by Fred Vargas
A well-informed lady?
If certain gentlemen of the press can’t resist recording the antics of some poor devil who gets his kicks drawing chalk circles round bottle tops, like a five-year-old, that is, alas, a sign of the weird idea our colleagues have of their calling. But when serious scientists poke their noses in, it hardly bodes well for French research. First we had the eminent psychiatrist, Vercors-Laury, writing a column about this sad individual. But he’s not alone. Gossip in the quartier suggests that Mathilde Forestier, the world-famous underwater specialist, has also decided to start analysing this pathetic exhibitionist. She has apparently made it her business to get to know him, and even to accompany him on his grotesque nocturnal perambulations. That would make her the only person who has penetrated the ‘mystery of the chalk circles’. A brilliant achievement, wouldn’t you say? She apparently revealed as much, one evening in the Dodin Bouffant, at the launch of her latest book, when serious quantities of alcohol were consumed. Naturally, our arrondissement has prided itself on having the celebrated Madame Forestier as one of our long-standing residents, but would she not do better to spend her government grant on chasing her beloved fish instead of running after an imbecile who may be a criminal, or a deranged lunatic, a man whom her childish imprudence might even attract to our district, which has so far been spared any circles? Some fish are deadly poisonous, even on the slightest contact. Madame Forestier knows this perfectly well: far be it from us to teach her to suck eggs. But what does she know about the poisonous fish that might roam at large in the city streets? By encouraging this kind of behaviour, is she not stirring up trouble in the depths of society? Why is she trying to hook this creature and drag him into our arrondissement, something that must distress all law-abiding inhabitants?
‘So,’ said Danglard, putting the newspaper down on the desk, ‘the person who called you must have heard about the murder yesterday, or this morning, and contacted you right away. Someone with prompt reactions who doesn’t like Madame Forestier, it would seem.’
‘What do you conclude, then?’ asked Adamsberg, still sitting sideways and grinding his jaw.
‘I conclude that, thanks to this article, quite a few people have known for some time that Madame Forestier was in possession of certain little secrets. They might want to get their hands on that knowledge themselves.’
‘Why would they want to do that?’
‘Optimistic hypothesis: to provide copy for the newspapers. Pessimistic hypothesis: to bump off their mother-in-law, stick her inside a chalk circle and make everyone think it was the work of the latest maniac in Paris. The idea could have crossed the minds of a few benighted individuals too cowardly to risk an attack in the open. It offered them a golden opportunity, and all they had to do was find out the habits of the chalk circle man. After a few drinks, Mathilde Forestier would be an ideal source of information.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then one might tend to ask, for instance, how it happened that Monsieur Charles Reyer went to live in Mathilde’s house a few days before the murder.’
Danglard was like that. He didn’t mind coming out with remarks of this kind, in front of the people he was accusing. Adamsberg couldn’t bring himself to be so direct, and he found it useful that Danglard had no qualms about hurting people’s feelings. Qualms that made Adamsberg say anything except what he was really thinking. Which in police matters produced unexpected, and not always immediately helpful, results.
After Danglard’s words there was a long silence. Danglard was still pressing his finger to his forehead.
Charles had suspected that there might be a trap, but all the same he couldn’t help giving a start. In the dark inside his head, he imagined Adamsberg and Danglard both looking at him.
‘Very well,’ said Charles, after a pause. ‘I did start renting from Mathilde Forestier last week. Now you know as much as I do. I have no wish to answer your questions or to defend myself. I don’t understand anything about this beastly business of yours.’
‘Nor do I,’ said Adamsberg.
Danglard was annoyed. He would have preferred Adamsberg not to admit his ignorance in front of Reyer. The commissaire had started scribbling on the paper resting on his knee. It was provoking to see Adamsberg taking that casual, vague and passive attitude, not asking any questions to move the situation on.
‘All the same,’ Danglard insisted, ‘why did you want to rent her apartment?’
‘Bloody hell!’ said Charles, exploding with anger. ‘It was Mathilde who came to find me in my hotel to offer me the flat, not the other way round.’
