He ushered me through the low doorway, peering back into the mist to make certain we were still alone. Once inside, he took down a lamp from a high shelf behind the door, drew out a tinder-box from inside his habit and struck the flint, lighting the stub of candle, before pulling the door closed behind us. Rodent feet scuttled away into the corners at the sound. As the flame took hold and flickered up the walls, I saw that we stood in a low, windowless storeroom, with wooden crates stacked along one side, casks and sacks piled up at the far end.
‘You say the priest was attacked close to the abbey gate,’ Cotin whispered, glancing around again as if we might be overheard.
‘I saw his blood on the track out there, by that door that leads to the jetty,’ I said.
He nodded, absorbing this, then gestured to a pile of crates in the far corner of the room. ‘My predecessor acquired over the years all manner of books and manuscripts from private collections. The most valuable went straight to the library, but the remainder could not be housed in the library archive, there was not the space. He died before he had a chance to catalogue them, so when I became librarian I inherited all these boxes that no one has looked through in perhaps thirty years.’ He swept a hand to encompass the volume of material. ‘Slowly but surely, I am working my way through, deciding which are worth the cost of repair. The answer is precious few, to my lasting regret – time has not been kind to them and many are suffering the ravages of damp, this place being so close to the river, even though they were packed in treated skins. At least the mice have spared them. But whoever decided to keep them in here should be thrown in the Bastille, in my view.’
He folded his arms and glared at the door, as if the culprit might appear at any moment. I motioned for him to continue. Intrigued as I was by the prospect of crateloads of forgotten manuscripts, with the Abbé already combing the grounds for me, I wanted him to come to the point.
‘And?’
‘Well.’ He twisted his hands together. ‘I came in yesterday after supper to make a start on the next pile. The atmosphere among the brothers was sombre after the death of the priest, you may imagine, but I had not thought – I mean to say, it was supposed that the poor man had been attacked by brigands on the road…’ He broke off to set the lantern down. Then he lifted off the topmost of the boxes, placing it on the floor before rummaging through the books in the crate beneath, from which he retrieved a bundle of rough brown cloth. ‘I pulled those boxes out and found this stuffed behind them. My first instinct was to leave it, since whoever put it there would surely come back to dispose of it more permanently. But my conscience… I don’t want to be mixed up in this business, Bruno,’ he said, his eyes bright with fear, ‘but if someone in this abbey…’ He shook his head and handed over the cloth, as if that were explanation enough, holding up the light so that I could see it more clearly.
The bundle was heavier than I had expected; I unfolded it carefully and understood the source of Cotin’s distress. I was holding a rough woven cloak, such as the abbey servants might wear; wrapped inside it was a statue of a saint, about eighteen inches high – Saint Denis, to be precise, staring up at me with blank eyes from the severed head he carried tucked under his own arm, his expression serene. He was carved from a block of white limestone, discoloured with age, the same stone as the walls and pillars of the abbey church; the sculptor’s art had once teased delicate details into the folds of his robe, the curls of his hair and beard and the braiding on his mitre, but his shoulders and the halo surrounding his empty neck had been smoothed and effaced by time and weather, and one of his feet was chipped away. Denis stood on a solid cuboid base, its edge stained with gobbets of bloody matter and a few strands of hair. I balanced it in my hands; it was easily heavy enough to strike a killing blow. I held up the cloak with the other hand; the front was spattered with dark blotches, now dried to a rust-brown crust. There could be little doubt as to the significance of these items. I looked up and met Cotin’s fearful gaze.
‘I haven’t told the Abbé. Do you think—’
‘Was this statue taken from the church?’
He shook his head.
‘Originally. But it has been in here for as long as I can remember. Those crates at the back there are full of bits and pieces from the church awaiting repair. Reliquaries, masonry, statues, candlesticks, glass. Anything that is no longer fit to glorify God is put here to be mended or else given away or the materials sold, though in practice it just gathers dust waiting to be sorted.’
‘Whose job is that?’
‘The sacristan’s.’
‘Could one of the servants have come in here and taken it?’ I asked, indicating the cloak.
‘Almost certainly not. This storeroom is kept locked, only three of us
