The Ghost Riders of Ordebec: A Commissaire Adamsberg Mystery

by Fred Vargas

  ‘Ello’ – in English as usual – ‘Capitaine Émeri has telephoned to ask for you, and he doesn’t sound too pleased. Come in, the coffee’s hot. You’ll catch cold outside with no shoes on.’

  ‘How did he know I was here?’ asked Adamsberg when he was back inside.

  ‘I suppose he didn’t buy the story of the cousin, and he put two and two together with reports of a Parisian getting off the bus yesterday. He said he didn’t like having some cop looking over his shoulder, and that I’d kept it from him. You’d think we’d been plotting, like in wartime. He might make trouble for you, you know.’

  ‘I’ll tell him the truth. I came to see what a grimweld looked like,’ said Adamsberg, helping himself to a large piece of buttered bread.

  ‘Exactly. And there was no hotel.’

  ‘You see.’

  ‘If you’ve been summoned to the gendarmerie, you won’t be able to catch the 8.50 train from Lisieux. You’ll have to get the next one, the 14.15 from Cérenay. But be careful. It takes at least half an hour by bus. Now, when you go out of here, you turn right, then right again and go straight ahead, about eight hundred metres towards the town centre. The gendarmerie is just behind the main square. Leave your bowl, I’ll clear up here.’

  Adamsberg walked through the fields to the gendarmerie, which, oddly enough, had been painted bright yellow as if it were a holiday home.

  ‘Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg,’ he said to the portly officer on the reception desk. ‘Your capitaine’s expecting me.’

  ‘Yeah, he is,’ said the officer, looking at him with an apprehensive air, as if he wouldn’t like to be in his boots. ‘Down the corridor, sir, office at the end. The door’s open.’

  Adamsberg stopped in the doorway and for a few seconds observed Capitaine Émeri, who was pacing up and down in his office, looking on edge and tense, but very elegant in a close-fitting uniform. A handsome man, the wrong side of forty, with regular features, a full head of hair that was still blond, and cutting a slim figure in his military jacket with epaulettes.

  ‘What do you want?’ Émeri asked as he turned and saw Adamsberg. ‘Who told you you could come in here?’

  ‘You yourself, capitaine. You summoned me first thing this morning.’

  ‘Adamsberg?’ said Émeri, quickly eyeing the commissaire, who not only wore his usual casual clothes, but had not been able to shave or comb his hair.

  ‘Apologies for being unshaven,’ said Adamsberg, shaking hands. ‘But I wasn’t expecting to stay the night in Ordebec.’

  ‘Sit down, commissaire,’ said Émeri, still unable to take his eyes off Adamsberg.

  He was having difficulty reconciling Adamsberg’s reputation, good or bad, with such a small man, and such a modest appearance: with his dark complexion and black clothes he appeared out of place, unclassifiable or at any rate nonconformist. Émeri looked for the right expression without really finding it, finally settling on a smile which was as pleasant as it was distant. The aggressive speech he had been thinking of delivering had somehow got lost in his perplexity, as if coming up not so much against a wall as against an absence of obstacles. And he couldn’t see how to attack or even get to grips with an absence of obstacle. So it was Adamsberg who broke the silence.

  ‘Léone told me you were displeased, capitaine,’ he said, choosing his words. ‘But I think there’s been a misunderstanding. In Paris yesterday it was thirty-six degrees, and I had just arrested an old man who had killed his wife by choking her with bread.’

  ‘With bread?’

  ‘By pushing a couple of handfuls down her throat. And the idea of being able to take a walk in the cool of a grimweld appealed to me. Perhaps you can understand.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘I was picking blackberries and eating them.’ Adamsberg noticed that his hands still bore the stains. ‘I hadn’t expected to come across Léone. She was waiting for her dog and sitting by the path. And she hadn’t expected to find Herbier’s body by the chapel. Out of respect from one professional for another, I didn’t go to the crime scene. And since the last train had gone, she offered me hospitality for the night. I wasn’t expecting to find myself smoking a Havana cigar and drinking some excellent Calvados by her fire, but that’s how the evening ended. She’s a splendid woman, as she might say of someone else, but more than that.’

