The Chaplin Conspiracy

by Stewart Ferris

  ‘Gizmos,’ said Ratty. ‘Gizmos and brains. I have access to the brightest archaeologist in England and the whizziest ground penetrating radar scanning thingy known to science.’

  ‘You know metal detectors are about as welcome in Rennes as one of my drum solos in a library,’ said Scabies. ‘And you can’t even stick a shovel in the ground there without getting dragged away by the local gendarmes.’

  ‘I appreciate that I may not look the type,’ said Ratty, puffing out his insignificant chest, ‘but I am no stranger to operating on the slightly questionable side of the law.’

  ‘Ever killed anyone?’

  ‘No, but I have a black belt in Pilates.’

  ‘Finding whatever Saunière left behind can’t be done without overlooking dozens of laws,’ whispered Scabies, ‘and you’re not exactly a hardened criminal.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks. I happen to drive an old Land Rover that’s of doubtful roadworthiness.’

  ‘So what do you want from me?’ asked Scabies.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ replied Ratty. ‘Ruby seemed keen for us to meet. Frankly I’m beginning to suspect that she hoped you might dissuade me from this whole enterprise.’

  ‘She wants me to tell you it’s a fucking waste of time? She’s right. Everyone involved in this has hit brick walls. There’s no reason for you to be any different.’

  ‘But did she tell you about Charlie Chaplin?’ whispered Ratty.

  Scabies shook his head and leaned closer. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I have,’ said Ratty before correcting himself, ‘well, I had, film footage that proved Charlie Chaplin visited Rennes-le-Château in 1932.’

  ‘So what? The place has always attracted tourists.’

  ‘But there was an anomaly in the film,’ said Ratty. ‘Something queer.’

  ‘You mean like that mobile phone in a Chaplin clip?’ asked Scabies. ‘You’re shrugging so you obviously don’t have a clue what I’m on about. There’s a film on a Chaplin DVD showing the scene outside a cinema in the twenties. Something to do with a premiere of one of his films. Anyway, there’s this bird – or it could be a bloke, it’s hard to tell – and she’s holding something to her ear and rabbiting away as she walks down the street. It looks like a clunky cellphone from the nineties. Look it up on YouTube. People think she’s a time-traveller or crazy inventor or something.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s most fascinating, but I can’t see that it pertains to Saunière’s activities. The fact remains that Charlie Chaplin visited Rennes in 1932 and the film he shot during his visit contains something just as impossible as that mobile telephone of which you speak.’

  ‘So what did you see? An iPhone? A laptop? Time travellers from the future?’

  ‘Saunière, Mr Scabies. We all clearly saw Saunière’s face in a film shot in 1932.’

  ‘So someone faked the footage,’ said Scabies. ‘There’s a lot a fakery going on in the Saunière world. It’s too easy to do these days. Anyone can fuck about with film using digital editing. Why don’t you e-mail the video to me and I’ll show you how they faked it?’

  ‘Thing is, when I say footage, I really mean the kind of footage that can only be measured in feet. This was old film. It stank the place out. Then it kind of blew up.’

  ‘Blew up?’

  ‘Well, it sort of caught fire when I ran it through the old projector a second time. When I tried to put it out, it exploded and set fire to the drawing room. Half my house burned down.’

  ‘Cool!’

  ‘So I don’t have the film now, but all of us recognised the priest. There’s no question about it. He was definitely very much not dead in 1932.’

  Scabies choked on his beer and stood up. ‘Come on,’ he said, heading for the exit to the street.

  ‘Where are we tootling off to?’ asked Ratty.

  ‘France.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘To get a fucking croissant. Why do you think? We’re going to find Saunière’s gold.’

  ‘Gosh.’

  ‘Only kidding. I can’t go to France, I’m playing a gig in Croydon tomorrow. But I think we should look into the idea of Saunière faking his death. I have some insights. I think I can help you.’

  ‘It’s awfully decent of you to offer your services, but I already have Ruby to help me. Well, I can call her up for archaeological advice when I need it. She doesn’t want to get her hands dirty on this one. And there’s Patient chappy. Not sure if he really wants to get involved, either, and anyway I prefer not to dilute the spoils.’

