London now. Now those who killed and those who uncovered were the same. Now death no longer had the buoy of morality. It carried with it no distinction. It was at best convenient, or as aimless as his son’s death in the visceral darkness of that sinking battleship; as aimless as Crosley’s death; or the man’s with the wing-tipped shoes.
They reached the end of the park which stretched from the police station to the cathedral. Lyman paused for a moment and stared up at the towers of the western portico. It was ironic, he thought. After all that hatred welling up in him in London, after all that welcome long-lost anger, the man with the wing-tipped shoes had simply fallen from a balcony. Lyman had wanted to have the time to suckle him on pain, the way that George had suffered crawling room to room, the glass shards churning in his stomach. But the man was gone now, and the worst part of the stranger’s death was not the theft of Lyman’s vengeance, but the stark sincerity of Joseph Koster’s gratitude—the aspect which most marked it as a thing of truth.
Captain Musel had called it an attempted robbery and it had taken Lyman a pathetically short amount of time to persuade the American architect that—if safety were his watchword—then, of all the places he should be in Amiens, the Hôtel de la Paix was by far the most secure. The concierge had begged them to remain, despite his wife’s alarms. Their rooms were complimentary, of course, and they were given little books of tickets worth substantial discounts at a host of local restaurants and nearby points of interest. Joseph Koster had tossed his book of coupons in the lobby dustbin, indignant and complaining, but Lyman had pulled it out immediately. It was this act, Lyman knew, that had finally turned the young American’s fear, that had trivialized the incident enough to make him smile. And that was all that Lyman needed, even more than the gratitude which followed in a rush—the debt of life. For with that smile Lyman knew that Koster could be bought, his trust acquired, and that the currency of greatest value lay not in acts of bravery, but in the simplest show of human weakness.
Now it would be easy to stay close to Koster, to find out why exactly he was measuring the labyrinth, and why he had so readily revealed his cousin at the IOR. Koster had already invited Lyman to luncheon with Soury-Fontaine. “It’s the least I can do,” the American had said. “The very least.” Lyman had accepted with a show of great reluctance, reassuring Koster that he need not feel obliged in any way. Lyman had done nothing. He had merely scared the burglar off with his old army gun. It was a bad lie, Lyman knew, but one the American would believe.
They made their way beside the great cathedral until they reached the rue Robert de Luzarches, where Koster suddenly turned off. Lyman followed close behind. The cathedral’s southern transept rose up at their backs, the gray stone of the portico blending into cobbled streets and flint, into the wooden beams which seemed to reach out from a single ancient root to hold the houses of the street together. The wars of men and vagaries of time had somehow overlooked this section of the city. Except for a few yards of plumbing and a length of wire cable, nothing had changed here for five hundred years.
Joseph Koster paused for a moment by a doorway, and checked the number on the glazed ceramic tile above the lintel. “I always get mixed up,” the American said. “The houses all look the same. Come on, Nigel. We’re already late.”
Koster knocked on the door and Lyman soon heard footsteps from inside. A woman’s voice called out, “Joseph, is that you?” The door flew open and a girl with dark brown hair and a white blouse threw her arms round the American. She kissed him on both cheeks and then reluctantly pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” Koster finally said. “Nigel Lyman—let me introduce you to Mariane Soury-Fontaine, Guy’s sister.”
Lyman took her hand. “The pleasure’s mine.”
“You’re the man who saved Joseph’s life.” She studied him and said, “He was right. You are remarkable.”
Lyman watched her watching him and tried to answer, but he felt tongue-tied as a schoolboy. What was happening to him? The girl turned back into the house. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder. “Xavier and Guy are waiting.”
They made their way up a wooden staircase to the second floor. At the rear of the landing Lyman could see the wink of a small window overlooking a garden, and then more houses further on. Mariane opened a narrow door and motioned them to follow.
Two men sat beside a table at the rear of the room. Behind them Lyman noticed three tall windows trimmed with curtains. The table had been set for lunch. The men stood up as Lyman closed the door. The larger of the two, a strapping bearded fellow in a faded tweed jacket, strode toward Koster as if he meant to attack him. But at the last moment, he stopped and shook the American by the shoulders, laughing like a child.
