A Climate of Fear

by Fred Vargas

  ‘It was nothing,’ said Céleste, wringing her hands.

  ‘Marc came to fetch me at the inn. So tell me what happened.’

  ‘He was scared.’

  ‘He’s not easily scared. Only if you’re scared.’

  ‘He can have his own troubles, can’t he? What would you know about a boar’s troubles?’

  Adamsberg, after walking round the outside, entered the cabin.

  ‘Smells of horses,’ he remarked.

  ‘Everything smells of horses round here,’ replied Céleste.

  ‘But not outside, not in the woods. And what’s more, it smells of liniment in here. A mixture of mint, camphor and hyacinth. They used to put it on donkeys’ hooves where I come from. Did he come here?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man who whistled for Dionysos.’

  ‘Oh, Pelletier,’ said Céleste casually, almost innocently.

  ‘He did come here?’

  ‘That would surprise me,’ said Victor. ‘Marc can’t stand him, and he knows that.’

  ‘All the same,’ Adamsberg insisted, ‘was he here this evening?’

  ‘It was nothing but the door rattling and Marc was startled,’ said Céleste, frowning grumpily. ‘He’s just an animal after all.’

  ‘No, that isn’t it,’ said Victor. ‘Marc has very sensitive reflexes. He came because he thought you were in danger.’

  The little woman, sitting down on the only stool in the cabin, brought out a pipe from her overall pocket, and started packing it. A short pipe with a large bowl, quite masculine-looking.

  ‘Céleste,’ Victor pressed her, ‘we’re going to bury Henri tomorrow morning. This isn’t the moment to hide the truth. Suicide or murder, they’re different, a person doesn’t go to heaven the same way.’

  ‘God knows all,’ said Céleste, lighting the pipe and waving away large clouds of smoke. ‘But what are you talking about murder for, Victor? Aren’t you ashamed of accusing folk?’

  ‘I’m talking about it because the police are. So perhaps God knows, or perhaps you do, what Pelletier was doing coming round here at night.’

  ‘It smells of horses and liniment in here,’ Adamsberg repeated quietly, rather fascinated by this little woman with her teeth clamped round the pipe stem. ‘But I like the smell of liniment,’ he added, turning his face in the dark – the cabin was lit only by two candles.

  ‘All right,’ Céleste admitted. ‘But he just rattled the door.’

  ‘No he didn’t, he broke it open,’ said Victor, pointing to splinters of wood. ‘What did he smash that log with, an axe?’

  ‘He was drunk, it wasn’t his fault. I should get it made of oak, not pine, you can see it isn’t very strong, I did mention it to Monsieur Henri.’

  ‘Céleste, just stop this. What did he do to you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing. And that’s why Marc came rushing to the inn?’

  ‘He’s just an animal,’ she repeated.

  ‘Who? Pelletier?’ said Victor, raising his voice.

  ‘No need to get in a state, all he did was shake me a bit by the shoulders.’

  ‘A bit? Show me.’

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she ordered.

  And Marc took up his guard-dog position again, gnashing his tusks.

  ‘Céleste,’ Adamsberg interrupted gently, ‘Henri Masfauré didn’t kill himself. What did Pelletier say to you?’

  And Céleste had the feeling that the commissaire would not take his vague eyes off her, any more than her old schoolteacher would have when he was waiting for her to finish her homework. And curiously enough, Marc had calmed down, to the point of moving slightly towards the commissaire, offering up his snout. Adamsberg carefully stroked the duckling-like fur on his nose. This meeting seemed to decide Céleste.

  ‘He just said that since Monsieur Henri’s death, I’ve been giving him dirty looks,’ she said. ‘And he said it’s got to stop.’

  ‘And why were you giving him dirty looks?’

  Céleste took out a pipe tamper from another pocket, pressed down the tobacco and took a long pull.

  ‘Oh, he was drunk, he’s making things up. And then Marc went for him, and after that he chased him through the forest. I had no idea he’d go and fetch Victor.’

  ‘When did he get here?’

  ‘Nine years ago. He lost his parents when he was small, they were killed just like that, and his brothers and sisters died of neglect.’

