by Fred Vargas
‘Eh?’
‘Sorry, a little hill overlooking our village. I was sitting there on a rock, repeating to myself these lines I’d just read and that I was sure I would have forgotten by the next day.’
‘And they were?’
‘What god, what harvester of eternal summertime,
Had, as he strolled away, carelessly thrown down
That golden sickle in the field of the stars?’
‘It’s by Victor Hugo.’
‘Ah. And who asks the question?’
‘Ruth, the woman who bares her breast.’
‘Ruth? I always thought I asked the same question myself.’
‘No, it was Ruth. Hugo wasn’t to know you would come along. It’s the end of a long poem, Boaz asleep, it’s famous. But tell me something. Did it work for frogs too? Puff, puff, bang? Or was it just toads?’
Adamsberg threw him a look of despair.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Danglard, gulping another mouthful of gin.
‘I was reciting this to myself anyway, because I liked the sound of it. I had just done my first year as a probationer at the police station at Tarbes. I was back in the village on leave. It was late August, the nights were beginning to get cool, and I started off home. I was washing my face at the sink as quietly as I could – there were nine of us in a couple of rooms – when Raphaël came rushing in like a madman, with blood on his hands.’
‘Raphaël?’
‘My younger brother. He was sixteen.’
Danglard put the glass down, open-mouthed.
‘Your brother? I thought you only had sisters. Five of them.’
‘I did have a brother, Danglard, almost like a twin, we were so close. It must be almost thirty years ago now that I lost him.’
Stunned, Danglard maintained a respectful silence.
‘He was seeing a girl from the village, in the evenings, up by the water-tower. It wasn’t just a teenage fling, they really loved each other. Lise, the girl, wanted to get married as soon as they were of age. But that was a nightmare for my mother, and as for Lise’s family, they were furious. They really didn’t want their little girl to get involved with the likes of our Raphaël. We were the lowest of the low. And her father was the mayor. So you see.’
Adamsberg stopped for a moment before he could carry on.
‘Raphaël grabbed my arm and said: “She’s dead, Jean-Baptiste, she’s dead, she’s been killed.” I put my hand over his mouth, washed the blood off him and pulled him outside. He was crying. I asked him over and over, “What happened, Raphaël, tell me for God’s sake.” He just kept saying: “I don’t know, I don’t know.” Finally he said, “I found myself on my knees, up there by the water-tower, with blood all over me, and this big screwdriver in my hand, and she was dead, Jean-Baptiste, dead, with three stab wounds in her stomach.” I begged him not to shout, or cry, I didn’t want the family to hear. I asked him if the screwdriver belonged to him. “I don’t know, it was just in my hand.” “But what were you doing before that, Raphaël?” “I can’t remember, Jean-Baptiste, I swear to God. But I know I’d gone out and got drunk with my pals.” “Why?” “Because she was pregnant. I was beside myself, but I’d never have touched a hair of her head.” “But then what happened, Raphaël? Between drinking with your pals and the water-tower.” “I went through the wood to meet her as usual. And because I was frightened, or because I was drunk, I was running and I hit my head on the sign.” “What do you mean?” “The sign to Emeriac, it must have been across the path. Next thing, I found myself by the water-tower. Three red wounds, Jean-Baptiste, and I was holding this screwdriver.” “And you can’t remember what happened in between?” “No, not a thing. Maybe the blow on my head made me go out of my mind, or maybe I am out of my mind, or maybe I’m a monster. I can’t remember … I can’t remember hitting her.”
So I asked him what he had done with the screwdriver. He’d left it up there, by her body. I looked at the sky and I thought, we’re in luck, it’s going to rain. Then I told Raphaël to wash himself properly, to get into bed, and if anyone asked him later, to say that we’d been playing cards in our little backyard since quarter-past ten, when he left his friends – have you got that, Raphaël? We were playing écarté, you won five games and I won four.’
‘Providing a false alibi,’ remarked Danglard.
