by Fred Vargas
‘Good thinking,’ said Adamsberg.
‘Yes, I could go along with that,’ Voisenet said. ‘They’d still be alive in the bag. Suppose our killer – well, I say “our”, but it doesn’t mean I believe in him . . .’
‘Yes, we gathered that,’ said Veyrenc.
‘Let’s suppose our killer makes a collection of recluse spiders. He puts three or four inside a shoe, or a pair of trousers – trousers would be good, because they’d stay there – or in a sock, or in an old geezer’s bed, well, there’s a fair chance the man would squash them, and they’d bite him.’
‘The problem with that,’ said Adamsberg, ‘is that in two of the cases, the victim was outside the house.’
‘Ah, shit!’ said Voisenet.
Adamsberg and Veyrenc exchanged glances. If Voisenet was put out at the idea that his theory wouldn’t work, it was a good sign. Anyone who’s constructed a theory, even on the spur of the moment, will be unhappy to see it demolished. The pathway was opening up, just a little, but opening.
‘Or,’ said Adamsberg slowly, ‘of course the two old men could have been lying. Perhaps they were bitten indoors.’
The three men sat silently pondering this new hypothesis. Estelle brought over their cheese course, Tomme again.
‘But I don’t see why they would lie about that,’ Voisenet said at last.
‘No, nor do I,’ said Adamsberg, who had in fact thought of one reason why that might be the case, but preferred to let Voisenet pursue the train of thought for himself.
‘It’s a bit unlikely,’ said Voisenet at last. ‘But let’s suppose they were lying because they knew.’
‘Knew what?’ said Adamsberg.
‘That someone was taking revenge on them. And in that case, you might not want to tell other people you’d done something bad enough to deserve vengeance.’
‘With recluse spiders?’ said Adamsberg.
‘We’d also have to imagine,’ Voisenet went on, ‘that the recluse was some kind of sign of vengeance. For instance, that they had already done some harm with recluse spiders back in the orphanage. Suppose when they found a spider, they put it in the bed of some poor little boy they were picking on?’
Voisenet sat up, took another mouthful of wine and grinned, proud of his performance. Adamsberg and Veyrenc exchanged glances again.
‘Of course,’ Voisenet went on, ‘you’d need to find out what happened in the old days in the orphanage. But how would you do that? It’s over seventy years ago!’
‘Froissy has traced the son of the former director of the orphanage. He’s now a child psychologist. She thinks it’s highly likely he’s kept the records.’
‘So Froissy’s one of us, is she?’ said Voisenet, using a conspiratorial formula. ‘She’s doing a search for you?’
‘She doesn’t mind what the subject is. The chase is what lights her fire.’
‘Well, this guy should definitely be interviewed then,’ said Voisenet firmly.
‘That’s tomorrow’s programme,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Veyrenc and I are going to Nîmes in the morning.’
‘What about the woman who was raped?’
‘I’m not forgetting her. But there are just two of us.’
‘This woman, does she live far from Paris?’
‘No, not all that far. She works in Sens now.’
Voisenet finished his glass, looking thoughtful. Adamsberg silently passed him a note with the address of the woman, Justine Pauvel. The lieutenant nodded.
‘Leave it to me,’ he said.
XVII
‘I don’t have everything, messieurs, far from it,’ Dr Cauvert said, waving his arms as though trying to dispel a crowd of gnats. ‘Just think, the orphanage, as it was called in those days, was founded in 1864. So, you see!’
This man was astonishingly fidgety, walking round the room with little jumps or fast footsteps by turns, shaking his head to throw back his long white hair, and all with a lively air that took ten years off his age. It was a long time, he had explained as he warmly welcomed them, since anyone had shown any interest in the records. ‘A veritable gold mine, though,’ he explained, ‘so vast and rich that I won’t manage to exploit it all in my lifetime. Just think, 876 children in all, their lives, from birth or early childhood until the age of eighteen. And for each orphan’s life, my father noted down every detail, night after night. Thirty-eight years, thirty-eight volumes.’
