by Vargas, Fred
‘No, but I do have a hunter-gatherer housemate from the palaeolithic period. He’s a prehistorian, very into all that, so don’t tease him about the subject. And he may be a prehistorian and obsessed, but he’s a good friend. I’ve taken an interest in the kind of remains he digs up, because he’s sensitive actually, and I don’t want to offend him.’
‘Is he the one your uncle calls “St Luke”?’
‘No, that’s Lucien, he’s a historian who specialises in the Great War, he’s obsessive about that too. There are four of us in our lodgings, Mathias, Lucien and me, plus my uncle. And the Vandoosler ancestor, who insists on calling us St Matthew, St Mark and St Luke, makes us sound like we’re crazies. It wouldn’t take much to get the old man calling himself God. Well, that’s just my uncle’s bullshit. But Mathias’s little obsessions are different. In the things he digs up, there are bones like that, with tiny holes in. Mathias tells us they come from the droppings of prehistoric hyenas, and on no account to confuse them with what the hunter-gatherers ate. He used to have this stuff all out on the kitchen table, until Lucien got mad because it was getting too close to his food, and Lucien likes his food. Well, none of that’s important, but since there are no prehistoric hyenas prowling round the trees of Paris and their metal grids, I imagine it came from a dog.’
Kehlweiler nodded. He was smiling.
‘Only,’ Marc went on, ‘what of it? Dogs gnaw bones, that’s what they do, and they come out looking like that, porous and with holes in. Unless . . .’ he added after a silence.
‘Unless,’ Kehlweiler repeated. ‘Because that’s a human bone, the top joint of a big toe.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Certain. I got it confirmed at the Natural History Museum by someone who knows. It’s from the toe of a woman, quite an old one.’
‘Obviously,’ said Marc after another silence, ‘that doesn’t happen every day.’
‘It didn’t bother the cops. The local commissaire doesn’t believe it’s a bone, he’s never seen one like this. I realise that this fragment is in an unusual condition, and that I cornered him into making the mistake. He thinks I’m trying to trap him, which is quite true, but not in the way he thinks. Nobody has been reported missing from round here, so they’re not going to open an investigation because of a bone covered in dog shit.’
‘But what do you think then?’
Marc addressed anyone who called him ‘tu’ in the same way. Kehlweiler stretched out his long legs and clasped his hands behind his head.
‘I think this toe joint belongs to someone, and I’m not sure that the person on the end of it is still alive. I’m ruling out an accident, that’s too unlikely. It’s true weird things can happen, but still. I think the dog helped itself to a corpse. Dogs are carrion eaters, like hyenas. And we can forget about corpses held legally in a house or a hospital. I don’t imagine a dog would be allowed into a laying-out room.’
‘What if some old woman died alone in her room, with her dog beside her?’
‘How did the dog get out then? No, it’s impossible, the corpse must have been in the open air. A corpse that has been forgotten somewhere, or killed somewhere, a cellar, a building site, a patch of waste ground. That way a dog could have come past. The dog swallows the bone, digests it, excretes it and the torrential rain from the other night gives it a wash.’
‘A corpse abandoned on some waste ground somewhere doesn’t necessarily mean a murder.’
‘But the bone was found in Paris and that’s what bothers me. Parisian dogs don’t go exploring far from their habitat, and a corpse couldn’t remain unnoticed for long in the city. They should have found it by now. I saw Inspector Lanquetot this morning, still nothing, not the slightest hint of a body lying around in the capital. No missing persons reported either. And routine enquiries about the deaths of people living alone haven’t shown up anything relevant. I found the bone on Thursday night. No, Marc, it isn’t normal.’
Marc wondered why Kehlweiler was telling him all this. He wasn’t put out by it, though. It was pleasant to listen to him talking, he had a calm, deep voice, very soothing for the nerves. But as for this dog shit, well, what could he contribute? It was beginning to feel really cold on the bench, but Marc didn’t dare say, ‘I’m cold, I’m going home.’ He pulled his jacket round him.
‘You’re cold?’ asked Louis.
‘A bit.’
‘Me too, it’s November, nothing to be done.’
Yes there is, thought Marc, we could go to a cafe. Though of course it might be a bit tricky to talk about this in a cafe.
‘We’ll have to wait,’ Kehlweiler went on. ‘There are some people who’ll wait a week before reporting someone missing.’
‘Yes,’ said Marc, ‘but why are you so concerned?’
‘I’m concerned because I don’t think it’s normal, like I told you. Somewhere, some nasty murder has taken place, that’s what I think. The bone, the woman, the murder, the nastiness, it’s all got inside my head, too late to stop, now I have to know, I have to find out.’
‘That’s a vice.’
‘No, it’s an art. It’s an irrepressible art and it belongs to me. You don’t have something like that?’
Yes, Marc did: but for the Middle Ages, not for a toe joint found at the bottom of a tree.
‘It’s my art,’ repeated Kehlweiler. ‘If after a week Paris doesn’t come up with anything, the problem will become much more complicated.’
