The Avignon Quintet (35 page)

“There is an odd similarity in the hierarchy of the groups – it extends even to the costume: the fighting uniform with the red hood for example. The whole thing was really a momentous meeting of a grass culture (blue grass, hashish,
quat)
and a wine culture – the Christian wine doing service for the redeemer’s blood. Wine as a blood substitute held the Christian guilt partially in check, but not always. When it broke out, as in the siege of Jerusalem, one sees what a hecatomb these creatures could build of their fellow men. They wanted to drink blood, they could not disguise it. The assassins killed frugally, imagining they were killing minds, dry as flies.”

He was silent, thinking, with his sleepy head on his breast. Then he went on. “Grape and grass cultures suddenly meet and for a while do battle. Then one side wins with the sword and loses morally. One kills like an automaton, the other must drink the blood of the victim. The Templars started going astray right here.”

He chuckled and placed the sacred typescript under his head to form a pillow. “Can you not
now
see the right true end of poor Babcock? His hair will fall out around the time of the menopause, he will wilt, he will lose all his mayonnaise, Bruce.”

But my mind was far away from these common-room squabbles. “Tell me what Sabine had to say,” I asked and a preoccupied silence overcame him. He said suddenly: “How difficult is it to remove a human head?” “Not very difficult,” I said, “and it can be done quite neatly. Just clamp off the big arteries, section the cartilage with a butcher’s saw and lift.”

“I do not know what to think about Piers, and the letter Sabine wrote was full of ambiguities. One thing is sure, Piers had received his
laissez-passer
and was waiting for the blow to fall. He must have confided in Sylvie, hence her relapse, her conflict, for she would have wanted to go with him and at the same time stay with you. Her relapse was a compromise which absolved her of refusing to choose.”

“And the head – are you suggesting that there is some disgusting secret society trying to resurrect Templar practices with the head of the last Nogaret?”

“We won’t know the truth until Sabine comes and tells us. I can think of a number of different explanations of these facts, but none which covers all the possible contingencies. In every explanation there is an odd fact or two which won’t. But usually the truth is quite simple. Suppose it was Sabine herself who had been elected to complete the task? Piers could hardly be suspicious of her. We know that she was among the last of his visitors, perhaps the very last.”

“Yes, but how did he
die
?”

“Of course they found no trace of poison, but there are quite a lot of poisons which leave no trace. Fresh prussic acid for example among others … But of course none of these considerations would explain the removal of his head. Who took it off and why?”

“The death mask was made on the orders of Jourdain, but nothing so drastic as the removal of the head would be needed for that sort of operation.”

“Of course. You know, Sabine once told me of a very clever murder which took place in Alexandria – it was on the pattern of Judith and Holofernes. To drive a nail without a head swiftly into the skull of a sleeping man … the hair would hide its existence. But of course in an X-ray one would see the shadow of a spike that stuck into the brain. …”

Far away, on the stony
garrigues
by the fading light of the harvest moon one could hear the musical calling of wolves. Provence slumbered in the moist plenitude of harvest weather, the deep contented mists and damps of fruition. The dusty roads were furrowed by the wobbling wains and carts and tractors bearing their mountains of grapes to the vats. Blue grapes dusted with the pollen of ages. In the fields lines of harvesters moved with their pruning hooks and sickles; followed by clouds of birds.

“Toby!” I said, and he gave a grunt, hovering on the very borders of sleep. “Do you really believe that something like that happened?”

“I can’t tell,” he said at last, “but if anyone knows the truth it will be Sabine. I have a feeling she will turn up one of these days and then we shall get the whole truth from her. I have written to her everywhere.” When she was wandering the world like this she had no address, not even a Poste Restante. The faint chance of reaching her was some celebrated café with a notice-board on which one posted letters, the Hawelka in Vienna, Molard in Geneva, Baudrot in Alexandria, Groppi in Cairo, the Dôme in Paris.… There was an outside chance of catching her on the wing in one of these places.

If one were lucky she would reply at once. But some sort of obstinate premonition seemed to tell me that we would not see Sabine again – she had hinted in a recent letter that she too had received her quittance, her message – and that all these brain-wrenching problems would remain unanswered, lie buried in the dusty future or the rotting palimpsests of the past. Provence is particularly rich in myths and symbols, and does not like to be interrogated by the idle forebrains of modern hominids. It was like the key – the great key which the Nogarets had handed down to Piers. The legend ran that it was the key to a Templar vault where a vast treasure had been buried out of reach of the King. But where to find the lock which would fit such a great pistol-key? Piers spent years travelling about all over the country in a vain attempt to find this perhaps mythical treasure. In vain! In vain. Now the key lay in the muniments room and was used by Toby as a paperweight. There too I felt that no issue to the mystery would ever be found. It was all part of the Provençal image, the story of a land which from ancient times had given itself up to dreaming, to fabulating, to tale-telling, with the firm belief that stories should have no ending.

Dawn was breaking and a heavy dew had settled on our blankets; we would be slightly stiff and perhaps a little rheumatic as we retraced our steps to the little inn by the Pont du Gard where we had left our horses.

THE GREEN NOTEBOOK

(Sutcliffe Papers)

Comedy or tragedy? Which side up, old boy. The truth is that one could make either out of our troubles. When, for example, I decided to take my “homosexual component” (O! felicity of phrasing) for a romp I instantly got a clap. After all, Dr. Joy had assured me that my choice of a boyish sexual partner like Pia argued a heavy homosexual layer in myself. Curiosity got the better of me. But it was like sleeping with a graphic mule. It was ludicrous, it was tragic, it was funny. Pia was upset when I wrote her but Trash, in telling me so, added: “Honey Rob, I’m gonna tell you I jest laughed myself yellow when she read me your letter. You crazy great man you. I’d jest love to’ve been with you for the kicks.” Things are what you make them and a salutary clap is where one might imagine it to be. Clowns weep where angels fear to tread. For quite a while I was out of action. Sat alone of an evening mulcting a piano of tunes: Poor Rob.

A few words passed between us that evening in the sunken rose garden where they had planted Chinese tea-roses the colour of champagne. Perfumed, and yellow for Tao. I can still feel the weight of those words, like an oracle which brushes schizophrenia. Pia sat so still, hardly breathing.

At the beginning, afraid of losing her, he hit upon an idea of genius. “I must get really ill to make her love me.” He did, it worked, now they are married – or were. I can show them to you if you wish.

Ah Pia, aim always for the lowest uncommon denominator. Trash, you big out-of-date Thing, come here and put your shoes in my mouth and your puss on my hat. I’ll fit you, my black giraffe, and teach you to solder those rubber lips to Pia’s.

In the chateau at Verfeuille when an old chambermaid died in her bed, from “natural causes” as they say, they covered all the mirrors in the house with black crêpe until her funeral.