Then the doctor seemed to realise he had not yet invited his visitors to sit down, or offered them any refreshment, in the 33-degree heat of the day in Nîmes. He moved the piles of books from two chairs, and hurried into the kitchen to fetch something to drink.
‘Dynamic, isn’t he?’ said Veyrenc.
‘Very,’ said Adamsberg. ‘You’d think a psychiatrist would be sitting down calmly, not jabbering away and hopping about like that.’
‘Perhaps he wasn’t like that with his patients. He seems really glad to see us, as if he hadn’t talked to anyone for years.’
‘Could be the case.’
Froissy had sent them a short message while they were on the train: Dr Roland Cauvert, only child, bachelor, no children. Aged 79. Working on a second book entitled 876 Orphans, 876 Destinies.
Then they had received a text from Voisenet at 2.20 p.m.
Just arrived, sir.
Where? Adamsberg had texted back.
Sens.
‘Well, he didn’t waste time,’ Veyrenc had commented.
* * *
*
‘You’ll see everything, in the fullness of time,’ Dr Cauvert continued enthusiastically, with an expansive gesture of his arms. ‘If divine providence gives me another five years, I shall have produced the definitive work on the paedopsychiatry of abandoned children. I have already devised an analysis based on the daily trajectories of 752 of them – I’ve got 124 to go. And then, of course, I’ll have to factor in peer-group pressure, paradoxes and similarities, syntheses, and their adult careers, whenever I’ve been able to trace them, their occupations, their marriages, and whether they turned out to be satisfactory parents. Oh yes, this’ll make him rise from the grave and bow down.’
‘Who?’ asked Veyrenc, though he knew the answer.
‘Why, my father!’ cried the doctor, laughing out loud. ‘I’ve only got tap water and apple juice in the house, nothing else, I’m afraid. Because, as you can imagine, what with all these maladjusted kids, my father had precious little time for me. I was his only child, but he hardly saw me. The invisible child – that was me. He never remembered a single one of my birthdays. But thanks be to divine providence’ – here he laughed again – ‘I had my mother, and she was a saint. Ice? I didn’t ever want to have children myself. I’ve seen too many orphans to believe that fathers stick around for ever, as you might imagine. Well, anyway,’ he said, passing them drinking glasses, ‘that’s not why you’re here. So go ahead, be my guest, dig into this big cauldron where all those unfortunates are preserved. What names was it, and which years?’
‘Just two, doctor. A boy aged eleven in 1943, Albert Barral, came to –’
Dr Cauvert laughed again, but this time it was a short, sharp laugh.
‘Well I never! Young Barral, you say? Barral, Lambertin, Missoli, Claveyrolle, Haubert . . . !’
‘Claveyrolle interests us as well.’
‘Oh, the whole gang then? The worst group of boys my father knew in his thirty-eight years in post. The only ones he couldn’t master, the only kids he ever wanted to send somewhere else. There was the very devil in them. I know as a psychiatrist I shouldn’t say that, but it’s what my father used to say, and when I was little I thought it was the truth. He tried everything. He talked to them at length, he listened to them, trying to understand, he brought in doctors, medicine. And he handed out punishments too, keeping them in, stopping treats. Tried everything. Was it a
ll predestined? Would things have been different if it hadn’t been for that little demon, Claveyrolle? Because he was the ringleader, the boss of the gang, the dictator, call him what you like. There’s always one. But I’m so stupid! Marie-Hélène brought me some apple tart with cinnamon, and it’s four o’clock. That woman is a gift from heaven.’
The doctor shot off again into the kitchen, excited by the thought of the tart.
‘Claveyrolle and Barral. Stink bugs,’ said Adamsberg.
‘Don’t go saying that kind of thing to a child psychiatrist.’
‘He already called Claveyrolle a demon, and said they all had the devil in them. I envy this doctor, he seems to have a great relish for life. I don’t think I’m in his league. An apple tart would never get me so excited.’
