by Fred Vargas
‘Of course. But not just after being cursed by the satanic little Hippo. Not just after Regis’s tragic accident. Everything went downhill for you after that. You failed at school, you had no success in Valence or Lyon, you couldn’t have children, your wife left you. Your fear, your caution and your diabetic attacks. You aren’t a marshal like your father wanted you to be, you’re not even a soldier. And all this catalogue of failure, it’s a drama for you, and it gets worse. But it wasn’t your fault, Émeri, was it? It was Hippo’s fault for cursing you. He said you’d have no children, he prevented you from having a glorious career or a happy one, because they’re the same thing as far as you’re concerned. Hippo’s the source of all your pain, your bad luck, and he still terrifies you.’
‘Come off it, Adamsberg. Who on earth would be scared of a degenerate who talks backwards?’
‘Do you really think you have to be degenerate to know how to invert letters? Of course not. You have to be gifted with a special kind of genius. A diabolical one. You know that, just as you knew that Hippo had to be destroyed if you were to be able to live. You’re only forty-two, you’ve still got time to make a new life. Since your wife left you and since Régis’s suicide three years ago, which really panicked you, it’s been your obsession. Because you’re a man who gets obsessions. Like your Empire dining room.’
‘That’s a simple mark of respect, you wouldn’t understand.’
‘No, it’s megalomania. Like your impeccable uniform – no sugar lumps in your pockets to make them bulge. Your way of parading like a soldier. There’s just one person responsible for what you consider your unjust, unbearable, shameful and above all threatening downward path, and it’s Hippolyte Vendermot. But the curse can only be removed by his death. You could argue that what happened at the well was simply a neurotic case of self-defence, if it wasn’t that you’d already killed four other people.’
‘Well, in that case,’ said Émeri, leaning back in his chair, ‘why wouldn’t I just have killed Hippo?’
‘Because you were afraid of being accused of his death. Understandably. Everyone here knows about your childhood, the bike accident when you were ten, after being cursed, the hate you have for the Vendermot family. You needed an alibi, to be above suspicion. An alibi or another culprit. You needed a vast and ingenious strategy, like the Battle of Eylau. A well-thought-out strategy, the only way to victory over a much bigger army, like the Emperor had to have. And Hippolyte Vendermot is ten times stronger than you. But then you’re the descendant of a marshal, for heaven’s sake, so you’ll be able to crush him. “Are you going to let yourself be devoured by those people?” as the Emperor would say. Certainly not. But it means reconnoitring every bump and dip in the terrain. You needed a Marshal Ney to back you up, like when Davout was threatened on the right flank. That’s why you went to see Denis.’
‘I’m supposed to have gone to see him, am I?’
‘A year ago, you were at a dinner at the chateau, with the local dignitaries, like Dr Turbot, Denis of course, the head of the salesroom at Evreux and others. The count had one of his attacks, you took him to his room with Turbot’s help. Turbot told me about it. I think it must have been that evening that you learned about Hippo and Lina and the will.’
Émeri laughed out loud, quite naturally. ‘You were there, Adamsberg, were you?’
‘In a way. I asked Valleray to confirm it. He thought he might die, he asked you to fetch his will, he gave you the key of the deed box. Before dying, he wanted to write his two Vendermot children into the will. So with difficulty, he added a few lines on the paper and asked you to sign as a witness. He trusted to your discretion, as capitaine of gendarmes and a man of honour. But you read those few lines, of course. And you weren’t surprised to learn that the count had fathered two limbs of the devil like Hippo and Lina. You had seen the birthmark on his back when Turbot was examining him. You knew about Lina’s, because her shawl is always slipping. For you, the mark wasn’t a woodlouse with antennae, it was the crimson face of a devil with horns. And it only confirmed in you the idea that this was a bastard and cursed line of descent. And that night, after all the time you’d been looking for the chance to wipe the Vendermot family from the face of the earth – because Lina’s just as bad in your eyes – it finally offered itself. Or almost. You had to think about it, you don’t rush boldly into action, you weigh everything up, and after a while, you decide to have a chat with Valleray’s stepson.’
