‘We’re on a wild goose chase, Sir. The pistol was last registered in 1933. And the man to whom it was registered has probably been dead for years. There may have been six changes of address in the interim. Or six changes of owner. The researcher tells me that when the war ended, nobody really caught up with their paperwork again until the 1960s. Why waste our time on it?’
‘Have your pinheads cracked the tracker code yet?’
‘No, Sir. No one has told me anything along those lines.’
‘Do you have any other leads you are not telling me about?’
Macron groaned. ‘No, Sir.’
‘Read me out the address.’
‘Le Domaine de Seyeme, Cap Camarat.’
‘Cap Camarat? That’s near St-Tropez, isn’t it?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Your neck of the woods, then?’
‘Yes, Sir.’ Macron did not relish the prospect of returning, with Calque in tow, to somewhere quite so near home.
‘Who was it registered to?’
‘You’re not going to believe this name.’
‘Try me.’
‘It says here it’s registered to Louis de Bale, Chevalier, Comte d’Hyeres, Marquis de Seyeme, Pair de France.’
‘A Pair de France? You’re joking?’
‘What’s a Pair de France?’
Calque shook his head. ‘Your knowledge of your own history is execrable, Macron. Have you no interest whatsoever in the past?’
‘Not in the aristocracy, no. I thought we got rid of all that in the Revolution?’
‘Only temporarily. They were reinstated by Napoleon, got rid of again in the Revolution of 1848 and then brought back by decree in 1852 – and as far as I know they’ve been around ever since. Established titles are even protected by law – which means by you and me, Macron – however much your Republican soul may resent doing it.’
‘So what’s a Pair de France when it’s at home, then?’
Calque sighed. ‘The Pairie Ancienne is the oldest and most exclusive collective title of nobility in France. In 1216 there were nine Pairs. A further three were created twelve years later, in 1228, to mimic the twelve paladins of Charlemagne. You’ve heard of Charlemagne, surely? Bishops, dukes and counts, mostly, deputed to serve the King during his coronation. One peer would anoint him, another would carry the royal mantle, another his ring, another his sword and so on… I thought I knew them all, but this man’s names and titles are unfamiliar to me.’
‘Perhaps he’s a fake? Assuming he’s not dead, of course, which he undoubtedly is, as we’re talking upwards of seventy-five years here since he first registered the pistol.’ Macron gave Calque a withering look.
‘You can’t fake things like that.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because you can’t. You can fake small titles – people do it all the time. Even ex-Presidents. And then they end up in the Livre de Fausse Nobilite Francaise. But big titles like that? No. Impossible.’
‘What? These people even have a book of fake peerages?’
‘More than that. The whole thing is like a mirror, really.’ Calque weighed Macron up, as if he feared that he might be about to cast pearls before swine. ‘For instance there’s a fundamental difference between Napoleonic titles and those which preceded them, like the one we’ve got here. Napoleon, being a bloody-minded so-and-so, gave some of his favourites the same, or already existing, names and titles – to humiliate the original owners, probably and keep them in their place. But the effects proved unexpectedly long term. For even now, if you place a Napoleonic noble higher up the table than an Ancient noble with the same name, the Ancient noble and all his family, will simply turn over their plates and refuse to eat.’
‘What? Just sit there?’
‘Yes. And that is the sort of family we’re probably dealing with here.’
‘You’re kidding me?’
‘It would be seen as a calculated insult, Macron. Just like someone saying that the schools of Marseille produce only cretins. Such a statement would be palpably untrue and, in consequence, subject to castigation – except in certain extreme cases, of course, when it is found to be perfectly correct.’