‘Absolutely, and you’re the only person who knows about it. I went running up there and Lise was lying just as he had described, with those stab wounds in her stomach. I found the weapon, sticky with blood up to the hilt, and the handle covered with bloody fingerprints. I pressed it on to my shirt to get its measurements, then I put it under my coat. It was raining a bit by then, enough to muddy the footprints near the body. I went and threw the weapon into a pool in the Torque.’
‘The what?’
‘The Torque, the river that runs nearby and forms big pools, we call them launes. Anyway I threw it in where the water’s quite deep, and chucked a lot of stones on top of it. It wasn’t going to surface for some time.’
‘False alibi, plus concealing material evidence.’
‘Exactly, and I’ve never regretted it. I’ve never, ever, had the slightest remorse. I loved my brother better than myself. Do you think I was going to let him go down?’
‘That’s for you to say.’
‘But something else I can say, is that I’d seen Judge Fulgence out that night. Because while I’d been up on the mountain earlier, on the Conche de Sauzec, I could see down into the valley, and I’d seen him going past. It was him all right. I remembered that later, while I was holding my brother’s hand to get him off to sleep.’
‘Could you really see that well?’
‘Yes, you could see the path through the trees, silhouettes stood out against it.’
‘Did he have the dogs? Was that how you recognised him?’
‘No, it was because he was wearing the summer cape. His outline was like a triangle. Most of the men in the village were stocky and much shorter than him. It was the judge for sure, Danglard, walking along the track to the water-tower.’
‘Raphaël was out that night too, and so were his pals. Who were blind drunk. And you were out yourself.’
‘Never mind. Listen to the rest, and you’ll understand. The next day, I climbed the wall of the Manor and went poking about the outbuildings. And in the barn, with a lot of spades and shovels, I found a three-pronged garden fork. A trident, Danglard.’
Adamsberg raised his right hand with three fingers up.
‘Three prongs, three holes in a row. Look at the photo of Lise’s body,’ he said, taking it out of the file. ‘Look at that straight line of puncture marks. How could my brother, who was in a state of panic and very drunk, possibly have made three stab wounds in a perfectly straight line?’
Danglard examined the picture. It was true that the wounds ran in an absolutely straight line. He understood now why Adamsberg had been using a ruler to measure the Schiltigheim pictures.
‘How did you get hold of this picture? You were just a trainee policeman, a probationer.’
‘I pinched it,’ said Adamsberg calmly. ‘The fork was a very old garden tool, Danglard, it had a handle that was polished and decorated, and the crossbar was rusty. But the prongs were clean and shiny, without a trace of soil or a mark of any kind. Cleaned, polished, smooth as could be. What does that tell you?’
‘Well, it’s suggestive, but it’s not clear proof of anything.’
‘It’s as clear as the water in the pool. As soon as I saw that fork, the evidence exploded in my face.’
‘Like the toad’s guts?’
‘If you must. An outpouring of vice and wickedness, the real insides of the Lord and Master of the Manor. But then there he was at the barn door, watching me, holding his two dogs on the leash, the terrifying dogs who had torn Jeannot to bits. And when Judge Fulgence was watching you, Danglard, even when you were eighteen years old, it put the fear of God into you. He asked me what I thought I
was doing, with that contained anger in his voice that was second nature to him. I said I’d come to play a trick on him, to unscrew the bolts in his workbench. I’d done that kind of thing so often over the years that he believed me, and with a royal wave of his hand he pointed to the way out and said, “I’ll count to four, young man, to give you a start.” I ran like crazy towards the garden wall, because I knew that on the count of four he would unleash the dogs. One of them got hold of my clothes, but I was able to pull myself free and get over the wall.’
Adamsberg pulled up his trouser leg and showed a long scar on his calf.
‘Judge Fulgence’s teethmarks are still there.’
‘His dog’s, you mean.’
‘Same thing.’
Adamsberg took a sip of the gin from Danglard’s glass.
