After trying the clutch a few times to no effect, Robert Longdick finally found the brake and pulled the car into a convenient ruelle: “I was sure your grandfather meant us to know this”, he said. “And it only just occurred to me now that we have the two rings of the keystone safely in hand”.
Before he could answer a shot rang out.
*****
At that moment elsewhere, Bishop Aringaringarosi was leaving his audience with the Pope at the Castle Gandalf. He had learned a terrible thing whose full significance will not be divulged until page 436: the Bishop of Rome wears his underpants in the bath!
What could he be concealing? he wondered. And then it occurred to him: Never trust a man who thinks in italics.
*****
Unknown to Nonferque, Longdick or the Monk, Inspector Bezu Bebel, chief of the SPPF (Section Policière Pédérastique Française) and well-known anagram was on the blower to Aringaringarosi revealing his momentous secret. “Don’t whisper a word”, he said conveniently in English under the guise of not being overheard but also so stupid readers could understand, “I’m now looking at the original of The Last Supper, as newly restored. Have you ever wondered why its dimensions defeat the rules of the Golden Ratio?”
“Can’t say I’ve noticed”, replied the Bishop who thought art was just short for Arthur.
“Well, if you extend the frame of the work downwards so that it observes the exact ratio of 1 to (1 plus the square root of 5) (divided by 2))”, he continued, carefully pronouncing his parentheses, “you can see what’s going on underneath the table!”
“Not St Peter ... ?”, asked the astonished Bishop. “Holy shit!”
“Yes”, said Bezu Bebel. “You should have looked more closely at the Papal Jocks, as I instructed on page 69”. But they were both well and truly off the mark so that Longdick could discover the true meaning before them.
*****
Back in Paris, Longdick and Noferque had escaped with the two-ringed keystone to the château of Sir Nigel Twining-Teabags, leaving the Monk, in another pathetic reference to onanism, to flagellate himself yet again in the cul-de-sac of the dark ruelle. In his enormous library, Teabags pulled out a volume from the shelves. The spine read:
====================================
SECRETS OF THE PRIORY OF SCIFI:
CENTRALLY INDENTED FOR AUTHENTICITY
====================================
SECRETS OF THE PRIORY OF SCIFI:
CENTRALLY INDENTED FOR AUTHENTICITY
====================================
“Here”, he said to Sophie, turning to the centrefold, “is the original version of The Last Supper whose nether portion has been concealed from the world since the Vatican censored it but an hour after its completion”.
“But, Sophie”, interrupted Longdick, “you should have guessed it all along”.
“What?” she asked, still playing the dumb broad despite the overall theme of sublime femininity.
“Think”, Longdick went on, prolonging the bleeding obvious so the number of pages could go up beyond the $19.95 limit. “The two rings, isn’t it obvious?”
“Shall I give you a clue?” asked Teabags, giving Longdick a knowing, barely concealed homosexual wink. “The word Sangria, doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“A Spanish drink of red wine mixed with lemonade, fruit and spices?” Sophie suggested.
“That’s what everyone has thought since the Council of Nicaea declared it to be a drink in 325AD”, said Longdick, taking over for no apparent reason except that he’s the hero and has to make all the brilliant revelations. “It really splits into two words, SAN and GRIA”.
“I know SAN refers in a restricted version of disgusting public-school argot to the toilet; they converted the American slang CAN, thereby hiding their masturbatory desires by asking the masters if they may go to the san, or sanitorium”, said Sophie, only half-completing the puzzle as usual.
“I learned that derivation at Eton”, Sir Nigel chimed in — when Brown remembered that Sir Ian McKellen might be more important than Tom Hanks. “It was certainly more believable if two boys in succession wanted to go to the san rather than the can. But the actual origin is much more ancient. During the Holy Wars, the Simon Templars would display the C-sign with the left hand pointing backwards when nature called, thereby excusing themselves from their sacred spiritual mission for a mere bodily function. Like the public schoolboys who came after them, they knew that san was a sibilant letter discarded from the Greek alphabet, roughly equivalent to the Doric C but pronounceable either as s or sh. They took the latter interpretation, for obvious reasons”.
“What about the second part?”, asked Sophie, her Royal Holloway training now strained to the limit.
“That”, said Longdick, “is a secret known only to the Simon Templars who excavated the Holy of Holies where the word is carved in stone in Hebrew”.
(Pregnant pause inserted by Brown, still with an eye to the $6m film rights.)
“After applying the Fairport Cryptographic Convention to the four letters of GRIA, it becomes מושב”, he said, “the Hebrew word for SEAT”.
And there, in the painting before her, Jesus and Mary Magdalene — or was it the lovely St John? — were indeed sitting together on a double ….
