The Club Dumas

“But life is expensive, Mr. Corso. Very expensive, especially when one has to make deals with people like our friend Mr. Montegrifo to get the rare books one wants. Satan serves as a good source of income nowadays, but that’s all. I’m seventy years old. I don’t have time for gratuitous, silly fantasies, spin­sters’ dreams.... Do you understand?”

It was Corso’s turn to smile. “Perfectly.”

“When I say that this book is a forgery,” continued the baroness, “it’s because I’ve studied it in depth. There’s some­thing in it that doesn’t work. There are gaps in it, blanks. I mean this figuratively, because my copy is in fact complete. It belonged to Madame de Montespan, Louis XIV’s mistress. She was a high priestess of Satanism and managed to have the ritual of the Black Mass included in the palace routine. There is a letter from Madame de Montespan to Madame De Peyrolles, her friend and confidante, in which she complains of the inefficacy of a book which, she states, ‘has all that which the sages specify, and yet there is something incorrect in it, a play on words which never falls into the correct sequence.’ “ “Who else owned it?”

“The Count of Saint Germain, who sold it to Cazotte.” “Jacques Cazotte?”

“Yes. The author of The Devil in Love, who was guillotined in 1792. Do you know the book?”

Corso nodded cautiously. The links were so obvious that they were impossible. “I read it once.”

Somewhere in the apartment a phone rang, and the secre­tary’s steps could be heard along the corridor. The ringing stopped.

“As for The Nine Doors” the baroness continued, “the trail went cold here in Paris, at the time of the Terror after the revolution. There are a couple of subsequent references, but they’re very vague. Gerard de Nerval mentions it in passing in one of his articles, assuring us that he saw it at a friend’s house.” Corso blinked imperceptibly behind his glasses. “Dumas was a friend of his,” he said, alert.

“Yes. But Nerval doesn’t say at whose house. The fact is, nobody saw the book again until the Petain collaborator’s col­lection was auctioned, which is when I got hold of it....”

Corso was no longer listening. According to the legend, Gerard de Nerval hanged himself with the cord from a bodice, Madame de Montespan’s. Or was it Madame de Maintenon’s?

Whoever it belonged to, Corso couldn’t help drawing worrying

parallels with the cord from Enrique Taillefer’s dressing gown.

The secretary came to the door, interrupting his thoughts.

Somebody wanted Corso on the telephone. He excused himself and walked past the tables of readers out into the corridor, full of yet more books and plants. On a walnut corner table there was an antique metal phone with the receiver off the hook.

“Hello.”

“Corso? It’s Irene Adler.”

“So I gather.” He looked behind him down the empty cor­ridor. The secretary had disappeared.  “I was surprised you weren’t still keeping a lookout. Where are you calling from?” “The bar on the corner. There’s a man watching the house. That’s why I came here.”

For a moment Corso just breathed slowly. Then he bit off a hangnail. It was bound to happen sooner or later, he thought with twisted resignation. The man was part of the landscape, or the furniture. Then, although he knew it was pointless, he said:

“Describe him.”

“Dark, with a mustache and a big scar on his face.” The girl’s voice was calm, without any trace of emotion or awareness of danger. “He’s sitting in a gray BMW across the street.” “Has he seen you?”

“I don’t know. But I can see him. He’s been there an hour. He got out of the car twice: first to look at the names at the door, and then to buy a newspaper.”

Corso spat the hangnail out of his mouth and sucked his thumb. It smarted. “Listen. I don’t know what the man’s up to. I don’t even know if the two of you are part of the same setup. But I don’t like him being near you. Not at all. So go back to the hotel.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Corso. I’ll go where I have to.” She added, “Regards to Treville,” and hung up.

Corso made a gesture halfway between exasperation and sarcasm, because he was thinking the same thing and didn’t like the coincidence. He stood for a moment looking at the receiver before hanging up. Of course, she was reading The Three Musketeers. She’d even had the book open when he saw her from the window. In chapter 3, having just arrived in Paris, and during an audience with Monsieur de Treville, commander of the king’s musketeers d’Artagnan sees Rochefort from the window. He runs after him, bumps into Athos’s shoulder, Porthos’s shoulder belt, and Aramis’s handkerchief. Regards to Treville. It was a clever joke, if it was spontaneous. But Corso didn’t find it at all funny.