by Fred Vargas
‘And you are the son of Maximilien Barthélémy François Château. Who was himself the son of Maximilien Château.’
Château-Robespierre stiffened, and at the other end of the line so did Danglard and Veyrenc.
‘What?’ said Voisenet, expressing what the others felt.
‘Those were the first names of Robespierre’s own father and grandfather,’ Danglard whispered quickly. ‘The Château family gave its sons the same names as the Robespierre family.’
President Château now entered upon one of the rages which were known to overcome the Incorruptible, banging his fist on the table, his fine lips trembling as he shouted at Adamsberg.
‘Is he in danger?’ asked Kernorkian.
‘Shut up, for heaven’s sake,’ said Veyrenc. ‘Retancourt’s on hand.’ Knowing that the lieutenant was nearby reassured them, even Noël. Their heads moved closer to the speaker.
‘You damnable traitor!’ Château was yelling. ‘I called on your assistance in complete confidence, and you have used that, like a contemptible hypocrite, to go snooping like a rat into my own family!’
‘“Contemptible hypocrite”, one of Robespierre’s favourite expressions,’ Danglard commented quietly.
‘And anyway, what of it?’ Château was going on. ‘Yes, the entire family was fervently pro-Robespierre, and believe me, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone!’
‘So why didn’t you inherit these sacred names?’
‘Thanks to my mother!’ Château shouted. ‘She did all she could to protect me from these Robespierrist fanatics, but she drowned in front of my eyes, when I was twelve years old. Are you satisfied now, monsieur le commissaire?’
The little man had stood up, pulled off his wig and thrown it violently on the floor.
‘The mask’s off,’ Danglard said, ‘the second cork is out of the bottle.’
‘Can a bottle have two corks?’ asked Estalère.
‘Obviously,’ said Danglard. ‘Now be quiet. We can hear water running. He’s got a basin in the office by the coffee machine, he’s washing the make-up off.’
Château was rubbing his cheeks fiercely, as a white stream of water rolled off them. Then spitting and sniffing shamelessly, he wiped his face, now regaining some of its natural rosy colour, and came to sit down, caught between pride and distress. He extended an elegant hand, this time to ask for a cigarette.
‘You are a skilled fighter, monsieur le commissaire, I ought to have had you guillotined earlier,’ he said, finding his smile once more, though it was a rueful one now. ‘You should have been beheaded first of the lot. I know what you’re thinking. That my family somehow made me think I was a “descendant” of Robespierre. That they tried to stuff this into my child’s brain. Well, it’s true. My grandfather was responsible, he was an impossible old man, and he’d been raised in the same cult. My mother was against it, but my father was a weak man. Shall I go on?’
‘Yes please. My own grandfather was nothing to boast about, he’d been shell-shocked by the Great War, and he was a tyrant.’
‘The old man started on me from the age of four,’ Château said, slightly calmer now. ‘He taught me Robespierre’s speeches, but also his posture, his voice, how to imitate the delivery, and most of all he taught me about Robespierre’s distrust of potential enemies, distrust in fact of everyone, with purity as his rule for life. The old idiot was pumped up with pride at the idea that he was descended from the great man. My mother helped me to resist. Every evening, like Penelope with her web, she undid for me what the old man had done in the daytime. But she abandoned me. I always thought the old man must have sabotaged the boat she was drowned in. Like Robespierre: eliminate any obstacle in your path. After that, he became even more dictatorial. But by then I was twelve and the shield my mother had given me was more effective. So the old man was faced with another obstacle: me.’
Adamsberg stopped walking up and down, and both men took another cigarette. Château, with his face now half washed, still bearing traces of powder, without the same presence, his bald head ringed round with tousled fair hair and his eyes swollen, but still wearing Robespierre’s famous sky-blue coat, was as splendid as he was touching. He could have looked grotesque. But his distress, his graceful posture and the extraordinary sight he made both disturbed and moved Adamsberg. He, Adamsberg, had worked for this defeat, indeed this debacle, because it was necessary for the investigation. Pull the second cork, empty the bottle down to the dregs. But at a cost.
