‘I don’t make anything of it,’ I said.
‘But Silano, of the heretical Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry, was interested. Which means that perhaps this has something to do with our order’s mysteries.’
Masonic imagery was said to be inspired by that of the ancients. Some were commonplace tools such as the mallet, trowel, and trestle board, but others were more exotic such as the human skull, pillars, pyramids, swords, and stars. All were symbolic, and meant to suggest an order to existence I’ve found hard to detect in everyday life. In each degree of Masonic advancement, more such symbols were explained. Was this medallion some ancestor of our fraternity? We hesitated to speak of it in the ice-cream cafe because lodge members are sworn to secrecy, which of course makes our symbolism all the more intriguing to the uninitiated. We’ve been accused of every kind of witchcraft and conspiracy, while mostly what we do is parade around in white aprons. As one wit declared, ‘Even if that is their secret – that they have no secret – still, it is an achievement to keep that a secret.’
‘It suggests the distant past,’ I said as I put it back around my neck. ‘The captain I won it from claimed it had come with Cleopatra and Caesar to Italy and was owned by Cagliostro, but the soldier thought so little of it that he gambled it away in chemin de fer. ’
‘Cagliostro? And he said it was Egyptian? And Silano took interest?’
‘It seemed casual at the time. I thought he was simply bidding me up. But now…’
Talma pondered. ‘All this is coincidence, perhaps. A card game, two crimes.’
‘Perhaps.’
His fingers tapped. ‘Yet it could also be connected. The lantern bearer led the police to you because he calculated that your reaction to the ransacking of your apartment would be to unwittingly plunge yourself into the scene of a horrific murder, making you available for interrogation. Examine the sequence. They hope to simply steal the medallion. Yet it is not in your apartment. It has not been given to Minette. You are a foreigner of some standing, not assaulted lightly. But if charged with murder and searched…’
Minette had been killed merely to implicate me? My head was whirling. ‘Why would anyone want this so badly?’
He was excited. ‘Because great events are in motion. Because the Masonic mysteries you irreverently mock may at last have an effect on the world.’
‘What events?’
‘I have informants, my friend.’ He loved to be coy, pretending to know great secrets that somehow never made their way into print.
‘So you agree I’m being framed?’
‘But naturally.’ Talma regarded me gravely. ‘You have come to the right man. As a journalist, I seek truth and justice. As a friend, I presume your innocence. As a scribe who writes about the great, I have important contacts.’
‘But how can I prove it?’
‘You need witnesses. Would your landlady attest to your character?’
‘I don’t think so. I owe her rent.’
‘And this lantern bearer, how can we find him?’
‘Find him! I want to stay away from him!’
‘Indeed.’ He thought, sipping lemonade. ‘You need shelter, and time to make sense of this thing. Our lodge masters may be able to help.’
‘You want me to hide in a lodge?’
‘I want you safe while I determine if this medallion could give both of us an unusual opportunity.’
‘For what?’
He smiled. ‘I’ve heard rumours, and rumours of rumours. Your medallion may be timelier than you think. I need to speak to the right people, men of science.’
‘Men of science?’
‘Men close to the rising young general Napoleon Bonaparte.’
CHAPTER THREE
The chemist Claude-Louis Berthollet was, at age forty-nine, the most famous student of the guillotined Lavoisier. Unlike his master, he’d ingratiated himself to the Revolution by finding a nitrate soil substitute for saltpeter, so necessary to gunpowder. Rising to leadership of the new National Institute that had succeeded the Royal Academy, he’d shared with his mathematician friend Gaspard Monge the task of helping loot Italy. It was scholars who advised Bonaparte on which masterpieces were most worthy of being carted back to France. This had helped make both scientists the confidants of the general and privy to strategic secrets. Their political expediency reminded me of an astronomer who, when making surveys for the new metric system, had been forced to replace his white survey flags, seen as a symbol of King Louis, with the tricolour. No profession escapes the Revolution.
‘So you’re not a murderer, Monsieur Gage?’ the chemist asked with the barest hint of a smile. With a high forehead, prominent nose, stern mouth and chin, and sad, lidded eyes, he looked like the weary lord of a rural manor, regarding science’s growing alliance with governments the same dubious way that a father contemplates the suitor of his daughter.
‘I swear by God, by the Great Architect of the Masons, or by the laws of chemistry.’
His eyebrows barely elevated. ‘Whichever I happen to worship, I presume?’
‘I’m only trying to convey my sincerity, Doctor Berthollet. I suspect the killer was an army captain or Count Silano, who had an interest in a medallion I’d just won.’
‘A fatal interest.’
‘It seems strange, I know.’
‘And the girl wrote the initial of your name, not theirs.’
‘If she wrote it.’
‘The police claim the width of her final calligraphy matched her fingertip.’
‘I’d just slept with her and paid. I had no motive for killing her, or she of accusing me. I knew where the medallion was.’
‘Hmm, yes.’ He took out a pair of spectacles. ‘Let me see it.’
We examined it while Talma watched us, clutching a handkerchief in case he could find some reason to sneeze. Berthollet turned it as Silano and Talma had done and finally leant back. ‘Aside from the modicum of gold, I don’t see what all the fuss is about.’
‘Nor do I.’
‘Not a key, not a map, not a symbol of a god, and not particularly attractive. I find it hard to believe that Cleopatra wore this.’
‘The captain said it simply belonged to her. As queen…’
‘She’d have as many objects attributed to her as chips of wood and vials of blood are attributed to Jesus.’ The scientist shook his head. ‘What easier claim to make to inflate the price of clumsy jewellery?’
We were sitting in the basement of the Hotel Le Cocq, used by a branch of the Oriental Lodge of Freemasonry because of the cellar’s east-west orientation. A table with a cloth and closed book rested between two pillars. Benches were lost in the gloom under the arches of the vault. The only illumination was candlelight, flickering on Egyptian hieroglyphics that no one knew how to read and Biblical scenes of the raising of Solomon’s temple. A skull rested on one shelf, reminding us of mortality but contributing nothing to our discussion. ‘And you vouch for his innocence?’ the chemist asked my Masonic friend.
‘The American is a man of science like you, Doctor,’ Talma said. ‘He was apprenticed to the great Franklin and is an electrician himself.’
‘Yes, electricity. Lightning bolts and flying kites and sparks in a salon. Tell me, Gage, what is electricity?’
‘Well.’ I did not want to exaggerate my knowledge to a renowned scientist. ‘Doctor Franklin thought it a manifestation of the basic power that animates the universe. But the truth is, no one knows. We can generate it by turning a crank and store it in a jar, so we know it is. But who knows why? ’
