The Devil's Cave: A Bruno Courrèges Investigation (Bruno Chief of Police 5)

I’ll be following those up with the
Police Nationale
.’
    ‘Maybe we can turn this talk of Satanism to our advantage,’ suggested Jérôme. ‘We could get some good publicity from that.’ He turned to Father Sentout. ‘I’m thinking of an exorcism ceremony at the bridge.’
    ‘Ridiculous, we’d be a laughing stock,’ snapped the Mayor. Bruno looked up in surprise. That wasn’t like him. The Mayor was a wily old politician who usually waited to gauge the mood of any meeting before he committed himself. A silence fell.
    ‘It might be a little premature,’ the priest said, smoothing over the sudden tension. ‘There’s no sign that anyone has been possessed. But there is one thing that disturbs me …’
    He paused for effect, and everyone at the council table leaned forward. Bruno smiled to himself. Father Sentout was just as skilled a player as the Mayor.
    ‘It’s the nature of the ritual that intrigues me. Features of this death remind me of one of the classic examples of Satanism. The naked woman with arms outstretched in the rough form of a cross, the pentagram scrawled on the body, the black candles …’
    ‘Go on,’ said the Mayor, as fascinated as the rest of them.
    ‘It has most of the trappings of a classic Black Mass, but not all. In the classic form of this abomination there would be a mockery of Holy Communion. The Host, which in a real Mass becomes the body of Christ, becomes a tool of the devil’s depravity in the Black Mass. It is usually placed in the private parts of the naked woman on whom the Mass is performed.’
    Bruno remembered the item that Dr Gelletreau had taken with his tweezers from the dead woman’s vagina. He’d have to call the pathologist and get him to check.
    ‘There would also be some form of sacrifice,’ the priest went on. ‘A black cockerel was the usual victim, its head cut off and its blood smeared on the naked woman, another mockery of the way that Holy Communion transforms the wine into the blood of Christ.’
    ‘When you say the classic form of the Black Mass, Father, what’s the basis of that?’ Bruno asked. He was curious, and unlike the Mayor he had a soft spot for the plump little priest. He’d enjoyed some magnificent meals at Father Sentout’s home, but also the priest was devoted to the fortunes of the town’s rugby team and to supporting the
minimes
, the kids’ team that Bruno coached. The priest held a special service for them each year, with the proceeds from the collection box going to the purchase of rugby shirts and the travel budget for away games.
    ‘Most of what we know of the Black Mass comes from the reign of
le roi soleil
, the Sun King Louis XIV, and the incident known to history as the Affair of the Poisons,’ the priest began, visibly preening at this chance to display his knowledge. ‘It was the great scandal of the age, the seventeenth-century equivalent of the Kennedy assassination. There were pamphlets about it published all over Europe.’
    He reminded them that the king had a famous mistress, the celebrated Madame de Montespan, who came from one of the oldest and noblest families of France. Thanks to her noble blood and her mother’s connections at court, she had been appointed a lady-in-waiting to the King’s wife, Queen Marie-Thérèse of Austria.
    ‘
Putain de merde
,’ muttered Montsouris, the town’s only Communist councillor. ‘I knew the bloody aristos would be behind all this.’
    At the time, the priest continued, the King already had a mistress, Louise de la Vallière, and Madame de Montespan resolved to replace her. To do so, she resorted to witchcraft. Her first ally was a wise woman or witch, used by several women at the court to abort unwanted pregnancies, named Catherine Monvoisin. She then recruited a renegade priest, Etienne Guibourg, to perform a Black Mass that would produce a love potion to win the King’s heart. The potion was concocted from the desecrated Host that had been placed in Madame de Montespan’s vagina during the Black Mass. The result was a scandal and a trial in which the witch was executed and the priest imprisoned, but with Madame de Montespan securely ensconced in the royal bed.
    ‘How did she get away with it?’ asked the Mayor. Bruno smiled to himself. Father Sentout had seldom had such an avid audience.
    ‘Some say her sensual charms won the king’s devotion and thus her immunity, but I prefer to think it all the work of Satan,’ said the priest. ‘And what