‘I’ve never had any dealings with Denis, anyone will tell you that.’
‘But you can go and visit him any time, Émeri, you’re the capitaine of gendarmes. You tell him the truth, about the extra clause written into his father’s will. You show him the dark chasm that awaits him. He’s a weak man and you know it. But a man like him doesn’t decide quickly. You let him think about it. You come back, you press him, convince him and make him an offer. You can get rid of these bastard heirs, on condition he provides you with an alibi. Denis doesn’t know what to think, he probably takes more time. But as you suspected, he ends up saying yes. If you do the killing, he doesn’t have to do anything except swear you were with him. Cheap at the price. So you’ve got a deal. You wait for the opportunity.’
‘You still haven’t answered my question. Why the fuck would I care if the count fathered those creatures? Or that Danglard knew about it?’
‘Nothing. It’s the creatures themselves that concern you. But if the secret of their birth got around, you’d lose the support of your accomplice, Denis, because it wouldn’t be in his interests any more to cover you. And you’d lose the alibi. That’s why you pushed Danglard on to the tracks.’
Just then, Commandant Bourlant came in. Having no esteem for Adamsberg, he saluted him without warmth.
‘What are the presumed charges here?’ he asked.
‘Four murders, two attempted murders.’
‘Intentions don’t count. You’ve got evidence?’
‘You’ll get my report at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Then it’s up to you whether you refer the case to the examining magistrate.’
‘I suppose that’s in order. Follow me please, Capitaine Émeri, and don’t blame me, because I know nothing about all this. But Adamsberg’s in charge of the case and I’m obliged to obey him.’
‘We won’t spend long in each other’s company, Commandant Bourlant,’ said Émeri, getting up stiffly. ‘He’s got no evidence whatever, he’s rambling.’
‘Did you come alone, commandant?’ asked Adamsberg.
‘Affirmative, commissaire. It’s a bank holiday today, 15 August.’
‘Veyrenc and Retancourt, please accompany the commandant. I’ll start writing the report while I wait for you.’
‘Everyone knows you’re incapable of writing three lines,’ Émeri threw out derisively.
‘Don’t worry about that. One last thing, Émeri. The perfect opportunity. Lina gave it you without meaning to. When she saw the Ghost Riders, and all of Ordebec heard about it. She was showing you the way, it was a sign from fate. All you had to do was fulfil her prediction, kill the three named men who had been “seized”, and get the townspeople incensed against the Vendermots. Death to the Vs. Then you would kill Lina and her accursed brother. People would have thought it was some madman in Ordebec who was scared of the army and determined to get rid of its “go-betweens”. Like in 1775 when dozens of them lynched François-Benjamin. There would have been no shortage of suspects.’
‘Seventeen seventy-seven,’ Veyrenc corrected him in Danglard’s absence.
‘Not that many, but a couple of hundred.’
‘I didn’t mean the number of suspects, I meant the date he was lynched, 1777.’
‘Oh, OK,’ said Adamsberg, unperturbed.
‘Hark at him, what an imbecile!’ said Émeri between clenched teeth.
‘Denis was almost as guilty as you,’ said Adamsberg calmly, ‘by giving you his cowardly word, his lousy blessing. But when you realised that the Compagnie de la H
ache–’
‘De la Marche,’ Émeri interrupted.
‘As you like…that the Compagnie was going to tip off Denis, you realised he wouldn’t hold out more than a few hours. He’d talk. He’d accuse you. He well knew that you’d killed the “seized” men, to prepare for the death of the Vendermots. You went to see him, you talked to him to calm down his fears, then you knocked him half conscious – with one of your professional blows to the carotid – and forced the pills and alcohol down him. Unpredictably, Denis got up to be sick and made a dash for the window. It was the night of the storm, you remember. The time when power is there for the taking. You just had to tip him up by the legs and out he went. Denis would be accused of the murders, which would be the cause of his suicide. Perfect. It wasn’t quite what you’d planned, but in the end it would do. After these four deaths, even if there was now a rational explanation, half of Ordebec would go on believing that the army was behind them. And that basically Hellequin had come to take the four villains. That the count’s stepson was his chosen arm to do the killing, just his instrument. But that Hippo and Lina were essentially responsible for the Lord’s arrival, again, and always would be. So nothing would prevent everyone saying some madman had decided to kill them both, as limbs of Hellequin. A madman who would never be found thanks to the population closing ranks.’