The squad was thinking much the same; people held their breaths, and there was a perceptible emotion in the room, which only Estalère expressed.
‘Sad, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘My father was mad about Napoleon,’ said Voisenet, ‘but he didn’t try to get me to invade Russia. Still, he hated me getting involved with fish.’
‘Silence!’ said Danglard.
‘Nevertheless,’ Château was saying, breathing out cigarette smoke, ‘your suspicions go further, don’t they? You think the old man must have twisted my personality, like a blacksmith with a piece of iron. That I’ve absorbed the “Chosen Role” he assigned to me, and that now, I’m reproducing Robespierre’s own destructive tendencies. That I’m the one who’s killing members of my own association. That’s what you’re thinking. And in that respect, monsieur le commissaire, you are quite mistaken.’
Château was twitching his fingers open and closed, against his damp lace jabot, as if he wanted to feel or caress something. Adamsberg had noticed this compulsive gesture the previous day. Some kind of medal or pendant, a talisman, he supposed, or perhaps a locket containing his mother’s hair.
‘So if your mother had provided you with a shield as you put it, what drove you, all the same, to found this association and to take on this hated role?’
‘I could imitate Robespierre to perfection with my eyes shut, from the age of fifteen. Even after my old grandfather died, I was haunted by Robespierre, he was walking beside me, following me everywhere, never letting me go. So I decided to turn round and face him. Face up to him, commissaire. With the aim of finishing with him, settling his hash for good. So I grappled with him, I got hold of him, and I played him. He’s my creation now, not me his. I’m pulling the strings now.’
Adamsberg nodded.
‘We’re both tired,’ he said, sitting down and crushing out his cigarette. ‘Your associates, your co-founders, what did you call them?’
‘Leblond and Lebrun.’
‘OK, Leblond and Lebrun, do they know all this?’
‘No, absolutely not. And can I beg you, if we are allowed to beg things from the police, that they should remain in ignorance?’
XXII
ZERK WAS NOT yet a good cook, but he was making progress. His leg of lamb was roasted exactly right, and the tinned haricot beans were acceptable. Danglard poured out generous glasses of wine, and Adamsberg gave himself time to finish his dinner before tackling the case once more. His companions understood as much and made small talk about other things, which greatly pleased Zerk, who was as unskilled as his father at verbal jousting. And it allowed Adamsberg to forget briefly about the knot of seaweed, which had not yet lost any of its density and darkness.
They carried their coffee over to the fireplace, Danglard taking his usual position on the left, Adamsberg on the right, feet on a firedog, and Veyrenc in the centre.
‘So, what was your impression?’ asked Adamsberg.
‘He sounded genuine,’ said Danglard.
‘Well, he sounded genuine when we had lunch with him on the Tournelle embankment,’ said Veyrenc sceptically, ‘when he concealed from us the fact that he was going to play Robespierre. Though, of course, he wasn’t under any obligation to tell us that.’
‘Perhaps there’s a third cork in this bottle,’ said Adamsberg.
‘There are some bottles with nine corks, apparently,’ said Danglard, pouring himself another glass.
‘Not for you, commandant.’
‘No, corks don’t
bother me. They come out in my hands like obedient insects.’
Zerk had already had too much to drink and had nodded off at the table, head on his arms.
‘He claims to be pulling the strings of his character,’ Adamsberg said, ‘performing at the rostrum, and therefore being in control. But when he came in as Robespierre this evening, when he fell into a rage at me, and started using expressions like “damnable traitor”, “contemptible hypocrite”, “foundling and son of the people”, it didn’t seem to me that little Château was running the show. As if once he was in costume – he was wearing a blue frock coat, the same one, he said, that he wore for the Feast of God –’
‘Not God, the Supreme Being,’ said Danglard.
‘Well, anyway, as if little Château had become permeable, absorbent, filled full of the character without controlling him. Robespierre can get inside him whenever he wants, and at those times, François Château doesn’t exist. Nothing left. Contrary to what he tried to make me think. There again, he wasn’t telling the whole truth. And yet he was obviously suffering. His smile was painful to see.’