  ‘So you just wanted some advice from me for free and you were going to keep everything?’

  ‘No, no, no, no. Nothing of the sort. Absolutely not.’

  Scabies leaned in close to Ratty’s face. ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, maybe. Just a smidge. Though to be fair, you haven’t actually provided me with any advice yet.’

  ‘Bullshit. Of course I have,’ protested Scabies.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Don’t waste your time. Saunière’s not gonna make you rich.’

  ‘Ah, that. Much obliged, I’m sure.’

  ‘This Chaplin shit. It might not bring you any closer to Saunière’s loot, but it fits with some of the weird bits of the story. There’s a photo of Saunière on his deathbed, right? It’s in all the books, but it’s not him. It’s clearly some dead bishop geezer. So why did that photo ever get credited as being of Saunière? Easy. Because he needed an official deathbed photo as evidence of his demise. And there are rumours that he was fit as a violin right up to the day he supposedly died. Rennes is a hilltop village. It’s a five mile hike to the nearest shops, and it’s uphill all the way back. These people were fit back then. Saunière was strong. That’s why I always thought he didn’t die of natural causes in 1917. It had to be an assassination: Vatican or French government or something. But now I see it. He – or someone else – masterminded his disappearance. No one would look for him if he was meant to be dead. That would free him to do …’

  Scabies paused. He had no idea what the priest would do with his new-found anonymity and bucketloads of cash. Whatever it was, however, Scabies wanted to know. He wasn’t going to let Ratty investigate this alone. ‘You ever been to Rennes?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Ratty.

  ‘You know where the tunnels are? You know whose palms to grease to get access to the crypt? To the graveyard? To the castle?’

  ‘I must confess to being less than entirely au fait with those aspects of the mission as yet.’

  ‘Do you know who the Knights Templar recently appointed to guard the secrets of the village? Do you even know where Rennes is?’

  Ratty found himself pointing in a southerly direction, then retracted his arm.

  ‘And do you have anyone on drums?’ asked Scabies, with a wink. ‘Come with me. There’s more at stake with this story than you realise. Some unsavoury Herberts are going to come looking for you if they think you’re close to sniffing out Saunière’s gold. I’ve got some documents back home. You should take a butcher’s. I think you need to know what you’re up against and what might be unleashed against you.’

  ***

  With the drill bit spinning at three thousand revolutions a minute and moving ever closer to his eyeball, Rocco Strauss was almost out of options. Handing over the crowbar and attempting to gain the trust of the two American women had clearly been a mistake. He hadn’t expected to be so easily overpowered by the muscly woman, nor had he anticipated a fishing knife being held at his throat, and he lacked the strength to wriggle free of the duct tape that subsequently bound him. His attempts at reason and bribery and even seduction had failed hopelessly. All he could consider now was humour. He was not in a laughing mood, but it was the only way he could think of to defuse the tension.

  ‘That’s a masonry bit,’ he told them through a dry and croaky throat.

  ‘Huh?’ asked Winnifred, pausing momentarily on the drill’s route towards his face.

  ‘It’s per
fect for tomb raiding, but for human flesh you’re better off with a bit for metal and plastic.’

  Justina and Winnifred glanced at each other. A flicker of a smile appeared on Justina’s face.

  ‘Don’t even think about wimping out,’ said Winnifred to her associate. ‘We gotta see this through.’

  ‘Come on, this is gonna be gross,’ replied Justina. ‘Don’t you think we’ve caused enough harm? Let’s just leave him here.’

  ‘It will be really gross if you use the wrong bit,’ agreed Rocco. ‘A wood bit would be even worse, though. It peels the skin and muscle in long strands and it takes ages to clean the drill.’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting,’ said Justina. ‘And how come you know this shit?’

  ‘Put the drill down,’ Rocco whispered, ‘and I’ll tell you. And I’ll also tell you anything you could ever want to know about Saunière’s treasure.’

  ‘He’s bluffing,’ grunted Winnifred.

  Shit, thought Rocco. Even the old trick of pretending to know something so important that they needed very much not to kill him hadn’t washed with these women.

