The poisoned chalice

sunset.'
    Benjamin smiled. 'A fair point, Monsieur. Can we see this carp pond?'
    Ricard led us out into the garden. Really, it was a small orchard, with some apple and pear trees and untended grass. Here and there was the occasional flower bed; the lilies and other wild flowers struggling to thrive amongst the brambles and weeds. In the middle of the garden was a large, deep carp pond. It must have been about two yards deep and three yards across. It was man-made, I glimpsed the grey bricks around the edge, and probably fed by underground streams. 'Tell us again,' Benjamin asked. 'What happened?'
    'Well, the abbe was in the water, floating face down.' Ricard wiped his constantly dripping nose. ‘I and Simone pulled him out. He must have been dead for hours.' 'Do you think he drowned?' 'He could have had a seizure. Yet the abbe enjoyed good health. He had no fits nor did he suffer from the falling sickness.'
    Benjamin sat down on a small bench near the pool and watched the silver, darting carp who swam in dashes of light amongst the water grass and luxuriant lily pads. He half-closed his eyes and listened to plopping sounds in the water for the place swarmed with frogs, and the buzz of the bees as they hunted for honey amongst the flowers. 'Did Abbe Gerard have any enemies?' I asked abruptly. Ricard shook his head. 'Monsieur, I don't understand.'
    'My companion asked,' Benjamin repeated, 'did the Abbe Gerard have any enemies?'
    'No, he was a compassionate man, even to me with all my failings.'
    'Did he ever talk about his friendship with King Henry of England? You know our king, when he visited Maubisson, often called on Abbe Gerard and used him as a confessor?' 'Others at the chateau do,' Ricard observed.
    I winked at Benjamin. Abbe Gerard, I thought, would be the natural recipient of all sorts of secrets. In an enclosed community such as Maubisson who would want to confess to a drunken idiot like Waldegrave? Apart from Falconer, I thought, and he died.
    'The Abbe Gerard,' Benjamin remarked, speaking my thoughts aloud, 'must have known the secrets of many hearts.' He stared up at Ricard. 'But we were talking about our noble King Henry.'
    'The abbe often boasted,' Ricard answered, 'about his friendship with King Henry of England. He often described him as a truly Christian Prince.'
    (It just goes to show you that Henry could fool anyone, and invariably did. At least two of his wives and three of his principal ministers paid the price, not to mention a legion of others whose only reward for speaking their minds was a short journey to the executioner's block on Tower Hill.)
    'And King Henry's gift to him?' Benjamin pointedly asked.
    'Oh, the abbe was very proud of the gift. A copy of St Augustine's On Chastity, I believe. He showed it to me once. I am not a scholar but I saw it was personally annotated by your king. Abbe Gerard usually kept it well hidden.' 'And you never saw it?' 'As I have said, only once.' 'Where is it now?'
    'I don't know. You see the abbe had very few possessions. I searched for that but never found it.' Benjamin stared at the carp pond.
    'Monsieur le Cure, since the abbe's death, has anything strange happened here?'
    'No. Of course, there was mourning and grief at the abbe's sudden death and his funeral caused disruption in the normal tedium of our lives.' The cure's voice quickened. 'Ah, yes, one incident. The day after the funeral I was out visiting all day. Simone had gone back to her family. On my return I found the doors had been forced. Someone had carefully searched the house from top to bottom but nothing was missing. I did wonder if they were searching for the book. In itself it is valuable, being recently translated from the original Greek and annotated by a king.'
    'Did the abbe ever say what would happen to the book after his death?'
    'Yes, he joked and said he would take it to heaven with him. How it deserved to go to Paradise.'
    'Ask him where the abbe is buried,' I said, an idea half-forming in my mind.
    'In our cemetery,' Ricard replied. 'Under the old yew tree. The parishioners bought him a head stone. You can see it there. It's marked simply with his name and the cross of Lorraine.' 'May we see inside the church?' Benjamin asked.
    Ricard agreed and was searching for the key on the ring of his belt when we heard the sound of horses and men shouting. We followed the cure back to the kitchen. Simone was standing by the front door which she held ajar, her hand to her mouth. Ricard