This Night's Foul Work

by Fred Vargas

  ‘I agree it doesn’t fit,’ said Adamsberg, nodding. ‘Unless, that is, some profound shock might have opened up a different crater in the volcano. The lava of madness might have flowed in a different direction. Maybe her stay in prison could have had a strong effect, or the fact that her Alpha caught sight of her Omega.’

  ‘I know about Alpha and Omega,’ piped up Estalère. ‘They’re the two halves of a dissociating murderer, one each side of the wall.’

  ‘The angel of death is a dissociator. Her arrest may have broken down her inner wall. After that, any kind of change is conceivable.’

  ‘All the same,’ said Mordent, ‘it doesn’t tell us what she’s after with her virgins, or what she’s looking for in their graves.’

  ‘That’s the black hole,’ said Adamsberg. ‘To get in there, we can only work backwards, since we have traces of her actions. Pascaline owned four cats. Three months before her death, one of them was killed. The only male among them.’

  ‘Was that some kind of early threat to Pascaline?’ asked Justin.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. It was killed to get at its genitals. Since it was already a neutered tom, its penis was the part that was taken. Danglard, explain about the bone.’

  The commandant repeated his lesson about penile bones in carnivores – all pinnipeds, felids, etc.

  ‘Anyone else here know about that before?’ asked Adamsberg.

  Only Voisenet and Veyrenc raised their hands.

  ‘Voisenet, that figures, since you’re a zoologist. But Veyrenc, how did you know that?’

  ‘My grandfather told me. When he was a boy, a bear was killed in the valley. Its corpse was dragged around the villages. My grandfather kept the bone from its penis. He said it shouldn’t be lost or sold at any price.’

  ‘Do you still have it?’

  ‘Yes, it’s still there, back home.’

  ‘Do you know why he valued it so much?’

  ‘He just said it kept the house standing and the family safe.’

  ‘How big is the penile bone of a cat?’ asked Mordent.

  ‘This big,’ said Danglard, showing about two or three centimetres between finger and thumb.

  ‘Not enough to keep a house standing,’ remarked Justin.

  ‘It’s symbolic,’ said Mordent.

  ‘I dare say,’ said Justin.

  Adamsberg shook his head, without pushing back the hair that was falling into his eyes.

  ‘No, I think this cat’s bone has some precise significance for whoever took it. I think it’s something to do with the male principle.’

  ‘Contradiction with the value of the virgins, then,’ objected Mordent.

  ‘Depends what she’s looking for,’ said Voisenet.

  ‘She’s looking for eternal life,’ said Adamsberg. ‘And that’s the motive.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Estalère after a silence.

  And for once, something Estalère didn’t get corresponded to incomprehension all round.

  ‘At the same time the cat was mutilated,’ Adamsberg said, ‘it was discovered that a reliquary had been looted, in the church at Le Mesnil, just a few kilometres away from Opportune and Villeneuve. Oswald was right, that’s a lot of disturbance for a small area. From the reliquary the thief took only the human bones belonging, supposedly, to Saint Jerome, but left behind various sheep bones, plus the bone from the snout of a pig.’

  ‘Must have been a connoisseur, then,’ remarked Danglard. ‘It’s not everyone who could recognise the bone from a pig’s snout.’

  ‘There’s a bone in a pig’s snout?’

  ‘So it would seem, Estalère.’

  ‘The same way, it’s not everyone would know that the cat has a penile bone. So one way or another, we’re dealing with a woman who knows what she’s doing.’

  ‘I don’t see the link,’ Froissy said, ‘between the relics, the cat and the graves. Except that there are bones in all three cases.’

  ‘That in itself is something,’ said Adamsberg. ‘The relics of the saint, the relics of a male animal, and the relics of virgins. In the priest’s residence in Le Mesnil, alongside Saint Jerome, they have a very old book, which is open and available for anyone to see, where these three elements are combined in a kind of recipe.’

  ‘More like a remedy or a potion,’ Danglard corrected.

