by Fred Vargas
In that case, it was she, Marie-France, who had played the role of fate. She had taken the decision to carry out the old woman’s intention. And yet she had thought it over several times. Not too little, not too much, before she had crossed the road to the postbox.
Forget it, you’ll never know anything about it. And there’s no reason at all to think the letter might have had lethal consequences. That’s just your imagination running wild, my girl.
But by lunchtime, Marie-France had still not forgotten it, as was proved by her getting no further in her reading of death announcements while still being none the wiser whether the cousin who loved orang-utans had died yet.
She walked towards the toy shop where she worked part-time, her mind troubled, her stomach aching. And that, my girl, means you are chewing it over and you know quite well what Papa used to say about that.
It wasn’t that she had never noticed the police station on her way – after all she passed it six days a week – but this time it shone out to her like a lighthouse in the dark. A lighthouse in the dark – that was her father’s expression again. But the problem with a lighthouse, he would say, is that it switches on and off. So your plan may come and go all the time, and it goes out anyway in daylight. Well, it was daylight now, and the police station nevertheless seemed like a lighthouse in the dark. Proof that you could modify the biblical pronouncements of your father, no offence intended.
She went in timidly, registered the gloomy-looking lad in reception and, in the background behind him, a very large, very heavily built and rather scary woman, talking to a small fair-haired character who didn’t seem of any account, alongside a balding man who looked like an ancient bird huddled on its nest waiting for a last clutch of eggs that would never arrive, while over there was someone reading – she had good eyesight – a magazine about fish, plus a huge white cat sleeping on the photocopy machine, and a tough guy who looked ready to tear people limb from limb. And she almost walked straight out again. No, she told herself firmly, it’s just that the lighthouse goes on and off and just now it’s off. A tall man with a paunch, elegantly dressed, but no oil painting, came over dragging his feet, and gave her a sharp look with his blue eyes.
‘Were you wishing to report anything in particular, madame?’ he asked with perfect diction. ‘Here, we don’t receive complaints about thefts or muggings. This is the Serious Crime Squad. Homicide and murder only.’
‘Is there a difference?’ she asked anxiously.
‘A very great one,’ the man replied, leaning towards her in an attitude of old-world courtesy. ‘Murder is premeditated killing. Homicide may be unintentional.’
‘Well, yes, in that case, I’m coming about a maybe-homicide, a not deliberate one.’
‘Do you wish to bring a charge, madame?’
‘No, no, but it might have been me that did it, the homicide, without meaning to.’
‘In some kind of disturbance?’
‘Oh no, monsieur le commissaire.’
‘Commandant, not commissaire, madame. Commandant Adrien Danglard at your service.’
It was a long time ago, if ever, that anyone had spoken to her with so much courtesy and deference. This man was far from good-looking – he seemed rather ill-assembled to her gaze – but my word, his beautiful way with language won you over. The lighthouse switched on again.
‘Commandant,’ she said, with a little more assurance, ‘I’m afraid I may have sent a letter that caused a death.’
‘A letter containing a threat? Anger? Vengeance?’
‘Ah no, commandant’ – she liked repeating this word which seemed to give her more importance – ‘I don’t know anything about it.’
‘Anything about what?’
‘Anything about what was in the letter.’
‘But you said you sent it.’
‘Yes, I sent it. But I thought about it first. Not too little and not too much.’
‘But why did you post it – that’s what you did, was it? – if you hadn’t written it yourself?’
The lighthouse had gone off.
‘Well, because I picked it up off the ground, and then after that the lady died.’
‘So you posted a letter for a friend, is that it?’
‘No, no, I didn’t know her at all. But I’d just saved her life. That must count for something, though, mustn’t it?’
‘It counts for an immense amount,’ Danglard agreed.
Hadn’t Bourlin said that Alice Gauthier had set off to post a letter that had disappeared?
He drew himself to his full height, as far as possible. Danglard was actually very tall, much taller than little Commissaire Adamsberg, but people tended not to notice this.
‘Immense,’ he repeated, being conscious of the distress of the woman in the red coat.
Lighthouse on again.
‘But then, later, she died,’ she went on. ‘I read it in the deaths column this morning. I look at the deaths from time to time,’ she explained, a little too quickly, ‘to check I haven’t missed the funeral of someone close to me, an old friend, you see.’
‘That is a concern which does you great credit, madame.’
Marie-France cheered up immediately. She felt a kind of affection for this man who understood her so well and who washed away all her sins so promptly.
‘So I discovered that Alice Gauthier, from 33a, had died. It was her letter that I posted. And oh dear, monsieur le commandant, what if I set something off? Like I said, I thought it over seven times, not more or less.’
Danglard had received a jolt on hearing the name of Alice Gauthier, and at his age, receiving a jolt and having his fast-fading curiosity about the minutiae of life reignited meant that he felt gratitude to the woman in the red coat.
‘Which day did you post this letter?’
‘Friday of last week, when she collapsed in the street.’
Danglard moved smartly.
‘Would you be so good as to accompany me to see Commissaire Adamsberg?’ he said, ushering her by the shoulders, as if he were afraid that the unknown elements she possessed might spill out on the way, like the contents of a vase.