‘But you chose to go and sit by her in the café, before that, didn’t you? And you told her, for some reason, that you were looking for a place to rent.’
‘If you were blind, you’d know it’s beyond my powers to recognise someone sitting on a café terrace.’
‘I think you’re capable of doing plenty that’s so-called beyond your powers.’
‘That’ll do,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Where is Mathilde Forestier now?’
‘She’s off tracking some guy with a bee in his bonnet about the rotation of sunflowers.’
‘Since we can’t do anything and we don’t know anything,’ Adamsberg said, ‘let’s drop it.’
This argument appalled Danglard. He suggested that they search for Mathilde, in order to find out more straight away. They could post a man outside her house to wait for her, or send someone to the Oceanographical Institute.
‘No, Danglard, we’re not going to bother with that. She’ll be back. What we will do, though, is post some men tonight at the metro stations of Saint-Georges, Pigalle and Notre-Dame-de Lorette, with a description of the chalk circle man. That will keep our consciences clear. And then we’ll wait. The man who smells of rotten apples will start his night-time walks again – it’s inevitable. So we’ll wait. But we haven’t any hope of catching him. He’s bound to alter his itinerary.’
‘But what’s the point of our worrying about the circles if he isn’t the killer?’ said Danglard, getting up and pacing awkwardly round the room. ‘The chalk circle man! Again! But surely we don’t give a damn about the poor sod! It’s whoever’s using him that we’re after!’
‘Not me,’ said Adamsberg. ‘So we carry on looking for the circle man.’
Danglard stood up again, wearily. It would take time to get accustomed to Adamsberg.
Charles could sense all the confusion in the room. He perceived Danglard’s vague discomfiture and Adamsberg’s indecision.
‘Which one of us is going into this blind, you or me, commissaire?’ asked Charles.
Adamsberg smiled.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘After the anonymous phone call, I suppose you’ll be wanting me to “help you with your inquiries”,’ Charles went on.
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Adamsberg. ‘But anyway there’s nothing to stop you going to work as usual. Don’t worry.’
‘It’s not my work that worries me, commissaire.’
‘I know. It was just an expression.’
Charles heard the sound of pencil on paper. He imagined that the commissaire must be drawing while he was talking.
‘I don’t know how a blind man could manage to kill someone. But I’m a suspect now, aren’t I?’
Adamsberg made an evasive gesture.
‘Let’s say you picked the wrong moment to go and live at Mathilde Forestier’s house. Let’s say that, for whatever reason, we’ve recently become interested in her and what she knows, that is if she’s told us everything, which may not be the case. Danglard can explain all that to you. Danglard’s incredibly intelligent, you’ll see. It’s a great comfort to work with him. Let’s also say that you seem to be a rather awkward customer, which doesn’t help.’
‘What makes you think that?’ asked Charles, with a smile – a nasty smile, Adamsberg thought.
‘Madame Forestier says so.’
For the first time, Charles felt worri
ed.
‘Yes, that’s what she says,’ Adamsberg repeated. ‘“He’s a bad-tempered so-and-so, but that doesn’t bother me” is what she said. And you like her too. Because being in touch with Mathilde, Monsieur Reyer, would do you a power of good, it would bring back shining black eyes, like patent leather. She’d do plenty of people good. Danglard doesn’t like her, though – no, Danglard, you don’t. He’s taken against her, for reasons that he’ll tell you about. He’s even tempted to cast doubts on her good faith. He’s already finding it odd that our Mathilde turned up at the police station to talk to me about the chalk circle man with or without a smell of apples, long before the murder. And he’s quite right. It is odd. But then, everything’s odd about this case. Even the rotten apples. Anyway, the only thing we can do now is wait.’
Adamsberg started doodling again.
‘All right,’ said Danglard. ‘We’ll wait.’
He was not in a good mood. He saw Charles to the street.