  ‘Do you know how this splendid woman comes to be smoking genuine Cuban cigars?’ said Émeri, smiling for the first time. ‘Did she tell you her full name?’

  ‘No, she didn’t.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me. Léo’s full name is Léone Marie de Valleray, Comtesse d’Ordebec. Some coffee, commissaire?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  * * *

  Léo, the Comtesse d’Ordebec. Living in a tumbledown old farmhouse, having kept it as an inn, slurping down her soup and spitting out strands of tobacco. Capitaine Émeri came back with two cups, smiling broadly now, allowing the good-natured and hospitable side of his character described by Léo to appear up front.

  ‘You’re surprised?’

  ‘Yes, rather. She doesn’t seem well off. And Léo told me the Comte d’Ordebec was very rich.’

  ‘She’s the count’s first wife, but it goes back sixty years. They were young, they were carried away. But the marriage caused such a scandal in the count’s family that heavy pressure was exerted and there was a divorce two years later. People say they went on seeing each other for a long time. But then they saw reason and went their separate ways. That’s enough about Léo,’ said Émeri, ceasing to smile. ‘When you arrived on that path yesterday, you didn’t know anything? What I mean is: when you spoke to me on the phone from Paris in the morning, you didn’t know Herbier was lying dead by the chapel?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. Do you often do that, leave your squad to go walking in a forest at the first opportunity?’

  ‘Yes, often.’

  Émeri took a mouthful of coffee and looked up. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. And there’d been all that bread in the morning.’

  ‘What do your officers have to say about that?’

  ‘Among my officers, I have a hypersomniac who goes to sleep without warning, a zoologist whose speciality is fish, freshwater fish in particular, a woman with bulimia who keeps disappearing in search of food, an old heron who knows a lot of myths and legends, a walking encyclopaedia who drinks white wine non-stop – and the rest to match. They can’t allow themselves to stand on ceremony with me.’

  ‘And that lot get some work done, do they?’

  ‘Yes, plenty.’

  ‘What did Léo say when you met her?’

  ‘She just said “Ello”, that way she does. And she already knew I was a cop and just off the train from Paris.’

  ‘Not surprising – she’s more gifted at sniffing out information than her dog. She’d be shocked, though, at my calling it a gift. She has her own theory about the combined effect of details on each other. She’s always quoting this story about the movement of a butterfly’s wing in New York leading to an explosion in Bangkok. I don’t know where that comes from.’

  Adamsberg shook his head, being equally ignorant.

  ‘Léo goes on about the butterfly’s wing,’ Émeri continued. ‘She says the important thing is to spot the moment it moves. Not when everything explodes later. And I have to say, she’s pretty good at it. Lina sees these Riders go past. That’s the butterfly’s wing. Lina’s boss tells other people, Léo hears about it, Lina’s mother takes fright, some priest gives her your name – I’m right, aren’t I? – she gets the train to Paris, her story intrigues you, the temperature in Paris is thirty-six degrees, the woman gets killed with a mouthful of bread, the cool walk in the grimweld tempts you, Léo is waiting on the path, and here you are sitting in front of me.’

  ‘That isn’t exactly an explosion.’

  ‘But Herbier’s death is. That’s when Lina’s dream explodes into reality. As if the dream made a wolf come
out of the woods.’

  ‘Lord Hellequin designates the victims, and someone thinks he’s had the go-ahead to kill them? Is that what you think? That Lina’s vision has pushed a murderer to act?’

  ‘It isn’t just a vision, it’s a legend that’s been current in Ordebec for a thousand years. You can bet that more than three-quarters of the people here are terrified of this parade of dead horsemen. They’d all be panic-stricken if their name was announced by Hellequin. But they wouldn’t say so. I can assure you that people tend to keep well away from the grimweld at night, except for a few lads who dare each other to go there. Spending a night on the Chemin de Bonneval is a sort of initiation rite, to prove you’re a man. A kind of medieval ritual. But there’s a big difference between all that and someone believing in it enough to assassinate someone at Hellequin’s bidding. No. But I do admit one thing. It’s fear of the Riders that’s behind Herbier’s death. Note that I said death, not murder.’

