by Fred Vargas
‘Some men are particularly attracted to women of great virtue,’ said Adamsberg.
‘Well, there is a challenge there,’ the priest agreed. ‘The temptation of an unusually difficult conquest. But neither Elisabeth nor Pascaline ever complained of anyone harassing them.’
‘So what did they come and tell you so often at confession?’ the commissaire asked.
‘Secrets of the confessional,’ the priest replied, raising his hand. ‘Sorry.’
‘So they did have something to say?’ put in Veyrenc.
‘Everyone has something to say. That doesn’t mean that it’s worth passing on, still less that graves should be profaned. You stayed at Hermance’s house, didn’t you? So you heard what she has to say? She doesn’t have a life, as most people would see it, but that doesn’t stop her talking about it all day long.’
‘You know as well as I do, Father,’ said Adamsberg gently, ‘that maintaining the secrecy of the confessional is not sustainable or even legal in certain circumstances.’
‘Only in the case of murder,’ the priest objected.
‘I think that’s what we are dealing with.’
The priest relit his pipe. They could hear Danglard turning over another thick page of the book, while the fly, which seemed no calmer than before, continued to buzz loudly, hurling itself at the window. Danglard knew that the commissaire was putting on pressure to over-come the priest’s reluctance. Adamsberg was excellent at eliminating obstacles, slipping inside the resistance of other people with the treacherous power of a trickle of water. He would have made a formidable priest, midwife or purger of souls. Veyrenc got up in turn and walked round the table to look at the book which was so absorbing Danglard’s attention. The commandant let him see it, but with a bad grace, like a dog unwillingly sharing a bone: ‘On sacred relics and all the uses that may be made of them, whether for the health of the body or the salubrity of the mind, and the useful medicines which may be derived from them to lengthen life: edition purged of past errors.’
‘What’s so special about the book?’ Veyrenc asked in a low voice.
‘The De reliquis,’ Danglard whispered, ‘has been famous since the mid-fourteenth century. The Church condemned it, which made it very popular at once. Many women were burnt at the stake for consulting it. This is the 1663 edition, which is a collector’s item.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it re-established the original text, including a diabolical potion banned by the Church. Read it for yourself, Veyrenc.’
Danglard watched as the lieutenant struggled in front of the page that was open in front of him. The text was in French, but an antiquated and very obscure version.
‘Complicated, huh?’ said Danglard, with a thin smile of satisfaction.
‘I can’t understand it, and you’re not about to explain it to me, I suppose.’
Danglard shrugged.
‘There are some other things I ought to explain to you first.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Well, you’d do better to leave the squad, Veyrenc,’ Danglard whispered. ‘Nobody catches Adamsberg, any more than they can catch the wind. And if you’re trying to have a go at him, you’ll have to reckon with me first.’
‘I’m sure I would, commandant. But I’m not trying to do anything.’
‘Kids are kids. You’re past the age of bothering about their fights and so is he. Stay with us and get on with the job, or else push off.’
Veyrenc closed his eyes quickly and went back to his seat on the bench. The conversation with the priest had progressed, but Adamsberg looked disappointed.
‘Nothing else at all?’ he was saying.
‘No, nothing, except that pathological dislike of homosexuality in Pascaline’s case.’
‘So you reckon they they didn’t sleep together or anything?’
‘They didn’t sleep with anyone, man or woman.’
‘Did either one ever talk to you about stags?’
‘No, never. Why on earth would they?’
‘It’s just Oswald. He gets everything mixed up.’
‘Oswald, and this isn’t a secret of the confessional, is a bit special. He’s not as daft as his sister, but he talks off the top of his head, if you see what I mean.’
‘What about Hermance? Did she come and see you?’
The fly, being either provocative or careless, was once more approaching the warm computer top, distracting the priest.
‘She often did, long ago, when the villagers used to say she brought bad luck. Then she lost her wits and she’s never really got them back.’
