by Fred Vargas
‘Still, after that, or so the count says, Denis didn’t seem too bothered at dinner. But then in that family, they don’t really notice each other. They eat at different ends of their great big table and don’t hardly talk. Nobody else was there; Denis’s wife is off in Germany with her children.’
‘Émeri ought to be thinking that if Denis did kill himself, it was because he was guilty.’
‘Yeah, he says that too. But you know the capitaine, he gets on his high horse – well, he is the great-great-grand-something of the marshal – then he comes down again. He just says you should have gone about it another way. More cautious like, collect the evidence in secret, and have Denis watched. Then he wouldn’t be dead.’
‘But sentenced to life and his murders revealed for everyone to see. Exactly what he didn’t want. How is the count taking it?’
‘He’s in shock, he’s shut himself in the library. I wouldn’t say he’s that grieved though. They couldn’t stand each other no more.’
Adamsberg called Émeri on the mobile when they were two kilometres from the chateau.
‘I’ve found the paper,’ said the capitaine in a hostile voice.
‘What paper?’
‘The bleeding will, what do you think? And yes, the two Vendermot brats inherit, a third each. The only bonus for Denis was that he would have kept the chateau.’
‘Have you spoken to Valleray about that?’
‘Can’t get a word out of him about that, he clammed up. I don’t think he knows how to deal with it.’
‘And what about the murders Denis committed?’
‘He refuses to believe any of that. He’ll admit he didn’t like his stepson and it was mutual. But he says no way Denis could have killed three men or hit Léo on the head or pushed your man on to the railway track.’
‘Any reason for that?’
‘Because he’s known him since he was three years old. He’ll cling to his version. Afraid of scandal, you’ll understand.’
‘So what’s his version?’
‘That Denis had too much to drink, made himself ill over some personal problem we don’t know about. Then he felt sick, and ran to the window to vomit. The window was open, to let in fresh air, because of the storm. And because he was feeling dizzy, he fell.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘I think it’s partly your fault,’ muttered Émeri. ‘That visit from the secretary of the Compagnie de la Marche sounded the alarm. Denis took a mixture of pills and alcohol and he died of it. Not the way he would have chosen. He meant to die in his bed, just losing consciousness. But when he staggered to the window and leaned out to be sick, he must have lost his balance.’
‘All right,’ said Adamsberg, without picking up on the capitaine’s reproach. ‘So how did you get the will out of the count?’
‘Put pressure on him. Said I knew what was in it. He was cornered. Nasty business, Adamsberg. Despicable. No poetry, no grandeur.’
* * *
Adamsberg looked down at Denis’s shattered head, examined the height of the window and the low sill, the position of the corpse and the signs of vomit on the ground. He had certainly fallen from the bedroom. Inside the large room, a bottle of whisky had rolled on the carpet and three bottles of pills were open on the bedside table.
‘Tranquillisers, antidepressants and sleeping pills,’ said Émeri, pointing to each in turn. ‘And he was in bed when he took them.’
‘Yes, I see,’ said Adamsberg as he viewed the traces of vomit, some on the sheet, some on the carpet about twenty centimetres from the window, and some on the sill. ‘So when he felt sick, his reflex sent him towards the window. A matter of dignity.’
Adamsberg sat on a chair to one side, as two technicians took over in the bedroom. Yes, the questions to the shooting club must have precipitated Valleray’s suicide. And yes, Denis, after three murders and two attempted murders, had chosen his own way out. Adamsberg thought about the bald head he had seen in the courtyard below. No, Denis de Valleray had neither the stature nor the attitude of a brazen killer. There was nothing savage or intimidating about him, he’d been a man who was distant, aloof, sarcastic at most. But he had done it. Gun, axe, crossbow. It was only at this point that the commissaire realised that the Ordebec case was closed. That the separate events, each steeped in its own context, had suddenly all come together, in a single mass, like the clouds in the west releasing their rain. That he would go and see Léo one last time, and read her another instalment of the romance, or something about mares in foal. He’d see for one last time the Vendermots, Dr Turbot, the count, Fleg, he’d see Lina, the hollow in the mattress, and his place under the apple tree. At the thought of leaving, and having to forget all these people and things, he was overtaken by a nagging feeling of incompleteness. As light as Zerk’s fingers on the pigeon’s feathers. Tomorrow he’d take Hellebaud back to town, tomorrow he’d be driving to Paris. The Ghost Riders would fade away, Lord Hellequin would retreat back into the shadows. Having, Adamsberg told himself with irritation, accomplished his mission. Nobody conquers Lord Hellequin. Everyone had said that, and it was true. This year would go down in the lugubrious annals of Ordebec. Four men seized and four men dead. He had only been able to prevent some human interventions. Well, he had at least saved Hippo and Lina being savaged with pitchforks.
