This Poison Will Remain

by Fred Vargas

  ‘The mother?’

  ‘She was at home. If you can call it a home.’

  ‘You’ve accessed Enzo’s trial records?’

  ‘I haven’t read them all yet, it’s a huge file. Just enough to know the worst. Enzo gave the key evidence. The mother simply confirmed, after a fashion. The psychiatrists described her as amorphous, depersonalised. Enzo, though, was very bright. He was the one who provided the evidence about the younger girl, Annette.’

  Adamsberg mashed up his potatoes to mix them with cabbage in the regional fashion, and waited.

  ‘At first, Seguin raped her, like the elder sister, once she was five. Then he got tired of her. “His girl”, his property, was Bernadette. And the other kid, well, he hired out the other kid, sir.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hired her out. To boys. From when she was seven until she was nineteen. Some youths he unearthed from somewhere or other. Enzo was asked to describe them but he couldn’t, he never met them. On evenings when they “visited” Annette, he was locked up, by his father. He heard them talking and climbing the stairs.’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘Yes, because they came as a group. They asked Enzo how many youths had been in the house, in his opinion. If it was the same ones, or different. He said it was always the same ones, who had used his little sister over a period of twelve years. Twelve years. They asked him how many. From the voices, Enzo reckoned nine or ten.’

  Adamsberg grabbed his officer’s wrist.

  ‘How many did you say?’

  ‘Enzo thought nine or ten.’

  ‘Nine or ten, Mercadet? And always the same ones? You realise what you just said?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s got to be those nine unspeakable youths from the orphanage. Work it out. Same dates, same ages, same place. The ones that the janitor Landrieu let out at night.’

  ‘But, sir, forgive me, how would Landrieu have known that Seguin was hiring out his daughter like that?’

  ‘They knew each other, Mercadet, they must have. I knew we had to keep concentrating on the orphanage tower. One of those two sisters has been eliminating the stink bugs for the last twenty years, one after another.’

  ‘Maybe both of them.’

  ‘Yes. Or maybe not. Not the older one, she wasn’t raped by the same people. She would have had her revenge when the father was killed. Must be the younger one, surely. Annette’s killing them. Or possibly,’ he added after a moment, ‘Bernadette.’

  ‘Whichever of them it is, how would they know who all these youths were? Because Enzo never saw them.’

  The two men thought in silence for so long, their food uneaten on their plates, that Estelle came over, looking anxious.

  ‘Anything wrong with it?’

  ‘No, no, Estelle, it’s fine.’

  And seeing their faces, looking tense and concentrated, she went quietly away.

  ‘Annette would be sixty-eight,’ said Adamsberg. ‘That doesn’t fit with Louise Chevrier, because she’s five years older.’

  ‘Easy to lie about your date of birth.’

  ‘And where’s Enzo now?’

  ‘He got a sentence of twenty years. The mother got eleven for passive complicity and ill-treatment of the children. She died in prison. Enzo got out after doing seventeen years, in 1984.’

  ‘And where’s he now?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir, haven’t had time to find that out yet.’

  ‘And the daughters?’

  ‘Same thing.’

  ‘What a bastard!’ said Adamsberg between clenched teeth.

  ‘Who, the father?

  ‘No, this time I mean the son of the orphanage director. Dr Cauvert. He knew, he must have known.’

  ‘What? That Landrieu was letting the boys out at night?

  ‘That Eugène Seguin worked at the orphanage. But with the trial and the threat of scandal, his father, Cauvert senior, must have covered that up. And destroyed any records. La Miséricorde? Employing a man who imprisoned his children, a rapist, hiring out his own daughter? Oh no, that wouldn’t do at all. That’s got to be why there’s such confusion about Seguin’s work. He wasn’t really a metalworker, he must have been working at the orphanage too. Probably as janitor along with Landrieu. And he took money from the young bullies in the Recluse Gang to rape his daughter.’

  ‘What money would they have? They were orphans.’

  Adamsberg shrugged.