“Guy!” Mariane said curtly. “He’s been through enough, hasn’t he?”
The bearded man turned toward Lyman. “You are the Englishman,” he said.
Lyman nodded.
“I’m Guy Soury-Fontaine, Mariane’s brother, and this is Father Xavier Marchelidon.”
The second man moved forward, proffering his hand. He was dark and very thin, a paring of a man, with a high domed forehead and a drooping, fragile jaw. “I’m only the assistant priest,” he said contritely. “Weekday masses and midday Sunday.” They shook hands. “Welcome to the rectory.”
Lyman was a little surprised. He had thought that they were going to Soury-Fontaine’s, but as he glanced about he realized that the room somehow suited Father Marchelidon. It was simple and stark, with plain white walls and a wooden floor. A few books had been piled up in one corner. Except for the table and chairs, and a small wooden cot, the room was barren of furniture. A crucifix hung above the table between the windows, and Lyman noticed a gooseneck reading lamp poised on a typewriter case beside the cot.
“Pronto a tavola,” Father Marchelidon said. “Let’s eat.”
They all squeezed in around the little table. Guy began to tear a baguette into large pieces as Father Marchelidon said grace. There were goat cheeses and cold meats, cooked vegetables and a plate of tiny pickles.
“Well, tell us what happened,” Guy said at last. “What did Musel say?”
Koster shrugged. “First he told us not to worry. Then he told us not to leave. Unbelievable. Some guy tries to rob me and when he falls off the damn balcony, we’re the guilty ones, we’re the ones who have to stick around. You should have seen how he treated Nigel. And then he tells us not to worry, that it’s simply a formality.”
“Show them your neck,” Lyman said.
The American pulled his shirt collar down with care. Mariane caught her breath. A purple line ran across his Adam’s apple like a coral necklace. Koster smiled. “Telephone line. I’m sure it looks worse than it is,” he said to Mariane. “It wasn’t like he was trying to kill me.”
“What’s that?” Lyman cut in. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe I’m wrong. It’s just that I got the feeling he was after something else. Money, I guess.”
“Anyway, it’s over now,” Father Marchelidon said, lifting his glass of Bordeaux. “Let’s hope the rest of your stay in Amiens is boring and uneventful. There is a lot to be said for boredom.”
T
hey toasted one another and for a moment no one spoke. Lyman noticed that Father Marchelidon had hardly touched his food.
Finally Guy broke the silence once again. “Mariane tells me you’re interested in the cathedral, Mr. Lyman.”
“Who wouldn’t be while they’re here? We have one in Winchester too, you know.”
“I know,” Guy said. “It’s one of my favorites. They even wrote a song about it.”
Lyman put his glass down. “To be honest with you, I think yours is grander. The pilgrims and the stories. The architecture. I think it’s absolutely incredible that people used to walk hundreds of miles just to see it.”
“They still do,” Guy said, “but now they come for the cathedral. In the Middle Ages they came for the relics. It meant a great deal then if you could say that you’d seen John the Baptist’s head. It’s here, you know. Walon de Sarton brought it back from the Holy Lands in 1206.”
“And Chartres has the Virgin Mary’s shawl,” Koster added with a wink.
“Don’t laugh. Relic worship is what the Middle Ages were all about—the relics as symbols, of course.”
“What about the Book of Thomas the Contender?” asked Lyman, as he reached for a piece of bread. “Isn’t that another legend?”
“There are always legends,” Guy replied. “That’s my business, to tell them, to give them life. The Contender story is much as any other. They say that one of the Amiens cathedral’s earliest master masons—we don’t know his name for certain—either bought or was given a Gnostic gospel called the Book of Thomas the Contender for the cathedral treasury. The story dates back to the early eleven hundreds, but it’s never been substantiated.
“The Book of Thomas the Contender, like the Gospel of Thomas and other early Gnostic texts, was said to contain the Logoi or sayings of Christ. Unfortunately, there was a fire in 1137 which destroyed most of the cathedral. The same thing happened at Chartres, when the old Carolingian cathedral burnt down in the eleventh century, and they had to build a new one up around her.”