by Vargas, Fred
Chevalier overused the expression ‘just between ourselves’, which didn’t fit his character. He wasn’t the kind of man to confide to you what was going on under the surface.
‘So,’ the mayor concluded, drinking off his cognac, ‘when Sevran arrived in Paris, he let the dog out at once – with a creature like that it’s normal. But that said, I’ll go and have more words with him about his dog. Savaging corpses is totally unacceptable. He’ll have to tie him up, or I’ll take action.’
‘It’s not against the dog that there’ll need to be some action.’
‘Oh, come on, Kelhweiler, you don’t mean the engineer’s responsible for this barbarism?’
‘The engineer?’
‘Sevran, that’s what he’s known as round here.’
‘Well, not necessarily Sevran, but somebody, yes.’
‘Somebody? Somebody who cut off Marie’s toe to give it to the dog to eat? Don’t you think you’re pushing this story for your own amusement? The pathologist said the toe hadn’t been cut. Can you imagine a human being attacking a corpse with his teeth? Kehlweiler, you must be off your trolley.’
‘Monsieur le maire, pour us out another cognac, and go and get the tide tables please.’
Chevalier gave a slight start. It was rare for anyone to order him about, and in a jokey tone what was more. A quick thought about how to react, but no, he’d been warned, pointless to kick the German out if you had the bad luck to find him sitting in your armchair. He sighed and moved towards his desk.
‘Pour out the cognac yourself, make yourself at home, why don’t you?’ he said grumpily.
Louis smiled and refilled the glasses. Chevalier came back on his bouncing footsteps and held out the tide table.
‘Thanks, but I’ve already seen it. It was for you.’
‘I know the tide tables by heart.’
‘Oh, really? And if you know that, you haven’t noticed something very obvious?’
‘No I haven’t, so hurry up and get to the point, I’m very tired.’
‘Well, look, Chevalier, can you imagine a dog, or even a seagull, pulling the boots off a corpse, in order to go and eat its feet? Why didn’t the pit bull just bite a bit of a hand, or an ear?’
‘Jesus Christ, you read the reports, she was barefoot, her boots were off. The dog attacked a foot by pure chance. Of course it didn’t take her boot off first, do you really take me for an idiot?’
‘Not at all, that’s why I’m asking you this question: if the dog attacked Marie when her feet were bare, and if the dog didn’t pull her boots off, who did?’
‘Well, the sea of course, dammit. It’s in the report. Between ourselves, you’re losing the plot, Kehlweiler.’
‘Not the sea, the tide, let’s be precise.’
‘The tide then, same thing.’
‘And what time was high tide that evening?’
‘About one in the morning.’
This time, Chevalier did give a start. Not a real one, but a wobble, as he put his cognac down on a coffee table.
‘You see?’ said Louis, spreading his hands. ‘Marie’s boots can’t have been pulled off by the tide on Thursday night, because the tide was going out, and it only reached her again at seven o’clock in the morning at the earliest. But the pit bull excreted this bone in Paris before 1 a.m.’
‘Well, I don’t understand any more. Could the dog have pulled off her boot? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘For the sake of absolute completeness, I asked to see the one boot they still had at Fouesnant. We were lucky – it was the left one.’
‘How come they had the right to show you that?’ asked Chevalier indignantly. ‘Since when do the gendarmes get out their crime scene exhibits for a retired civilian?’
‘I know a friend of the captain at Fouesnant.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘I just examined this one boot, and with a magnifying glass. No trace of a dog’s jaws, not the least little scratch. The dog hadn’t touched it. She already had her boot off, when the pit bull arrived, round about six o’clock.’
‘There must be some explanation. For instance . . . let’s see . . . she could have taken off her boot because she had a pebble in it, and then, balancing on one foot, she fell over, and hit her head.’
‘I don’t think so. This Marie was an old lady. She’d have sat on a rock to take her boot off. You don’t go balancing on one leg at her age. Was she an athletic, fit sort of person?’
‘Well, no. Timid, fragile, careful.’