  ‘Léo said this man had been shot.’

  Émeri nodded. Now that his plans for confrontation had melted away his bearing and face had lost their pomposity. The change was striking and Adamsberg thought again about the dandelion. When it’s closed at night, it’s nondescript, with just a hint of yellow, but in the daytime it’s a rich, attractive, bright flower. Still, unlike Madame Vendermot, Capitaine Émeri was anything but a fragile flower. Adamsberg was still trying to remember the name for the little parachutes, so he missed the beginning of Émeri’s reply.

  ‘…it was his gun, yes, a sawn-off shotgun, a Darne. Herbier was a brutal hunter, he liked to scatter the pellets and kill a female and her young with one shot. From the impact, which was at very close quarters, it’s quite possible he held it in front of him with the barrel pointing at his forehead and pulled the trigger.’

  ‘But why would he do that?’

  ‘For the reasons people have said. Because of the appearance of the Ghost Riders. You can guess the chain of events. Herbier hears about the prediction. He’s a bad character and he knows it. He takes fright and something clicks in his head. He empties out his freezers himself, as if to deny all his hunting atrocities, and he kills himself. Because they say that someone who enacts justice on himself won’t go to hell with Hellequin’s army.’

  ‘Why did you say he had the barrel pointing at his forehead, but not touching it?’

  ‘The shot was fired from at least ten centimetres.’

  ‘It would have been more logical to put the muzzle directly against his forehead.’

  ‘Not necessarily. It depends what he wanted to see. The muzzle pointing at him. So far we’ve found only his own prints on the gun.’

  ‘But you could equally well suppose that someone else thought they would take advantage of Lina’s prediction to get rid of Herbier, disguising it as suicide.’

  ‘But you can’t seriously imagine someone would go to the lengths of emptying his freezers? Round here there are more hunters than animal rights campaigners. And wild boar are a damned pest, they cause terrible damage. No, Adamsberg, a gesture like that must be some sort of penance for his crimes, an expiation.’

  ‘What about the moped? Why would he hide it in the hazel bushes?’

  ‘It wasn’t hidden, just pushed in under the bushes out of the way, a sort of reflex, I suppose.’

  ‘And why would he have gone to the chapel to kill himself?’

  ‘That bit makes perfect sense. In the legend, the people who are seized are often found near some abandoned religious site. You know what “seized” means?’

  ‘Yes,’ Adamsberg repeated.

  ‘So, they go to some site which is cursed, in Hellequin’s domain. Herbier kills himself there, he’s anticipating his destiny, and he’ll escape punishment because of his contrition.’

  Adamsberg had been sitting too long on his chair and his legs were itching with impatience.

  ‘Is it all right if I walk around a bit in here? I can’t sit still too long.’

  An expression of total sympathy appeared on the capitaine’s face. ‘Nor can I!’ he exclaimed, with the intense happiness of someone who finds another person shares their own torment. ‘It makes my stomach clench, I get nervous electricity in little bubbles bouncing round inside me. Apparently my ancestor, Napoleon’s marshal, Davout, was a man of great nervous energy too. I have to walk at least a couple of hours a day to get rid of it. Let’s go for a walk through the streets. Ordebec’s a pretty place, you’ll see.’

  The capitaine proceeded to drag his colleague through the town’s narrow passageways, between ancient wattle-and-daub walls, low houses with exposed beams, abandoned barns and gnarled apple trees.

  ‘Léo didn’t agree,’ Adamsberg was saying. ‘She seemed convinced that Herbier had been killed.’

  ‘Does she say why?’

  Adamsberg shrugged. ‘No, she seems to know it because she knows it, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with her. She’s so quick-witted that as the years go by she thinks she’s always right. If she were to be decapitated, Ordebec would lose a lot of its brains, that’s true. But the older she gets, the less explanation she gives. She likes her reputation and she fosters it. She really didn’t tell you any details?’

  ‘No. She said Herbier was no great loss. That she wasn’t shocked when she came across him, because she already knew he was dead. She told me more about some fox and a little bird than about what she’d seen up at the chapel.’

  ‘The coal tit that fell in love with the three-legged fox?’