‘At the trial, they took no account of my having seen Fulgence in the woods. I was too subjective a witness. But in particular, they didn’t accept the trident as the murder weapon. And yes, the spacing of the prongs was exactly the same as the wounds. That coincidence held them up a bit, and they took expert evidence again, because they were terrified of the judge, who was starting to make threats. But their second examination relieved them. The depth of the perforations didn’t correspond. They were too deep by half a centimetre. What cretins! As if it wasn’t easy enough to have plunged the screwdriver into each of the wounds and then put it in my brother’s hand. They weren’t just fools, they were cowards. The examining magistrate in charge of the case was just a lackey in the hands of Fulgence. They preferred to believe it was the work of a kid of sixteen.’
‘And did the depth of the wounds correspond to the screwdriver?’
‘Yes. But of course I couldn’t suggest that, since the weapon had mysteriously disappeared.’
‘Yes, very mysteriously.’
‘Raphaël had everything stacked against him. She was his girlfriend, he met her there regularly every night, and she’d just announced she was pregnant. According to the magistrate, he was panicked by the news, so he killed her. But you see, Danglard, there was vital evidence missing, if they were going to convict. No weapon, because it had disappeared, and no witness to testify that Raphaël was up there at the time. And he wasn’t there, because he had been playing cards with me, since leaving his friends. I swore that under oath.’
‘And as a policeman, your word counted double?’
‘Yes, I took advantage of that. I lied from start to finish. And now if you want to go and fish the murder weapon out of the pool, go ahead.’
Adamsberg looked at his deputy through half-closed eyes and smiled a little for the first time since he had been speaking.
‘You’d be wasting your time of course,’ he said. ‘I went and pulled it out later and threw it into a dustbin in Nîmes. Because water is not to be relied on, nor is its god.’
‘So he was acquitted then, your brother?’
‘Yes. But the rumours went on, getting worse and worse. Nobody would speak to him in the village, they avoided him, out of fear. And he was haunted by this black hole in his memory, and didn’t know whether he really had done it or not. Do you see, Danglard? He honestly didn’t know whether he had murdered the girl he loved. So he dared not go near anyone. I ruined half a dozen cushions, trying to prove to him that if you stab someone three times, you simply can’t do it in a straight line. I must have given hundreds of demonstrations. But it was no good, he was completely destroyed, he kept his distance from everyone. I was away in Tarbes, I couldn’t hold his hand every day. And that’s how I lost my brother, Danglard.’
Danglard passed him the glass and Adamsberg swallowed two mouthfuls.
‘After that, I had just one idea in my head, to bring the judge to justice. He left our region, because he too was affected by rumours surrounding the case. I wanted to track him down, and get him prosecuted, so as to clear my brother’s name. Because I knew, and I was the only one who knew, that Fulgence was guilty. Guilty of the murder and guilty of destroying Raphaël too. I followed him relentlessly for fourteen years, all over the country, chasing him through press reports and archives.’
Adamsberg put his hand on the files.
‘Eight murders, eight people stabbed, with three wounds in a row. Between the years 1949 and 1983. Lise was killed in 1973. All eight murders had been solved, eight culprits easily caught, virtually weapon in hand. Seven poor sods in jail, as well as my brother, gone to perdition. Fulgence always escaped. The devil always escapes. Read the files, take them back home with you, Danglard. I’m going to the office to see Retancourt. I’ll call round at your place late tonight, OK?’
IX
ON HIS WAY HOME, DANGLARD MULLED OVER WHAT HE HAD LEARNT. A brother, a crime and a suicide. An almost-twin brother, accused of murder, driven from the world, and dead. A drama so traumatic that Adamsberg had never spoken of it. In such circumstances, what credence could be given to his accusations, based simply on having seen the silhouette of the judge on a woodland path, and having found a garden fork in his barn? In Adamsberg’s place, he too would have desperately sought a culprit to take the place of his brother. And instinctively, he too might have pointed the finger at the well-known hate-figure of the village.