  ‘Wait,’ said Justina. ‘Let’s see what he knows about this tunnel.’

  ‘Who cares? It’s a tunnel,’ replied Winnifred. ‘Let’s get rid of him and carry on with the plan.’

  ‘I think there’s a chance we might miss out on some vital piece of information if we do,’ Justina countered. ‘Let him speak.’

  ‘I can’t talk with that drill pointing at me,’ said Rocco. When the tool was lowered, he continued, trying to disguise the timbre of fear that shook the foundations of every word. ‘This tunnel is contemporaneous with the castle and the church, built as an escape route for the castle’s occupants way back when Rennes was a fortified hilltop town.’

  ‘How long ago?’ Justina asked.

  ‘Between eight hundred and a thousand years. It originates in the castle dungeon and passes beneath the gardens of the intervening houses, finishing up in the crypt of the church. But the blocks that seal the crypt were installed more recently. My guess is that they were put there in Saunière’s day, probably by the priest himself. They’ve been broken into a few times and rebuilt between the 1950s and 1980s. Since then this tunnel has come under the guardianship of the Knights Templar and no one has been allowed inside. No one, that is, until you two persuaded the owners of the castle to sell up, or so the rumour goes. Sealed the deal only today, I understand. I wandered in to congratulate you. I can’t tell you how many people you’ve pissed off by getting the family to sell up. No one thought they would ever leave. With French probate law being what it is, no one thought the legal ramifications of ownership within the extended family would ever be resolved. But then, out of the blue, two American women show up with the keys and the deeds and start unblocking the entrance to this tunnel from their newly-acquired dungeon. Which begs a whole load of questions. If you have as much cash as it would take to persuade some very astute local French people to sell up and accept a Hollywood mansion in part exchange, according to my enthusiastically chatty sources, why do you need Saunière’s money? And since you must know that this tunnel has been explored and re-sealed within living memory, why would you expect it to lead to any gold?’

  ‘What do you mean, living memory?’ asked Justina, trying not to sound deflated.

  ‘Bullshit,’ added Winnifred. ‘There’s a stack of gold behind this wall. There has to be.’ She picked up the drill once more and squeezed the trigger so that it turned slowly.

  ‘I do my research,’ protested Rocco, leaning away from the drill. ‘I’m not usually wrong. Unless, of course, you haven’t bought the castle. And if you didn’t buy it, then the owners are still here.’ He waited for a contradiction, but none was forthcoming. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? They didn’t go to America. Everyone knows they would never sell. And they didn’t sell it to you, did they?’

  ‘If the crypt does turn out to be empty,’ said Winnifred, ‘I can think of another use for it. What do you say, Justina?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she replied.

  ‘If there’s nothing behind this block wall because it’s already been plundered many times before, like this asshole says,’ explained Winnifred, ‘then we should use the crypt for its proper purpose.’

  ‘For depositing dead bodies?’ asked Justina.

  ‘Shit,’ said Rocco.

  ‘No one will go in there during our lifetimes,’ said Winnifred. ‘It could be a hundred years before the authorities grant permission to dig in Rennes. It’s the perfect place to put them.’

  ‘Them? How many are there?’ asked Rocco.

  ‘These rural French guys have large families,’ replied Winnifred, ‘and sadly they all succumbed to food poisoning during a birthday celebration. Serves them right for hiring American chefs. They should have stuck to local food. And now it’s up to us to sort out the mess they left behind, and it seems that the crypt under the local church is where they would have wanted to end up.’

  ‘How come you didn’t see them on the kitchen floor?’ asked Justina.

  ‘I let myself in round the side. Through a window, actually, and straight down into the dungeon.’

  ‘I reckon it’s gonna be crowded in the crypt when we’re done,’ said Winnifred, looking Rocco in the eye, ‘but who knows, maybe there’s room for one more?’

  Rocco thought about the warm spring sunshine radiating onto the graveyard just a couple of metres above his head. He wondered if he would ever see daylight again. Perhaps this kind of yearning for the simple warmth of life is what it was like to be dead and buried? Nonsense, the scientist within him decided. Being dead is just the same as not yet being born. Eternity passes in a flash. It was easy. Anyone could do it. Still, easy or not, he wasn’t ready for eternity. There was one more thing for him to try.

