by Fred Vargas
‘And you think Veyrenc has just come along to find out for sure. To see if you knew him.’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘No. When you asked me to check the names, you were suspicious about something. What’s made you change your mind?’
Adamsberg didn’t reply, just dipped a lump of sugar the dregs of his cider.
‘His charm?’ asked Danglard acidly. ‘His verse? It’s quite easy to make up verses.’
‘It’s not that easy. Seems quite good to me.’
‘Not to me.’
‘I was talking about the cider. You’re touchy, capitaine. Touchy and jealous,’ said Adamsberg wearily, crushing his sugar into the bottom of the glass with his finger.
‘Oh, for God’s sake. What made you change your mind?’ said Danglard, losing patience.
‘Keep your voice down. When Noël insulted him in the bar, Veyrenc wanted to react, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t even throw a punch, which would have been the easiest thing to do in the circumstances.’
‘So what? He was in shock. You saw his face, he went white as a sheet.’
‘Yes, because it brought back all the insults he’d had to put up with as a child, and later when he was a young man. Veyrenc didn’t only have peculiar hair, he also used to limp because of the horse that had trampled him. He was scared of his shadow after that attack in the meadow.’
‘I thought it was in the vineyard.’
‘No, he mixed up two separate occasions when he was knocked unconscious.’
‘Well that proves he’s crazy,’ concluded Danglard. ‘A man who speaks in twelve-syllable alexandrines has got to be crazy anyway.’
‘You’re not usually so intolerant, capitaine.’
‘You think it’s normal, to speak in verse like he does?’
‘It’s not his fault. It runs in the family.’
Adamsberg wiped up the melted sugar from the cider with a finger.
‘Think, Danglard. Why didn’t Veyrenc punch Noël? He’s quite big enough to have knocked him down.’
‘Because he’s new round here, because he didn’t know how to respond, because the table was between them.’
‘Because he’s mild by nature. He’s never used his fists. It doesn’t interest him. He lets other people do that. He hasn’t killed anyone.’
‘So Veyrenc just came to find out the name of the fifth boy?’
‘Yes, I think so. And to let the fifth boy know that he knows.’
‘I’m not sure you’re right.’
‘Me neither. Let’s say that’s what I hope.’
‘What about the other two? We don’t warn them, then?’
‘Not for the moment.’
‘And what about number five?’
‘I would say that number five’s big enough to look after himself.’
Danlgard got lethargically to his feet. His anger with first Brézillon, then Devalon, then Veyrenc, and the horrors of another open grave, plus an excess of alcohol, had left him feeling weak.
‘And you know number five, do you?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg putting his finger back in the empty glass.
‘It was you.’
‘Yes, capitaine.’
Danglard nodded and said goodnight. Sometimes one can be sure of something but still find it unbearable when it’s confirmed. Adamsberg waited five minutes after Danglard had left. Then he put his glass on the bar and climbed the stairs himself. He stopped at Veyrenc’s bedroom door and knocked. The lieutenant was on his bed, reading a book.
‘I’ve got some sad news for you, lieutenant.’
Veyrenc looked up, expectantly.
‘I’m listening.’
‘Fernand the little chap, and Big Georges – remember them?’
Veyrenc shut his eyes rapidly.
‘Well, they’re both dead.’
The lieutenant nodded a brief acknowledgement but did not speak.
‘You going to ask me how they died?’
‘How did they die?’
‘Fernand drowned in a swimming pool and Georges was burnt alive in his shack.’
‘Accidents, then.’
‘Fate caught up with them, in a manner of speaking. A bit like in Racine, don’t you think?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Goodnight, lieutenant.’
Adamsberg closed the door and stood outside in the corridor. He had to wait almost ten minutes before he heard Veyrenc’s melodious voice.
‘Cruelty damns sinners to the dark of the grave.
Was it vengeance divine or the burden they bore
That turned these young villains to shadows on the shore?’
Adamsberg plunged his fists into his pockets and tiptoed away. He had tried to appear cool to calm Danglard. But Veyrenc’s words were far from reassuring. Cruelty, vengeance, war, treason and death – that’s Racine for you.