‘That smile is painful to see,’ Danglard began quoting. ‘The passion which has visibly drunk all his blood and dried out his bones has left in place his nervous energy, like a cat that has been drowned and then resuscitated by galvanism, or perhaps a reptile that stiffens and rears up, with an unspeakable gaze, frighteningly elegant. The overall impression though, make no mistake, is not hate: what one feels is a kind of painful pity, mingled with terror.’
‘Is that a description of Him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where did you get the idea of looking into his family names?’ asked Veyrenc.
‘Since Château was so obsessed with the man, I thought perhaps he might be descended from him. That was before I knew that Robespierre had no children.’
‘No, no children,’ Danglard confirmed. ‘Women, anything to do with sex, terrified him. It was on this fear that he based his notion of “vice”, unconsciously no doubt. He lost his mother when he was six years old, and since she was almost permanently pregnant for those six years, she hardly had time for little Maximilien before she died in childbirth. After her death, his previously impeccable father, a respectable lawyer in Arras, abandoned the household and disappeared, deserting the four children. Aged six, Maximilien, the eldest boy, was left feeling responsible, without having known an ounce of love. They say that the child became rigid after that and they never saw him laugh or play again.’
‘Sounds a bit like Château,’ said Veyrenc.
‘Yes, more than a bit, in fact.’
‘When stripped down – what I mean is,’ said Adamsberg, ‘when he’s without the covering of Robespierre – he does seem rather asexual.’
‘If Robespierre hadn’t got involved in the Revolution,’ said Danglard, ‘and had remained a small-town lawyer in Arras as he started off, he might well have been like our Château. Talented but petrified, full of exaltation, but gagged. Unable to approach a woman. And yet women fell for him in large numbers. But no, there are no descendants. None of the four Robespierre children ever had any. It’s always possible of course that Maximilien might have had the odd affair, or even just one, before he became “Robespierre”. But the historians doubt it.’
At this point, Danglard stopped speaking, and looked thoughtful, knitting his brows. He stiffened like a hesitant animal, suddenly in a state of alert.
‘Oh my God!’ he said. ‘Château! No, don’t say anything, I’m trying to get there.’
The commandant pressed his glass against his mouth, half closing his eyes.
‘Got it!’ he said. ‘There was this rumour. I had completely forgotten about it, it nearly slipped through my fingers, like the cats in your garden.’
‘We’re listening, commandant,’ said Adamsberg, taking a cigarette from his own packet. He would leave it for Zerk tomorrow and steal some more from him, because he preferred his son’s. But you don’t rob a sleeping man.
‘There was a persistent rumour about a secret son of Robespierre,’ Danglard said, ‘born in about 1790. And called . . . yes . . . Didier Château.’
‘Château!’ said Adamsberg, sitting up.
‘Like Château.’
‘Carry on, commandant.’
‘Indeed, he was called François Didier Château, François like our François. But the only “proof” of this relationship is one letter. In 1840, so when this François Didier Château was about fifty, the president of the Paris Appeal Court, no less, made a strong plea for him to be given an official position. And yet he was only a simple provincial innkeeper at the time. So how did François Didier Château, bastard and son of the people, manage to get to know the all-powerful Parisian lawyer? That’s the first puzzle. Anyway, in a letter to the prefect of his département, the president asked that this innkeeper should be made the postmaster of . . .’
Danglard rubbed his forehead, sat up and drank some white wine.
‘. . . of Château-Renard, in the Loiret,’ he said finally, sounding relieved at retrieving the name. ‘But better than that, the president said that his protégé was also recommended by various respectable people in the area, such as the justice of the peace, the mayor, the local landowners. So how did this innkeeper come by such advocates in high places?’
‘His reputation?’ said Veyrenc.
‘Exactly. Because in his reply, refusing to give him the job, the prefect – remember we are under the July Monarchy now . . . Can you pass me your laptop please, commissaire?’