The pathologist grabbed his elbow unceremoniously to get his attention.
‘I’m sorry,’ Adamsberg said, ‘I didn’t see you come in.’
‘It wasn’t an accident,’ she said. ‘Tests will confirm it, but a preliminary examination suggests he’d absorbed a lethal dose of benzodiazepines and especially neuroleptics. If he hadn’t fallen out of the window, he’d probably be dead anyway. Suicide.’
‘Confirming that,’ said one of the technicians coming up. ‘Just the one set of prints here, looks like they’re all his.’
‘So what happened?’ asked the doctor. ‘I know his wife’s gone off to live in Germany with her sons, but they hadn’t really been a couple for years.’
‘He’d just learned that he’d been found out,’ said Adamsberg wearily.
‘What? Money troubles, ruin?’
‘No, the police investigation. He’d killed three people, almost killed another and the old lady, Léone. And he was preparing to kill two more, or four or five.’
‘Him?’ said the doctor, glancing at the window.
‘Surprise you?’
‘I’ll say. This was a man who never chanced his arm.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, once a month I try my luck at the casino in Deauville. I used to see him there. I never really talked to him, but you can learn a lot watching someone gambling. He hesitated over his decisions, he’d ask people for advice, he’d hold the whole table up in an exasperating way, all that for a small stake. He wasn’t a bold player, not someone who’d go for it, he was a timid gambler. I’d find it hard to imagine him having ideas of his own, let alone the determination to do something savage like that. He was only keeping going because of his rank, his prestige and his relatives’ help. They were his safety net. Like for a trapeze artist.’
‘And if the net looked as if it might be about to break?’
‘Well, I suppose in that case anything would be possible,’ said the pathologist, moving away. ‘When an alarm signal goes off, human responses are unpredictable and can be devastating.’
Adamsberg registered her sentence; he could never have formulated it himself. This might help him to calm the count down. Brutal murder, an unexpected suicide, one should never corner an animal, however sophisticated and well brought up. Everyone knew that. But there were various ways of putting it. He went down the polished oak staircase, murmuring the words to himself, and felt the mobile vibrate in his back pocket. Which reminded him, as his hand encountered some dried mud, that he hadn’t troubled to put on clean trousers to come out. He stopped at the door of the library, reading Retancourt’s text: 6 cut hairs on left headrest 2 o
n party suit. Chmbrmd sez yes haircut + sugar smlt like garage. Adamsberg clutched the phone, feeling that puerile sensation of power that had gone through him the night before, during the storm. It was a primal joy, brutal and barbaric; he’d triumphed against overwhelming odds. He took two deep breaths, smoothed his face to remove the smile and knocked at the door. By the time he had heard the count’s answer, angry and accompanied by the sound of his stick on the floor, the doctor’s sentence had completely disappeared, lost in the opaque waters of his brain.
XLVIII
He had been to visit LÉo, had read her a chapter about twin births in horses, kissed the old woman on the cheek and told her: ‘I’ll be back.’ He had said goodbye to Dr Turbot. He had gone to the Vendermot house, where he’d interrupted the brothers who were installing a hammock in the courtyard: he had explained the situation briefly to them, without mentioning the crucial element of the Comte de Valleray’s paternity. He was going to leave that to Léo or the count himself, if he ever had the courage. Valleray’s anger had subsided, but with the shock that had shaken the chateau, Adamsberg doubted he would have enough bravado to carry out his plan to marry Léo. The following day the national press would be full of the crimes committed by his stepson and would be sniffing at the trail of blood leading to the chateau.