‘So, it wasn’t the tide, and it wasn’t Marie, and it wasn’t the dog.’
‘What was it then?’
‘Who, you mean.’
‘Who?’
‘Chevalier, someone killed Marie, and you’re going to have to deal with that.’
‘All right, what’s your version?’ asked the mayor quietly, after a short silence.
‘I went to the spot. At about five or six o’clock, the light is fading, but it’s not quite dark. If you were going to kill Marie, the beach, although it’s deserted at this time of year, isn’t the best place, because it’s too exposed. Imagine, then, that someone killed her let’s say in the clump of pines above the beach, or in the cabin nearby, by hitting her on the head with a rock. Then they carried her down by the little path that leads to the cove. The murderer carries Marie on his shoulders, she doesn’t weigh much presumably.’
‘No, a featherweight. Go on.’
‘On his shoulders then, down to the beach, where he lays her, face down, on the rocks. On the steep path, might there be a good chance that one of her boots worked loose and fell off?’
‘All right.’
‘Then the murderer, as he puts the body down, notices the boot is missing. He absolutely has to find it, because it has to look like an accident. He wasn’t to know that the sea would wash both the boots off anyway. He goes back up the path, to the cabin, or to the pinewood, looking around, in the failing light. It’s full of bracken and gorse, and then the trees. Let’s say that he, or she even, spends four minutes going back up the path, four minutes to find the boot, which is black, and another three to come back down. That leaves a gap of eleven minutes, during which Sevran’s dog, mooching about the beach as usual, has plenty of time to bite off a toe. You’ve seen its jaws, very powerful. As night falls, the murderer hurriedly replaces the boot, without noticing that the toe has been amputated. Let’s have another cognac.’
Chevalier obeyed, without a word.
‘If they’d found Marie at once, with her boots on, they’d have noticed the amputation straight away, when they took off the boots for the post-mortem, and the murder would have been obvious. A dead person doesn’t bother putting her boots back on when her toe’s been bitten off.’
‘Go on.’
‘But the tide, and this is a lucky break for the murderer, washes her boots away, deposits one on the pebbles and carries the other off to America. So they find her barefoot, but there are seagulls all around, they can easily be blamed, even if it’s a bit unlikely. Only . . .’
‘Only Sevran’s dog had passed by . . . and had deposited the bone even before the tide came up.’
‘I couldn’t put it better myself.’
‘All right, you win, she was killed. Someone killed Marie. But Sevran took his dog with him, as usual at six o’clock.’
‘The dog had had time to find Marie sometime before six. We’ll have to ask Sevran if the dog was loose before he left.’
‘Ye-es, of course.’
‘We don’t have any choice now, Chevalier. We’ll have to alert Quimper tomorrow. Murder, and premeditated, whether someone followed Marie to the beach, or lured her there to fake an accident.’
‘Sevran, do you think? The engineer? It’s impossible! He’s a really nice man, talented, polite. Marie had been with them for years.’
‘I didn’t say Sevran. His dog runs about all over the place. Sevran and his pit bull operate independently. Everyone knew where Marie went
winkling, didn’t they? – you said so.’
Chevalier nodded and rubbed his big eyes.
‘Let’s sleep on it,’ said Louis. ‘We can’t do anything tonight. You’ll have to notify your constituents here. If one of them has anything to report, they’d better do so discreetly. A murderer can strike twice.’
‘A murderer . . . That’s all we need. Not to mention a burglary I’ve got to deal with.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Louis.
‘Yes – and it’s the engineer’s cellar in fact, where he stores his old machines. The door was forced last night. It might be a collector, you know they come from all over to see him, and the machines are valuable.’
‘Any damage?’
‘No, oddly enough. Just entered, but nothing touched. But it’s still a nuisance.’
‘Yes.’