‘Yes, of course. Dogs can travel.’
‘Precisely.’
Kehlweiler unfolded his long body and got to his feet. Marc looked up at him.
‘This dog,’ Kehlweiler said, ‘could have travelled kilometres that night in a car. It could have eaten a toe in the provinces somewhere and deposited it in Paris. All we can suppose, thanks to this dog, is that there’s a woman’s body somewhere, but it could be anywhere. France isn’t as small as all that, and that’s just France. A body somewhere, but nowhere to look.’
‘What a lot to come out of a piece of dog shit,’ Marc said quietly.
‘You didn’t see anything in the regional papers, did you? Murders, accidents?’
‘No murders. A few accidents as usual. But nothing about a foot, I’m sure of that.’
‘Well, keep looking and be vigilant, foot or no foot.’
‘OK,’ said Marc, standing up.
He’d got the point, his fingers were freezing, he wanted to get away.
‘Wait,’ said Kehlweiler. ‘I need someone to help, someone who can run. I’m slowed down by my leg, I can’t follow this bone all on my own. Could you just lend me a hand for a few days? But I can’t afford to pay you.’
‘To do what?’
‘To follow people who walk their dogs near this bench. Note their names, addresses, movements. I don’t want to waste too much time, just in case.’
This idea did not appeal to Marc at all. He’d been a lookout man for his uncle once, and that was enough. It wasn’t his kind of thing.
‘My uncle says you have men all over Paris.’
‘They’re fixed points, bartenders, newspaper sellers, cops, people who don’t move around. They keep their eyes open and alert me when it’s necessary, but they’re not mobile, do you see? I just need someone who can move about.’
‘I don’t do running, I just climb trees. I run about after the Middle Ages, but not after people.’
Kehlweiler was going to get upset, it was clear. This guy was even nuttier than his uncle. All artists are nutty. Artists sweating away about paint, the Middle Ages, sculpture, criminology, all mad, he had experience.
But Kehlweiler didn’t get upset. He just sat down again on the bench. Slowly.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Forget it, it doesn’t matter.’
He replaced the scrap of newspaper in his pocket.
Good. All Marc had to do was what he’d been wanting, go and get warmed up in a cafe, have a bite to eat, and go back to the shabby lodgings in the rue Chasle. He s
aid goodbye and strode off down the avenue.
IX
MARC VANDOOSLER HAD eaten a sandwich in the street, and was back in his room by early afternoon. Nobody was home in the ramshackle house. Lucien was off giving a lecture on some aspect or another of the Great War, Mathias was classifying artefacts from his autumn dig in the basement of a museum, and the elder Vandoosler must have gone for a walk. Marc’s godfather always had to be outdoors, and wasn’t bothered by the cold.
Pity. Marc would have liked to ask him a few questions about Louis Kehlweiler, his incomprehensible shadowing of various people, and his interchangeable first names. Just a thought. He couldn’t really care less, but still, just a thought. It could wait, of course.
Marc was working just now on a bundle of archives from Burgundy, from a place called Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye to be precise. He needed to finish a chapter in his book on the Burgundian economy in the thirteenth century. Marc would continue with his damned Middle Ages until he could make a living out of it, he’d sworn as much to himself. Well, he hadn’t exactly sworn, he’d just told himself. At any rate, this was the only thing in his life that gave him wings, or let’s say feathers, that and the women with whom he had been in love. All gone, even his wife, who had walked out on him. He must be too nervy, it probably put them off. If he’d been calm, like Kehlweiler, things might have worked out better. Though he suspected Kehlweiler wasn’t as calm as he looked. Slow-moving, certainly. But that wasn’t right either. From time to time, he turned his head to look at people with amazing rapidity. And he wasn’t always calm. His face sometimes tensed up, his eyes focused into the distance, it wasn’t as simple as that. Anyway, who’d said it would be simple? No one. This guy who went looking for improbable murderers, because of some dog shit on a pavement, couldn’t function like everyone else. But he gave the impression of being calm, strong even, and Marc would have liked to be able to do the same. It must make things easier with women. Stop thinking about women. He’d been on his own for months now, and it wasn’t worth twisting the knife in the damned wound.
So, back to the accounts of the lord of Saint-Amand. He had reached the income from his barns, columns of figures from 1245 to 1256, with some gaps. It was already pretty good, this snapshot of a corner of Burgundy to put into the overall picture of the thirteenth century. Come to think of it, Kehlweiler had that strange face, as well as everything else. It makes a difference. Close to, the face was strikingly gentle. A woman might have been better at guessing whether it was the eyes, the lips, the nose, or the combination of all that, but the result was that from close to, he was worth a look. If he’d been a woman, he’d have agreed. Yeah, but he was a man, so that was stupid, and he only fancied women, which was stupid too, because women apparently didn’t fancy him above anyone else, in this world.