The press conference was due to take place at 9 a.m. and Adamsberg was leaving Émeri to take all the credit, as fair return for his collaboration, which had been pretty friendly, all in all. Émeri had thanked him warmly, without suspecting, since he himself loved announcements and formal parades, that Adamsberg was heartily glad to escape. Émeri had insisted they should celebrate the end of the case, by inviting him to take an aperitif in his Empire room, with Veyrenc, Blériot and Faucheur. Blériot had cut up the salami, Faucheur had prepared some sickly-sweet kirs and Émeri had raised his glass to the defeat of the enemy, taking the chance to refer in the same breath to the great victories of his ancestor, Ulm, Austerlitz, Auerstadt, Eckmühl and, his favourite one, Eylau. On that occasion, Davout, being attacked on the right flank, had received reinforcements from Marshal Ney’s army. It was the one when the Emperor, spurring on his men, had shouted to Murat: ‘Are you going to let yourself be devoured by those people?’
Looking jovial and satisfied, the capitaine had stroked his stomach repeatedly as if he were now completely rid of the bubbles of electricity.
* * *
He had been to see Lina at her office, casting a final glance at the object of his desire. With Veyrenc, he had tidied up Léo’s house, hesitating over whether to put a little water in the Calvados bottle to restore the level. That was the sort of sacrilegious thing ignorant teenagers do, Veyrenc had decreed. You should never water a Calva as good as that. He had scraped the pigeon droppings from his left shoe, swept up the birdseed from the floor, and pummelled the mattress back into shape. He had filled up the petrol tank, packed his rucksack and climbed to the highest point in Ordebec. Sitting on a warm wall in the last ray of sunshine, he looked carefully at all the meadows and hills around, watching to see if any of the impassive cows should move. He would have to wait to have supper at the Blue Boar before leaving, that is, to wait for Danglard’s phone call, so as to tell him he could bring the young men back. The commandant was to send Zerk to Italy, and he was to drop Mo off at the home of one of his friends, whose father had agreed to ‘report’ him to the police. He had no need to refer to these instructions in code, having agreed them with Danglard before his departure. It would be enough simply to give him the green light. Not one cow decided to move, and faced with this setback, Adamsberg felt the same sensation of incompleteness as in the morning. Just as light, just as clear.
In the end, it was as his old neighbour Lucio was always telling him: Lucio, who had lost his arm as a child, during the Spanish Civil War. The problem, Lucio would explain, wasn’t so much the missing arm as that when it happened he had had a spider bite on it which he hadn’t finished scratching. And seventy years later, Lucio was still scratching away at empty space. Something that isn’t finished with properly will irritate you for ever. But what hadn’t he completed at Ordebec? The movement of the cows? Léo’s final restoration to health? The flight of the pigeon? For sure the conquest of Lina, whom he had not so much as touched. At all events, something was still itching, and since he couldn’t work out what was causing it, he concentrated on the motionless cattle in the fields.
* * *
He and Veyrenc left at nightfall. Adamsberg gave himself the task of shutting up the house, and took his time. He put the birdcage in the boot, picked Hellebaud up in the shoe and installed him on the front seat. The pigeon now seemed sufficiently tame, that is to say de-natured, not to flutter about during the drive. The rain from the storm had leaked inside the car and no doubt into the engine as well, and he had trouble starting it, evidence that his own squad cars were no better than Blériot’s, and a far cry from the top-of-the-range Mercedes belonging to the Clermont-Brasseurs. He glanced down at Hellebaud, peacefully perched on the seat, and spared a thought for the old man Clermont, sitting like that in the front seat of the car, waiting trustingly while his two sons prepared to set fire to him.
* * *
Two and a half hours later, he was crossing the dark little garden of his house and waiting for old Lucio to appear. His neighbour would surely have heard him arrive, and would inevitably turn up with some beer, pretending to take a leak by the tree before starting a conversation. Adamsberg had just time to go inside with his bag and Hellebaud, whom he put on the kitchen table, still in the shoe, when Lucio appeared in the dark, holding two bottles of beer.
