Gospel Truths

by J. G. Sandom

  He began his search in a natural fashion, opening the drawers immediately below the writing surface first. They contained little odds and ends such as cigarettes and paper clips, scissors, and a box of silver coins. Then he tried the very bottom drawer on the right side. It caught for a moment before slipping out. Lyman noticed that the bolt was partly visible. Someone had already been there. Captain Musel perhaps? There were scratches in the wood around the lock. The drawer was empty.

  The next drawer was a different matter. Nestled in the back, behind a stack of legal documents and tax forms, Lyman came across a passbook from a local bank with Jacques Tellier’s name and address printed in black computer type across the front. Lyman skipped to the last entry. Apparently Tellier had made a small deposit on the nineteenth of May, 1990. One hundred and twenty francs to be exact. He had written the words “Pen Set” in the space beside the figure. Not much of a sale, thought Lyman. And not even a withdrawal. The total account was worth almost eight hundred pounds. He scanned the pages. Yet Tellier had gone to Klagenfurt on something, Lyman realized. A ticket to Austria wasn’t cheap. Perhaps he had kept a little tucked away here at the shop, a few francs for emergencies. It was certainly not uncommon. Or perhaps he had had a friend to help him on the way, an accomplice with a pair of tickets waiting in the wings.

  His finger hesitated beside an entry dated April 23rd, 1990. This was odd. Unlike the five or six hundred-franc deposits scattered throughout the pages of the passbook, this entry was valued at more than fifteen thousand. Three initials trailed the figure, etched in pencil—G.L.F.

  Lyman looked around reflexively. The door was still closed. He slipped the passbook into the inside pocket of his coat. Who would know anyway? Then he started for the door. But as he walked across the room, careful to duck his head below the slanted roof, he caught a movement in the corner of his eye and stopped to see his own face staring back at him from the surface of a mirror.

  He looked terrible. His eyes were puffy and red, drooping at the corners. His skin was pale as milk. His hair needed a trim. He looked, he realized, as he always did after a night of heavy drinking. Except that he hadn’t been drinking. Not since England. Not since the ransacking of his flat in Golders Green. And it struck him that this was a terrible injustice, a betrayal of the body somehow. He was getting old and soft, he thought, and age had come upon him suddenly, without his looking. He had simply waked one day and realized that the pinch of extra flesh about his kidneys was something he would have to live with for the rest of his life.

  He walked back over to the desk. It really didn’t matter, he thought, dropping the passbook back into the drawer. He would remember it all anyway.

  He turned and headed for the door. As he moved beside the mirror once again, he glimpsed a small round leather jewelry box on a chest of drawers and picked it up, absentmindedly, aware of the figure staring back, the movements of his own hands in reverse. G.L.F., he thought. G.L.F. What could it mean? Nothing but a few more coins, a pair of plastic collar stays, a garnet ring. He poked the contents with a fingertip. And on its side, beneath a pair of tarnished cuff links, a tiepin made of gold shaped as a mason’s square. It looked exactly like one he’d seen his Uncle Jack wear years before in Winchester.

  Lyman smiled. So Tellier was a Mason too. Like Marco Scarcella. Like Pontevecchio.

  Paul Tellier was sitting on a stool at the rear of the shop when Lyman came downstairs. The shopkeeper was directing the movements of two teenagers in the midst of unpacking a bust of Napoléon Bonaparte from a crate. The boys were dressed in navy overalls. One was smoking a cigarette even as he heaved and pulled at the general’s marble hat.

  “Ah, Monsieur Lyman,” Tellier said, hopping off his stool. “I hope you found what you were after.”

  “Not really. But perhaps you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions for me.”

  Tellier sat back on the stool. “Of course,” he said.

  The boys had finally unpacked the bust and it lay in a heap of straw on the floor. “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting your uncle,” Lyman said. “Tell me. What kind of man is he? What’s he like?”

  Tellier lowered his eyes. “Like any other man.”

  “What about friends? A girlfriend, perhaps.”