  ‘Pickpocketing round Nîmes was easy for them. Probably Seguin wasn’t hiring the daughter out for the money, in fact. But for the sinister pleasure of prostituting her, listening, and watching everything. Then after they’d left the orphanage, it went on. It’s got to be that, Mercadet, I can’t see that it could be anything else.’

  ‘You’re going too fast, sir, we’ve got no evidence of that.’

  ‘We’ve got a bundle of stuff: the connections, the dates, the number of boys.’

  ‘You mean we’re approaching the 52nd parallel?’

  ‘Maybe we are.’

  XXXVIII

  ‘Lieutenant,’ said Adamsberg, stopping under the entrance to the squad headquarters, ‘I need to find out more about the two women, Bernadette and Annette. Where they are now, who they are, everything. And about Louise Chevrier too.’

  ‘Commissaire, if I could . . .’ Mercadet began in embarrassment.

  Adamsberg looked at his officer’s face. His cheeks were drained of colour, his eyelids were drooping, and his shoulders were bent. His inescapable narcoleptic cycle was entering the sleep phase.

  ‘No, no, you go and sleep, I’ll ask Froissy. You can meet up with her later.’

  Froissy listened intently as Adamsberg told her about the daughters of the Seguin couple.

  ‘We can tell the rest of the team about them now. Make a full report on the imprisoned girls in Nîmes and send it out. Then see if you can find anything about the sisters, the brother, and Louise. Photos too, if you can, as recent as possible, but especially of them smiling.’

  ‘For ID photos you’re not allowed to smile these days. What was it you wanted to see?’

  ‘Their teeth.’

  ‘Their teeth?’

  ‘Just an idea, a proto-idea.’

  Froissy did not query the request. After a remark like that, there was no point trying to go further.

  ‘A bubble of gas,’ she said, nodding. ‘In Louise’s case, since she looked after children, I could look for some websites about former crèches and so on in the Nîmes and Strasbourg areas. But honestly I don’t know if such sites exist. As for those two poor girls, did Mercadet say he couldn’t trace them?’

  ‘No, he just didn’t have time. He’s already done a lot of work.’

  ‘And now,’ said Froissy, consulting her watch, ‘he must be asleep.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘He’s a bit early.’

  ‘The emotion.’

  But Froissy had turned to her keyboard and stopped listening. He tapped her shoulder.

  ‘Can you find me the time of the next train for Nîmes?’

  After a moment:

  ‘15.15, arrives 18.05.’

  Adamsberg headed for Veyrenc’s office.

  ‘We’re going back to Mas-de-Pessac, Louis. That bastard didn’t tell us everything he knew.’

  ‘Cauvert? A bit eccentric, but nice enough, I thought.’

  ‘Nevertheless, he was protecting his father. We’ve lost days because of that. A train at 15.15, OK? We’ll come back tonight.’

  During the journey, Adamsberg filled Veyrenc in on the new material, the sequestered children of Nîmes and his conviction that Seguin must have worked in the orphanage. He also told him in total confidence about the tooth extraction on the Île de Ré. Veyrenc whistled, his way of showing feelings. According to the cadence
s, Adamsberg could guess which ones. This time a mixture: shock, stupefaction and thoughtfulness. Three tunes.

  ‘So what we’re going to do is shake down good old Dr Cauvert without any proof that Seguin worked there? That right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How will we do that?’

  ‘We’ll tell him he did. Your uncle worked there for a year, filling in for someone.’

  ‘Oh yes? So what was his name?’

  ‘Froissy found me someone who was a supply teacher. Your uncle’s name was Robert Quentin.’

  ‘All right. What subject?’

  ‘Catechism class. That bother you?’

  ‘That’s the least of our problems. So I’m to say that through my Uncle Robert, I know Eugène Seguin was employed at La Miséricorde. But why would my uncle have told me that?’

  ‘He just mentioned it, that’s all. Don’t fuss over the detail, Louis.’

  ‘What if Seguin never worked there?’

  ‘But he did, Louis.’

  ‘If you say so. Are you going to sleep now?’