‘Things going better now, hombre,’ Lucio diagnosed.
‘I think so.’
‘The shit-stirrers came back twice. But now they’ve disappeared. Have you sorted out your affairs?’
‘Almost.’
‘In the country too, sorted that one out?’
‘It’s over. But it ended badly. Three deaths and a suicide.’
‘The killer?’
‘Yes.’
Lucio nodded, seeming to appreciate the macabre balance sheet, and uncapped the beer bottles, levering them against a branch.
‘When you piss against it, you’re damaging its roots,’ Adamsberg protested, ‘and now you’re tearing off its bark.’
‘Not at all,’ Lucio retorted indignantly. ‘Urine’s full of nitrates, best thing there is for compost. Why d’you think I piss against the tree? Nitrates, that’s why, did you know that?’
‘I don’t know much, Lucio.’
‘Sit down, hombre,’ said the old Spaniard, pointing to a packing case.
‘It’s been hot here,’ he said, drinking straight from the bottle, ‘we really suffered.’
‘It was hot there too. Clouds kept building up in the west but never amounted to anything. Then finally it all came to a head yesterday, end of the hot spell and the case, both. There was a woman up there, with breasts good enough to eat. You can’t imagine. I really thought I ought to, I felt I’d left things unfinished.’
‘Still itching, is it?’
‘Yes, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s not my arm that’s itching, it’s inside my head. Like a door banging somewhere, a door I didn’t close properly.’
‘You’ll have to go back then, hombre. Or it’ll go on banging all your life. You know the principle.’
‘The case is closed, Lucio. I don’t have anything more to do there. Or perhaps it was because I didn’t see any cows move. In the Pyrenees, yes. But up there, no, nothing doing.’
‘You can’t get off with the woman? Rather than watch cows?’
‘I don’t want to, Lucio.’
‘Ah.’
Lucio drank off half his bottle of beer, swilling it down noisily, then belched, reflecting on the difficult case Adamsberg had presented to him. He was extremely sensitive to things that hadn’t stopped itching. This was his home ground, his speciality.
‘When you
think about her, do you think of any food in particular?’
‘Yes, a kouglof with almonds and honey.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A sort of special cake.’
‘Well, that’s very definite,’ said Lucio, with the air of a connoisseur. ‘But insect bites always are well defined. You should try and get hold of one of these kouglofs. That should do it.’
‘You can’t find real ones in Paris. It’s a speciality of eastern France.’
‘I could always ask Maria to make one for you. There must be some recipes, surely?’
XLIX
The debriefing session started in the squad headquarters on the Sunday morning, 15 August, at nine thirty, with fourteen members present. Adamsberg had been waiting impatiently for Retancourt, and as a sign of gratitude and admiration, had squeezed her shoulder in a bluff, rather military show of emotion, a gesture Émeri might have approved of. An accolade for the most brilliant of his troops. Retancourt, who lost any subtlety when on emotional ground, had tossed her head like a sulky and evasive child, keeping her satisfaction for later, that is for herself alone.
The officers were seated round the large table. Mercadet and Mordent were taking notes, for the minutes. Adamsberg wasn’t keen on these big meetings when he had to sum up, explain, give orders and conclude. His attention would wander at the slightest pretext, neglecting his immediate duty, and Danglard was always at his side to bring him back to reality when necessary. But just now, Danglard was in Porto with Momo, having dispatched Zerk to Rome, and was no doubt preparing to return to Paris. Adamsberg was hoping that would be by the end of the day. Then they would wait a few days to make it look less unlikely, and the pseudo-informer would alert the squad. Mo would be brought back as a trophy in Adamsberg’s hands. Adamsberg was revising his part in this charade, while Lieutenant Froissy was reporting on the tasks carried out in the previous few days, among other things a bloody confrontation between two employees of an insurance company, when one had called the other a ‘lunary perv’ and had ended up with a ruptured spleen, having been stabbed with a paperknife, and only just escaping with his life.