by Fred Vargas
‘Yes, a little land shrimp. It has fourteen legs. Insects have six legs. That’s how you know that spiders, which have eight legs, aren’t insects either.’
‘Are you kidding me? Are you saying spiders are land shrimps too?’
As Veyrenc explained the paths of science to Adamsberg, he wondered why the commissaire hadn’t reacted more strongly to the news that Hippolyte and Lina might be the natural children of Valleray.
‘No, they’re arachnids.’
‘Well, it alters something,’ said Adamsberg, starting to walk slowly along the path, ‘but what?’
‘It doesn’t really alter one’s view of a woodlouse. It’s a non-edible crustacean, that’s all. One wonders what Martin might do with them.’
‘I’m talking about Valleray. If a man has a birthmark like that, and someone else does too, does that necessarily mean they’re related?’
‘Yes, absolutely. And Danglard’s description was precise. Two centimetres, port wine colour, long oval, with something like two antennae at the top.’
‘A crustacean then.’
‘Yes. And if you add that to the fact that Valleray was very resistant to anyone seeing him without his shirt, you might deduce that he knew very well the birthmark would give him away. So he knows that two of the Vendermot children must be his.’
‘But they don’t know, Louis. Hippo said to me, and he was bitterly sincere, that the only regret he had in life was being the son of the biggest bastard in the district, i.e. his godawful father, Vendermot.’
‘So that means the count had taken care that they shouldn’t know. He looked after them when they were small, he got Léo to educate them, he rescued young Hippo when he was under threat, but he refuses to recognise his children. Letting them live in poverty with their mother,’ said Veyrenc drily.
‘Fear of scandal, need for stable succession. That doesn’t make Valleray look good at all.’
‘But you liked him?’
‘Like isn’t strong enough. I found him sincere, determined. Generous, indeed.’
‘Whereas he’s really cunning and cowardly.’
‘Or perhaps glued to the rock of his ancestors without daring to budge. Like an anemone. No, please don’t tell me what anemones are. Molluscs, I suppose.’
‘No, cnidarians.’
‘OK,’ Adamsberg conceded, ‘a cnidarian. Just reassure me Hellebaud’s a bird, and things will be fine.’
‘Yes, he’s a bird. Or at least he was. Since he’s mistaken your shoe for his natural habitat, things have changed.’
Adamsberg took one of Veyrenc’s cigarettes and pursued his slow pacing.
‘After Valleray married Léo, when they were very young,’ he said, ‘they gave in to pressure from the Valleray clan, and he divorced her to marry a woman of higher status, who was already widowed with a child.’
‘So Denis de Valleray isn’t his son?’
‘No, Louis, and everyone knows that, he’s his mother’s son, and the count adopted him when he was three.’
‘No other children?’
‘Not officially. The gossip is that the count is sterile, but now we know that isn’t true. Imagine when Ordebec finds out that he had two children with a maidservant.’
‘Was the Vendermots’ mother employed at the chateau?’
‘No, but she worked for about fifteen years in a sort of chateau hotel not far from Ordebec. She must have been an irresistible girl if she had breasts like Lina’s. Have I already mentioned them to you?’
‘Yes, you did, and I’ve even seen them. I met her coming out of her office.’
‘And?’ said Adamsberg, glancing quickly at his lieutenant.
‘Like you, I looked.’
‘And?’
‘Well, you’re right. Mouth-watering.’
‘The count must have met the young Madame Vendermot at this chateau place. Result: two children. But he had nothing to fear from the mother. She wasn’t going to tell everyone that Hippo and Lina were his children. Because from what we know of her husband, he could have killed her, and the kids as well.’
‘She could have spoken up after his death.’
‘Question of dishonour,’ said Adamsberg, shaking his head. ‘She had her reputation to protect.’
‘So Valleray could feel safe. Except for the birthmark that could give him away. But what has this got to do with Lord Hellequin?’
‘Well, in the end, nothing. The count has two illegitimate children, OK. Nothing to do with the three murders. I’m tired of thinking, Louis, I’m going to sit under the apple tree.’