  ‘Doctor’s orders. No kidding, Louis, it’s to allow scar tissue to form after the extraction. Apparently, if I don’t do this, I’ll fall into a pit. The doctor seemed pretty serious about that.’

  Before obeying the doctor’s orders, Adamsberg consulted his text messages. The psychiatrist didn’t seem to realise that now people had mobiles it was impossible to go to sleep. Or to wander about watching the gulls fly over the dead fish in the river, or to allow the bubbles of gas to bounce around inside your head.

  From Retancourt:

  Lambertin + Torrailles turned up, now in café under watch Justin + Noël, I’m too visible. Eavesdrop result: Lambertin staying tonight with Torrailles.

  OK, don’t lose them.

  From Irène:

  At funeral Louise chuckling, esp. when earth hit coffin! Must like burials, some people do. She smiles a lot, little clicks, why? Not in the cemetery thank God. Can’t stand her sometimes, feel mean. Have packed up yr snowstorm of Rochefort. L believes me but says why do cops waste time on that instead of protecting people? My answer: without hobbies or snowstorms, they’d go mad. Cheers, Jean-Bapt.

  Cheers, Irène, and thanks.

  From Froissy:

  Nothing yet on the Seguin sisters, vanished. No record psych hosp. Same for brother. No photo of L Chevrier smiling on old websites. Trying dentists, Strasbourg, Nîmes, records easy but many dentists.

  Don’t forget evening meal.

  Blackbirds?

  Yes.

  Think I’d forget?

  Before dentists check any member Cauvert family suspected of wartime collaboration. Father, grandfather, uncle?

  More family secrets?

  Just so.

  * * *

  *

  It was after six thirty when the two policemen rang the bell at Dr Cauvert’s door. Adamsberg had deliberately not let him know they were coming and they disturbed him in the middle of working.

  ‘Now?’ said Cauvert, rather grumpily. ‘You didn’t even phone to say.’

  ‘We were just down here,’ said Veyrenc, ‘and we thought we’d try our luck.’

  ‘There’s a detail we need to follow up,’ added Adamsberg.

  ‘OK, OK,’ said the doctor, letting them in and disappearing into the kitchen, from which he emerged five minutes later looking more cheerful and carrying a laden tray. ‘Ceylon tea, green tea, coffee, decaf, infusion, strawberry juice and, special treat, a Savoy cake! Whatever you like.’

  To refuse would have distressed Cauvert, who was already putting out teacups and glasses, and plates for the cake. Once he was sitting in front of his coffee, Adamsberg got straight to the point.

  ‘You must have heard, when you were young, about the two girls who were sequestered by their father in Nîmes, in the sixties.’

  ‘That terrible case? Of course, everyone in the whole town, the whole region, knew about it! We followed the trial day by day.’

  ‘So you knew that the father, Eugène Seguin, hired his younger daughter out to young local boys who raped her?’

  The doctor shook his head, with the expression of a psychologist who does not think a young patient has much future. Adamsberg sensed he had flinched slightly on hearing the name Seguin.

  ‘Yes, indeed, the brother’s evidence was damning. What was his name again?’

  ‘Enzo.’

  ‘Enzo, that’s right. Brave young man.’

  ‘Unlike your father, who did all he could to conceal the fact that Seguin had been employed at La Miséricorde. That he sent the boys from the Recluse Gang off to have sex with his daughter. Aided by another janitor, Landrieu.’

  ‘What?’ said Cauvert, sitting up. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I just told you. Seguin was working at La Miséricorde.’

  ‘You dare to insult my father! In this room! Good Lord, if he’d known that a man like Seguin had any dealings with the Recluse Gang, he’d have gone straight to give evidence.’

  ‘But he didn’t.’

  ‘Because Seguin was never employed by him!’

  ‘Yes, he was,’ said Veyrenc.

  ‘Good Lord, man, my father hated that gang of little shits, as you well know. He was a good man, you hear me, an honourable man.’

