by Fred Vargas
‘Of course. Our mother forced us to walk along it every year, whether we wanted to or not.’
‘Mostly not. But we didn’t walk the whole thirty-five kilometres, all the same.’
‘No, our father took us some of the way in the car, to a little wood.’
‘The Bénéjacq wood.’
‘That’s it, I’d forgotten the name.’
‘So you see, I do remember. And then we’d walk a few more kilometres, and our father would come back and take us the rest of the way to Lourdes. Every year, same thing.’
‘Except this one time,’ said Raphaël. ‘That day, he drove us all the way to Lourdes. Our mother went to the grotto, bought her bottles of holy water and so on. Remember once we drank them? We got in big trouble.’
‘Yeah, right, I remember that.’
‘But nothing else?’
‘Nothing. We went to Lourdes and we came back again. What am I supposed to say?’
Adamsberg felt better. He was listening to his brother, there was nothing else to be done. It must be that saint they worship at Lourdes who had kindly placed Raphaël near to him, on this sandy beach on the Île de Ré, not too far from Rochefort. And what was the saint called? Thérèse? Roberte?
‘What’s her name?’ he asked. ‘The saint, the one in Lourdes?’
‘St Odette, no wait, St Bernadette.’
‘So we didn’t remember much about that bit of it!’
‘No. Have some more wine.’
Adamsberg drank again, put down his glass, then looked at his brother, who continued:
‘That summer, Mother had decided not to stop at Bénéjacq but to do five or six kilometres on foot on the way home from Lourdes. She had something she wanted to do. It was off the road, and she explained as we went along. You don’t remember that either?’
‘No.’
‘Well, off the road,’ Raphaël went on, ‘up in a field, there was an old dovecot, you know, a place where they used to keep pigeons, built of stone. It was quite small, only about a couple of metres across. And the doors and flight-holes had all been bricked up. Except for one. I could see that.’
‘And? What did she want with this dovecot?’
‘There was a woman living there. She’d been there about five years, never came out.’
‘What? You mean she lived there all the time, day and night?’
‘Yes.’
‘But how did she survive?’
‘On charity, from people who were prepared to walk up the slope in the field and give her food and water through this window slot. They brought her straw as well for, you know, natural functions. Anyway, that’s what our mother was going to do, take her some food. The locals thought she was a nun or a saint, who was going to protect them, like in the old days. The prefect didn’t dare intervene.’
‘I can’t believe this, Raphaël.’
‘You don’t want to believe it, Jean-Baptiste.’
‘But what was she doing there? Who’d locked her up?’
‘I’m talking about a woman who’d cloistered herself up voluntarily, to stay there till death. Like in the olden days, medieval times.’
‘Because there were women who did that then?’
‘Yes, masses of women in the Middle Ages, and it went on until the sixteenth century. And they were called . . . recluses.’
Adamsberg’s hand stopped in mid-air, holding his wine glass.
‘Yes, recluses,’ Raphaël repeated. ‘And some of them survived in their cells for up to fifty years. Their hair grew like a wild mane, jumping with lice, their nails got so long they curved over like claws, their skin was ingrained with dirt, and their bodies smelled terrible, because their bedding was soaked with urine and crap. And this one, maybe the last recluse of our own times, you saw her, in the field: the recluse of the Pré d’Albret.’
‘No, I did not!’ Adamsberg shouted. ‘Our mother would never have let me see her.’
‘Quite right. When we were about ten metres from the dovecot, she made us stop and wait for her. But it was so mysterious, wasn’t it? So you slipped behind her, and when she was on her way back, you ran like a hare and climbed up on to a rock, to peep in through the window. For a couple of minutes. A long couple of minutes. Then you screamed, you started screaming with terror, like a mad thing. And you lost consciousness.’
Adamsberg glared at his brother, his fists clenched.
‘Mother tried to revive you by slapping your face and pouring Lourdes water over you. I ran back to the road to get our father. He carried you in his arms, and you didn’t come round until you were in the back of the car. Your head was on my knee, and just from resting your chin on that window ledge, your face smelled of shit and death. And Mother gave you a shake and said, “Forget it, son, for mercy’s sake, just forget it!” And you never mentioned it again. So that’s the terror, that’s the darkness, that’s the recluse that’s been gripping the back of your neck: the woman in the Pré d’Albret.’
Adamsberg stood up, his lips drained of blood and his body rigid, ran his hand stiffly across his face, and thought he could smell once more the atrocious odour of death and rotting. He could see his brother, the candles, the wine glass, but now he could see the claws, a shock of hair as grey as a cellar beetle, hair that was crawling with parasites, he could see a mouth opening slowly, wide open, full of rotten teeth, and the claws coming nearer, and he heard again the harsh terrifying roar. The recluse. Raphaël jumped up and dashed round the table just in time to catch his brother as he fainted. He managed to drag him to a bed, pulled off his shoes and covered him up.
‘I knew I was going to hurt you,’ he whispered.
XXVIII
Adamsberg normally slept little, rising at daybreak. Raphaël woke him at noon. He opened his eyes and sat up on the bed. He realised it was late, no need to ask the time.