‘Right,’ Danglard went on after a few minutes, ‘here we are: I have to tell you that the sieur Château whom you have recommended to me is the natural son of Robespierre. Note how firmly the prefect states this, without the shadow of a doubt. He is not responsible for his birth, I know, but unfortunately his origin has had a bad influence on his opinion and his behaviour, and he is extremely radical in both respects.’
Danglard put down the computer, and folded his arms, smiling and satisfied.
‘Is there any more, Danglard?’ asked Adamsberg, stunned, leaning towards his colleague as if towards Aladdin’s magic lamp.
‘There isn’t much else, but still. After Robespierre’s death, the mother of this François Didier had taken refuge in Château-Renard with her four-year-old son. Were there rumours? Was she afraid for the child? Was his life in danger? Quite possibly. After all, a few years earlier, people had been afraid that the child in the Temple was a threat. The threat of blood calling for vengeance. Like the prisoners in the tower at Le Creux.’
‘What do you mean, the child in the Temple?’ asked Adamsberg.
‘The dauphin, Louis XVI’s young son. The royal family were imprisoned in a building called the Temple.’
‘So what else do we know about this supposed child of Robespierre?’
‘There is a physical description of him when he was serving in the Napoleonic army. Nothing very conclusive, but it doesn’t actually contradict any link with the supposed father. What I mean to say is, he wasn’t six feet tall with a Roman nose and dark eyes. No, he was less than one metre sixty, had blue eyes and fair hair, a small nose and a small mouth.’
‘Yes, that’s vague.’
‘But there’s another puzzle. Five years after failing to get a job as postmaster, our innkeeper becomes director of public coaches. The state stagecoaches! A big deal,’ said Danglard, clicking his fingers. ‘Friends in high places again. That’s all, no more left to say.’
‘That’s a lot, Danglard. The prefect’s letter is very striking.’
‘Actually,’ Danglard said, ‘I don’t believe a word of it! I don’t believe Robespierre ever slept with a woman. What’s to say that this Denise Patillaut – that’s the mother’s name, it’s just come back to me – being pregnant and unmarried, didn’t boast of the famous father to deflect the opprobrium normally attached to an illegitimate birth? And then the Château family preserved the legend. Down to our François. If he reall
y is a descendant of François Didier.’
‘We do have another element,’ said Veyrenc. ‘His extraordinary resemblance to Robespierre.’
‘Well, we’ll never know,’ said Danglard, ‘and nor will the Château family. No DNA testing’s possible, because Robespierre’s remains were finally dispersed in the catacombs under Paris.’
‘But the most important thing isn’t whether it’s true,’ said Adamsberg, putting his feet back up on the firedog. ‘The key thing is that the Château family believed it. The grandfather must have clung to it through thick and thin, like his predecessors. They were keepers of the flame, priests of the cult. So what does our François believe then? That he’s a descendant of some “fanatical Robespierrists” as he put it to me, or that he is really a descendant of Robespierre himself, in flesh and blood? It would change things a lot.’
‘Château’s been lying through his teeth,’ commented Veyrenc.
‘If he does believe he’s a descendant,’ said Danglard, ‘and if he is our killer, I’ll say it again, why on earth did he write to us?’
‘He’s acting like his ancestor,’ said Veyrenc. ‘Robespierre didn’t kill people in secret like some “hypocritical” criminal from the stews of Paris. He’s doing it out in the open. Because these are exemplary deaths.’
‘There really must be a third cork at the bottom of this bottle,’ Adamsberg concluded quietly.
XXIII
HAVING BEEN SUMMONED by Adamsberg, François Château’s two fellow office holders in the association readily agreed to come to the Serious Crime Squad headquarters at 3 p.m. Meanwhile Froissy was looking into the archives of Château-Renard, to trace the descendants of François Didier Château, who had been a local innkeeper there in 1840, and Retancourt and her colleagues were still protecting the president.
NTR, Retancourt had texted. FC home 22h, supper, bed, lives alone. Now at work hotel 11h–17h. BTW, was assaulted rue Norevin by 3 dumb skinheads, seen as potential lay. Flattered. Justin witnessed. No serious fallout but kids at station in 18th bit worse 4 wear.