  “Goodness, no. He’s not like that. I don’t think he’s ever had a girlfriend. My father always used to say that he forgot about women when he went to prison, and then never bothered to remember them again when he got out.” Tellier laughed thinly, his little eyes shining for the first time.

  “What about the shop?” said Lyman. He took a pack of cigarettes from his coat and offered one to Tellier. The little man shook his head. Lyman helped himself.

  “What about it?”

  “Is it successful?”

  “Success, as I’m sure you know, is a relative term. I suppose my uncle would say it is. After all, he started from almost nothing after prison. But personally…” He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. To be honest with you, we practically lose money. It’s the Socialists, you know. It’s Mitterrand and his clique. At least Giscard was a real intellectual.”

  Lyman lit his cigarette. “Did your uncle keep any financial records? For the shop, I mean. Records of transactions. Receipts. That sort of thing.”

  “Some.”

  “May I see them?”

  Tellier popped off his stool. “If it’s absolutely necessary.” He reached across a stack of paintings and pulled a pair of ledgers from a dusty shelf. “These are for ′89 and ′90. If you need anything earlier, I’ll have to look upstairs.”

  “I’m sure these will be fine. Thank you.” Lyman took the ledger marked 1990 and sat down on a chair nearby.

  He had never really liked this kind of legwork, perhaps because he had never been much good at it. Lyman preferred to search for answers in the faces of his suspects, in their actions and inactions, in the cadence of their words. He had no instinct for the printed page, for numbers, and yet he knew this was the future of his trade. Pontevecchio had stolen hundreds of millions with the simple movement of a number from one column to another. Computer criminals now accounted for more money lost each year than all the petty thieves and pickpockets of Great Britain. It had all changed since Winchester. It was all different now. Crime had become like war, like the Falkland Islands conflict with its missiles, like the Gulf War—something waged at a distance.

  He finally found the right page, and began to run his finger down from one number to the next. There was nothing unusual, certainly no sales entry worth fifteen thousand francs—almost a thousand pounds. Yet Jacques Tellier had found the money somewhere. “Monsieur Tellier,” he said at last. “Do you recall your uncle selling something particularly valuable before he left?”

  “Valuable?”

  “Yes. Something in the range of fifteen thousand francs.”

  Tellier looked shocked. “I don’t think so.” He hesitated for a moment. “That is,” he continued, “I suppose it’s possible. But frankly, Monsieur Lyman, I doubt it. Not from this shop.”

  “I see. What about the initials G.L.F.? Do they mean anything to you?”

  “G.L.F.? I don’t think so.”

  “And you say you don’t recall any of his friends.”

  Tellier’s expression soured. “I’m sorry, but you have to understand. We were never particularly close. Most of our family lives in Rochefort, or nearby in the town of La Tremblade. Jacques was the one who chose to come and live up here. I suppose he wanted a fresh start after prison.”

  “He had no friends,” the teenager with the cigarette said suddenly.

  “How do you know?”

  The boy shrugged. “I used to work for him. Almost three years.”

  “What about steady customers?”

  The boy laughed. He was tall and stiff with a pocked face and black hair which hung down almost to his eyes. “What customers? Are you kidding?” he said. “The only people who ever come here are lost on their way to the cathedral
. Tourists. You know.” He hesitated for a moment.

  “What is it?”

  “There was one guy though. He used to come around.”

  “What was his name?”

  “How would I know? Every time he came, Jacques—I mean Monsieur Tellier—used to kick me out. But I’ve seen him around town. At least I used to. It’s been a while.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  The boy shrugged. “Dark. Not too tall, not too short. About your height. But younger, maybe thirty.”

  Lyman frowned. “Thanks,” he said. “Anything else?”

  The teenager looked around as if the answers to Lyman’s questions had been hidden somewhere in the room. “He drove a blue Peugeot,” he said at last. “Yeah, that’s right. And there was some kind of writing on the side. What do you call it?”

  “Like a stencil?” Lyman volunteered.

  “Yeah. The name of a store. Like a company car.”