Obediently, Marie-France allowed herself to be guided. She was going to the big chief’s office. And the big chief’s name – Adamsberg – was not unknown to her.
She was disappointed though, when the gentlemanly commandant pushed open the door of the chief’s office. Inside, a drowsy-looking character wearing a shabby black cotton jacket over a black T-shirt was nodding off, his feet up on the desk: he had nothing in common with the social graces of the man who had greeted her.
The lamp in the lighthouse was flickering out.
‘Commissaire, madame says she posted Alice Gauthier’s last letter. I thought it was important for you to hear what she has to say.’
Although she had thought him practically asleep, the commissaire opened his eyes at once and sat up properly. Marie-France stepped forward awkwardly, irked at having to leave her friendly commandant for this odd-looking man.
‘Are you the chief?’ she asked, expressing disappointment.
‘Yes, I’m the commissaire,’ Adamsberg smiled, being both accustomed and indifferent to the disconcerted faces he often met. With a wave of his hand, he invited her to sit down opposite him.
Never believe in the authority of the authorities, her father used to say, they’re the worst. And in fact he would add: ‘bastards, the lot of ’em’. Marie-France clammed up. Aware of her retreat into her shell, Adamsberg motioned to Danglard to sit down beside her. And indeed it was only after prompting by the commandant that she decided to open her mouth.
‘I’d been to the dentist. I don’t live in the 15th arrondissement. It just happened, she was coming along with her walking frame, she took ill and she fell over. I caught her in my arms, so her head didn’t hit the pavement.’
‘Very good reflexes,’ said Adamsberg.
Not even a ‘madame’, which the commandant would have added. No ‘immensely’
either. Just a cop making an ordinary remark and, anyway, she had no great love of the police. While the other man was a real gentleman – though one who’d strayed into the wrong job – this one, the boss, was a run-of-the-mill cop, and in a couple of minutes he’d be accusing her of something! Go to the police and in no time you’re guilty of something.
Lighthouse out.
Adamsberg glanced at Danglard again. No question of asking her for her ID papers, as they normally would, or they’d lose her completely.
‘Madame happened to be there by a miracle,’ the commandant explained with some insistence. ‘She saved Madame Gauthier from a blow that could have been fatal.’
‘Destiny must have set you on her path,’ Adamsberg took over. No ‘madame’, but still, it was a compliment. Marie-France turned the anti-cop half of her face towards him.
‘Would you like some coffee?’
No answer. Danglard stood up, and from behind Marie-France, he mouthed at Adamsberg ‘ma-da-me’ , in three syllables. The commissaire took the hint.
‘Madame,’ he said, more pressingly, ‘may we offer you a cup of coffee?’
After a slight nod from the woman in the red coat, Danglard headed upstairs to the coffee machine. Adamsberg had caught on, it seemed. This woman had to be reassured, treated politely, and her wavering narcissism had to be cultivated. The commissaire would have to alter his manner of speaking, which was too casual and natural. But of course he’d been born like that, natural, straight out of a tree or a rock or a stream. He was from the mountains of the Pyrenees.
Once the coffee had been served – in cups, not plastic beakers – the commandant took charge of the conversation.
‘So, you caught her as she fell,’ he began.
‘Yes, and her nurse came running to help at once. She was shouting, she said that Madame Gauthier had absolutely refused to let her come along with her. Then the lady from the pharmacy took over, and I just picked up her things that had fallen out of the handbag. Because who else would have done it? The emergency people, they don’t think of that. But in your handbag, well, everything’s in here, your whole life.’
‘Very true,’ Adamsberg said encouragingly. ‘Men stuff everything in their pockets. So you picked up a letter?’
‘She must have had it in her left hand, because it was the other side from the handbag.’
‘You are most observant, madame,’ said Adamsberg, smiling at her.
The smile suited him. It was gracious. And now she felt that she was of interest to the big chief.
‘Yes, but I didn’t realise at once. It was only afterwards, when I was on my way to the metro, that I felt the letter in my coat pocket. Now don’t go thinking I pinched the letter, will you?’
‘No, of course not, one does this kind of thing inadvertently,’ said Danglard.
‘That’s right, inadvertently. I saw that it was marked with the sender’s name, Alice Gauthier, so I realised it was the old lady’s letter. After that I thought it over, seven times, not any more.’
‘Seven times,’ Adamsberg murmured.
How could you count the number of times you thought something over?
‘Not five, and not twenty. My father always said you should think something over seven times in your head, before you act, not less, because you might do something silly, but especially not more, or you’d go round and round in circles. And end up corkscrewed into the ground. Then you’re stuck. So I thought: this lady went out on her own to post this letter. So it must have been important, don’t you think?’
‘Yes indeed.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Marie-France more confidently. ‘And I checked it was her letter, she’d written her name in big letters on the back. First, I thought I’d better return it to her, but she’d been taken off to hospital, and which one would it be? I didn’t know, the paramedics never even spoke to me, or asked my name, or anything. Then I thought I should take it back to number 33a, because the nurse person had said that’s where she lived. That was the fifth time of thinking. But then I said to myself, no, absolutely not, because the lady had stopped the nurse coming with her. Perhaps she didn’t trust her or something. So at the seventh turn, I decided to finish what the poor lady hadn’t been able to do. And I posted it.’