  ‘What for?’ asked Mordent.

  ‘To obtain eternal life, with various ingredients. In the priest’s house, the book was open at the page of this recipe. He’s very proud of it, and I think he shows it to all his visitors. So did his predecessor, Father Raymond. This recipe must have been known to about thirty parishes in the area, and over many generations.’

  ‘And nowhere else?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Danglard. ‘The book’s famous, and especially this con-coction. It’s the De sanctis reliquis, in the 1663 edition.’

  ‘Never heard of it,’ said Estalère.

  And, once more, something that Estalère had never heard of corresponded to ignorance all round.

  ‘Personally, I wouldn’t want eternal life,’ said Retancourt, in a low voice.

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ asked Veyrenc.

  ‘Just imagine living for ever. You’d end up flinging yourself on the ground and being bored to death.’

  ‘Carpe diem, Madame:

  The span of a lifetime flies as a summer day,

  Much more cruel though would be for ever here to stay.’

  ‘Yes, you could put it like that,’ nodded Retancourt.

  ‘So we need to analyse what’s in this book, is that it?’ asked Mordent.

  ‘I think so,’ replied Adamsberg. ‘Veyrenc has memorised the recipe.’

  ‘The potion,’ Danglard corrected him again.

  ‘Go on, Veyrenc, but not too fast.’

  ‘Sovereign remedy for the lengthening of life, through the quality possessed by sacred relics to weaken the miasmas of death, preserved from the truest processes and purged of former errors.’

  ‘That’s just the title,’ Adamsberg explained. ‘Now for the rest, lieutenant.’

  ‘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.’

  ‘I don’t understand a word of it,’ said Estalère, this time with a note of panic in his voice.

  ‘No one really understands it,’ Adamsberg reassured him. ‘But I think it means something about the age you have to be to take the remedy. Not when you’re young.’

  ‘That’s quite possible,’ agreed Danglard. ‘When you’ve seen the age of youth pass five times. One could say five times fifteen, if you took the average age of marriage in the late Middle Ages in Western Europe. That would make it seventy-five.’

  ‘Which is exactly the age of the angel of death now,’ said Adamsberg slowly.

  There was a silence and Froissy raised her elegant arm to say something.

  ‘We can’t carry on like this. I propose we continue the discussion across the road.’

  Before Adamsberg could say anything there was a general move to adjourn to the Brasserie des Philosophes. The discussion could not begin again until everyone was seated in the bay with the stained-glass windows, in front of a plateful of food and a glass.

  ‘Right,’ said Mordent. ‘Maybe when she reached the age of seventy-five, it opened up another crater.’

  ‘The nurse can’t see herself joining the common herd of old folk she’s been bumping off,’ said Danglard. ‘She’s not an ordinary mortal any more. One might imagine that she wants to find the secret of eternal life and hold on to her powers.’

  ‘And that she’s been preparing for it for some time,’ said Mordent. ‘So she’d need to have got out of prison before her seventy-fifth birthday whatever happened, in order to get the recipe together.’

  ‘The potion.’

  ‘I guess that makes sense,’ said Retancourt.

  ‘Give us the rest of the text, Veyrenc,’ said Adamsberg.

&nb
sp; ‘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.’

  ‘I didn’t understand that,’ said Lamarre, getting in before Estalère.

  ‘Let’s take it again slowly,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Start again, Veyrenc, bit by bit.’

  ‘Sacred relics thou wilt crush, taking three pinches.’

  ‘That’s easy enough,’ said Danglard. ‘Three pinches of bones that have been reduced to powder. Saint Jerome would fill the bill.’

  ‘… Mixed well with the male principle which must not bend …’

  ‘A phallus,’ suggested Gardon.

  ‘That doesn’t bend,’ added Justin

  ‘Well, a penis with a bone in it, for example,’ confirmed Adamsberg. ‘In other words the penile bone of a cat. And since cats have nine lives, that would give a special little eternity as a bonus.’

  ‘Yes, OK,’ said Danglard, who was taking notes.

