“The day I charge an unbeliever like you for the word of God will be the day I’m struck dead by lightning, and with good reason.”
Dalmau rushed off in search of my Bible and I followed Barceló into his office, where the bookseller poured two cups of tea and offered me a cigar from his humidor. I accepted it and lit it with the flame of the candle he handed me.
“Macanudo?”
“I see you’re educating your palate. A man must have vices, expensive ones if possible. Otherwise when he reaches old age he will have nothing to be redeemed from. In fact, I’m going to have one with you, what the hell!”
A cloud of exquisite cigar smoke covered us like high tide.
“I was in Paris a few months ago and took the opportunity to make some inquiries on the subject you talked about with our friend Sempere some time ago,” Barceló said.
“Éditions de la Lumière.”
“Exactly. I wish I’d been able to scratch a little deeper, but unfortunately, after the publishing house closed down, nobody, it seems, bought its inventory, so it was difficult to gather much information.”
“You say it closed? When?”
“In 1914, I believe.”
“There must be some mistake.”
“Not if we’re talking about the same Éditions de la Lumière, in Boulevard St.-Germain.”
“That’s the one.”
“In fact, I made a note of everything so I wouldn’t forget it when I saw you.”
Barceló looked in the drawer of his desk and pulled out a small notebook.
“Here it is: ‘Éditions de la Lumière, publishing house specializing in religious texts with offices in Rome, Paris, London, and Berlin. Founder and publisher, Andreas Corelli. Date of opening of first office in Paris, 1881—’”
“Impossible,” I muttered.
“Of course, I could have got it wrong, but …”
“Did you get a chance to visit the offices?”
“As a matter of fact, I did try, because my hotel was opposite the Pantheon, very close by, and the former offices of the publishing house were on the southern side of the boulevard, between Rue St.-Jacques and Boulevard St.-Michel.”
“And?”
“The building was empty, bricked up, and it looked as if there’d been a fire or something similar. The only thing remaining was the door knocker, an exquisite object in the shape of an angel. Bronze, I think. I would have taken it if a gendarme hadn’t been watching me disapprovingly. I didn’t have the courage to provoke a diplomatic incident—heaven forbid France should decide to invade us again!”
“The way things are going, they might be doing us a favor.”
“Now that you mention it … But going back to the subject, when I saw what a state the place was in, I went to the café next door to make some inquiries and they told me the building had been like that for twenty years.”
“Were you able to discover anything about the publisher?”
“Corelli? From what I gathered, the publishing house closed when he decided to retire, although he can’t even have been fifty years old. I think he moved to a villa in the south of France, in the Lubéron, and died shortly afterwards. They say a snake bit him. A viper. That’s what you get for retiring to Provence.”
“Are you sure he died?”
“Père Coligny, an old competitor of Corelli’s, showed me his death notice—he had it framed and treasures it like a trophy. He said he looks at it every day to remind himself that the damned bastard is dead and buried. His exact words, although in French they sounded much prettier and more musical.”
“Did Coligny mention whether the publisher had any children?”
“I got the impression that Corelli was not his favorite topic, because as soon as he could he slipped away from me. It seems there was some scandal—Corelli stole one of his authors from him, someone called Lambert.”