‘And did you by any chance note the address, madame?’ asked Adamsberg with a note of anxiety.
Because it was quite possible that this woman, with all her elaborate precautions, tormented by her conscience, could have refrained from reading the name of the addressee, in order to respect the old woman’s privacy.
‘Well, of course I did, because I looked at it for so long, while I was thinking. And you have to know the address, because the postbox has all these different slots: Paris, Suburbs, Provinces, Abroad. You mustn’t get it wrong, or the letter will go astray. It was Yvelines, Paris suburbs, département 78, then I posted it, and now, since I found out that the poor lady died in the end anyway, I’m worried I might have made a terrible mistake. Perhaps the letter started something. Something that might have killed her. Would that be unintentional homicide? Do you know how she died?’
‘We’ll get to that, madame,’ said Danglard, ‘but your help is very valuable to us. Anyone else might have forgotten about the letter and never come forward to see us. Apart from the address being in Yvelines, did you notice to whom it was addressed, and do you by some miracle remember it?’
‘No need for a miracle, I have a good memory. Monsieur Amédée Masfauré, Le Haras de la Madeleine, route de la Bigarde, 78 491, Sombrevert. So I was right to put it in the “Suburbs” box, wasn’t I?’
Adamsberg stood up, stretching his arms out.
‘Absolutely magnificent!’ he said, coming over to her and grasping her shoulder rather familiarly.
She put this inappropriate gesture down to his feeling of satisfaction and felt happy too. Very good day, my girl.
‘But what I’d like to know,’ she said, looking serious again, ‘is whether what I did might have somehow caused that poor lady’s death, by some consequence or other. Do you understand, that worries me? And when I see that the police are involved, it means she didn’t die in her bed, isn’t that so?’
‘No, you can’t have been the cause of anything, madame, you have my word on it. The proof of that is that the letter will have arrived on the Monday, or Tuesday at latest. And Mme Gauthier died on the Tuesday evening. And she didn’t receive any letters or visits or phone calls in that time.’
As Marie-France breathed deeply in relief, Adamsberg shot a look at Danglard, indicating: we don’t tell her the truth. We don’t mention the visitor on Monday and Tuesday. We tell her a story, we don’t want to ruin her life.
‘But she died peacefully didn’t she?’
‘Well, not exactly, madame,’ Adamsberg said hesitantly. ‘She committed suicide.’
Marie-France gave a little cry, and Adamsberg patted her shoulder, consolingly this time.
‘We think that this letter, which had disappeared, contained her last words, which she wished to send to a close friend. You have nothing to blame yourself for, on the contrary.’
Adamsberg did not wait for Marie-France to have left the building – duly escorted by Danglard – before he was on the phone to the commissaire in the 15th.
‘Bourlin? I’ve got a name for your man. The one Alice Gauthier’s letter was addressed to. Amédée something or other in Yvelines département, don’t worry, I’ve got the full address.’
Adamsberg certainly didn’t have a good memory for words, in that respect, Marie-France was way ahead of him
‘How did you get it?’ asked Bourlin eagerly.
‘Didn’t do a thing. The nameless woman who helped Alice Gauthier when she collapsed had picked up the letter, and she had it in her pocket without realising it. And luckily, after long and due thought – seven times, I’ll spare you the details – she posted it. And the best of it is, she had memorised the full address it was going to. She recited it t
o me, just like you might be able to recite a La Fontaine fable you learn at school, “The Fox and the Crow”, say.’
‘And why would I recite “The Fox and the Crow”?’
‘Don’t you know it?’
‘No, apart from some line about being “the phoenix of these parts”. Couldn’t make head or tail of that bit. So you see, it’s the stuff we don’t understand we remember best.’
‘OK, enough about the crow, Bourlin.’
‘Well, you started it.’
‘Sorry.’
‘So let’s have the address.’
‘Here we are: Amédée Masfauré, I don’t know exactly how that’s pronounced, M A S F A U R É.’
‘Amédée, eh? Like the Dédé the neighbour heard. So he came running as soon as he got the letter. Carry on.’
‘Le Haras de la Madeleine – that must mean it’s a stud farm – route de la Bigarde, 78 491, Sombrevert. That do you?’
‘Yes, it does, except I’m supposed to close the case tonight. The magistrate was cross about the Cyrillic hypothesis, I only managed to get a day’s extension. So I’m going to jump in my car and go right away to see this Amédée.’
‘Mind if I come along too, incognito, with Danglard?’
‘Because of the sign?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK,’ said Bourlin after a brief pause. ‘I know what it feels like to have a puzzle going round in your head. But tell me, why did this woman come to see you, instead of coming over to me?’
‘Animal magnetism, Bourlin.’
‘Really?’
‘No, what really happened was that she goes past this station every day. And today she walked in.’
‘And why didn’t you send her straight over to me?’
‘Because she was entirely captivated by Danglard’s charm.’