The Cairo Diary (18 page)

“And since then they have been the repositories of the spirit of Mont-Saint-Michel, or at least they think so!”

Joe started to laugh, his mirth restrained but sincere.

“Brother Gilles and Sister Luce, are they … from the same family?” asked Marion with interest.

“That is a vast debate! I don't know. To see the pair of them, one as acerbic and disdainful as the other, you might think so. But in the end, I still don't know if they already resembled each other back then, or if it's this bitterness that has brought them closer together in terms of physical appearance. I just can't remember what they were like, when they were younger. That's what old age is like, my dear, it means forgetting, or getting confused. Or no longer having the strength to go far in efforts of memory. So we harp on about what we have left.”

“You seem in very good form to me, for someone who's saying such things.”

“Don't trust appearances, Marion, still less here than elsewhere.”

He took the plate of biscuits and offered it to her so that she could take one, then took one himself. “Have you met everyone?” he asked.

“Yes, everyone you have mentioned.”

“All fine folk.”

“That's what they seem to me. Actually, it's quite funny because I'm discovering each inhabitant of this … this island in one way or another, and I find myself liking them all for the little I know of them, even though I am generally suspicious by nature, not to say misanthropic. You know, I have often thought, stupidly I agree, that only people with sinister secrets to keep could want to set up home on a pebble like this one, set apart from the world.”

Joe joined his palms in front of his nose and leaned his chin on his thumbs as he gazed at the fire. “Secrets, all the families in the world have them,” he confided. “All. More or less well-kept. It isn't the secrets that lead people here. It's the answers. The men and women who live here do so because their souls are like this Mount, made up of truth sometimes concealed by mists, sometimes unveiled by the sun. We are here because we are all made up of fluctuating memories, like the tide. No other place could suit us better.”

“Are you talking about yourself?” Marion dared ask.

“No, I don't think so. More in the name of all the Mount's inhabitants.”

Joe pointed a gnarled index finger at her. “I can see you turning pale,” he said, laughing. “Don't be afraid, I'm talking in metaphors. Mont-Saint-Michel isn't the lair of melancholic people; I just … decode souls. That being said, I'm often wrong.”

At that, he laughed even more. “I haven't frightened you, anyway?”

“No, it would take more than that. And since I've been here, I'm beginning to stop jumping at the slightest thing.”

“Really? That is preferable; this village is full of indefinable sounds, especially at night. So if you are becoming accustomed—”

“I'm not afraid of sounds, but jokers.”

Joe frowned. Marion swallowed. Now that she had started, she couldn't go back. And besides, the old man inspired confidence in her.

“The day after I arrived, I found an envelope in my house, well, the one I'm living in. Someone who wanted a bit of amusement, in the form of a riddle. It was no more than a game to wish me welcome … and to test me, I think.”

“Test you? What makes you say that?”

“A simple practical joker would have wished me welcome directly in the envelope, and merely placed it inside the house. But in this case, I had to decipher a code and go out onto the Mount to find out the real meaning of the message.”

Joe nodded. “It's original. And you had the determination to follow it through to the end. Congratulations.”

“I had nothing else to do.” Her reply fell like a guillotine, cleaving the air. They remained silent for a moment. Eventually, Marion put down her cup and stood up.

“Thank you for everything.”

“If I may permit myself to paraphrase your joker: welcome here, to my home. Now that you know where I live, do drop in and pay me a visit.”

Marion said goodbye and stepped out into the cool wind, which was whistling along rue Grande. She walked down the paved road to the little staircase that skirted around the parish church, then along the edge of the cemetery to her door.

On the way, she thought of Joe. About his agreeable presence, his smiling, trusting face, and about his age. She didn't understand why she liked him so much. He was at least eighty, even if his bearing was such that he looked thirty years younger.

She left her coat in the hall and switched on the lights in the living room.

It took her less than five seconds to notice it.

It was flaunting itself there, like an insult to her privacy.

A large envelope, lying on the sofa.

21

The same paper as in the first message.

This time, there was no riddle.

No game, either.

Nothing but a request. Almost a warning.

Because you were the first person to visit us in a long time, I wanted to play with you. I note with surprise that you have happened upon something that belongs to me. That was in no way planned in our little game, a game whose only goal was to amuse us both on this immense, over-tranquil rock. But hardly had the game begun when it ended. For by appropriating what is mine, you have offended me. I know that this was not your wish, so I am inclined to put things behind us straightaway. On the sole condition that you give me back my possession. Place it this evening in the place where you found the welcome message, at the Gabriel Tower. And we shall call it quits. Hoping to be your friend, once this misunderstanding has been rectified.

There was no doubt as far as Marion was concerned that the possession in question was the diary. She hadn't come into possession of anything else since her arrival.

She returned to her trench coat and took the notebook from one of the pockets.

Its cracked leather cover was cold to the touch.
The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym
stated the title in old gilded lettering. In the long run, it was becoming even stranger than a work by Poe.

And the bizarre nature of its contents was echoed in reality, noted Marion. Like the book found by the hero of Michael Ende's novel
The Neverending Story.
Who hadn't dreamed of possessing a book that
really
opened onto another world?

Marion opened the cover and flicked through the worn pages.

The magic of this text had been in operation since 1928, and was stretching out its inky arms so far that it had even altered time this winter, more than seventy years later.

Who knew that she had found the diary?

Brother Damien.

On the evening of the discovery he had dropped in to see her. The diary was on the hall table, and his eyes had lit on it. Although he had said nothing, perhaps he had recognized it. In that case, the entire brotherhood might know about it.

There was Ludwig the night watchman, too.