  ‘That’s right. And she talked about her dog and the bitch on the farm, about St Antony, about her guest house, about Lina and her family, and about how she pulled you out of a pond.’

  ‘That’s quite true,’ said Émeri with a smile. ‘I owe her my life and it’s my earliest memory. They call her my “water mother” because she gave me a new lease of life after pulling me out of the Jeanlin pond, like Venus from the waves. My parents idolised Léo after that, and I was ordered never to touch a hair of her head. It was in winter, and Léo came out of the water carrying me, chilled to the bone. They say she took three days to get warm again, and then she developed pleurisy and nearly died.’

  ‘She didn’t tell me about the chill. Or that she was married to the count.’

  ‘She never shows off, she’s just happy quietly imposing her views and that’s already quite enough. No lad from hereabouts would dare shoot at her three-legged fox. Except Herbier. The fox lost his paw and tail in one of Herbier’s wretched traps. But he never managed to finish him off.’

  ‘Because Léo killed him before he could kill the fox?’

  ‘She’d be quite capable of it,’ said Émeri with a grin.

  ‘Are you going to keep a watch on the next person who’s supposed to be seized? The glazier?’

  ‘He’s not a glazier, he makes stained-glass windows.’

  ‘Yes, Léo said he was very gifted.’

  ‘Glayeux’s a hard bastard, not afraid of anyone. Not the sort to worry about the Furious Army. But if by some chance he did take fright, we can’t do anything about that. You can’t stop someone killing himself if he’s determined.’

  ‘But what if you’re wrong, capitaine? What if someone did kill Herbier? That someone might kill Glayeux too. That’s what I mean.’

  ‘You’re very obstinate, Adamsberg.’

  ‘So are you, capitaine. Because you haven’t got any other answers. Suicide would be a handy solution.’

  Émeri slowed down, then stopped and took out his cigarettes.

  ‘Explain what you mean, commissaire.’

  ‘Herbier’s disappearance was reported over a week ago. And except for going and checking his house, you haven’t done anything.’

  ‘That’s the law, Adamsberg. If Herbier decided to take off without telling anyone, I had no right to go chasing after him.’

  ‘Even after the sighting of the Riders?’

  ‘That kind of idiocy has no place in a police investigation.�
��

  ‘Yes, it does. You said yourself that the Riders are behind all this. Whether someone else killed him or whether he killed himself. You knew he’d been named by Lina, and you didn’t do anything. And then when they find the body, it’s a bit late to start looking for clues.’

  ‘You think I’m going to get into trouble, do you?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  Émeri pulled deeply on his cigarette, let out the smoke in a sigh, and leaned against the old wall along the side of the road.

  ‘All right,’ he admitted. ‘Perhaps I will get into trouble. Or maybe not. You can’t be held responsible for a suicide.’

  ‘That’s why you want to hang on to the idea. It’s less likely to be called negligent. But if it is a murder, then you’re in it up to your neck.’

  ‘There’s nothing to indicate murder.’

  ‘Why didn’t you try and find Herbier?’

  ‘OK, I’ll tell you. Because of the Vendermot family. Because of Lina. And her degenerate brothers. We don’t get on, and I didn’t want to play their little game. I stand for order, they stand for anarchy. It won’t work. I’ve had to tell Martin off several times, for poaching. And the oldest brother, Hippolyte. He trained a gun on a group of hunters, he made them take off their clothes, he took away their shotguns and threw the lot in the river. He couldn’t pay the fine, so he was jailed for twenty days. They’d all love to see me go down in flames. That’s why I didn’t take it any further. So as not to fall into their trap.’

  ‘What trap?’

  ‘It’s quite simple. Lina Vendermot pretends to have a vision, and Herbier disappears. They’re all in it together. I start searching for Herbier, and they immediately complain to the authorities that I’m exceeding my powers and infringing their liberty. Lina’s studied law, she knows the rules. So let’s suppose I persist and go on looking for Herbier. The complaint goes up to the top. One fine day Herbier turns up again, right as rain; he adds his voice to theirs, and also lodges a complaint against me. I get a reprimand or a transfer.’