Returning to the corridor, he was still pressing a finger to his forehead. Yes, it was true: because he had this long body in the shape of a skittle he resented Mathilde, who was the kind of woman who’d never go to bed with someone whose body was that shape. So, yes, he would have liked her to be guilty of something. And this business with the newspaper article certainly landed her in it. That would interest the kids, for sure. But he had sworn, since his mistake about the girl in the jeweller’s shop, never to proceed unless he had evidence and hard facts, not some half-baked hunch that wormed its way into your head. So he would have to tread carefully with Mathilde.
Charles remained on edge all morning. His fingers trembled a little as they ran over the Braille perforations.
Mathilde was on edge too. She had just lost sight of the sunflower man. Stupid, really – he had jumped into a taxi. She had found herself standing on the Place de l’Opéra, disappointed and disoriented. If it had been in the first half of the week, she would have sat down immediately and ordered a glass of beer. But since it was the second half, there was no point getting too upset. Should she pick someone at random to follow? Why not? On the other hand, it was almost midday and she wasn’t far from Charles’s office. She could call and take him out to lunch. She had been a bit brusque with him that morning, with the excuse that during a section two you could say what you liked, and she felt rather bad about that now.
She caught Charles by the shoulder just as he came out of the building in the rue Saint-Marc.
‘I’m hungry,’ said Mathilde.
‘Good thing you found me,’ said Charles. ‘All the cops in the world are thinking about you now. You were the subject of a minor denunciation this morning.’
Mathilde had settled herself on a banquette at the back of the restaurant, and nothing in her voice indicated to Charles that this item of news disturbed her.
‘All the same,’ Charles insisted, ‘it wouldn’t take much for the police to start thinking you’re the person best placed to help the murderer. You’re probably the only one who could have told him the time and place to find a circle that would suit his plan to kill someone. Worse still, you could even become a murder suspect yourself. With your bad habits, Mathilde, you’re going to be in deep trouble.’
Mathilde laughed. She ordered several dishes. She really was hungry.
‘Well, that’s just fine,’ said Mathilde. ‘Strange things happen to me all the time. It’s my fate. So one more or less isn’t going to make any difference. The night of the Dodin Bouffant was surely in a section two of the week, and I must have had too much to drink and talked a lot of nonsense. I don’t remember a lot about that evening, to be honest. You’ll see – Adamsberg will understand, he won’t go chasing the impossible all over the world.’
‘I think you’re underestimating him, Mathilde.’
‘I don’t think I am.’
‘Yes, you are. Plenty of people underestimate him, though probably not Danglard, and certainly not me. I know, Mathilde, Adamsberg has this voice that lulls you to sleep, it charms you and makes you drop your guard, but he never relaxes at all. His voice has distant pictures and vague thoughts in it, but it’s leading inexorably to some conclusion, although he may be the last to suspect that himself.’
‘Have you finished? Is it all right if I eat my lunch?’
‘Of course. But listen to what I’m saying: Adamsberg doesn’t attack, but he transforms you, he weaves his way round you, he comes at you from behind, he leads you on, and in the end he disarms you. He can’t be caught out and tracked down, not even by you, Queen Mathilde. He’ll always get away, because of his gentleness and his sudden indifference. So to you or me or anyone else, he can be a good thing or a bad thing, like the sun in spring. It all depends how you expose yourself to it. And for a murderer he’d be a formidable enemy – you ought to realise that. If I’d killed someone I’d prefer to have a cop chasing me whose reactions I could predict, not one who’s as hard to grasp as water, then suddenly turns to stone. He flows like a stream, he resists like a rock, he’s on his way to his destination, the estuary. And a murderer could easily drown in that.’
‘A destination? An estuary? Don’t be silly, that’s ridiculous,’ said Mathilde.
‘Maybe his destination is the lever that lifts up the whole blasted world. Or the blasted eye of the blasted cyclone – another eye for you, Mathilde. Or some outpost of the universe where knowledge exists, in the mists of eternity. Ever thought of that, Mathilde?’
Mathilde had stopped eating.