‘Mass slaughter, to try and get one man?’ said Émeri drily, smoothing down his tunic.
‘Yes, it was, Émeri. But these killings gave you the greatest satisfaction as well. Both Glayeux and Mortembot had teased and humiliated you, they’d both escaped the prosecutions you attempted. And Herbier too, because you were never able to pin anything on him. They were all doubledyed villains, and you were about to eliminate these evil men, Hippo being the last one. But above all, Émeri, you really believe in the Ghost Riders, Lord Hellequin, his servants Hippo and Lina, his victim Régis – it all makes perfect sense to you. By destroying the “seized” men, you would be getting into Lord Hellequin’s good graces. That’s not negligible. Because you were afraid you might be the fourth man. You never liked the fourth man to be mentioned, the unnamed one. So I suppose that sometime, long ago, you must have already killed someone. Like Glayeux, like Mortembot. But that’s a secret you’ll probably take with you.’
‘That will do, commissaire,’ said Bourlant. ‘Nothing said here has any official standing.’
‘No, I know, commandant,’ said Adamsberg with a brief smile, as he propelled Veyrenc and Retancourt to follow the dour chief of the Lisieux gendarmes out of the office.
‘The proud son of the eagle comes tumbling to earth / When in the heavens he’d dreamed of his worth,’ murmured Veyrenc.
Adamsberg gave him a look that told him this was not the moment, just as he had done to Danglard when he had blethered on about Richard the Lionheart.
LIV
Lina hadn’t gone to work: the routine of the Vendermot household had been turned upside down by the news of the arrest of Capitaine Émeri, representative of the forces of order. A little as if Ordebec Church had been tipped up on to its steeple. After reading Adamsberg’s report – largely drafted by Veyrenc – Commandant Bourlant had decided that he ought to inform the examining magistrate, and he in turn had recommended holding Émeri on remand. Nobody in Ordebec was now unaware that Louis Nicolas was in a police cell in Lisieux.
But even more momentously, the Comte d’Ordebec had written a formal letter to the Vendermot family, informing them of the true parentage of Hippolyte and Lina. It would be less shameful, he had told Adamsberg, that the children should learn it directly from him before rather than after it became the stuff of local gossip, which would spread quickly and inaccurately, as it always does.
On his return from the chateau at almost midday, Adamsberg found them pacing round their dining room, moving at random like billiard balls hitting each other on a bumpy surface, talking while standing up, and circling their large table, from which the breakfast dishes hadn’t been cleared.
Adamsberg’s arrival passed almost unobserved. Martin was pounding a few herbs with a pestle and mortar, while Hippo, usually the master of the house, was walking round the room, trailing his index finger along the walls as if drawing an invisible line. A child’s game, Adamsberg said to himself. Hippo was reconstructing his life, and there’d be plenty for him to think about. Antonin was anxiously watching the rapid steps of his older brother, moving out of his way every now and then to avoid being knocked. Lina was concentrating on one of the chairs, scraping off little flakes of paint with her fingernail, with such intensity that one would have thought a life depended on her work. Only the mother was not moving. She was huddled in her armchair. Her entire posture, head down, thin legs pressed together, arms hugging her body, cried out the shame that had come upon her and from which she saw no means of escape. Everybody would now know that she had slept with the count, that she had been unfaithful to her husband, and all of Ordebec would go on talking about it for ever.
Without greeting anyone, since he thought they were incapable of hearing him, Adamsberg went over to their mother and put his bunch of flowers on her knees. It seemed, if anything, to make her embarrassment worse. She was unworthy of being presented with flowers. Adamsberg insisted, taking her hands one at a time and placing them round the stems. Then he turned to Martin.
‘Martin, could you make us some coffee, please?’
