“Eh? What?” cried M. Filleul, taken aback. “His tomb?—Do you think that that impenetrable hiding-place—”
“It was here—there,” he repeated.
“But we searched it.”
“Badly.”
“There is no hiding-place here,” protested M. de Gesvres. “I know the chapel.”
“Yes, there is, Monsieur le Comte. Go to the mayor’s office at Varengeville, where they have collected all the papers that used to be in the old parish of Ambrumésy, and you will learn from those papers, which belong to the eighteenth century, that there is a crypt below the chapel. This crypt doubtless dates back to the Roman chapel, upon the site of which the present one was built.”
“But how can Lupin have known this detail?” asked M. Filleul.
“In a very simple manner: because of the works which he had to execute to take away the chapel.”
“Come, come, M. Beautrelet, you’re exaggerating. He has not taken away the whole chapel. Look, not one of the stones of this top course has been touched.”
“Obviously, he cast and took away only what had a financial value: the wrought stones, the sculptures, the statuettes, the whole treasure of little columns and carved arches. He did not trouble about the groundwork of the building itself. The foundations remain.”