XXIX
‘WE’LL HAVE TO BE DISCREET,’ SAID ADAMSBERG, PARKING IN FRONT OF THE priest’s house in Le Mesnil. ‘We don’t want to upset a man who’s mourning the relics of Saint Jerome.’
‘I wonder,’ said Danglard, ‘whether the fact that his church in Opportune appears to have let a stone fall and kill a parishioner might not also have shaken him.’
The curate, who was not best pleased at their arrival, showed them into a small, dark but warm room, with low ceiling beams. The priest in charge of the fourteen parishes did indeed look like any other man. He had abandoned clerical garb for ordinary clothes and sat peering into a computer screen. He got up to greet them, a rather ugly man but healthy and ruddy-complexioned, looking more as if he were on holiday than suffering from depression. However, one of his eyelids was twitching like the heartbeat of a small creature, suggesting a troubled soul, as Veyrenc would have put it. In order to obtain the interview, Adamsberg had had to make a fuss about the theft of the relics.
‘I don’t imagine the Paris police would normally come as far as Le Mesnil-Beauchamp just because some holy relics go missing,’ said the priest as they shook hands.
‘No, you’re right,’ Adamsberg admitted.
‘And you’re in charge of Serious Crime, as I discovered. Am I supposed to have done something?’
Adamsberg was relieved to find that the priest did not express himself in the customary hermetic and mournful sing-song of some churchmen. This chant tended to inspire in him an irresistible melancholy, inherited from the interminable services in the freezing-cold village church of his childhood. Those were some of the only moments when his indomitable and indestructible mother had allowed herself to sigh and dab her eyes with a handkerchief, thus revealing to him, in a spasm of embarrassment, painful intimate feelings that he would rather not have witnessed. And yet it was during those Masses that he had also had the most intense daydreams. The priest now motioned them to sit opposite him, on a long wooden bench, with the result that the three policemen lined up like so many schoolboys in class. Adamsberg and Veyrenc were both wearing white shirts, thanks to the unpredictable contents of the emergency packs. Adamsberg’s was too big and the cuffs were slipping down over his hands.
‘Your curate wanted to keep us out,’ said Adamsberg, twitching his sleeves. ‘So I thought Saint Jerome would get us in.’
‘The curate is protecting me from the outside world,’ replied the priest, as he gazed at an early bluebottle flying round the room. ‘He doesn’t want me to be seen. He’s ashamed, so he’s keeping me hidden. If you’d like something to drink, it’s in the sideboard. I don’t drink now. I don’t know why, it just doesn’t interest me.’
Adamsberg made a negative sign to Danglard. It was only nine o’clock in the morning. The priest looked up, surprised not to hear questions coming from them in return. He was not a Norman, and seemed able to speak quite openly. This embarrassed the three police officers. To discuss the mysteries of a priest – which they assumed to be sensitive matters – was more difficult than to interview a criminal suspect across a table. Adamsberg felt he was
being obliged to walk over a delicate patch of lawn in hobnailed boots.
‘The curate’s hiding you,’ he ventured, using the Norman device of the statement-containing-a-question.
The priest lit his pipe, still following with his gaze the fly that was swooping low over his keyboard. He cupped his hand ready to catch it, brought it down on the table, missed.
‘I’m not trying to kill it,’ he explained, ‘just to catch it. I take an interest in the frequency of the vibrations of flies’ wings. They’re much more rapid and loud when they’re caught in a trap. You’ll see.’
He puffed out a large smoke ring and looked at them, his hand still cupped like a lid.
‘It was my curate who had the idea to put it about that I was suffering from depression,’ he went on, ‘to let things settle down. He practically placed me in solitary confinement, at the request of the diocesan authorities. I haven’t seen anyone for weeks, so I don’t mind talking about it, even if it is to policemen.’