  ‘Exactly. And if he’d admitted that Seguin had worked for him, he’d be dishonoured and ruined, for lack of vigilance and professional shortcomings. But there was probably something else as well, so he couldn’t bring himself to speak up. In the end, he kept quiet, and wiped Seguin out of the records. And after him, you’ve concealed the truth too.’

  The doctor, by now perspiring with indignation, collected everything from the table in a hurry, before all the cake had been eaten, piling crockery on the tray and breaking a saucer. They were being asked to leave.

  ‘Get out of here!’ he said. ‘Get out!’

  ‘Seguin was here,’ said Veyrenc. ‘He was a janitor. The supply teacher for catechism, Robert Quentin, was my uncle. And he told me.’

  ‘Oh, did he, indeed, and why didn’t he speak up at the trial then?’

  ‘He’d gone to live in Canada, he never heard about the girls who were locked up till much later.’

  ‘And what about the other teachers, why would they have kept quiet, eh?’

  ‘The teachers were only here during the school day,’ said Adamsberg. ‘They didn’t have much to do with the daily life in the orphanage. None of them stayed more than three years. After the war, when more schools were being rebuilt, they left for better jobs. The janitors would only be known to them by sight, most of them probably didn’t even know their names.’

  The doctor got up and patted his cheeks one after the other, walking more slowly now.

  ‘Can this remain between ourselves?’ he said finally.

  ‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Word of honour.’

  ‘All right, yes, Seguin did work in the orphanage,’ he said, sitting down heavily. ‘And yes, he did do favours for that gang, Claveyrolle’s lot. Even as kids, we knew that. No point asking him to help us if you quarrelled with them. But sending them off to rape his daughter? No, my father never said anything about that to me.’

  ‘But it was them, and your father must have realised that.’

  ‘Surely not. He might have suspected them, but nothing more. It would have been wrong to denounce youths in his care without proof.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Dr Cauvert. Your father wasn’t stupid, and he knew all the boys like the back of his hand. He knew Claveyrolle and Co. were getting out at night. Because it wasn’t just the once, was it? And he knew they went after girls, even inside the orphanage. And when the trial opened, and everyone learned that Seguin’s own daughter had been raped by “nine or ten local boys”, no more and no less, “always
the same ones” and for several years, your father didn’t immediately think of the Recluse Gang? When he knew they had been in cahoots with the janitor? He didn’t just suspect them, Dr Cauvert, he knew.’

  ‘My father respected the rule of presumption of innocence, and he was protecting the institution,’ said Cauvert, twisting a delicate teaspoon between his fingers.

  ‘No,’ Adamsberg corrected him, ‘he was protecting himself. It was his own professional fault, his past neglect coming home to roost. But it wasn’t just that, was it?’

  ‘You said that before. What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘Why didn’t he ever sack Seguin, if he was helping the gang that your father detested?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Cauvert cried.

  ‘I’ll tell you. Because the janitor was almost certainly blackmailing him. Seguin was deep into the black market and collaboration during the war, and so was your grandfather. If your father had laid a finger on him, Seguin could just have said “Son of a collaborator!” – words that at the time nobody wanted to hear, something that had to be kept quiet. So that explains what your father did, and why the Recluse Gang went unpunished.’

  ‘No!’ said Cauvert.

  Adamsberg showed him in silence his message from Froissy, confirming that his grandfather Cauvert had indeed been a wartime collaborator. The doctor looked away, his features collapsed, and he swayed forward passively like a grass in the wind. His wandering gaze fell on his hand, where the teaspoon, now twisted out of shape, seemed to surprise him.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ he said in a dull voice. ‘About the collaboration. So I didn’t understand.’

  ‘I believe you. And I’m sorry to have put you through this,’ said Adamsberg, standing up quietly. ‘But you must have suspected some dark secrets for a long time now. Thank you for being honest about this today.’

  ‘Does my honesty wipe out my father’s offence?’

  ‘In part, doctor,’ Adamsberg lied.

  * * *

  *

  As they had the previous time, Adamsberg and Veyrenc went back up the long narrow street leading to the bus station.

  ‘That was a good idea, the job in Canada,’ said Adamsberg. ‘I hadn’t anticipated the question.’