Like your vocation, thought Adamsberg, wondering whether one morning, if he himself looked out and saw the snow on the branches and a woman on a bicycle, he would leave the squad and never return.
‘So she doesn’t come any more.’
‘Yes, of course she does,’ said the priest, watching the fly again as it moved over his keyboard. ‘But that reminds me of something. Just a little thing. It was about six or seven months ago. Pascaline used to have several cats. One of them was killed and left bleeding on her porch.’
‘Who did that?’
‘Nobody ever owned up. Probably kids, like in every village. I’d forgotten all about it, but it upset her a lot. And she wasn’t just upset, she was frightened.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Frightened that someone would suspect her of being a lesbian. Like I said, she had a thing about it.’
‘I don’t see the connection,’ said Veyrenc.
‘Yes, there was one,’ said the priest, sounding a trifle irritated. ‘It was a tomcat, but they’d cut off its male parts.’
‘A bit violent for kids messing about,’ observed Danglard, pulling a face.
‘Did Elisabeth have cats too?’
‘Just the one. But nothing ever happened to it, nothing like that.’
The three men sat in silence on the way back to Haroncourt. Adamsberg was driving at a snail’s pace, as if the car needed to go at the same slow speed as his thought processes.
‘What do you think of him, capitaine?’ Adamsberg asked at last.
‘A bit on edge, a bit weird, but that’s understandable if he’s going to take a big step like that. Still, it was worth the trip.’
‘Because of the book? Is it an inventory of relics?’
‘No, it’s the best-known treatise on how to use them. ‘On sacred relics and the uses that may be made of them.’ The priest’s copy is in very good condition. I couldn’t possibly afford it – it’d cost four years of my pay.’
‘Relics were used for something?’
‘For everything. For stomach upsets and earache, fever, piles, weakness, the vapours.’
‘Ah, we should offer some to Dr Roman, then,’ said Adamsberg with a smile. ‘So why is this edition so valuable?’
‘I already told Veyrenc. Because it contains the most famous potion, one the Church outlawed for centuries. It’s a bit disconcerting, in fact, to find it in the possession of a priest. And he’s left it open at exactly that page, oddly enough. A sort of provocation, I suppose.’
‘My guess is he’s the best-placed person to have taken Saint Jerome’s bones himself. But what was this medicine supposed to do, Danglard? Give him back his vocation? Remove all devilish temptations?’
‘No – it’s a potion for acquiring eternal life.’
‘On earth or in heaven?’
‘On earth, for centuries and centuries.’
‘Go on then, capitaine. Tell me what it contains.’
‘How do you expect me to remember that?’ Danglard grumbled.
‘Actually, I remember it,’ said Veyrenc, discreetly.
‘OK, lieutenant, I’m listening,’ said Adamsberg, still smiling. ‘Maybe it’ll tell us what the priest had in mind.’
‘All right,’ said Veyrenc, hesitantly, not yet able to guess whether Adamsberg was serious or just joking. ‘Sovereign remedy for the lengthening of life, through the quality p
ossessed by sacred relics to weaken the miasmas of death, preserved from the truest processes and purged of former errors.’
‘Is that it?’
‘No, that’s just the heading.’
‘It’s after that that it gets more complicated,’ said Danglard, stupefied and offended.
‘Five times cometh the age of youth, till the day thou must invert it, pass and pass again, out of reach of the thread of life. Sacred relics thou wilt crush, taking three pinches, mixed well with the male principle which must not bend, and with the quick of virgins, on the dexter side, sorted by three into equal quantities, and grind these with the living cross from the heart of the eternal branches, adjacent in equal quantity, kept in the same place by the valency of the saint, in the wine of the year, and thus wilt thou lay its head on the ground.’
‘Did you know about this before, Veyrenc?’
‘No, I just read it today.’
‘Do you understand it?’
‘No.’
‘Neither do I.’
‘It’s about acquiring eternal life,’ commented Danglard sulkily. ‘You won’t manage that with a couple of spoonfuls of something.’
