by Fred Vargas
‘That was the uncle talking, was it?’
‘The last bit, that’s right. And Hellebaud says: “When we advanced and came to the forest, it was getting dark and yet I could hear voices and the sound of armour and horses neighing, but I could neither see the shades nor understand the voices. After reaching home, we found the archbishop at his last extremity and he did not survive fourteen days after we heard those voices. People said he had been taken by spirits. They had been heard saying they were going to seize him.”’
‘Well, that doesn’t correspond to what Lina’s mother said,’ Adamsberg interrupted gruffly. ‘She didn’t say her daughter had heard voices, or horses, or seen shades. She simply saw this Michel Herbier and three other men, with the Riders in the Army.’
‘That’s because the mother didn’t dare tell you the whole story. And because in Ordebec there’s no need to explain. Up there, when someone says, “I’ve seen the Furious Army go past”, everyone knows perfectly well what it means. I need to tell you a bit more about the horsemen Lina saw, to explain why she probably doesn’t sleep at night. And if there’s one thing that’s sure, commissaire, it’s that her life in Ordebec will have become very tough. People will certainly be avoiding her like the plague. I think the mother came to talk to you above all to get some protection for her daughter.’
‘What did she see?’ asked Zerk, his cigarette hanging unsmoked from his lips.
‘Armel, this ancient cavalcade causing havoc in the countryside is damaged. The horses and their riders have no flesh and many of their limbs are missing. It’s an army of the dead, of the putrefied dead, an army of ghostly riders, wild-eyed and screaming, unable to get to heaven. Imagine that.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Zerk, pouring himself some more wine. ‘Can you excuse me a minute, commandant? It’s ten o’clock, I have to see to the pigeon. Instructions.’
‘From whom?’
‘Violette Retancourt.’
‘Well, you’d better do it then.’
Zerk set conscientiously to work with the wet crumbs, the water dropper and the bottle of tonic. He was getting used to it now, but when he sat down, he looked anxious.
‘He’s no better,’ he said sadly to his father. ‘That horrible kid.’
‘I’ll catch him, believe me,’ said Adamsberg serenely.
‘Are you really going to investigate some kid who’s been torturing a pigeon?’ asked Danglard, looking mildly surprised.
‘Absolutely, Danglard,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Why not?’
Danglard waited until he had Zerk’s full attention to continue the tale about the ghostly army. He was increasingly struck by the resemblance between this father and son, their expressions were so similar: vague, without sharpness or movement, their eyes shadowy and withdrawn. Except that in Adamsberg’s case there was sometimes a sudden flash of light like the sun illuminating strands of seaweed at low tide.
‘The Ghost Riders always carry along some living men or women, who are heard shrieking and lamenting in suffering and flames. They’re the ones the witness recognises. Just as Lina recognised this hunter and the three other individuals. The living people beg some good soul to atone for their terrible sins, so as to save them from torment. That’s what Gauchelin says.’
‘Stop, Danglard,’ Adamsberg begged him, ‘that’s enough about Gauchelin, we get the general idea.’
‘Well, it was you who asked me in the first place to come over and explain about the army,’ said Danglard in some irritation.
Adamsberg shrugged. Stories like this sent him to sleep and he would have preferred Danglard to keep it short. But he knew how happy it made his commandant to wallow in the telling, as if swimming in a lake of the finest white wine in the world. Especially when he had the admiring and excited attention of Zerk. Well, at least this excursion had wiped out Danglard’s fit of the sulks, since he seemed much more at ease with life now.
‘What Gauchelin actually wrote,’ Danglard went on with a smile, fully aware of Adamsberg’s weariness, ‘was: “Now behold an immense army of men on foot began to pass. They bore on their necks and shoulders cattle, clothing, objects of all kinds and diverse utensils which brigands habitually carry with them.” Great text, isn’t it?’ he said to Adamsberg with a deliberate smile.
‘Yeah, great,’ Adamsberg replied without thinking.
‘Sobriety and grace, it’s all there. Rather different from Veyrenc’s verses, eh, which are clumping doggerel.’