  ***

  The study in Scabies’ attic rivalled Ratty’s for the sheer quantity of books in the collection, but owing to a lack of space they were piled high on the floor rather than arranged neatly on shelves built by Georgian craftsmen. The only other difference was the presence of a drum kit in the centre of the room.

  ‘No one else has seen this,’ Scabies said, passing an envelope to Ratty. ‘I didn’t think it was significant before you mentioned the Chaplin reel, but now I see it in a new light.’

  Ratty opened the yellowing envelope and withdrew the small sheet of paper. It was an invoice from a company in Paris, printed in French with a blotchy ink detailing the services rendered. Ratty couldn’t make out what was written, but the name on the invoice was clear: B. Saunière. And so was the date: 1st November 1917 – almost a year after he was supposed to have died.

  ‘Makes no sense,’ said Scabies.

  ‘There’s simply no excuse for a sloppy hand when writing financial documents,’ agreed Ratty.

  ‘Not the handwriting, the name. If he’d faked his death by this time, why would he use his real name?’

  ‘Golly. What a conundrum.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about this. First of all, maybe it’s not the same guy. There might have been another B. Saunière alive in Paris back then. That’s one possibility. Secondly, Paris is a long way from Rennes, so perhaps he didn’t think anyone would know or care about his past. Thirdly, perhaps he was an arsehole and too stupid to think of changing his name. But I don’t think it was any of those things. My theory is that without his real name he was nothing. He needed that name. It was his brand. It opened doors for him. It gave him power and influence.’

  ‘To do what?’ asked Ratty.

  ‘People say he was into all sorts of shit. Voodoo. Politics. Blackmail. Murder.’

  ‘Murder? Doesn’t sound like the typical pastime of a village priest chappy.’

  ‘1897,’ said Scabies. ‘Coustaussa. It’s a neighbouring village to Rennes. The priest there was called Abbé Gélis. Someone bashed his brains out in his presbytery on Halloween night.’

  ‘How frightful for him. Bet he wished he�
�d had a bucket of chocolates to give out.’

  ‘No forced entry,’ Scabies continued, ignoring Ratty’s pathetic humour, ‘no money taken, and this guy had moolah. Not on the scale of Saunière, but more than his salary would allow for. They never caught the killer, but the police report says that the body appears to have received extreme unction. That’s the kind of crap only a priest can do to a dying geezer.’

  ‘Gosh, are you saying Saunière might have been a naughty boy?’

  ‘I think Gélis was on to him from the start. Saunière was paying him regular bribes for his silence. Then one night maybe Gélis upped his price and threatened to blab, Saunière got the hump about that and did him in with the fire poker. So yes, you could argue that he was into murder. When there’s crazy money at stake, even a priest can get mean. Religion, politics and money can all make good people turn bad. Saunière had every motivation possible.’

  Scabies produced another document from an envelope and passed it to Ratty.

  ‘What’s this fellow?’

  It was a blank sheet of paper with a series of numbers written by hand in the centre.

  ‘Could be anything, couldn’t it?’ asked Scabies. ‘Phone number. Bank account. Emma Calvé’s vital statistics.’

  ‘Regardless thereof, how do you know it has any connection to the Saunière story?’ asked Ratty.

  ‘Because,’ the drummer answered, ‘it was found inside this.’ He picked up a book and passed it over.

  ‘A railway timetable?’ Ratty leafed through it looking for more clues. Saunière’s name was entirely absent from the pages. ‘And how does this timetable link to anything relevant?’

  ‘Because of the times of the trains,’ said Scabies. ‘Look closely. This is a timetable for 1917. The year Saunière supposedly copped it. Certain routes and times are underlined. If you follow the connections, it starts in Couiza and continues to Carcassonne, then to Marseille, across to Italy and up into Zurich. You’re looking at the journey he made after faking his death. I didn’t get it before you came along. I thought it was one of his villagers taking a trip to claim his dosh. Marie Denarnaud, maybe. But now I think it was Saunière himself; this is where he went in 1917. And that number is the key to his Swiss bank account.’