Half an hour later, Adamsberg and his colleagues were putting their bags back in the car and heading for Paris. Danglard complained about the fireguard, not to mention the stag’s antlers which were taking up the back seat.
‘There’s only one solution,’ said Adamsberg. ‘We’ll put the antlers in front and the two passengers in the back, with the fireguard between us.’
‘We’d do better to leave the antlers here.’
‘You must be joking, capitaine. You drive, you’re the tallest, Veyrenc and I will sit either side of the fireguard. It’ll be fine.’
Danglard waited until Veyrenc was sitting in the car, before drawing Adamsberg aside.
‘He’s got to be lying, commissaire. Nobody could memorise a text like that. Nobody.’
‘I’ve already told you, Danglard, he’s got special gifts. Nobody else can make up verses like he does.’
‘It’s one thing to make stuff up, and another to remember it. He recited that damned text pretty well word-perfect. He’s lying. He must already have known that recipe off by heart.’
‘Why would that be, Danglard?’
‘No idea. But it’s been a potion known to damned souls for centuries and centuries.’
XXX
‘SHE DID WEAR NAVY-BLUE SHOES,’ RETANCOURT ANNOUNCED, PLACING A plastic bag on Adamsberg’s desk.
Adamsberg looked at the bag, then at the lieutenant. She was carrying the cat under her arm, and the Snowball, looking blissful, was allowing himself to be carried round like a rag doll, head and paws hanging down. Adamsberg had not been expecting such rapid results, nor indeed any result at all. But now here were the shoes belonging to the angel of death, sitting on his table: worn, out of shape, and definitely navy blue.
‘There’s no sign of shoe polish on the soles,’ Retancourt added. ‘But that’s not surprising, because they’ve been worn a lot over the last couple of years.’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Adamsberg, hoisting himself on to one of the Swedish bar stools he had brought into his office.
‘The estate agent just left the nurse’s house as it was, knowing it would be impossible to sell. Nobody went round to clean it after the arrest. But when I got there it was empty – no furniture, no crockery, no clothes.’
‘Why? Looters?’
‘Yes. In the neighbourhood, everyone knew the nurse had no family, and that she had some stuff in good condition. Gradually people started taking things. I had to go round a few squats and a travellers’ camp. With the shoes I found one of her blouses and a blanket.’
‘Where?’
‘In a caravan.’
‘With people living in it?’
‘Yes. But you don’t need to know who they are, do you?’
‘No.’
‘I promised this lady I’d get her another pair of shoes. She doesn’t have any others, just bedroom slippers. So she’ll miss these ones.’
Adamsberg swung his legs.
‘This district nurse,’ he mused, ‘went around knocking off old people with her injections for forty years. It was virtually her mission in life for about half a century, almost a tradition. Why would she suddenly turn to the occult, and start hiring ruffians to dig up graves belonging to virgins? I don’t get it, the switch just isn’t logical.’
‘The nurse wasn’t logical either.’
‘Yes, she was. All forms of mania have a certain rigidity, they follow a pattern.’
‘Maybe being in prison threw her off balance.’
‘That’s what the pathologist suggested.’
‘Why did you say “virgins”?’
‘Because they both were, Pascaline and Elisabeth. And I’m supposing that had some significance for the grave-robber. The nurse never had a husband or partner either.’
‘She would have needed to find out if it was true of Pascaline and Elisabeth.’
‘Yes, so she would have had to spend some time in Upper Normandy. Nurses get told a lot of things they don’t ask about.’
‘Have we any record of her being there?’
‘No, no victims towards the west at all, except for one in Rennes in Brittany. But that might not mean anything. She travelled a lot from place to place, staying a few months, then moving on.’
‘What are those doing here?’ asked Retancourt, pointing to the two large antlers taking up space on the office floor.
‘A trophy. Someone gave me them the other night. I cut them off myself.’