Louis felt no urge to say more on the subject, and bade the mayor goodnight. As he walked through the dark streets, he could feel the effects of the cognac. He couldn’t lean hard on his stiff leg to balance the other one. He stopped under a tree swaying in the west wind which had suddenly blown up. Sometimes this gammy knee really got him down. He had always thought Pauline had left him because of it. She had made her mind up six months after his accident. For a few seconds, Louis remembered the fierce fire in Antibes, where his knee joint had been shattered. He had trapped those men, after a chase lasting almost two years, but he had trapped his knee as well. Marthe, to cheer him up, had said it was distinguished to limp, it was like wearing a monocle, and he should be pleased to be like Talleyrand, since he was his ancestor. The fact that Talleyrand limped (and was known as ‘the Lame Devil’) was the only thing Marthe knew about this famous figure in French history. But Louis knew that limping was not actually a big turn-on. He felt vaguely inclined to get weepy about his knee. That was how you could tell a good cognac, and that you’d had too much of it. The world was full of horrors and bloodshed. He’d discovered the woman whose tragic remains had been found on the grid round the tree, he was right, she’d been killed, someone had killed an old lady, just a frail elderly resident, with a savage blow from a rock, there was a murderer in Port-Nicolas, the dog had given the game away at bench 102, for once he was going to forgive the dog. That would do about the knee, he was going to bed now, he wasn’t going to cry all night about limping, after all Talleyrand didn’t, well, he did after a fashion.
If someone had told him he’d drunk too much cognac, Louis wouldn’t have disputed it, it was the truth. He’d be in bad shape tomorrow to meet the cops from Quimper for the start of the investigation. He really needed to find out whether Chevalier had known about the second report or not, but to break into the town hall to check the envelope seemed out of the question. The municipal offices couldn’t be opened like a sardine tin, or like Sevran’s cellar. He set off again, dragging his leg, and crossed the dark square where the wind was now blowing as hard as it could. The town hall was a small building and well secured. And yet. Louis looked up. On the first floor, a small window was open, its white square visible against the night sky. A little window, probably the toilets, it couldn’t be an office. What negligence, and what a temptation for someone like him. But a pointless temptation. There was a drainpipe one could hold on to, and there were hollow gaps between the granite blocks to make footholds, but with his knee, it was no use even thinking about it. Anyway, the window was too small for someone his size, even if you weren’t a Lame Devil. Too bad for the town hall then, and too bad about Chevalier, he’d have to fish out the secrets of this man some other way. Louis slipped into the hotel with the image of Marie going through his head. The photo of her he had seen in the report showed a little old lady who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Or a toad. A featherweight, the mayor had said. Whoever had bashed her brains out with a stone, Louis would make him sweat out his vileness and arrogance. That was a promise. He thought about his father, far away across the Rhine. Yes, he promised his father, he’d wipe that murderer’s self-satisfaction off his face.
He had a bit of difficulty putting his key into the lock. That’s the problem with cognac. You get sentimental about your knee, about Marie, and the Rhine, then you can’t fit the key in the lock. And yet he’d switched on the feeble light in the corridor.
‘Need a bit of help?’ said a voice behind him.
Louis turned round slowly. Leaning against the opposite wall, Marc was smiling, arms folded, legs crossed. Louis looked at him for a moment, thought that Vandoosler junior was a pain in the arse, and handed him the key.
‘Lucky you turned up,’ he said, ‘and not just for the key.’
Marc opened the door without a word, switched on the light and watched as Louis lay down full length on the bed.
‘Five cognacs all in a row,’ he said, pulling a face. ‘Good stuff too, very good. The mayor is a great host, we’ve fallen on our feet here. Sit down. Did you know that Marthe calls me “the Lame Devil” like Talleyrand?’
‘Is that an honour?’
‘She thinks so. I don’t, it’s a pain. But you don’t limp, you’re small and thin, and you’re just the person I need.’
‘Depends what for.’
‘To climb in the toilet window: perfect.’
‘Sounds fun. What’s it about?’
‘What did you say you could do? Apart from your fucking Middle Ages of course.’
‘What can I do? Apart from that?’
Marc thought a bit. He didn’t find it an easy question.
‘I can climb,’ he said.
Louis sat bolt upright.
‘Off you go then. Look.’
He pulled Marc towards his bedroom window.