‘It might rain on you.’
‘Yes, I saw, clouds coming up in the west.’
* * *
Without knowing why, Adamsberg decided to spend part of the night on the Chemin de Bonneval. He walked right to the end, failing to glimpse a single blackberry in the darkness, then came back to sit on the tree trunk where Fleg had begged for sugar. He sat there for over an hour, in a passive and even receptive mood, ready for any impromptu visit by the Lord of the Riders, who did not however deign to turn up. Perhaps because he felt nothing in these lonely woods, neither unease nor apprehension, not even when a stag dashed noisily past and made him look round. Not even when a ghostly barn owl brushed past not far from him with a human-sounding screech. Hoping that the owl was indeed a bird, as he assumed. But on the other hand he had reached the conclusion that Valleray was rather contemptible, something which troubled him. Autocratic, selfish, without affection for his adoptive son. Bowing to the code of honour of the family. But why had he decided to marry Léo again when they were eighty-eight years old? Why take this provocative step? Why, on the last stretch of his journey, was he reviving the scandal, after a lifetime of submission? Possibly to try and shake off that very submission. Some worms turn at the last moment. In which case it changed everything of course.
A greater noise gave him a brief moment of hope, what sounded like a cavalcade of snorting beasts. He stood up, watchfully, ready to get out of the way of the Lord with the long hair. But it was only a herd of wild boar pressing on towards its wallow. No, Adamsberg thought as he set off back, Hellequin has no interest in me. The ancient ancestor preferred women like Lina, and who was to say he was wrong?
XLIV
‘In which case it would change everything,’ Adamsberg announced to Veyrenc over breakfast.
The commissaire had carried their coffee and bread out under the apple trees in the yard. While Adamsberg filled their bowls, Veyrenc was throwing little cider apples in front of him.
‘Think about it, Louis. My photo appeared in the Ordebec Reporter the day after I arrived. The killer couldn’t have mistaken Danglard for me. So it was him someone tried to kill on the railway, not me. But why? Because Danglard had seen these woodlice. There’s no other explanation.’
‘And who would know that he’d seen them?’
‘You know Danglard’s no good at keeping a secret. He’s been around in Ordebec, asking questions and talking to people. He might have let something drop, without meaning to. So we have a link between the murders and the woodlice. The killer doesn’t want anyone to know about the origins of the Vendermot children.’
‘Hide all your descendants, the fruit of ancient sin / They’ll return one fine day, to call the reckoning in,’ muttered Veyrenc, tossing another apple.
‘Unless the count doesn’t want them to be hidden any more. The worm began to turn a year ago, when old Valleray decided to remarry Léo. To repair what he had broken through his own feeble-mindedness. He’s obeyed other people all his life, he knows it, and he’s redeeming himself. So we might think he would do the same towards his children.’
‘How?’ asked Veyrenc, throwing his seventh apple.
‘By writing them into his will. Dividing the inheritance into three. As surely as a sea anemone isn’t a mollusc, I’m prepared to bet Valleray has willed them something, and that Hippolyte and Lina will be recognised after his death.’
‘And he
won’t have the courage before that?’
‘Apparently not. What are you doing with those apples?’
‘Aiming at vole holes. Why are you so sure about the will?’
‘Last night in the forest, it came to me.’
As if the forest could dictate truths in some way. Veyrenc preferred to disregard the typical lack of coherence in Adamsberg’s reply.
‘What on earth were you doing in the forest?’
‘I spent some of the evening on the Chemin de Bonneval. There were some wild boar, I heard a stag bellowing and I saw a barn owl. Which is a bird, isn’t it? Not a crustacean or a spider.’
‘A bird. The owl that screeches like a human.’
‘Exactly. And why are you aiming at vole holes?’
‘I’m playing golf.’
‘You’ve missed all the holes.’
‘Yes. So you mean that Valleray will have divided his will among the three children and that will have changed everything. But only if someone knows that.’