‘Ten points, eh?’ said Retancourt approvingly. ‘And what did you do to deserve them?’
‘They asked me to go up there and I went. But I’m not sure that I was really being called there for him. He was known as the Red Giant.’
‘Who?’
‘Him. The stag.’
‘Why would someone do that? Do you think it was a lure, to get you to go to the graveyard at Opportune?’
‘Possibly.’
Retancourt lifted up one of the antlers, weighed it and put it down delicately.
‘You’re not supposed to separate them,’ she said. ‘So what else did you pick up there?’
‘I learned that there’s a bone in the snout of a pig.’
Retancourt let this remark pass, hoisting the cat up on her shoulder.
‘It’s in the shape of a double heart,’ Adamsberg went on. ‘I also learned that one could cure the vapours with a saint’s relics, and acquire eternal life for centuries and centuries, and that the remains of Saint Jerome might include some sheep’s bones.’
‘Anything else?’ asked Retancourt, patiently waiting for the information that really interested her.
‘That the two men who dug out the grave of Pascaline Villemot were probably our Diala and La Paille. That Pascaline died of a fractured skull, caused by a stone falling from the church, that one of her cats was slaughtered and emasculated three months before her death, and had been left in that state on her doorstep.’
Adamsberg suddenly raised his hand, twined his legs round the foot of the stool and called up a number on his mobile.
‘Oswald? Did you know that Pascaline’s cat had been left bleeding at her door?’
‘Narcissus? Reckon everyone knew about him in Opportune. Famous for his weight, he was. Over eleven kilos. He nearly won a prize at the show. But that was last year. Hermance gave her a new cat. Hermance likes cats, they’re nice clean creatures.’
‘Were Pascaline’s other cats male too, do you know?’
‘No, all girls, they were. Narcissus’s daughters. Not important, is it?’
Another trick of the Normans, Adamsberg reflected, consisted of putting a question while apparently not being interested in the reply. As Oswald just had.
‘I was just wondering why whoever killed Narcissus went to the trouble of cutting his balls off.’
‘Whoever told you that don’t kno
w his arse from his elbow. Narcissus was neutered, oh, years ago. He used to sleep all day. A cat that weighs eleven kilos, ever seen that happen by chance?’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Course I am, ‘cos Hermance chose a tomcat for her, so the other cats could have kittens.’
Frowning, Adamsberg called another number, while Retancourt picked up the bag of shoes, looking annoyed. After twelve hours of difficult investigation, she had turned up a spectacular link between the district nurse and the recent deaths in La Chapelle, but the commissaire was off on quite a different track, wandering down country lanes.
‘This cat’s balls are a matter of urgency, are they?’ she asked sharply.
Adamsberg motioned her to take a seat. He had the parish priest of Le Mesnil on the line.
‘Listen, Oswald tells me that that cat, Narcissus, had already been neutered. So he couldn’t have been castrated when he was killed.’
‘Well, I tell you I saw it with my own eyes, commissaire. Pascaline brought his body up to the church in a cat basket, to ask me to bless it. I had to have a long argument with her, to explain why I couldn’t do it. The cat had had its throat cut and its parts were a bloody mess. What else do you want me to say?’
Adamsberg heard a sharp slap at the other end and wondered whether the priest was still catching flies.
‘In that case, I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘In Opportune, apparently everyone knew that the cat had been neutered.’
‘Maybe whoever did it didn’t know that, perhaps they weren’t from the village. Or it could be this person had a thing against males, if I can add an opinion to your investigation.’
Adamsberg snapped off his phone and started swinging his legs again in perplexity.
‘A thing against males,’ he repeated to himself. ‘The trouble is, Retancourt, that even people who don’t know anything about it would guess that a cat weighing eleven kilos and sleeping all day would have to have been neutered.’
‘Not the Snowball.’
‘The Snowball’s a special case, let’s leave him out of it. The problem’s still the same. Why did Narcissus’s killer try to castrate a cat that had already had its balls cut off?’