Adamsberg hesitated at this puzzling remark, unselfconsciously offered by the priest. The man needed to be listened to and understood, why not? After all, priests spent their lives listening to the problems of their parishioners without ever having the right to complain themselves. The commissaire envisaged various hypotheses: a love affair, regrets of the flesh, the loss of the relics, or the accident that had happened in the Opportune church.
‘Loss of vocation?’ guessed Danglard.
‘You’ve got it,’ said the priest, nodding towards Danglard as if to give him a good mark.
‘Sudden or gradual?’
‘Is there any difference? If something feels sudden, it’s only the end of a long hidden process that one may not have been aware of.’
The priest’s hand came down on the fly, which once again managed to escape between the thumb and the index finger.
‘A bit like a stag’s antlers, when they show through its hide,’ suggested Adamsberg.
‘If you like. The idea grows, like a larva inside its hiding place, and then it suddenly emerges and takes off. You don’t just mislay your vocation one day, like you lose a book. Anyway, you generally find the book again, but you never get your vocation back. That proves that the vocation had been dwindling away for a long time, without drawing attention to itself. Then one morning it’s all over, you’ve gone past the point of no return during the night without even realising it: you look out of the window, a woman goes past on a bicycle, there’s snow lying on the apple trees, and you feel a terrible sickness, life outside is calling you.’
‘Yesterday I still loved this great calling of mine
I rejoiced to break bread, I rejoiced to serve wine.
But now on a sudden, all is ashes and dust
And I must leave the church to another man’s trust.’
‘Pretty much, yes.’
‘So these lost relics weren’t really worrying you, after all?’ asked Adamsberg.
‘Do you want me to start worrying about them?’
‘Well, I was thinking of doing a deal: I would have tried to get Saint Jerome back for you, and in exchange you could tell me something about Pascaline Villemot. I suppose the deal wouldn’t appeal to you now.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. My predecessor, Father Raymond, was very attached to the relics, the ones in Le Mesnil or indeed relics in general. I wasn’t up to his level of scholarship, but I remember quite a lot about it. Even if it’s just for his sake, I’d like to get Saint Jerome back.’
The priest turned to indicate the bookshelf behind him, as well as a weighty volume on a lectern, protected by a plexiglas cover. This ancient book had already irresistibly attracted Danglard’s attention.
‘All that stuff comes from him. The book too, of course,’ he said, gesturing respectfully towards the lectern. ‘Given to Father Raymond by a certain Father Otto who died during the bombing of Berlin. Are you interested?’ he asked Danglard, who was gazing hungrily at the book.
‘Yes, I admit I am. If it’s what I think it is.’
The priest smiled, recognising a connoisseur. He puffed at his pipe, making the silence last, as if to herald the arrival of a famous person.
‘It’s the De sanctis reliquis,’ he said, savouring his announcement, ‘in the unexpurgated edition of 1663. You can consult it if you like, but please use the tongs to turn the folios. It’s open at the most famous page.’
The priest gave a curious snort of laughter, and Danglard headed immediately for the lectern. Adamsberg watched him raise the lid and lean over the book, and realised that Danglard would not hear another word they said.
‘It’s one of the most famous books on relics,’ the priest explained, with a casual wave of his hand. ‘Actually, it’s worth a lot more than any bones belonging to Saint Jerome. But I’d only sell it in a case of dire necessity.’
‘So you are interested in relics, then.’
‘I do have a weakness for them. Calvin described the people who hawked relics around as “traffickers in ordure,” and he wasn’t entirely wrong. But that ordure gives a bit of spice to a holy place, helps people to concentrate. It’s hard to concentrate in a vacuum. That’s why it doesn’t bother me that in our reliquary of Saint Jerome, most of the bones came from sheep, and there’s even one from the snout of a pig. Father Raymond used to laugh at that. He would only tell the secret, with a twinkle in his eye, to certain people, the ones strong enough to stomach such a down-to earth revelation.’
‘You mean to say there’s a bone in a pig’s snout?’ asked Adamsberg.
