The Alchemist

‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘Medieval history, Catharism, the esoteric, alchemy. That’s how I got to know poor Klaus Rheinfeld.’

‘I hope you won’t mind if we ask you a few questions,’ Ben said. ‘We’re interested in the Rheinfeld case.’

‘May I ask what your interest is?’

‘We’re journalists,’ he answered without missing a beat. ‘We’re doing research for an article on the mysteries of alchemy.’

Anna made them a black Italian coffee served in tiny little china cups, and told them about her visits to the Institut Legrand. ‘I was so upset to hear of Klaus’s suicide. But I must say it didn’t come as a complete surprise. He was deeply disturbed.’

‘I’m amazed they even allowed you access to him,’ Ben said.

‘They normally wouldn’t have,’ Anna replied. ‘But the Director granted me these visits to help me research my book. I was well guarded, although poor Klaus was usually calm with me.’ She shook her head. ‘Poor man, he was so ill. You know about the marks he carved into his own flesh?’

‘Did you see them?’

‘Once, when he was very agitated and tore open his shirt. There was a particular symbol he was obsessed with. Dr Legrand told me that he had drawn it all over his room, in blood and…other things.’

‘What symbol was that?’ Ben asked.

‘Two circles intersecting,’ Anna said. ‘Each circle contained a star, one a hexagram and the other a pentagram, their points touching.’

‘Similar to this?’ Ben reached into his bag and took out an object wrapped in a cloth. He laid it on the table and peeled back the edges of the cloth to reveal the glinting cruciform dagger. He drew out the blade and showed Anna the inscription on it. The two circles, just as she’d described.

She nodded, her eyes widening. ‘Yes, exactly the same. May I?’ He passed it to her. She carefully slid the blade back into the shaft and examined the cross from all angles. ‘It’s a magnificent piece. And extremely unusual. Do you see these alchemical markings on the shaft?’ She looked up. ‘What do you know about its history?’

‘Very little,’ Ben said. ‘Only that it may once have belonged to the alchemist Fulcanelli, and we think it might date back to medieval times. Rheinfeld apparently stole it from its owner in Paris, and brought it with him down south.’

Anna nodded. ‘I’m no antiquarian, but from these markings I would agree about its age. Perhaps tenth or eleventh century. It could easily be verified.’ She paused. ‘I wonder why Klaus was so interested in it. Not just because of its value. He was penniless, and he could have sold it for a lot of money. Yet he kept hold of it.’ She raised one eyebrow. ‘How did you come to find it?’

Ben had been ready for that one. He’d promised Pascal he wouldn’t give away his secret. ‘Rheinfeld dropped it,’ he said. ‘When he was found wandering and taken away.’ He watched her reaction. She seemed to accept it. ‘What about the twin-circle symbol on the blade?’ he asked, changing the subject. ‘Why was Rheinfeld so interested in it?’

Anna grasped the shaft of the cross and drew the blade back out with a quiet metallic zing. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But there must be a reason. He may have been deranged, but he wasn’t stupid. He had areas of knowledge that were very deep.’ She studied the blade thoughtfully ‘Do you mind if I make a copy of this symbol?’ She laid the dagger down in front of her and took a piece of tracing paper and a soft-leaded pencil from a drawer. Laying the paper across the bare blade she did a careful rubbing of the markings on it. Roberta noticed her perfectly manicured hands. She glanced down at her own. Slipped them under the table.

Anna studied her finished rubbing, looking happy with it. ‘There.’ Then she frowned and looked at it more closely. ‘It’s not quite the same as the one in the notebook. There’s a slight difference. I wonder…’ Ben looked at her sharply. ‘Notebook?’

‘I’m sorry, I should have mentioned it to you. The doctors gave Klaus a notebook in the hope that he would keep a record of his dreams. They believed this would help in his treatment, and perhaps help to shed light on what had caused his mental condition. But he didn’t record his dreams. Instead he filled the pages with drawings and symbols, strange poetry and numbers. The doctors couldn’t make any sense of it, but they allowed him to keep it as it seemed to comfort him.’

‘What happened to it?’ Ben said.

‘When Klaus died, the director of the Institut, Edouard Legrand, offered it to me. He thought I might be interested in it. Klaus had no family, and in any case it wouldn’t have been much of an heirloom. I have it upstairs.’

‘Can we see it?’ Roberta said eagerly.

Anna smiled. ‘Of course.’ She went to fetch it from her study. A minute later she returned, filling the room again with her fresh perfume, holding a small polythene bag. ‘I put it in here because it was so filthy and smelly,’ she said, laying the bag gently on the table.

Ben took the notebook out of the bag. It was frayed and crumpled and looked like it had been soaked in blood and urine a hundred times. It gave off a sharp musty smell. He flipped through it. Most of the pages were blank, apart from the first thirty or so which were heavily stained with grubby fingerprints and reddish-brown smears of old dried blood that made it difficult in places to read the handwriting.

The bits he could make out were just about the strangest thing he’d ever seen. The pages were filled with snatches of bizarre verse. Obscure and apparently meaningless arrangements of letters and numbers. Scrawled notes in Latin, English and French. Rheinfeld had obviously been an educated man, as well as a competent artist. Here and there were drawings, some of them simple sketches and others drawn in painstaking detail. They looked to Ben like the kind of alchemical images he’d seen in ancient texts.

One of the most grubby and well-thumbed pages in the notebook had a drawing on it that was familiar. It was the diagram from the dagger blade, the twin intersecting star-circles that Rheinfeld had been so obsessed with.

He picked up the dagger and compared them. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘They’re slightly different from one another.’

Rheinfeld’s version was identical except for one small extra detail. It was hard to make out, but it looked like a tiny heraldic emblem of a bird with outstretched wings and a long beak. It was positioned at the dead centre of the twin-circle motif.

‘It’s a raven,’ Ben said. ‘And I think I’ve seen it before.’ It was the symbol he’d seen carved in the central porch at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

But why had Rheinfeld altered the design from the blade?

‘Does any of this mean anything to you?’ he asked Anna.

She shrugged. ‘Not really. Who knows what was in his mind?’

‘Can I have a look?’ Roberta asked. Ben passed the notebook to her. ‘God, it’s gross,’ she said, turning the pages with revulsion.

Ben’s heart was sinking again. ‘Did you learn anything at all from Rheinfeld?’ he asked Anna, hoping he might be able to salvage at least something of value.

‘I wish I could say yes,’ she replied. ‘When Dr Legrand first mentioned this strange, intriguing character to me I thought he might help to inspire me for my new book. I was suffering from writer’s block. I still am,’ she added unhappily. ‘But as I got to know him I felt so sorry for him. My visits were more for his comfort than for my own inspiration. I can’t say I learned anything from him. All I have is this notebook. Oh, and there is one other thing…’

‘What?’ Ben asked.

Anna blushed. ‘I did something a little…what’s the word…naughty. On my last visit to the Institut I smuggled in with me the little gadget I use for dictating my book ideas. I recorded my conversation with Klaus.’

‘Could I hear that?’

‘I don’t think it could be of any use,’ Anna said. ‘But you’re welcome to listen to it.’ She reached behind her and picked up a miniature digital recorder from a sideboard. She set it down in the middle of the table and pressed PLAY. Through the tinny speaker they could hear Rheinfeld’s low, muttering voice.

It put a chill down Roberta’s spine.