‘See the house opposite. It’s the town hall. On the left, the toilet window’s open. There’s a drainpipe, plenty of footholds, all you need. Not that easy, but a piece of cake for a man like you if you haven’t been spinning me a yarn. You’ve blown in on the west wind, young Vandoosler. But I’d better find you some different shoes. You can’t climb in those cowboy boots.’
‘I’ve only ever climbed in my boots,’ said Marc, reacting, ‘and I’m not going to wear any other shoes.’
‘Why not?’
‘They comfort me, they make me feel safe if you want to know.’
‘All right,’ said Louis, ‘to each his crutches, and after all, you’re the one doing the climbing.’
‘And inside, what do I do? Take a piss and come out again?’
‘Sit down and I’ll explain.’
Twenty minutes later, Marc was slipping stealthily over to the town hall, approaching from the left. He smiled as he climbed, fitting the toecaps of his boots into the cracks between the stones. Foothold after foothold, he made quick progress, helping himself by holding on to the rough surface of the drainpipe. Marc had large, very strong hands, and tonight he took pleasure in the agility of his body, too thin of course, but therefore gravity-defying.
Louis watched from his bedroom window. In his black clothes, Marc hardly showed up at all against the wall of the building in shadow. He saw him steady himself at the level of the window, then go inside and disappear. He rubbed his hands and waited, without anxiety. If there was a problem, Marc would be able to handle it. As Marthe would say, he knew about men, and Vandoosler junior, with his nervousness, his excessive frankness, his volatile emotions, his knowledge from wrestling with historical records, his boyish curiosity, his tenacity as a thinking reed, all mixed up together, made him special. Louis had felt real relief when the medievalist had suddenly appeared in the hotel corridor, and hadn’t been surprised. In a way he had been expecting him, they’d started this hare together, and Marc knew the background as well as he did. For very different reasons from his own, Marc Vandoosler always finished what he’d started.
He watched Marc emerge from the window another twenty minutes later, climb down the facade without haste, land on the ground and cross the square with long strides. Louis went down to open the front door and in a few minutes Marc was inside and drinking
water from the basin in the little bathroom.
‘Ah, shit,’ he said as he came out, ‘you put your toad in the bathroom.’
‘He chose it. He likes sitting under the basin.’
Marc rubbed at his tight trousers which were covered in dirt from his climb, and readjusted his silver belt. Austere but showy, the elder Vandoosler had said of him, and it was true.
‘Not uncomfortable in those leg-huggers?’
‘No,’ said Marc.
‘Good for you then. OK, tell me.’
‘You were right, the toilets were next to the mayor’s office. I looked in the in-tray. The big envelope from the Fouesnant gendarmerie was marked “Confidential”. But it was open, Louis, I checked. Like you said, it was the second report, and it gives the detail about the missing toe.’
‘Ah!’ said Louis. ‘So he was lying. Believe it or not, he’s a man who lies all the time without it showing. He’s like the surface of a pond covered in weed, you can’t see the fish underneath. Just a vague movement or a few shadows, and that’s all.’
‘A clean pond or a dirty one?’
‘Ah, if I knew that . . .’
‘But why did he lie? You don’t think it was the mayor that bashed in the old woman’s head?’
‘You can think anything you like, we don’t know any of the people here. There could be a quite simple explanation for him covering up. You could think he hadn’t imagined any link between the missing toe and a murder, since he couldn’t possibly have known that the toe had travelled all the way to the Place de la Contrescarpe, or that I would find the dog shit before the tide came in.’
‘All right, but don’t go so fast, it makes me jumpy.’
‘You want me to speak more slowly?’
‘No, that makes me jumpy too.’
‘What doesn’t?’
‘No idea.’
‘Well, keep up at the back then. All the mayor could have known this morning was that one of his local residents had died on the rocks, and that seagulls had probably pecked off one of her toes. Note that he doesn’t tell that bit to the press, and why? Because Brittany lives off tourism and Port-Nicolas is a modest little place as you can no doubt see. He has no wish to draw attention to the greedy seagulls in his village. And as well –’