‘He must be a little unbalanced, Jean-Baptiste. Imagine, being the invisible son of his perfect father. And still wanting his father’s approval today – that’s why he’s doing all this.’
‘Perhaps he’s never really left the orphanage.’
Cauvert bustled back in cheerfully, served out the tart on plates for the visitors. He ate his own standing up, with voracious bites.
‘Ah, well, you’re in luck, because my father had a special file on Claveyrolle’s gang. What a little shit! I can see him now. Impossible to get rid of him – well, to transfer him somewhere else. It was wartime, there were plenty of orphans, and you can imagine the other children’s homes weren’t exactly welcoming kids like that with open arms. He spread terror throughout La Miséricorde. I think Missoli and Torrailles were his lieutenants. I was five years younger than them, but they didn’t come near me. Son of the director, no, they wouldn’t touch me. Anyone who spoke to me was treated as a toady and threatened by the gang of bullies. Nobody ever touched a hair of my head, true, but I never had a single friend either. My bad luck, eh? How’s the apple tart?’
‘Excellent,’ said Veyrenc.
‘Thanks, commissaire.’
‘He’s the commissaire,’ said Veyrenc, pointing to Adamsberg.
‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t imagine. No offence?’
‘None taken,’ said Adamsberg, standing up, feeling he’d been sitting long enough. ‘So your father had gathered some documentation on this Claveyrolle gang?’
‘Can you do me a favour, commissaire? Tell me what Barral ended up doing. I know about Claveyrolle – art teacher. A teacher, that’s ironic, isn’t it? But he had a gift, that’s true enough, especially for caricaturing the teachers, or drawing naked women on the playground walls. There was one time – you’ll see, it’s in the file – he managed to get inside the girls’ dormitory, and covered the walls with paintings. Paintings of what, do you think? Cock and balls, times fifty! But what about Barral?’
‘He worked in insurance.’
‘Ah, he settled down then. Unless of course he was a crook. Married?’
‘Divorced. He had two children. Claveyrolle was married and divorced twice, no children.’
‘Couldn’t forge a proper relationship – that will have been true of a lot of them. How can you create a family, when you have no idea what it’s like?’
And as Veyrenc had predicted, Dr Cauvert, once he was on professional ground became quite calm, concentrated indeed, and almost sad. Perhaps he had learned to laugh a lot and take pleasure in apple tart, in order to forget for a while the 876 damaged lives he had been following, step by step.
‘They kept in touch with each other all their lives.’
‘Really? So the gang didn’t break up when they were older?’
‘No, they used to meet again over a few drinks, well, two of them did.’
‘And now they’re dead,’ said Veyrenc.
‘I should have guessed. You’re cops, after all. Someone must be dead. What happened?’
‘They died last month, a week apart,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Both as the result of a bite by a recluse spider.’
Dr Cauvert’s face suddenly froze. Without a word, he stacked the plates, collected the glasses, and then abandoned this diversionary activity to go over to his bookcase, from which he took down a faded blue cardboard folder. With a serious expression, he placed it on the table in front of the two officers, without taking his eyes off them. The folder carried a large label, stuck on and fixed back again many times, after years of use. Written on it in black ink was the heading ‘The Recluse Gang’ and underneath in smaller letters: ‘Claveyrolle, Barral, Lambertin, Missoli, Haubert and Co.’
‘What does this mean?’ asked Adamsberg, after a good minute of silence.
‘It means “live by the recluse and die by the recluse” – doesn’t it?’
‘But you can’t die by a recluse,’ said Veyrenc.
‘No, but you can do a lot of damage with one. That was one of their favourite tricks, apart from all the other brutal attacks, not to mention being sex pests.’
Cauvert pulled from the file a series of photographs of some very young boys which he spread out on the table, flipping through them as if they were playing cards.
‘Here’s what they did,’ he said with disgust. ‘Eleven other kids, eleven victims of their cruelty – and their recluses. These four,’ he said, pointing to their pictures, ‘only received harmless bites. And these two only got slightly infected – here, you can see on Henri’s arm, a purple patch about nine centimetres across. He recovered, and so did this one, Jacques. But on the other five, just take a look at the damage.’