His request, in an affectionate tone, seemed to attract the family’s attention. Martin put down his pestle and went over to the cooker, scratching his head. Adamsberg himself got the bowls out of the sideboard and put them on the uncleared table, pushing the dirty dishes to the end. One by one, he asked them to sit down. Lina was the last to accept, and once seated, she started picking at the paint of her chair’s leg. Adamsberg, feeling he had no talent as a psychologist, had a sudden desire to run away. He took the coffee pot from Martin’s hands, and filled all the bowls. He took one to the mother, who refused, her hands still clasped round the bunch of flowers. He had the feeling he’d never drunk so much coffee as here. Hippo also pushed away the bowl, and opened a can of beer.
‘Your mother was afraid for you,’ Adamsberg began, ‘and she was absolutely right.’
He saw them all look down. All four looked at the ground as if they were at Mass.
‘Well, if not one of you can be bothered to defend her, dammit, who will?!’
Martin put his hand out towards the mortar then took it back.
‘The count saved her from going mad,’ Adamsberg hazarded. ‘None of you can imagine what hell her life had become. Valleray protected you all, and you owe him that. He stopped Hippo being shot like the dog. You owe him that too. By getting his protection, she got you all protected. She couldn’t do it herself. She did her job as a mother. That’s all.’
Adamsberg was by no means certain of what he was saying, whether the mother would have gone mad, whether the father would have shot Hippolyte, but this wasn’t the time for trifling over details.
‘Was it the count who killed our father?’ asked Hippo.
The head of the family had broken the silence, a good sign. Adamsberg took a breath, regretting he didn’t have a cigarette handy from Zerk or Veyrenc.
‘No. Who killed your father, we’ll never know. Could have been Herbier.’
‘Yes,’ said Lina, ‘that could be it. They’d quarrelled not long before. Herbier wanted money from our father. They were shouting.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Antonin, at last opening his eyes wide. ‘Herbier must have found out about Hippo and Lina and he was blackmailing our father. He’d never have stood for the whole town to know.’
‘In that case,’ Hippo objected, ‘surely our father would have killed Herbier.’
‘Yes!’ said Lina. ‘And that’s why it was his own axe. Our father tried to kill Herbier but he got the worst of it.’
‘Well, anyway,’ said Martin, ‘if Lina saw Herbier in with the Riders, must mean he’d committed a
crime. We knew what Mortembot and Glayeux had done, but not Herbier.’
‘That must be it,’ said Hippo. ‘Herbier attacked our father with the axe.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right,’ said Adamsberg approvingly. ‘That ties up the loose ends, and above all, it means it’s all over.’
‘Why did you say our mother was right to be frightened?’ asked Antonin. ‘Émeri didn’t kill us.’
‘No, but he was going to. It was his final objective: he wanted to kill Hippo and Lina and let the blame fall on some local person who was really scared of the dead men in the Furious Army.’
‘Like in 1777.’
‘Exactly. But the death of Denis de Valleray held him up. It was Émeri who tipped him out of the window. But it’s all over now,’ he said, turning to the mother, whose expression seemed to have cleared, as if now that her actions had been spoken aloud and even defended, she could emerge a little from her daze. ‘The time for fear is over,’ he insisted. ‘And the curse of the Vendermots is over too. At least these murders will have that result. Everyone will know that none of you had anything to do with them – in fact, you were the victims.’
‘So now nobody will be scared of us,’ said Hippo with a rueful smile.
‘Perhaps that’s a pity,’ said Adamsberg. ‘You’ll become just an ordinary five-fingered man.’
‘Good thing Mother kept the bits,’ sighed Antonin.
Adamsberg stayed another hour before taking his leave and sending a final glance towards Lina. Before he left, he put an arm round the mother’s shoulders and asked her to walk to the road with him. The little woman, intimidated, put down the flowers and picked up a basket, explaining that she would fetch in the clothes from the line at the same time.
* * *
Adamsberg helped her to unpeg the linen from the line strung between the two apple trees, and they folded it into the basket. He could see no tactful way to broach the question.
‘So Herbier might have killed your husband,’ he said quietly. ‘What do you think about that idea?’