Paris, rue Saint Didier, 20th of June, 13:00
The eve of the summer solstice
The sky in Paris was heavy and rain was forecast for the evening. In Sabrina, Audrey Hepburn says that the French capital gives the best of itself with a bit of rain, but I had always liked Paris in the sunshine, as had Àrtemis.
I thought about her, and prayed that masked lunatic hadn’t hurt her. I reflected on the fact that once again a whirlwind of events had sucked in my wonderful Àrtemis. And to think that it had all begun with a simple exhibition in Prague…
At the Gendarmerie headquarters in Rue Saint Didier a meeting room had been made available to us, where we found sandwiches and water. We ate in silence, and a few minutes later we were joined by the professor Thomas had mentioned.
“This is Angus Carpenter,” said the lieutenant, ushering in the lanky English man.
Carpenter showed all his seventy-nine years and more. He was tall and spare, with a typically British face – pale, sunken, with thinning white hair combed to one side and two thin lips surmounted by an aquiline nose. His eyes, though, were extremely bright.
When I introduced myself, his expression changed abruptly and grew compassionate. “I’m very sorry about your wife, Mr Aragona,” he said in perfect French, pronouncing the letter ‘s’ with a funny hiss, “I do hope that the police will manage to sort everything out for the best.”
“I hope so too, Professor Carpenter, and I thank you for your help.”
“Please, please, don’t mention it… I’m happy to be of assistance.”
“Professor, why don’t you tell our Italian friends and Inspector Kominkova what you told me about the event tomorrow?” asked Thomas, settling into one of the chairs set around the big table.
“Certainly, certainly,” said Carpenter, taking a seat himself. “As I told the lieutenant when he contacted me, the summer solstice at Chartres is a high point of the year. I do guided tours for English speaking tourists, and I assure you, despite the increasingly strict rules put in place to try and control the crowds in the cathedral, my job always becomes a bit more complicated on the twenty-first of June: so many people – often not particularly well behaved – come for the event of the year, sometimes disturbing the other visitors. It’s total chaos!”
“Professor,” I asked, “what can you tell us about this phenomenon of the ray of sunlight which passes through the glass window of St Apollinaris?”
Carpenter waved a hand as though swatting away something annoying. “Nonsense!” was his succinct response.
“We looked at each other in amazement. That was a reaction we hadn’t expected.
“Yes, yes,” continued the professor, repeating the same word twice as he seemed to do every time he began to say something. “A ray of sunlight coming through a stained glass window passes for a few minutes over a marble slab – so what? What’s mysterious about that? It marks the height of summer, it’s like a sundial, nothing more.”
“Have you ever heard of the Cathedral of the Nine Mirrors? Two eighteenth century alchemists mentioned it as a legendary place where an Egyptian secret was kept – the source of eternal youth. That is what the criminals who have kidnapped my wife are after.”
Carpenter actually seemed amused. “No, Mr Aragona, this is all stuff and nonsense! I’ve never heard of any such place. Notre-Dame de Chartres certainly hides many secrets, but nothing esoteric or mysterious, in my opinion. Some argue that the cathedral was built on an old place of worship – pagan, Roman, and even Gallic, or Celtic if you prefer.”
“Yes, I had heard that.”
“Well, I think that has a certain plausibility. Some have even gone so far as to speculate that in the foundations of the cathedral there is a dolmen chamber, a Celtic place of worship and burial. A dolmen built there, on the hill of Chartres, because according to the ancients, the telluric forces at that point are very strong.”
“The Wouivre…”
Carpenter smirked. “If you wish to call it that… There is, in fact, a very ancient well in the crypt of the cathedral, probably from the Gallo-Roman era, which for centuries has been considered miraculous. Perhaps its waters come from the underground river flowing beneath Chartres and, who knows, perhaps they do have some healing power. It is the so-called ‘Well of the Strong Saints’.”
I nodded. I had read about it, along with other fascinating details. “And what can you tell me about the shrine of Our Lady Underground? The so-called Black Virgin of Chartres? There is a copy currently in the crypt, but according to legend, the original statue was meant to represent a pagan goddess that the Druids found in a cave in the hill. A deity with strange similarities to Isis.”
Carpenter leaned forward. In that position he looked like an old bird of prey. “The current statue is an exact replica of the one that was destroyed during the Revolution, but it represents nothing more nor less than the Virgin Mary,” he said slowly, and then, lowering his voice until it became a hissing whisper, he added, “You may believe whatever you wish, though – even that the Holy Grail is stored down there. But as far as I am concerned, it is all nonsense!”