Adamsberg and Veyrenc passed the five photographs to each other. One showed a small boy of about four whose leg had been amputated, another a boy who had lost his foot.
‘Those two were bitten by spiders in 1944. Louis and Jeannot, aged four and five. In those days, penicillin was only just starting to appear. And the first serious consignments went as a priority to the troops in Normandy after the D-Day landings. It wasn’t possible to treat the children, or to save their limbs from the gangrene that developed. They had to amputate. My father went to court about it. Claveyrolle, Barral and Lambertin spent eight months in a boys’ reformatory. So then what was known as the “recluse nightmare” went quiet for a while. But as soon as they got out, they started it again.’
Looking serious, the doctor fetched the three glasses from the tray and refilled them with apple juice.
‘Sorry,’ he said as he passed them across, ‘the ice cubes have melted.’
He drank his own juice off in one gulp, and returned to the photographs.
‘This one here is Ernest, aged seven. He has a wound almost ten centimetres long and five across. It was 1946, so this time, the doctors were able to save his arm. Also in 1946, here we have Marcel, aged twelve: look, half his face is eaten away. Yes, he was cured too, but disfigured, with a horrible scar, as indeed was Ernest’s arm. Finally we have Maurice, aged eleven in 1947, bitten on the left testicle. Just a little marble left, see, and in fact the necrosis spread to the penis, so he became impotent. In 1948, the attacks using recluse spiders came to an end. Claveyrolle turned his attention to sexual abuse. Along with the others of course. He was the leader of a little gang of eight other little bastards who stuck as close to their hero as they did to their shadows.’
Adamsberg quietly put down the abominable photographs of mutilated children.
‘How did they do it, doctor?’
‘They would go out at night, and there were plenty of places they could collect the creatures: under the eaves, in the playground, the barn, the woodpile, the toolshed. These spiders were quite plentiful in summer round here. What we gathered afterwards was that they lured them with other insects they’d collected, flies, crickets especially, laid out on the ground in a likely place. Did you know that the recluse spider feeds on the corpses of other insects?’
‘No,’ said Veyrenc.
‘Well, it does, so that made it easier for them. They just put a few flies down on the g
round and waited with their pocket torches.’
‘But how did they catch the spiders without being bitten themselves?’ asked Adamsberg naively, in the manner of Estalère.
Dr Cauvert looked at him in puzzlement.
‘You’ve never caught any spiders?’ he asked.
‘No, just toads.’
‘You just need a glass and a bit of cardboard. You trap the spider under the glass and you slide the cardboard underneath and there you are.’
‘Oh, it’s simple,’ Adamsberg agreed.
‘Not that simple, actually. Recluses are timid creatures. They didn’t catch very many, eleven in four years. But that was already too many. They would choose their victim, and at night, they’d slip the spider into a shirt or a pair of trousers. And then the inevitable happened. The creature was cornered and it bit. What bloody little savages! When I think that after that, you could get to be an art teacher and walk around in a three-piece suit.’
‘You’re not trying to take a medical approach?’ Veyrenc enquired.
‘No, I’m not,’ said Cauvert sharply. ‘Don’t forget, I knew them and I knew their victims. I hated the Recluse Gang with all my heart. My father did what he could. He had the dormitory doors watched more closely, he shook out the children’s clothes every morning, he closed off the yards. But it wasn’t enough. These boys were wicked, and proud of being so, arrogant about their virility, and high on their power inside the Miséricorde community. And they got what they wanted, because sadism always generates plenty of energy and ideas. Lights out was at 9 p.m., so how did they get out at night? Some of them were even seen in town after nightfall. They’d gone there on bicycles, after forcing the bike shed. You can have the whole file – make a copy and look after it carefully. If one of their little victims has finally taken his revenge on them in his old age, messieurs, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, a recluse for a recluse, well, just let him be! That’s the only thing that would give me pleasure.’