“The Incorruptibles.” I sounded it out slowly, savoring the syllables and the meaning. “Sounds like a band of crime-fighting comic-book superheroes waging war on bribery and embezzlement. ‘Holy hedge fund, Miranda—someone on Wall Street is making insider trades! This looks like a job for the Incorruptibles!’”
She groaned, as I’d figured she would, and as I’d hoped she would. But she was right: I was intrigued to learn that Saint Bénézet was an Incorruptible—someone whose corpse did not decay. Catholics considered incorruptibility a sign of sainthood, but I looked at it through the lens of science. A few years back, I’d examined the body of a young woman—a pregnant young woman—who’d been killed and hidden in a cave for thirty years. The cave’s cool, damp conditions turned her soft tissue into a substance called adipocere—sometimes called “grave wax”—and the transformation was so complete, she might almost have come from a wax museum rather than a crime scene. In the morgue, I’d paused to admire her lovely features, and then I’d sprayed her body with hot water, watching with wonder as her prettiness and her half-formed baby melted away, dissolving like some sweet sad dream in the heat of a summer’s day.
I thought of her—that lovely murdered young woman who had spent three decades as an Incorruptible—as I stood on the ancient bridge beside an antique chapel where a shepherd-turned-engineer had lain in state for centuries.
According to Stefan, the move to the convent for safekeeping had not agreed with Bénézet. Some years after the French Revolution, the nuns to whom he’d been entrusted opened the saint’s coffin, the better to revere his perfectly preserved remains. Imagine their disappointment to discover that the miracle—like the man himself—had expired, and his mortal coil had shuffled off silently, unheralded by angelic fanfare or human notice.
HUMAN NOTICE: WE SEEMED TO BE ATTRACTING IT. As I leaned recklessly on the tubular steel rail of the Bénézet bridge once more, watching a long, slender canal boat slip beneath the outermost arch, Miranda laid her hand on my arm. “Don’t look now,” she murmured, “but someone’s stalking us.”
“Where?” Trying to look casual and touristy, I raised my eyes, pointing to the fortress on the river’s far shore, as if calling Miranda’s attention to it.
She looked in that direction, smiling and saying, just loudly enough for Stefan and me to hear, “Downstream about a hundred yards. Edge of the parking lot. There’s a red-and-blue sign. Guy in a floppy hat standing behind it, propping binoculars on top. Don’t look yet.”
I swiveled slowly, with only a passing glance at the spot she’d indicated, and gazed upward at the cathedral and the papal palace, which loomed above us on the rock. “You’re right,” I said. “That’s the biggest pair of binoculars I’ve ever seen. And they’re pointing right at us.”
“Merde,” Stefan muttered a moment later. “Now he has a camera. A big telephoto lens.” He raised his arm, hitched up the cuff of his sleeve, and made a show of checking his watch. “Allons-y. Let’s go. Turn your backs and cross to the other railing, so he can’t see us. Then let’s get the hell out of here.”
Hugging the far side of the bridge, we hurried back along the span. This time there was no singing or dancing. As we exited the tower and scurried to the car, I asked, “Did either of you get a good look?”
“Non.”
“’Fraid not,” Miranda said. “White guy with tan hat and black binoculars. That narrows it down to about, what, a zillion people?”
I recalled Stefan’s nervousness as we’d driven from Marseilles to Avignon, and again when we’d heard noises near the treasure chamber. I’d been inclined to dismiss it as excessive paranoia—that, or Stefan’s exaggerated sense of importance—but now I was re-evaluating. “Have you seen someone watching you before now?”
“Oui,” he said. “Nothing as obvious as binoculars and a camera, but yes, I think so.”
“When did it start?”
He shrugged. “A few days ago.”
“Maybe the day before you got here,” Miranda added. “Remember, Stefan? You got that phone call when we were having lunch, but then the caller hung up without saying anything?”
“Ah, oui. And then you thought someone was following us back to the Palais…”
“But when we turned around, he ducked down an alley and disappeared,” she finished. “So now I’m questioning everything, everybody. The guy behind me at the café this morning—did he smile because he thought I was cute, or was he just pretending to flirt so he could study me? The woman in the hotel lobby—was she really reading that newspaper? Hell, now that I’m feeling paranoid, even you seem kinda sinister, Dr. B, you know?”
I knew, and I made a mental note to make a phone call to Tennessee as soon as I was alone.
“STONE HERE.”