‘Not his fault, you know that. His grandmother knew Racine by heart, and she recited it to him all day, just lines and lines of Racine’s plays. Because she had rescued them from a fire at her school.’
‘She would have done better to rescue some books on manners and politeness and then teach her grandson about that.’
Adamsberg remained silent, without taking his eyes off Danglard. It was going to take some time for this problem to resolve itself. At present, it looked as if there was going to be a duel between the two men, or more precisely – because this was one of its causes – between the two intellectual heavyweights in the squad.
‘So, moving on,’ said Danglard, “‘All were lamenting and exhorting each other to move faster. The priest recognised in this throng several of his neighbours who had recently died and he heard them crying out about the great torment they were suffering because of their sins.” He also saw, and here we’re getting closer to your Lina, he saw also a certain Landri. “In court sessions and cases, this man gave judgment according only to his whims,” and according to witnesses, if he received gifts, he modified his sentences. “He was at the service of cupidity and deception rather than of justice.” And that is why Landri, Vicomte d’Ordebec, was seized by the Furious Army. To be a corrupt magistrate in those days was as serious as to commit bloodshed. Whereas nowadays, nobody cares.’
‘Yeah, right,’ breathed Zerk, who was uncritically in awe of the commandant.
‘Well, whatever the efforts of the witness when he goes home after seeing this terrifying vision, and however many Masses are said, the living persons he’s seen riding with the army die in the week following the vision. Or within three weeks at the outside. And that’s something you should remember about the little woman’s story, commissaire. All those who are “seized” by the Riders are certainly bastards beneath contempt, real villains, exploiters, corrupt judges or murderers. But their crime is not generally known to their contemporaries. They’ve remained unpunished. That’s why the army gets hold of them. When exactly did Lina see them go by?’
‘Over three weeks ago.’
‘In that case, there’s no doubt about it,’ Danglard said calmly, looking at his glass. ‘Yes, the man’s dead. Carried off by Hellequin’s Horde.’
‘His what?’ asked Zerk.
‘His horde, his servants if you like. Hellequin’s their overlord.’
Adamsberg approached the fireplace again, curious to hear a little more, and leaned against the brick hearth. The fact that the Riders singled out unpunished villains interested him. He suddenly realised that the other people whose names Lina had revealed would not be going about their lives very cheerfully in Ordebec. Everyone else would be watching them, asking themselves questions, wondering what crime these marked men had committed. You can tell yourself you don’t believe this kind of thing, but it’s difficult not to believe it. The pernicious idea digs a deep channel. It silently infiltrates the unavowed corridors of the mind, penetrates, and trickles through. You suppress the idea, it lies dormant for a while, then it returns.
‘How do they die, these people who are “seized”?’ he asked.
‘It depends. A sudden fever, or murder. If it isn’t some galloping disease or an accident, an earthly being may execute the implacable will of the Riders. So it’s murder, but one commanded by Lord Hellequin. You see?’
The two glasses of wine he had drunk – something he did only rarely – had softened Adamsberg’s bad mood. Now it seemed, on the contrary, that meeting a woman who
was able to see the ghostly cavalcade would be an unusual and distracting experience. And that the real-life consequences of a vision like that might indeed be frightening. He allowed himself another half-glass, and stole a cigarette from his son’s packet.
‘Is this legend peculiar to Ordebec?’ he asked.
Danglard shook his head. ‘No, Hellequin’s Horde is known throughout Northern Europe. In Scandinavia, in Flanders, all of France, and England. But it always travels along the same paths, and it’s been using the one through Bonneval for a thousand years or so.’
Adamsberg drew up a chair and sat down, stretching his legs, completing the little circle of three men around the hearth.
‘All the same,’ he began – and his sentence stopped there, for want of an exact thought to take it further.
Danglard had never got used to the cloudy vagueness of the commissaire’s mental processes, his lack of logical, overarching reason.
‘All the same -’ Danglard picked up his expression to complete it – ‘it’s just the story of some unfortunate young woman who is disturbed enough to have visions. And of a mother sufficiently frightened to believe in them and ask the police for help.’