  ‘And with the quick of virgins, on the dexter side, sorted by three into equal quantities.’

  ‘Look out,’ said Adamsberg, ‘here come our virgins.’

  ‘Sorted?’ asked Estalère. ‘Does that mean three by three?’

  ‘No, it means “matching” – you have to take the same quantities as for the relics.’

  ‘But what are you supposed to take, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘Well, that’s the question,’ said Adamsberg. ‘What is “the quick of virgins”?’

  ‘Blood?’

  ‘Genitals?’

  ‘Heart?’

  ‘I’d say blood,’ said Mordent. ‘That’s the most logical, if you’re seeking eternal life. Virgin’s blood, mixed with a male principle which would fertilise it and create eternity.’

  ‘Why blood “on the dexter side,” though?’

  ‘It means on the right,’ said Danglard.

  ‘Since when is there right-hand and left-hand blood?’

  ‘Don’t know what that means,’ said Danglard, serving more wine all round.

  Adamsberg had put his chin in his hands.

  ‘None of that fits the opening of a grave,’ he said. ‘You could easily take any of these things from the corpse of a virgin who had recently died. That’s not what happened. And as for blood, you can’t extract blood or indeed any vital part from a body that’s been three months in the ground.’

  Danglard pulled a face. He liked the intellectual element of the discussion, but the subject matter was abhorrent to him. The sordid dissection of the potion was making him now find repugnant the great De sanctis reliquis which he had once loved,

  ‘So what’s left in the tomb that might appeal to our angel?’ Adamsberg was asking.

  ‘Nails, hair, perhaps?’ Justin asked.

  ‘But to get them you wouldn’t need to kill anyone. They could have been taken from living women.’

  ‘The only thing left in the grave is bones,’ said Lamarre.

  ‘What about the pelvis?’ suggested Justin. ‘The basin of fertility. To sort of complement the “male principle”.’

  ‘That sounds a good idea, Justin, but only the head end of the coffins was opened, and the robber didn’t take any bones, not even a splinter.’

  ‘We’ve reached a dead end,’ said Danglard. ‘How does the text go on?’

  Veyrenc obediently recited it: ‘Now grind these with the living cross from the heart of the eternal branches, adjacent in equal quantity.’

  ‘Well, that’s clear, at any rate,’ said Mordent. ‘The living cross that lives in the eternal branches must mean Christ’s cross.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Danglard. ‘So-called fragments of the True Cross were sold by the thousand as sacred relics. Calvin calculated that there must have been more wood than three hundred men could carry.’

  ‘Well, it gives us something to aim for,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Can one of you check whether there has been any theft from a reliquary containing fragments of the Cross since the nurse escaped from prison.’

  ‘OK, I will,’ said Mercadet, taking notes.

  On account of his narcoleptic tendencies, Mercadet was often asked to do research in the files, since he was virtually incapable of fieldwork.

  ‘We should also see whether she ever practised in the Le Mesnil-Beauchamp region, possibly under a different name from Clarisse Langevin, and possibly a long time ago. Take her photo with you.’

  ‘OK,’ said Mercadet, with the same ephemeral show of energy.

  ‘“Clarisse” is the name of your bloodthirsty nun, commissaire,’ whispered Danglard. ‘The district nurse’s name is Claire.’

  Adamsberg turned to him with a vague and astonished look.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘How odd that I mixed them up. As if they’re two kernels of a walnut inside the same shell.’

  Adamsberg signalled to Veyrenc to carry on.

  ‘… kept in the same place by the valency of the saint.’

  ‘That’s easy, too,’ said Danglard, confidently. ‘It must mean the geographical sector, the zone of influence of the sacred relics. That would be the unity of place, so that all the ingredients came from the same area.’

  ‘Does a saint have a zone of influence?’ asked Froissy. ‘Like a radio transmitter?’

  ‘It isn’t written down anywhere, but that was the general feeling. If people took the trouble to go on pilgrimages, it was with the idea that the closer you got, the greater the influence of the saint.’