  Lyman nodded. “Right,” he said. “Thanks again.” He stood and shook Tellier’s hand. “Here,” he added, pulling out his pack of Players and tossing them to the boy. “Try these. Those Gauloises will kill you.”

  “Any time,” said Tellier. “And give my best to Captain Musel.”

  Lyman did not answer. The door opened and closed and he found himself out in the street, the chill of the morning nuzzling up against him. He missed England. He missed the frantic streets of Hendon, the rush to catch the tube, that morning cup of tea at his little desk in front of Blackwell’s open window. London seemed so far away now.

  He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and started back toward the hotel. The street was empty now except for a solitary figure in a distant doorway, and an old woman sweeping the pavement near her house. He walked on, remembering his ragged countenance in Tellier’s looking glass, a shabby center to the countless clues and dark suggestions which made up the Pontevecchio case. It was his task to reveal the thread that linked them all together, but every time he seemed to glimpse a pattern, it unraveled in his hands.

  Where had Jacques Tellier discovered the Book of Thomas the Contender, and how? How had he earned those fifteen thousand francs, and why hadn’t he withdrawn them before his trip to Klagenfurt? Who was the man with the blue Peugeot, and who or what was G.L.F.? All at once, all of these questions cried out from within him to be answered, so that he did not notice the solitary figure as he left his distant doorway for the street, as he followed through the shadows with his chin down and the collar of his olive-colored raincoat pulled up about his face.

  Joseph Koster sat in the brasserie of the Gritti Hotel, stirring a cup of weak espresso, looking through the window at the buses in the Place Fiquet. The cold sun pulled the shadows through the afternoon: the giant tower, a plea for secular vanity over the cathedral; the bald pate of the Gare du Nord, glistening; the gathering crowd of grim commuters, more predetermined than determined, walking in their bat-colored raincoats finally for home. Koster sipped his coffee. The train was late. Perhaps Grabowski wasn’t coming after all.

  At first, the news of the archbishop’s imminent arrival had delighted Koster. The call had come in over the public phone—his was still broken after the robbery—and the concierge had run the two flights with the message. “An archbishop,” he had sputtered at the door. “An archbishop!”

  Koster had followed him downstairs only to find that Grabowski was not even there—just a message that he was in Paris and would stop up that afternoon to say hello. But the more time passed, and the more Koster thought about the sudden call, the more he realized that he didn’t need Grabowski anymore.

  Langelier, the Minister of Culture, had given him full access to the Notre Dame cathedrals, including excavation rights. Koster had only sent those letters to his cousin in case his publisher, Nick Robinson, had failed to win the minister’s support, and in order not to alienate the local priests. But now it was too late. Grabowski was on his way.

  Koster called for the waiter and a lanky Algerian boy appeared, shuffling his feet. “More coffee, please.” The waiter smiled and moved dreamily away. He looked stoned, Koster thought, and he remembered Priscilla’s flat expression, the way she had somnambulated through his life for months before he had discovered her addiction. All those colorful little pills at the bottom of her makeup case, like a bag of cat’s-eyes. He had never even known. He had always taken her silence as a mark of grief after the accident. But that’s when she had changed.

  In retrospect, it seemed obvious now that their marriage had been doomed from the very start. Everyone had known it—except for Koster, of course. Nick Robinson had warned him outright. “She’s not the one for you,” he had told Koster repeatedly, even on the day of his wedding. No matter how much it had hurt back then, he had to respect Nick for speaking his mind. At least he was honest. Nick had always looked after Koster, ever since school. Only the night before he had called again to see how the book was coming.

  Koster looked up suddenly. A shadow lay across the table. And at the other end he saw a round face peering through the window, one hand raised up to block the glare. It was Grabowski.

  Koster stood automatically. The archbishop walked around the brasserie and in a moment he was by the table, signaling for the waiter. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, finally offering his hand.