‘All the same, it’s also the story of a woman who foretells several deaths. What if Michel Herbier hasn’t just gone off somewhere, and they find his body?’
‘Then your Lina would be in a very awkward spot. Who’s to say she didn’t kill Herbier herself? And then go round telling this story to confuse people?’
‘What do you mean “confuse” them?’ said Adamsberg, smiling. ‘Do you really believe that the horsemen in the Furious Army are credible suspects for the police? Do you think Lina is being Machiavellian, by pointing to a culprit who’s been riding round the area for a thousand years? Who are they going to arrest? Capitaine Hennequin?’
‘Hellequin. He’s a nobleman. Maybe a descendant of Odin.’
Danglard refilled his glass with a steady hand.
‘Just forget it, commissaire. Leave the limbless horsemen be, and this Lina person too.’
Adamsberg nodded his agreement and Danglard drank off the glass. When he had left, Adamsberg paced round the room with a blank expression.
‘Do you remember,’ he said to Zerk, ‘the first time you came here, there wasn’t a bulb in the overhead light?’
‘There still isn’t.’
‘Shall we replace it?’
‘You said it didn’t bother you whether there was a bulb working or not.’
‘That’s right. But there comes a time when you have to take action. A time when you tell yourself to replace the light bulb, and decide to call the captain of the Ordebec gendarmes tomorrow. And then you just have to do it.’
‘But Commandant Danglard’s quite right. That woman’s crazy. What are you going to do about her Furious Army?’
‘It’s not these ghosts riding round the countryside that bother me, Zerk. It’s that I don’t like people coming and warning me about some impending violent deaths, however they do it.’
‘Yes, I see. OK, I’ll look after the light bulb.’
‘Are you going to wait till eleven to feed the bird?’
‘I’ll stay down here tonight to feed it every hour. I’ll just take a nap in the armchair.’
Zerk touched the pigeon with the back of his fingers.
‘He doesn’t feel very warm, in spite of the heat.’
VI
At 6.15 next morning Adamsberg felt someone shaking him.
‘He’s opened his eyes! Come and see. Quick!’
Zerk still didn’t know what to call Adamsberg. Father? Too formal. Papa? He was rather old to do that. Jean-Baptiste? That might seem too familiar and inappropriate. So for the time being, he didn’t call him anything, and this absence caused embarrassing gaps in his sentences. Hollow spaces. But those hollow spaces perfectly summed up his twenty-eight years of absence.
The two men went downstairs and peered into the strawberry basket. Yes, things certainly looked better. Zerk took the dressings off the bird’s feet and applied antiseptic, while Adamsberg filtered the coffee.
‘What are we going to call him?’ asked Zerk as he wound bandages round the bird’s legs. ‘If he survives, we’ll have to give him a name. We can’t keep on saying “the pigeon”. Shall we call him Violette after your beautiful lieutenant?’
‘Not suitable. Nobody would ever be able to catch Retancourt and tie her ankles together.’
‘OK, let’s call him Hellebaud, like the guy in Danglard’s story. Do you think he revised his texts before he came over?’
‘Yes, he must have read them again.’
‘Yeah, but even so, how could he remember them like that, word for word?’
‘Don’t ask, Zerk. If you and I could really see inside Danglard’s head and take a walk round it, it would be more terrifying than any hullabaloo from the ghostly cavalcade.’
* * *
As soon as he arrived at the office, Adamsberg consulted the lists and called Capitaine Louis Nicolas Émeri at the Ordebec gendarmerie. He introduced himself, and sensed a certain hesitancy at the end of the line. Sounds reached him of murmured questions, answers being given, grunts, and chairs being moved round. The intrusion of Adamsberg into a gendarmerie often produced this immediate unease, as people wondered whether they should take his call or find some excuse not to. Louis Nicolas Émeri finally came back on the line.
‘What can I do for you, commissaire?’ he said distrustfully.
‘Capitaine Émeri, it’s about this missing man, whose freezer was emptied.’
‘Herbier?’