‘I’m taking over your bathroom,’ he said. ‘I haven’t washed or changed in over twenty-four hours.’
‘I’ve just got a shower.’
‘OK, I’ll take over your shower. Were there any phone calls?’
‘Two.’
Adamsberg snatched up his mobile and listened to the voicemails from Voisenet and Retancourt. Voisenet was categorical. Jean Escande had arrived at Palavas two days before the venomous attack on Vessac. The old man with one foot, Jeannot, was well known in several small restaurants in the spa town, and they had finally tracked him down at the house of a woman friend, just as he was leaving. Adamsberg called Voisenet back.
‘What’ll I do now, boss?’
‘Go home with the team, lieutenant. Did you have time to paddle in the sea at least?’
‘For five minutes.’
‘Well, that’s something.’
Retancourt answered her phone at once.
‘Thirty-eight hotels visited, commissaire.’
‘We’re not going to check the 17,000 hotels in all of France. Back to base, Retancourt.’
‘He slept in his car then? That’s what you think?’
‘He slept at Palavas.’
‘But if he was –’
‘I know, I know,’ Adamsberg cut her off.
‘Are you still in Rochefort?’
‘I’m on the Île de Ré, at my brother’s. Tell Mordent I’ll be back at base tomorrow. Mordent, not Danglard.’
Adamsberg rejoined Raphaël on the terrace, where lunch was waiting. Pasta and ham. Raphaël’s cooking skills were no more advanced than those of his brother.
‘We’re dished,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t Jean Escande who attacked Vessac. He’s been located at the seaside, hundreds of kilometres from where the attack took place.’
‘They might have sent one of their sons.’
‘No, Raphaël, this kind of vengeance can’t be done by proxy. It’s got to be direct or nothing. The kids who were bi
tten didn’t kill their tormentors. And yet there’s no doubt, it was recluse venom. And it’s still got to be that orphanage, La Miséricorde, that’s somehow at the centre of this case. I’m sure about that, or nothing makes any sense. There’s no other lead, but this lead is getting us nowhere. I’ve crashed head first into the sands, just like Danglard said.’
Raphaël passed Jean-Baptiste the bread, and the two brothers cleaned their plates with the sweeping gestures of country boys.
‘But it’s different now,’ said Raphaël, throwing some crumbs to a few waders scurrying about on the beach.
‘I have a pair of blackbirds at the squad. I feed them cake. The male is very thin.’
‘Blackbirds are nice too. Are they nesting?
‘The female’s sitting on eggs. What’s different?’
‘Are you still blind?’
‘No. I can perfectly well distinguish the recluse of the Pré d’Albret now. And I know why I screamed.’
‘She came towards you.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I don’t know, I just always imagined she had.’
‘Yes, hands outstretched, and she shouted, no, she sort of roared. But I can look back at it now. I’m not afraid of her, and I’m not afraid of the word. Recluse, recluse, I can keep saying it all day without falling over.’
‘So you can face it again. You’re free. You can see.’
‘If there’s anything left to see now. Who on earth would kill using recluse venom, if not the boys from the orphanage? And it wasn’t them.’
‘Well, it must have been someone else, bro. You’re free, you’ll find them. You’ll be there at eight.’
‘Where?’
‘Paris. I know you’re going to jump on the next train.’
Adamsberg smiled.
* * *
*
Raphaël dropped his brother off at the station, after they had given each other a long hug.
‘Oh dammit, Raphaël, I left my dirty clothes at your place.’
‘That was the point, wasn’t it?’
* * *
*
Like many people, Adamsberg enjoyed travelling by train, because it offers you a parenthesis, even an escape from the real world. Your thoughts can move around slowly, skirting difficulties. With his eyes half shut, his mind ranged over the painful shipwreck of the investigation and returned to the woman Louise, and her hundred imaginary recluses. He returned to the connections Voisenet had made between animal fluid and seminal fluid, and the women who had been raped. He returned once more to the woman described as ‘daft’ who shared a house with Irène. He took out his phone and sent a text to Voisenet.
Thoughts on train. What you said: rape victim, control of toxic fluid, murdering an aggressor by turning fluid against him. Could a woman who was raped develop a phobia for poisonous creatures for same reason?
Thoughts in car, Voisenet replied. Dictating to Lamarre, on way back to Paris. Certainly. Phobia of snakes scorpions spiders anything that injects toxin. Interesting but gets us nowhere.
Never mind.
‘Was that really all he replied?’ Voisenet asked Lamarre. ‘“Never mind”?’
‘Yes, that’s all.’
Voisenet, who was tired out, wondered how the disastrous results of the investigation so far still left Adamsberg with the desire to go foraging on these distant paths. That was because he did not know that Raphaël had rescued his brother from the web of the recluse of the Pré d’Albret, restoring to him the aerial freedom of his movements and thoughts.
* * *
*
Adamsberg tried Irène next, having received permission to contact her on Élisabeth’s phone, searching for an appropriate excuse to formulate his question. Without finding one, he decided to go ahead anyway and tapped:
Irène, what is full name of your housemate?
Louise Chevrier. Why?
That ‘why?’ was of course entirely justified.