‘Someone does know that. Denis de Valleray doesn’t like his stepfather. He must have been watching him for a long time. We might imagine that his mother warned him, so that he wouldn’t be done out of two-thirds of his fortune by some grubby little bastards from the village. I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t know about his father’s will.’
Veyrenc put down his handful of apples and helped himself to a second coffee, holding out his hand to Adamsberg to ask for the sugar.
‘I’m fed up with all these stories about sugar,’ said the commissaire, passing him a lump.
‘It’s over now. Fleg’s sugar lump led you to Christian Clermont’s sugar lump; you can pack up the box.’
‘I certainly hope so,’ said Adamsberg, leaning hard on the lid of the sugar box, which was tricky to close. ‘We’d better put a rubber band round it, that’s what Léo does and we should respect her little ways. She must find everything in its place when she gets back. Danglard’s already helped himself to her Calvados, and that’s quite enough. So I think it’s certain that Denis is no mollusc and that he knows about his father’s will. Perhaps he’s known for a year, ever since the count started his rebellion. If his father dies now, he’ll be in trouble financially and socially. Vicomte Denis de Valleray, high-class auctioneer in Rouen, finds he’s the brother of two peasants, brother of the madman with six fingers and the madwoman who sees visions, and the stepson of a count who has strayed from the path.’
‘Unless he eliminates the Vendermot children. That would be a big step to take.’
‘Not necessarily. Denis probably sees the Vendermots as negligible people. I should think he despises them in a spontaneous instinctive manner. Their disappearance would even seem legitimate to him. From where he sits, not a serious loss. Comparable to you trying to stop up the vole holes.’
‘I’ll unblock them again though.’
‘But anyway, infinitely less important than losing two-thirds of his inheritance and all his social status. He could be playing for very high stakes.’
‘You’ve got a wasp on your shoulder.’
‘An insect,’ said Adamsberg, sweeping it away with a gesture.
‘Yes. And if Denis knows about the will – if it exists – he wouldn’t just despise the Vendermots, he’d detest them.’
‘And will have done for a year or more. We don’t know when the count might have done it.’
‘But it’s not Hippo and Lina who’ve been killed.’
‘I know,’ said Adamsberg, putting the sugar box behind him, as if the sight of it troubled him. ‘So this isn’t an impulsive killer. He thinks, he prowls. To get rid of Hippo and Lina would be risky. Suppose someone else knows about their birth. If Danglard worked it out in a day or two, one might think other people are in on it. So Denis might hesitate. Because if the two Vendermots were to die, he’d automatically be suspected.’
‘By Léo for instance. She looked after them when they were little and she’s known Valleray for seventy years.’
‘It must have been Denis who hit her on the head. And in that case, the attack wouldn’t have anything to do with Léo’s discovery in the woods. The wasp’s on you now.’
Veyrenc blew on his shoulder and turned his bowl over so that the remains of the sweet coffee wouldn’t attract the insect.
‘Turn your bowl over too,’ he instructed Adamsberg.
‘I didn’t take sugar.’
‘I thought you did.’
‘I told you, right now the very thought of sugar annoys me. As if sugar were an insect. At any rate, it seems to be surrounding me like a swarm of wasps.’
‘In the end,’ Veyrenc said, ‘Denis was waiting for a suitable occasion for him to kill without being suspected. And the perfect opportunity presented itself when Lina had her vision.’
Adamsberg leaned against the tree trunk, almost turning his back on Veyrenc, who was occupying the other half of the tree. At nine thirty the sun’s warmth was getting through. The lieutenant lit a cigarette and passed another over his shoulder to the commissaire.
‘Yes, the perfect opportunity,’ Adamsberg agreed. ‘Because if the three “seized” men were to die, the terror of the local people would be directed at the Vendermots. Against Lina, who’s responsible for the vision, as an intermediary between the living and the dead. But also against Hippo, because everyone knows he had six fingers on each hand, the mark of the devil. So in an atmosphere like that, the murder of those two wouldn’t surprise anyone, and half the inhabitants of Ordebec could be suspects. Exactly like the villagers in seventeen-something who took their pitchforks to some chap called Benjamin who had also described the people seized by the Riders. So to put an end to the deaths, the mob killed him.’