  ‘That might mark your character,’ said Danglard. They had forgotten him, and he was standing outside, leaning against the upright of the damaged door.

  ‘I meant Pelletier, not Marc,’ said Adamsberg. ‘When did he come to live here?’

  ‘Oh, him? Soon after I did. What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Everything’s got to do with it when there’s a death,’ said Danglard.

  ‘Because you’re thinking he killed Monsieur Henri? Who was his benefactor! And all because Marc panicked just now? It’s the rutting season, if you want to know. He hasn’t got it out of his system, he’s got to start again, and he gets nervous, you have to understand.’

  ‘We’ve come across plenty of people who’ve done in their benefactors,’ said Danglard.

  ‘After he’d gone,’ said Céleste, in a changed voice as if she was making chit-chat in the big drawing room, ‘I heard a viper hissing outside.’

  She frowned, looking concerned and puffed at her pipe.

  ‘I should block the cracks with wood pulp,’ she said, ‘or they’ll get in.’

  Victor glanced across at Adamsberg. They wouldn’t get another word out of her, not tonight at any rate.

  ‘What you can do is spread bird droppings, especially crows’ droppings,’ suggested Adamsberg. ‘It’s known to repel vipers.’

  ‘Tons of that in the tower,’ said Victor.

  ‘I don’t want anything from the tower, as well you know, Victor.’

  ‘Céleste, why didn’t you want to tell us all that? To protect Pelletier?’

  ‘Now that Monsieur Henri has left this world, we none of us know what’s to become of us, in the household. Me, Victor, Pelletier. So I wasn’t going to get him into trouble, just because he’d had too much to drink.’

  She got up from her stool and started pottering around the cabin, pouring water from an old jug into an enamel basin, then meticulously spreading a blanket over her foam mattress, which had been laid on the ground with a blue plastic undersheet to protect it from damp. Adamsberg was contemplating this desolate home, with its old coal-burning stove and beaten earth floor, when a dark circular patch about twenty centimetres across caught his eye. He crouched down and felt it with his hand. Just a little circle, damper than the surrounding earth.

  ‘Does Marc piss on the floor in here?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Céleste firmly.

  ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Adamsberg, ‘he marks his territory outside the cabin.’

  He began grubbing up the cool earth with his fingers, watched with alarm by Céleste.

  ‘You have no right to do that,’ she said, raising her voice. ‘That’s where I hide my savings.’

  ‘You’ll get them back,’ said Adamsberg, continuing to move the loose soil.

  He did not need to dig very deep before his fingers met the edge of a thick drinking glass with a flat base, which he pulled out of the little hole. Standing up, he shook it, then waved it under his nose.

  ‘Whisky,’ he remarked calmly.

  ‘Henri Masfauré’s glass?’ asked Danglard.

  Must have been poisoned, was what the commandant was now thinking. Céleste must have been in love with the great clean-air genius! Perhaps Masfauré planned to marry again, who knows? So she killed him. But if so, why not destroy the glass?

  ‘Marc will see you to the drive,’ Céleste suddenly announced, as if she was talking about her butler at the end of a social evening.

  ‘After Amédée discovered him,’ Adamsberg said, ‘you went up t
o the study. And you put away the bottle, and took the glass.’

  ‘Yes. Marc will see you to the drive.’

  ‘Why, Céleste?’

  Céleste sat back down on the stool, and rocked to and fro for a moment, with the boar coming and going, rubbing up against her legs enough to make them pink. Then he went towards Adamsberg and lifted his snout. Without feeling apprehensive, Adamsberg stroked his head.

  ‘The master had killed himself. The police and journalists were going to tell people. That he drank whisky every night. They were going to sling mud at him. That’s why I took the glass.’

  ‘Why did you bury it?’

  ‘It was his last glass, it was in memory of him. You don’t throw away the last glass of someone who’s died.’

  ‘I’ll have to take it away to get it analysed,’ said Adamsberg, slipping it straight into his pocket. ‘But I’ll bring it back to you.’

  ‘Yes, I understand. But don’t clean it, please. Marc will see you to the drive.’