I know a specialist on spider phobia. Could he help?
Not knowing if there was such a word as ‘arachnophobia’ he had avoided the word, so his message did not look as convincing as he had intended.
She won’t see him. Hates men too, awkward, eh?
Just an idea.
I’m telling lies again, thought Adamsberg, pulling a face. Irène was replying spontaneously and he was deceiving her with other thoughts, train thoughts, that get you nowhere as Voisenet had rightly said. This time, he contacted Mercadet.
Check if Louise Chevrier, 73, was ever rape victim.
Urgent?
Need to understand something.
Adamsberg received the reply quite a while later, after he had dropped off to sleep again.
Raped in 1981 age 38 Nîmes!!! Rapist caught for once. Nicolas Carnot, got 15 yrs. Checked, but zero link to Miséricorde, either of them. Shit, missed her before. Trial held at Troyes, don’t know why.
‘Rapist caught for once.’ Adamsberg understood what his officer meant. He was familiar with the damning statistics: a woman raped every seven minutes in France, and only one or two per cent of rapists sentenced. Might one of the victims develop a neurotic fear of poisonous creatures afterwards? So that she might imagine them coming after her from all sides on their hairy legs? Or on the contrary, might she do a deal with the toxin, get hold of it and violate the aggressor’s life with it?
The hairy legs he had thought of might give an unquestioned advantage to the spider, if you wanted revenge for a rape, because they might suggest the arms of a man grabbing the victim. Well, the recluse spider wasn’t actually hairy, but that was still an element in favour of arachnids – arachnodes? arachnes? – compared to their competitors, snakes, scorpions, wasps, hornets, etc. And there was something else too: in the spider world, the male was often killed by the female after mating, although again this wasn’t usual for the recluse. But in its favour, the creature was timid, hiding away from humans, only venturing out where there was no threat. Yes, he said, trying to put himself in the mind of a woman who had been raped, the recluse could be a good companion for the rest of your life. And with its un-hairy legs, more feminine, in a way it might seem more approachable. At the same time, it was possessed of a venom that could destroy flesh and blood.
He turned away from the hills and clock towers speeding past before his eyes and texted Mercadet again.
Occupation of Louise Chevrier?
Via Froissy: childminder.
Where?
Strasbourg.
When?
1986 or so.
Strasbourg. He well remembered its mighty cathedral with its steeple. Which took him to another tower, a much more humble one, the one that must have been part of the Miséricorde orphanage. And that clock tower still loomed over their investigation. In his mind anyway.
Mercadet’s responses had been slow, reminding him that his lieutenant was probably approaching his period of narcoleptic sleep. He closed his mobile, reckoning that the question of whether you called the spider family arachnids, arachnodes or arachnes could wait. And closed his eyes. Twelve hours’ recovery time had not been enough.
XXIX
Adamsberg walked to headquarters next morning, watching a few seagulls that had accompanied him from the Île de Ré. He hadn’t felt shaky at all, had not put his hand to his neck, or felt the presence of any kind of spectre.
But he was walking without haste, putting off the moment of arrival, wondering how to lead the meeting at which he would have to deal with the unquestionable debacle of this investigation, while facing all his officers, most of them exhausted. He was returning from an expedition on which he had sent everyone – Danglard excepted – like a defeated captain on a dismasted ship, driven up against the reefs of incontestable facts. After the uncertain start, his colleagues had believed him and followed him, and the return
to port would be in silence, in the council chamber, on a calm sea. No Jeannot in detention, no charges against Little Louis, Marcel and the other ex-victims. He did nevertheless feel some satisfaction in having established that these men, who had been bitten by spiders long ago at La Miséricorde, and whom he had visualised as wounded children, had not actually killed anyone. And despite his professional disappointment, despite the investigation which had come to such an abrupt halt, the victory over himself that his brother had provided made him feel much more at ease and light-hearted. Scattered ideas without meaning came to play around in his head once more, like tiny bubbles, liberated to fill his mind with tumultuous gases, fizzing away without any concern for effectiveness.
Before he went through the archway of the squad building, he leaned against a lamp post and with a smile sent a text to Danglard:
You can go for dinner with your relatives now, Danglard, the coast is clear.
* * *
*
And in the office, faces did indeed look tired and sad. Veyrenc, to whom Adamsberg had delegated the task of dealing with whole sections of his speech, was concentrating on some notes. Retancourt remained imperturbable. This shipwreck of an investigation wasn’t going to challenge her force of resistance. But like the others, she was afraid that Adamsberg would find this failure hard to bear, when faced with the bitter hostility of Danglard. The commandant possessed many linguistic resources with which to celebrate his victory, and he was facing a boss who, this morning, had no answers. And Danglard had still not appeared. Adamsberg went from desk to desk, making rapid gestures of reassurance, according to the character of each officer. For Retancourt and Froissy, he had picked in his own garden at dawn two handfuls of wild flowers, blue ones. He put one bunch on Retancourt’s desk.
‘Has Danglard come in?’ he asked.
‘He’s in his office,’ said Noël, ‘hiding away like a recluse spider. Or perhaps he’s glad we’ve hit the buffers.’
Adamsberg shrugged.