She had bumped into him on her way back from Béatrice's place. The book was under her arm; he could have seen it.

In fact, anybody could have written those letters.

Marion went into the kitchen for a glass of water.

If she must follow a process of elimination, she could strike Joe from the list of suspects. He had been at Tombelaine that afternoon, and then with her. And the letter had been placed in her house while they were together. The Mount was sufficiently small for people to watch her comings and goings; if she was seen leaving, it was easy to get into the house.

That was perhaps the solution to the problem.

The author of these letters had a key. And the brotherhood had copies of them, according to Sister Anne.

If she must continue her process of elimination, Marion chose to retain only the men of the religious community. In the last letter, the French text contained no feminine word endings—it spoke of being
votre ami
rather than
amie.
This could be a decoy. For the moment, Marion continued with her original logical method.

Five people remained.

Brother “Wrong Way” Damien, permanently excited and apparently sporty.

Brother Gaël, the youngster of the group. Timorous.

Brother Christophe, “Brother Anemia.” Perpetually slow and out of breath.

The old and unpleasant Brother Gilles and finally, the great manitou of the whole bunch: Brother Serge, with his almost disturbing physique.

All the same, she was suspecting men of the Church.

Were they exempt from all failings or vices, for all that?

Marion shook her head emphatically. The writer of this letter was hiding among those five.

And now? What was she going to do?

“If you want your book back, you're going to need more than a letter you've sneaked in behind my back, old chap,” she announced out loud.

She was annoyed by this cowardice, disguised as a mystery.

Not only was she not going to abandon the diary in the middle of the great outdoors, but she wasn't going to give it up at all.

And that evening, when the coward would be waiting outside, in the cold, for her to go out and give back the book, she would be comfortably sitting here, reading it.

And if he wanted to get his hands on it, he would have to show his face to her, and ask her for it.

Then she would see what ought to be done.

She had had enough of secrecy and jokes.

At the start, that riddle and the intrusion into her lodgings to check her things—all of that was almost amusing in context. But with this, he had gone a little too far.

She might be a stranger on this mount, but they would have to accept her.

Nobody had a choice; least of all her.

22

Jeremy Matheson and Azim had dinner together in an Italian restaurant on Boulevard Sulliman Pasha.

Azim ate hungrily, proud of the significant advance he had made in the investigation. “It's not a legend anymore; we now know that it is real!” he exclaimed, with his mouth full.

“All the same, Azim, we are not going to believe the wild imaginings of two … cranks, as a basis for conducting our investigation! You have said as much yourself, the first man was under the effect of drugs when he thought he saw that … ghoul!”

“I agree that we must review what he said with a grain of salt, but he definitely saw something that evening; I gazed upon the fear in his eyes, and both men's descriptions tally.”

“Common popular imagery. They have the same references, the same myths; so when one of them mistakes a cripple escaping with his plunder for a monster, the others do the same.”

“Listen, we may have a chance to trap this thing, or whatever it is, if we station some of our men in that district. The shopkeeper told me he spotted it three times in three weeks, each time when he had gone out onto his roof at night to smoke. He's an insomniac.”

Jeremy drank the rest of his wine in a single gulp. Then he shook his head. “I am not going to mobilize thirty men at night for one or two weeks, on the pretext that a crazed insomniac thinks he's seen the monster that haunted his childhood. We have more important things to do.”

“Such as?”

“Tomorrow morning, we have a meeting at the Keoraz Foundation, with its director.”

Azim remained silent, seething with frustration. “How do you know this foundation?” he asked eventually.

Jeremy gave a composed smile as he wiped a piece of bread around his plate. Azim had the impression that his English colleague had been expecting to arrive at this question since the start of the meal. He finished chewing, taking his time, before pushing away his plate, and saying softly, “Because of a woman, my friend.”

Azim was about to raise a glass of water to his mouth, but he halted, one hand on the crystal stem.

“Some time ago, I fell in love with a woman who is today the wife of the patron who created that foundation.”

“Mr. Keoraz?”

Jeremy played with his napkin as he spoke. At the mention of Keoraz's name, Azim saw his grip on it tighten so much that his knuckles whitened.

“The very same. He is the paymaster; it is he who fills the foundation's coffers, but there is also a director, Mr. Humphreys.”

“And you are still in contact with this woman?”

“If you can call it contact. But I am as knowledgeable about this foundation as Jezebel is benevolent toward it, and I confess that for her, I too played a part.”

“You?”

The image of the solitary, taciturn Detective Matheson everyone knew did not sit well with that of a Jeremy in love and doing good works with underprivileged Cairo children.

“Yes.… It lasted a few months in the autumn and winter of 1926, and then we parted.” He opened his heart in a lower voice, with less assurance in his body, and fell forward, one elbow on the table.

“How long ago did you separate from this woman?” asked Azim.

“January last year, a little more than a year ago. She met her husband at a New Year's Eve celebration, a dinner organized by the foundation's patron for all his volunteers.”

“Were you among them?”

Jeremy nodded, his eyelids blinking.

Azim's lips vanished inside his mouth as he replied. “Whatever the case, it is a coincidence that is going to help us,” the little man remarked.

“In the final analysis, the English community in Cairo isn't as extensive as all that; it's clear that at some point one will have to carry out an investigation into one's close acquaintances. I don't call that a coincidence, no more than a ‘foreseeable inevitability.' By the way, congratulations on identifying the boy; I found out just now, when I called in at the office.”

“I called to see the family, to inform them of the death. The foundation is in all cases the common point among the victims, there is no doubt about that.”

Jeremy wiped a hand across his face. His features were drawn. When the waiter came within reach, he hailed him and ordered more wine.