‘I loved my brother better than myself.’ It seemed to Danglard that Adamsberg had somehow been holding Raphaël’s hand in his, ever since the night of the murder. He had removed himself in this way from the world of ordinary people for the last thirty years, since he could not join it without risking letting go of that hand, abandoning his brother to guilt and death. In that case, only the posthumous clearing of Raphaël’s name and his return to the world would release Adamsberg’s fingers. Or alternatively, Danglard told himself, clutching the briefcase tightly, recognising his brother’s crime. If Raphaël really had been the killer, his brother would have to face it one day. Adamsberg couldn’t spend his entire life chasing a false phantom, in the shape of a terrifying old man. If the dossiers led in that second direction, he would be obliged to hold the commissaire back, and force him to open his eyes, however brutal and painful that might be.
* * *
After supper, once the children were in their rooms, he sat down at his table, in an anxious frame of mind, having lined up three beers and three files. The children had all gone to bed too late. He had had the badly-timed idea of telling them the story of the toad that smoked cigarettes, puff, puff, puff, bang. The questions had come in thick and fast. Why did the toad smoke? Why did it explode? What size melon did it look like? Did its guts fly very high in the air? Would it work for snakes? Danglard had in the end had to forbid them to carry out any experiments along these lines: they were not to put a cigarette in the mouth of any snake, toad or salamander, lizard, pike or in fact any creature whatsoever.
But finally, by eleven o’clock, the schoolbags were all packed, the dishes had been washed and the lights were out.
Danglard attacked the dossiers in chronological order, memorising the names of the victims, the place and time of the crime, and the identity of the perpetrators. Eight murders, all committed, he noted, when the number of the year was uneven. But after all, odd or even years are a fifty-fifty matter, and can hardly be called a coincidence. The only thing that really linked these various murders was the unshakeable conviction of the commissaire that they were connected; nothing immediately suggested that they were the work of the same man. Eight murders, all in different regions of France: Loire-Atlantique, Touraine, Dordogne, Pyrenees. True, one could imagine that the judge had moved about a lot, to avoid being traced. But the victims were also very diverse, in age, sex and appearance: young, middle-aged and old, male and female, fat and thin, blond and dark. That didn’t seem to fit the obsessional pattern of a serial killer. And the weapons were different in each case: kitchen knives, sharpened screwdrivers, carpenters’ awls, hunting knives, flick knives, chisels.
Danglard shook his head, feeling somewhat discouraged. He had been hoping to follow Adamsberg’s lead, but such
a variety of circumstances created a serious obstacle.
It was true that the wounds did present converging features: in every case there were three deep perforations inflicted somewhere on the torso, below the ribs, always preceded by a blow on the head sufficient to render the victim unconscious. But then in all the murders committed in France in half a century, what were the chances of finding three wounds to the abdomen? Very high. The abdomen offered a large, easy and vulnerable target. And as for the three blows, that was not so unusual either. Three blows to make sure of killing the victim. Statistically, the number of cases with three stab wounds was high. It couldn’t be called a signature or a mark of identity. Just three blows, more or less the norm in murder cases.
Opening his second can of beer, Danglard looked attentively at the wounds. He had to do his homework conscientiously, so as to be certain one way or the other. It was unquestionably the case that the three wounds were in a straight line, more or less, in all the murders. And it was true that anyone dealing three separate frenzied blows would be most unlikely to place them in a straight line. That certainly pointed towards a fork or trident. And the wounds were all deep, which could also be explained by the force of a tool with a handle, whereas it was rare for a knife to penetrate three times up to the hilt. But the detailed reports appeared to wipe out that train of thought. The blades used varied in width and length. Furthermore, the spacing between the perforations varied from one case to another, as did the alignment. Not by very much, sometimes just a third or a quarter of a centimetre, with one of the wounds slightly out of line. But such differences appeared to rule out the use of the same weapon in every case. Three very similar blows, but not similar enough to point to a single weapon and a single hand behind it.
What was more, all the cases had been cleared up, the guilty parties having been arrested and sometimes even having confessed. But with the exception of one other teenager just as vulnerable and mixed-up as Raphaël, all those found guilty were individuals on the margins of society, homeless tramps or vagrants, habitual drunkards, and all, at the time of arrest, had presented with a spectacularly high alcohol count in their bloodstream. It would hardly have been difficult to extract confessions from people already so disturbed, and who had so quickly given up on themselves.