  He was wearing a dark suit and clerical collar. In his left hand he carried an overfull Alitalia bag which made him seem smaller than Koster remembered. Small and tired. “Don’t worry. I only just arrived myself,” Koster said, suddenly embarrassed by the empty cup of coffee at his elbow. My first words, he thought, and they’re a lie. “Listen, I wish I could have caught you on the phone this morning. There was really no need for you to come all the way up here on my account. Everything’s been going great. Not that I don’t appreciate it. I mean I know you’re busy.”

  Grabowski smiled. “I suppose you look more like your father than your mother. How is he anyway? I haven’t seen him in years.”

  “He’s all right.”

  “Still playing?”

  “Semiretired, but you know Dad. He still does guest appearances.”

  The archbishop nodded and Koster realized just how old he really was. For months his face had appeared in the New York daily papers, always the same photograph, the same defiant eyes. That had been back at the height of the Fabiano scandal. But now he looked as an actor looks after the show is over and he’s rubbed away the face paint and the powder. Was this what it meant to be famous, a struggle to resemble some stock photo from the past, a pure moment of dissembling? Perhaps the scandal had humbled him. Perhaps, like Priscilla, he too had changed.

  “And the rest of the family?” Grabowski asked, tilting his hand. “How are they?”

  “Fine, I guess.”

  “I heard about you and Priscilla. I’m sorry.”

  Koster shrugged. Had he seen it in his eyes? “It happens. It’s a statistical truth. We were just unlucky.”

  “Perhaps you should try and reunite. Don’t underestimate the value, the importance of a second chance. You are a Catholic, after all. Church doctrine is clear on this.”

  Koster bristled. “I’d rather not talk about it,” he said.

  The archbishop laughed, throwing his head back so that the sound rolled over like a wave across the empty brasserie. “Please, Joseph. Don’t misunderstand me. It’s just that when you get to be my age, you realize that there are only a few things not worthy of a second chance. Even a broken-down marriage. Maybe especially that. When you’re young—like you are—you’re certain there are some people, some things you simply can’t forgive. I remember, believe me. But one day, when you’ve done something, something… that you don’t know where to put, you’ll understand that it’s easy to forgive. Except yourself, of course, save through the love of Christ.” He paused, glancing out the window. “I suppose that’s why you came to Amiens?”

  “In a way,” Koster answered vaguely.

  Grabowski smiled. “I�
�m sorry if I seem inquisitive. It’s just that I hardly get to see anyone anymore, especially from the American side of the family.”

  “I came for the book. The one on the cathedrals.”

  “The book? Of course,” he said, waving at the waiter. “Tell me about the book. What’s it about? The last I heard, you were working for one of those big architectural firms in New York.”

  “My publisher suggested the idea. But I guess I needed to get away, after the divorce I mean. Anyway, I went. They were really nice about it at work.”

  “Really.” The waiter set Koster’s second cup of coffee on the table. Then he gathered up the first one, stuffing it full of empty sugar wrappings with his thumb.

  “I’ll have the same,” Grabowski said.

  “It’s about the Notre Dame cathedrals,” Koster said. “You know—Reims and Chartres as well. An architect’s perspective. Form as mathematical construct, as analog.”

  “Always the mathematician. Oh, I almost forgot. I brought you something.” Grabowski reached down and lifted the Alitalia bag onto the table. “What do you know about St. Thomas?”

  “St. Thomas?” Koster was startled. “Not much. A few legends. I know he’s the patron saint of builders. There’s a statue of him in the western portico of the cathedral here. He’s even carrying a T square.”

  “Did you ever hear the story of the Book of Thomas the Contender?”

  “And the one about the Persian Cup or Grail or whatever it’s meant to be. But there are lots of myths and legends about the cathedrals.” Koster watched Grabowski slip a box out of the Alitalia bag. “What’s that?” he said.

  “When I heard about your project I asked a friend of mine who works at the Vatican library to see if he could come up with anything you might find helpful.” Grabowski ran a thumbnail along the edge of the box, tearing the cellophane tape. Then he lifted the top with his left hand, revealing a sketch of black revolving lines, octagonal, and a weave of calculations on the side. “Recognize this?”