  ‘So she had to find all the ingredients in an area not too far from Le Mesnil,’ said Voisenet.

  ‘Logical,’ said Danglard. ‘In the Middle Ages, it was important to ensure the compatibility of the constituent parts, if a potion was going to be successful. They also took climate into consideration when balancing mixtures. So the bones of a Norman saint would mix better with some bones from a Norman virgin and a cat from the same place.’

  ‘OK,’ said Mordent. ‘So what comes next. Veyrenc?’

  ‘… in the wine of the year, and thus wilt thou lay its head on the ground.’

  ‘Wine,’ said Lamarre. ‘That must be to mix it together.’

  ‘It means blood, too.’

  ‘Christ’s blood. That ties it all together.’

  ‘Why “of the year”?’

  ‘Because in those days,’ Danglard explained, ‘wine didn’t keep. You always drank it the same year. Like when we drink Beaujolais Nouveau.’

  ‘So what’s left?’

  ‘… thou wilt lay its head on the ground.’

  ‘It means laying it low,’ said Danglard.

  ‘So it must mean to overcome,’ put in Mordent. ‘You’ll overcome death, I suppose, or the death’s head.’

  ‘So,’ said Mercadet, consulting his notes, ‘the killer has put together all these elements: some quick of virgins, whatever that may be, some saint’s relics, a cat’s bone. But perhaps not yet the wood of the Cross. All she needs is the wine of the year to mix it all up.’

  Several glasses were emptied at the mention of wine, which seemed to conclude the conference. But Adamsberg had not moved, so no one else dared to get up. They did not know whether the commissaire was about to nod off, with his cheek on his hand, or whether he was about to close the session. Danglard was about to nudge him, when he suddenly came to the surface like a sponge.

  ‘I believe that a third woman is going to be killed,’ Adamsberg said, without moving his cheek from his hand. ‘I think we’d better order some coffee.’

  XXXIII

  ‘THE QUICK OF VIRGINS, SORTED BY THREE IN EQUAL QUANTITIES,’ SAID Adamsberg. ‘By three. We ought to take notice of that.’

  ‘It must be the dosage,’ said Mordent. ‘Three pinches of powdered saint’s bones, thr
ee pinches of the penile bone, three pinches of the wood of the cross, and three of some sort of virgin principle.’

  ‘No, commandant, I don’t think so. We’ve already had two virgins being dug up. Whatever they wanted to find there, it seems to me that one would have been quite enough to get three pinches. And it would have been enough to write “in equal quantities”. Instead of that the recipe says “by three”.’

  ‘Yes, three pinches.’

  ‘No, three virgins. Three pinches from three virgins.’

  ‘You don’t have to take it that far, surely. It’s both a recipe and a sort of poem.’

  ‘No,’ said Adamsberg, ‘Just because the language seems complicated to us, we don’t have to regard it as a poem. It’s an old cookbook, nothing else.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ said Danglard, although he was a bit shocked by the casual way Adamsberg referred to the De reliquis. ‘It is just a plain compendium of medical recipes. It’s not meant to be in code, it’s meant to be easily understood.’

  ‘Well, that’s just what it isn’t,’ said Justin.

  ‘It’s not all that obscure,’ said Adamsberg. ‘We just have to take care to read each word carefully, and not miss anything out. In these ghoulish mixtures, just like any cookery recipe, every word counts. “Sorted by three.” That’s the danger area. That’s where we have to start work.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Estalère.

  ‘With the third virgin.’

  ‘Yes, it’s quite possible,’ agreed Danglard.

  ‘We’ll have to go and look for her,’ said Adamsberg.

  ‘Yes?’ said Mercadet, lifting his head.

  Lieutenant Mercadet was taking plentiful notes, as he did every time he was wide awake enough to compensate by redoubled zeal for his previous absences.

  ‘The first thing we need to do is check whether any other virgin from Upper Normandy has been recently killed, or has died in an apparent accident.’