  And this time, the men obeyed. Adamsberg motioned to Victor to stay behind a little while with her. Marc trotted docilely ahead of them to the drive, as his mother Céleste had ordered him – without showing any animosity.

  ‘A man and a woman, eh?’ said Danglard, who was using his torch to follow the path at their feet.

  ‘But which man, Danglard?’ asked Adamsberg.

  ‘Henri Masfauré, who else?’

  ‘I don’t think so. You’re forgetting Pelletier’s visit. Céleste knows something, he’s afraid of her and, worse, he’s threatening her. And yet she’s protecting him. How old was she when he got here? Thirty-five?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, a man and a woman.’

  The two men walked along in silence, with Marc rootling along in front of them.

  ‘Who does the tower belong to?’

  ‘The parish of Le Creux.’

  ‘What’s the matter with it?’

  ‘According to Céleste, it’s got an evil reputation. She said it was used as an oubliette in the olden days. They locked prisoners up inside and left them to rot.’

  ‘Ah, so obviously. . .’

  ‘So obviously, you can still hear their groans and their ghosts calling for vengeance.’

  ‘Understandable.’

  ‘Quite.’

  Marc did not stop at the drive, but led them through the trees to a hole in the fence.

  ‘Obviously,’ Adamsberg said, ‘he knew that we could only get through this way. The gates are triple-locked.’

  ‘Céleste told him “to the drive”.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to offend anyone, Danglard, but Marc may be brighter than she is. Why? Because he adapts, whereas Céleste is stuck.’ Adamsberg patted the boar’s muzzle.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he told Marc.

  Bourlin was fast asleep, flat out on the blue school bench which had vanished under his bulk. Adamsberg shook him awake.

  ‘I’m going back to Paris with Danglard now.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Bourlin, sitting up. ‘I like it here. Mélanie would have made those potato cakes for me every night.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Never eaten any as good as that. I’ve been stood down on this case, of course. Just got the message. Obviously, the 15th arrondissement doesn’t extend to the Auberge du Creux. So you will have to take it on now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was all that noise about?’

  ‘It was a wild boar, or rather a tame boar, coming for help. Pelletier had been manhandling Céleste. She lives in this tumbledown hut in the woods and smokes a pipe. Like a witch.’

  ‘A hut? What on earth was her employer like? A philanthropist or a slave trader?’

  ‘Might be useful to find that out. Don’t forget to get a photo of the sign on the leather desktop.’

  ‘That bloody sign.’

  ‘Like a guillotine.’

  ‘As you said before. Have you ever seen a guillotine with two blades?’

  ‘No, never.’

  X

  ADAMSBERG WAS BACK on the road, after dropping the whisky glass off at the Rambouillet gendarmerie. With formal instructions that it should be returned to Céleste after analysis. The patter of rain on the windscreen woke Danglard, who was dozing.

  ‘Where’ve we got to?’ he asked.

  ‘Just went through Versailles.’

  ‘I meant the investigation. Murders or suicides?’

  ‘Two suicides, both leaving the same sign behind them, Danglard. Two suicides connected to the same rock in Iceland. Something’s not right. And Amédée is the link between them, going to and fro.’

  ‘Difficult to see that boy as a frenzied killer, committing two murders in two days. He looks more like a poet, pale-cheeked and wielding a pen. Rather than a shotgun or a razor.’

  ‘Yes, but he’s hard to work out. A changeable character, a nervous temperament, his eyes can be absent-minded, then change to furious.’

  ‘He’s liable to take fright too, given he ran away on horseback.’

  ‘If he’d really wanted to, Danglard, the best way would have been to jump in his car.’

  ‘The best way for idiots, if you’ll forgive me, commissaire. On horseback, we couldn’t have followed him. He might have ridden to Rambouillet, taken a train to Paris, and then on anywhere, Lisbon, Naples, Copenhagen. Faster than we could catch up with him.’

  ‘If that was his plan, he wouldn’t have chosen Dionysos, or ridden bareback, come to that. No, he must have been thinking of something else,’ said Adamsberg, putting down his window and stretching his arm outside the car.

  He always did this, enjoying the feel of the rain on his hand.