‘Yes,’ the priest replied, smiling. ‘Just a little bone, quite elegant and symmetrical, a bit like a double heart in shape. Not a lot of people know that, which explains why there’s one among the Le Mesnil relics. It used to be thought of as a mysterious bone, and people thought it had special qualities. Like a narwhal’s tusk gave rise to the idea of the unicorn. The world of fantasy fills the gaps in people’s knowledge.’
‘And you knowingly left these animals’ bones in the reliquary?’ asked Veyrenc.
The fly went past again and the priest raised his arm, ready to pounce.
‘What difference would it make?’ he replied. ‘The human bones were unlikely to be Saint Jerome’s either. In those days, relics were bandied about like sweets. Supply expanded to meet demand. Seems that Saint Sebastian had four arms, Saint Anne three heads, Saint John six index fingers, and so on. In Le Mesnil, we’re not so presumptuous. Our sheep’s bones date from the late fifteenth century, which is already pretty good. Remains of men or animals, what does it really matter in the end?’
‘So the guy who robbed the church has just got the remains of someone’s Sunday joint?’ said Veyrenc.
‘No, because funnily enough, the thief seemed to pick and choose. He only took the human fragments, a bit of a tibia, a second cervical vertebra, and three ribs. Must have been either an expert, or else somebody local who knew all about the shameful secret of the reliquary. That’s why I’m trying to find him,’ he added, pointing to the computer screen. ‘I just wonder what he has in mind.’
‘You think he’ll try to sell them?’
The priest shook his head.
‘I’ve been scanning offers on the Internet, but I can’t find anyone selling Saint Jerome’s tibia. Obviously not for sale. But what are you looking for? They tell me you’ve been digging up Pascaline’s body. The gendarmes have already finished their inquiry about the stone that killed her. A sad accident, it seems, nothing suspicious. Pascaline never hurt a fly, and she didn’t have any money to leave.’
The priest brought down his hand on to the table. This time the fly was trapped, and immediately started buzzing more loudly.
‘Hear it?’ he said. ‘Its response to stress?’
‘Yes,’ said Veyrenc politely.
‘Is it sending a message to its friends? Or working up the energy to escape? Do insects have emotions? That is the question. Have you ever listened to a fly when it’s dying?’
The
priest had put his ear to his hand, appearing to count the thousands of beats per second of the fly’s wings.
‘We didn’t dig her up,’ said Adamsberg, attempting to bring the conversation back to Pascaline. ‘But we do want to know why someone took the trouble to open her coffin three months after her death, to get at the head.’
‘Good Lord!’ gasped the priest, letting the fly disappear vertically into the air. ‘What an abomination!’
‘The same thing has happened to another woman. Elisabeth Châtel from Villebosc-sur-Risle.’
‘I knew Elisabeth as well. Villebosc is one of my parishes. But she wasn’t buried there. She was buried in Montrouge, in Paris, because of a family quarrel.’
‘That’s where her grave was opened.’
The priest pushed away his computer screen, then rubbed his left eye, to try and stop the tic in his eyelid. Adamsberg wondered whether, apart from his loss of vocation, the man was perhaps genuinely suffering from depression, and whether his odd behaviour was an indication of that. Danglard, who was wholly absorbed in consulting his treasure trove, using the tongs, was no help in trying to get their host to concentrate on the matter in hand.
‘To the best of my knowledge,’ the priest went on, lifting up his thumb and index finger, ‘profanation of the dead has only two causes, each of them extremely repugnant. Either violent hatred, in which case the body is attacked.’
‘No,’ said Adamsberg. ‘They weren’t damaged.’
The priest lowered his thumb, abandoning this theory.
‘Or else passionate love, which is, alas, very close to hate, with a morbid sexual fixation.’
‘And did Elisabeth and Pascaline inspire anyone with unbridled passion?’
The priest lowered his finger, abandoning the second theory as well.
‘Both of them were virgins, and very determined to remain so, believe me. They were both women of absolutely unassailable virtue, no need to preach it to them.’
Danglard pricked up his ears, wondering how to interpret that ‘believe me’. His eyes met those of Adamsberg, but the latter signalled to him not to say anything. The priest pressed his finger on his eyelid again.