‘You really impress me, Charles. You come out with all this stuff like a book, but you just listened to him for an hour this morning.’
‘I’ve developed the sense instincts of a dog,’ said Charles bitterly. ‘A dog that hears what people don’t hear, and smells what they can’t smell. Some wretched hound that will travel a thousand kilometres as the crow flies, just to get back home. So I go about things a different way from Adamsberg, but I’ve got some knowledge too. That’s all we have in common. I believe I’m the most intelligent person on the planet, and my voice is like a metal-cutter. It slices things up, it twists them and my brain operates like a machine, sorting out data. And for me there are no destinations or estuaries any more. I don’t have the strength or purity now even to imagine that cyclones have eyes. I’ve given up all that, I’m too tempted by the nasty little tricks and ways I can find every day to compensate for what I can’t do. But Adamsberg doesn’t need any distractions in order to stay alive, do you understand what I’m saying? He just gets on with his life, letting it all swill about, big ideas and little details, impressions and realities, thoughts and words. He combines the belief of a child with the philosophy of an old man. But he’s real and he’s dangerous.’
‘You do impress me,’ repeated Mathilde. ‘I can’t say I’ve dreamed of having a son like you, because he would have driven me up the wall, but you impress me. I’m starting to see why you don’t give a damn about fish.’
‘You’re probably the one who’s right, Mathilde, because you find something to love in slimy creatures with round eyes that aren’t even good to eat. But it wouldn’t bother me if all the fish in the sea were dead.’
‘You certainly have the gift of giving me impossible ideas for a section two of the week. You’ve even upset yourself – look, you’re sweating. Don’t get so steamed up about Adamsberg. He’s a nice guy, isn’t he?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Charles. ‘He’s a nice guy all right. He says nice things, does Adamsberg. And I can’t understand why that doesn’t worry you.’
‘You do impress me, Charles,’ Mathilde repeated.
IX
STRAIGHT AFTER LUNCH, ADAMSBERG DECIDED TO TRY SOMETHING.
Inspired by the little diary they had found on the dead woman, he bought a small notebook that he could slip into his back pocket. So that if he was struck by some interesting thought he could write it down. Not that he was hoping for any miracles. But he told himself that when the notebook was full, the overall eff
ect might be relevant and perhaps provide him with some insight into himself.
He felt that he had never been living so much from day to day as at this moment. He had already noted on many occasions that the more pressing anxieties he had, harassing him with their urgency and seriousness, the more his brain seemed to want to play dead. In response, he did his best to live by concentrating on little things, as if he were some stranger who cared about nothing, wiping out any thoughts and qualities, keeping his spirit a blank, his heart empty and his mind fixed entirely on short wavelengths. This state, a stretch of indifference which discouraged all those around him, was well-known to him now, but he found it hard to control. Because when he was in this uncaring mode, having rid himself of all the worries of the planet, he felt calm and on the whole happy. But as the days went by, such indifference insidiously caused internal damage so that everything became colourless. People began to become transparent to him, all identical, since they were so distant from him. And this lasted until, coming to some end point in his informal disgust with the world, he felt that he himself had no density, no importance at all, letting himself be ferried along by other people’s daily lives, being all the readier to carry out a host of little kindnesses since he had become completely detached from them. His body’s mechanisms and his automatic responses enabled him to get through the day, but he wasn’t there for anyone. At this stage, almost out of his own existence, Adamsberg felt no anxiety, had no thoughts. This disinterest for the world did not even have the panic-inducing fear of nothingness. His spiritual apathy did not bring with it the dread of ennui.
But God in heaven, it had happened very quickly this time.
He could perfectly well remember the extreme distress which only yesterday had struck him when he had imagined that Camille was dead. And now even the word ‘distress’ seemed meaningless to him. What could distress mean? That Camille was dead? But what did that matter now? Madeleine Châtelain had had her throat cut, the chalk circle man was still on the loose, Christiane was pusuing him, Danglard was depressed, and he had to deal with the whole bloody mess, but what was the point?