  ‘Or perhaps he wasn’t thinking at all,’ said Danglard.

  ‘That would be even more worrying, but possible, I suppose. An empty brain behind that handsome face. The opposite of Victor. A very sharp mind behind an ugly face.’

  ‘What about Victor anyway? He could have read Alice Gauthier’s letter and rushed in to Paris.’

  ‘To stop her saying any more, yes. But Victor had no reason to kill his boss. And for the others, it’s the opposite.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Danglard. ‘Pelletier, or any of the neighbours might have wanted to kill Henri Masfauré. According to Bourlin, he was sitting on a fortune. The family had accumulated a thousand or so works of art between 1870 and 1950. Lots of money there, enough to excite envy and disputes. But on the other hand, no motive to go and drown Alice Gauthier.’

  ‘Still less to draw that sign.’

  ‘We keep harking back to the sign.’

  Danglard sighed and leaned back in the seat.

  ‘It really irritates you, that you couldn’t decipher it, doesn’t it?’ said Adamsberg.

  ‘It’s worse than that. Why did you talk about a guillotine though? It doesn’t look anything like a guillotine.’

  ‘I talked about it, Danglard, because that’s what it is, a guillotine.’

  The commandant shook his head in the dark. Adamsberg slowed down and pulled in on the verge of the highway.

  ‘What the heck are we doing now?’ groaned Danglard.

  ‘I’m not getting out for a leak, I’m going to draw a guillotine for you. Or rather that drawing of a guillotine. So I’m going to redraw a drawing.’

  ‘Right.’

  Adamsberg switched on his hazard lights and turned to Danglard.

  ‘Remember the Revolution?’ he asked, while detaching a burr from his trousers.

  ‘The French one? I wasn’t there, but yes, I’m acquainted with it.’

  ‘That’s good, because I’m not. But I do know that at some point during the Revolution, this engineer suggested adopting the guillotine as a means of carrying out the death sentence on criminals, so that they would all be executed in the same way, and with minimum suffering. At the time, it wasn’t meant for the Terror.’

  ‘He wasn’t an engineer, he was a famous doctor, Dr Guillotin.’

  ‘Ri
ght.’

  ‘Joseph-Ignace Guillotin.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

  ‘He’d been the personal physician of the king’s brother, the Comte de Provence –’

  ‘Danglard, do you want me to do this drawing, yes or no?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘This was some time at the beginning of the Revolution, when the king was still on the throne. And you needn’t tell me it was Louis XVI, I do know that. And at some meeting or other, Guillotin came along to present his machine. Apparently, the king was present.’

  ‘Must have been before August 1792, then.’

  ‘No doubt, Danglard.’

  The commandant frowned and Adamsberg lit one of his crumpled cigarettes, offering another to his colleague. The two lit ends glowed in the silent interior of the car.

  ‘We could be the only people in the world,’ mused Adamsberg quietly. ‘Where is everyone? All the other people.’

  ‘They’re out there, they’re just not doing drawings at the side of the road, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, it’s said,’ Adamsberg went on, ‘that the doctor brought plans showing a classic beheading machine. Because in fact, some such thing already existed.’

  ‘Yes, it had, since the sixteenth century. But Dr Guillotin improved the mechanism.’

  ‘So what did it look like, the earlier version, Danglard?’

  ‘It had a curved blade.’

  ‘Like this then,’ and Adamsberg drew with his finger on the misted-up windscreen: two uprights and a curved line between them.

  ‘Yes, like that. Or with a straight blade. Guillotin thought that the straight blade would be more efficient and do the job faster.’

  ‘Well, that’s not what I was told. I was told that the king, who was a lot better at mechanics than he was at politics, looked at the plans, thought about them for a bit, then crossed out the curved blade with an oblique straight one, to suggest his own modification. So it was him that transformed the machine, improved it in fact.’

  Adamsberg now drew a transverse line on his sketch.

  ‘Like this.’

  Danglard put his window down too, and tapped away his cigarette ash. Adamsberg removed another burr from his trousers. If they were seeds, he might plant them in his little garden. He put it on the dashboard.