‘Yes. Any news of him?’
‘No, nothing. We visited his home and all the outbuildings. No sign of him.’
A pleasant voice, a little mannered, clear and courteous intonation.
‘Are you taking some interest in this case?’ the capitaine asked. ‘I would be amazed if you had been asked to look into a very ordinary missing-person matter.’
‘No, I haven’t been asked to look into it. I was simply wondering what you were thinking of doing about it.’
‘Applying the law, commissaire. Nobody has been in to ask us to launch a search, so this individual isn’t officially listed as missing. He went off on his moped, and I don’t have any authority to try and trace him. He’s got a perfect right to his freedom,’ Émeri insisted, rather stiffly. ‘We’ve followed regulations and run checks, no reports of a road accident and his moped hasn’t been sighted anywhere.’
‘What do you think about his going off like that, capitaine?’
‘Not all that surprising. They don’t like him round here, and some people absolutely hate him. What the freezer might perhaps indicate is that some individual successfully threatened him, because of his nasty hunting habits, which you may know about?’
‘Yes, females and young animals.’
‘It’s possible Herbier was intimidated, took fright and left without hanging about for more. Or maybe he had some sort of crisis of remorse, emptied the freezer himself and scarpered.’
‘Yes, why not?’
‘In any case, he has no relatives or friends in the district. That could be a reason to start again somewhere else. The house isn’t his, he rents it, and since he’d retired, he was getting a bit behind with the rent. Unless the landlord complains, my hands are tied. If you ask me, I think he’s done a moonlight flit.’
Émeri was open, cooperative, as Danglard had suggested, though he seemed to consider Adamsberg’s call some kind of distant entertainment.
‘That’s all quite possible, capitaine. Is there a Chemin de Bonneval in your district?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Where does it run?’
‘From a hamlet called Les Illiers about three kilometres from here, through part of the Forest of Alance. After the Croix de Bois, it changes its name.’
‘Do many people go there?’
‘In the daytime, yes. But people don’t go there at night as a rule. There are
a lot of old wives’ tales about it, you know the kind of thing.’
‘And you haven’t taken a look there, by any chance?’
‘If that’s a suggestion, Commissaire Adamsberg, I have one for you too. I suggest you have received a visit from someone who lives in Ordebec. Am I right?’
‘Quite right, capitaine.’
‘Who?’
‘I can’t tell you that. Someone who was worried.’
‘And I can well imagine what she told you. About some damned phantom army seen by Lina Vendermot, if you can call it “seeing”. And in among them, she saw this Herbier.’
‘Spot on,’ Adamsberg admitted.
‘You’re surely not going to get involved in this, are you, commissaire? Do you know why Lina saw Herbier with this blasted so-called army?’
‘No, why?’
‘Because she hates him. He’s an old friend of her father’s, probably the only one Vendermot had. Take my advice, commissaire, and forget you ever heard of it. That girl’s been completely crazy since she was a child, as everyone round here knows. And everyone gives her a wide berth, and the whole family, they’ve all got something odd about them. Though it’s not their fault. In fact, they’re more to be pitied than anything.’
‘And everyone knows she saw these Riders?’
‘Of course. Lina told her family and her boss.’
‘Who’s her boss?’
‘She works as a junior in the local solicitors’, Deschamps and Poulain.’
‘And who spread the word around?’
‘Oh, everyone. They’ve been talking about nothing else here for the past three weeks. Sensible people laugh about it, but fainter souls are frightened. Believe me, we can do without Lina having fun terrorising the local population. I bet you anything you like that nobody’s gone near the Chemin de Bonneval since then. Not even those who don’t believe a word of it. Myself included.’
‘Why not, capitaine?’
‘Don’t imagine I’m afraid of anything,’ – and here Adamsberg seemed to hear something of the Napoleonic marshal – ‘but I have no wish for people to go thinking Capitaine Émeri believes this stuff about the Furious Army and goes looking. And the same would go for you, so take my advice. This whole affair needs a lid put on it. But if your business ever brings you to Ordebec, I would of course always be very happy to see you.’