‘But this isn’t the eighteenth century, the method will change. Nobody’s going to massacre Lina and Hippo on the market square, it will be much more discreet.’
‘So Denis kills Herbier, Glayeux and Mortembot. Apart from Herbier, he does it in an ancient manner, more or less observing the ritual, to make people scared. He’s the kind of guy who’d belong to a snobbish crossbow club, wouldn’t he?’
‘That’s the first thing we’d better check,’ said Veyrenc, throwing his twentieth apple.
‘You won’t aim very well while you’re sitting down. And since the three victims were notorious bastards and probably guilty of murder themselves, Denis has all the fewer scruples in killing them.’
‘So that, as we speak, Lina and Hippo are in mortal danger.’
‘Not before nightfall.’
‘You do realise that for now the whole story depends on the purple woodlouse.’
‘We can take a look at Denis’s alibis.’
‘You won’t be able to get close to him, any more than you did the Clermonts.’
The two men remained silent for a long moment, after which Veyrenc threw all the remaining apples away and started to collect up the dishes on a tray.
‘Look,’ whispered Adamsberg, catching him by the arm. ‘Hellebaud’s coming out.’
And indeed the pigeon had ventured about two metres from the door of Adamsberg’s bedroom.
‘Did you put some birdseed out there?’ asked Veyrenc.
‘No.’
‘Well, in that case, he’s looking for insects on his own.’
‘Insects, crustaceans, arthropods.’
‘Yes.’
XLV
Capitaine émeri listened to Adamsberg and Veyrenc, looking stunned. No, he had never seen the birthmarks, he had never heard it said that the Vendermot children had been fathered by Valleray.
‘He certainly slept around, yes, everyone knew that. And also that his second wife hated him: she turned young Denis against him.’
‘And we heard later, didn’t we, sir, that his wife wasn’t too particular either,’ said Blériot.
‘It’s not appropriate to wash more dirty linen, Blériot. The situation is difficult enough as it is.’
‘Yes. Émeri,’ insisted Adamsberg,
‘we do need to wash the dirty linen. There’s this crustacean and that can’t be dodged.’
‘What crustacean?’ asked Émeri.
‘The woodlouse,’ Veyrenc explained, ‘it’s a crustacean.’
‘What the fuck’s that got to do with anything?’ exploded Émeri, getting up abruptly. ‘Don’t just stand there, Blériot, go and get us some coffee. I warn you, Adamsberg, and please listen carefully, I refuse to entertain the slightest suspicion of Denis de Valleray. You hear me? I refuse.’
‘Because he’s a nobleman?’
‘Don’t insult me. You’re forgetting that Empire nobility has no truck with ancien régime aristocracy.’
‘Well, why then?’
‘Because your story doesn’t make sense. You think someone would kill three people, just to be able to get rid of the Vendermots?’
‘It makes perfect sense.’
‘No, it doesn’t, unless Denis is either wicked or bloodthirsty. I know him, he’s neither. He’s sly, he’s opportunistic and he’s ambitious.’
‘He’s also status-conscious, pompous and arrogant.’
‘All of that, all right. But he’s lazy, careful and timid, he’s just not a decisive character. You’re barking up the wrong tree. Denis would never have the nerve to shoot Herbier in the face, to chop Glayeux up with an axe or fire a crossbow at Mortembot. We’re looking for someone who’s audacious and crazy, Adamsberg. And you know perfectly well where crazy and audacious people are to be found in Ordebec. What’s to say it isn’t the other way round? What’s to say it isn’t Hippo who killed these three men, before planning to attack Denis de Valleray?’
Blériot put the tray down and gave out the cups clumsily, very differently from Estalère’s precise service. Émeri took his without sitting down and passed round the sugar.
‘Go on,’ he said, ‘what’s to prove it isn’t that way round?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Adamsberg admitted. ‘Yes, it’s not impossible.’
‘It’s extremely possible. Imagine that Hippo and Lina have found out who their father is, and about the will. They could have, couldn’t they?’