Shit. Marc stood up, went downstairs into the large kitchen, freezing cold as it was in November, and made himself a cup of tea. With tea to drink, he could concentrate on the seigneur of Puisaye’s barns.
Anyway, there was no sign that women made a beeline for Kehlweiler. Because seen from a distance you didn’t realise he was good-looking, in fact not at all, he seemed off-putting. And it seemed to Marc that Kehlweiler had the look of a man who was pretty lonely, when it came to it. That would be sad. But it would comfort Marc himself. He wouldn’t be the only one not to find anybody, to have disaster after disaster in his love life. Nothing worse than a love affair gone wrong to stop you giving due attention to medieval barns. It really blights your work. All the same, love exists out there, no point denying it. Still, at this moment, he wasn’t in love, nor was anyone in love with him, and that way he had a quiet life at least, so it was best to take advantage of it.
Marc went back up to the second floor with his tray. He took a pencil and a magnifying glass, because the archives were very hard to decipher. They were photocopies of course, which didn’t help. In 1245, now, they wouldn’t have given a toss about a bit of dog shit, even with a bone inside it. Yes, but then again, they might. Justice was taken very seriously in 1245. Yes, in fact, they probably would have taken notice of it, if they’d known it was a human bone, and if they had suspected it came from a murder. Of course they would. They’d have handed the matter over to the customary justice dispensed by Hugues, the lord of Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye. And what would Hugues have done about it?
OK, all very well, but that’s not the point. There’s no dog shit mentioned in the papers about the lord’s barns, don’t get everything mixed up. It was raining outside. Perhaps Kehlweiler was still sitting on his bench, since he’d left him there just now. No, he must have changed benches, and gone to sit at observation post 102, by that grid round the tree. He really must ask his godfather some questions about the guy.
Marc transcribed ten lines and drank a mouthful of tea. His bedroom was not very warm, the tea did him good. Soon, he might be able to turn on another radiator, when he got the job in the library. Because as well as everything else, he wouldn’t earn any money helping Kehlweiler out. Not a centime, he’d said. And Marc needed money, but not to look as if he would jump at anything. It’s true that Kehlweiler would find it hard to follow the dog owners on his own, with his stiff knee as well, but that was his problem. Marc had to keep following the lord of Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye and that’s what he would do. In three weeks, he’d made good progress, he’d identified a quarter of the feudal tenants. He’d always been quick at his work. Except when he stopped, of course. And Kehlweiler had noticed it in fact. Oh, the hell with Kehlweiler, and the hell with women, and with this tea that tastes of dust.
True, there might be a murderer around somewhere, a murderer no one would go looking for. But there were plenty of others, and so what? If some guy had killed a woman in a fit of rage, what business was it of his?
Dear God, the steward noting down the Saint-Amand accounts was hard-working, but his handwriting was lousy. If he’d been Hugues, he’d have changed his steward. His o’s and a’s were interchangeable. Marc picked up the magnifying glass. Kehlweiler’s business wasn’t the same as the Sophia Simeonidis case. That one he’d had to deal with because he’d been cornered, she was his neighbour, he liked her, and the murder had been a horrible premeditated one. Revolting, he didn’t want to think about it any more. Yes, but there might be a crime behind Kehlweiler’s bit of bone, and that too might be a horrible premeditated crime. Kehlweiler was thinking about it and wanted to know.
Yes, all right, but that was Kehlweiler’s job, not his. If he’d asked Kehlweiler to give him a hand transcribing the accounts of Saint-Amand, what would he have answered? He’d have said no fear, and that would be normal.
Finished, over, impossible to concentrate. All because of this guy, and his story of the dog, the grid, the murder, the bench. If his godfather had been around, he could have told him exactly what he thought of Louis Kehlweiler. He’d been hired for a little filing job, and it had gone haywire, he was being obliged to do something else. Although, to be fair, Kehlweiler hadn’t obliged him to do anything. He had suggested something, and he hadn’t got mad when Marc refused. In fact no one was stopping him carrying on with his study of the barns of Saint-Amand.
No one except the dog. No one except the bone. No one except the idea of a woman at the end of the bone. No one except the idea of a murder. No one except Kehlweiler’s face. Something convincing in his eyes, true, clear, sorrowful as well.
Right, but everyone had their cross to bear, and his was well worth Kehlweiler’s. To each his cross, his quest and his archives.
True, when he had launched himself into the Simeonidis affair, it hadn’t done him any harm. You can mix up your own quest and archives with other people’s and not lose your way. Yes, maybe, or definitely, but it wasn’t his job. No way. End of story.
Marc knocked his chair over in anger, as he stood up. He flung the magnifying glass on the pile of papers, and grabbed his jacket. Half an hour later, he walked into the bunker with Kehlweiler’s archives, and there, as
he had hoped, he found Marthe.
‘Marthe, do you know where this bench number 102 is?’
‘Are you allowed to know that? Because they’re not mine, you know, the benches.’
‘Good grief!’ said Marc. ‘I’m Vandoosler’s nephew, and Kehlweiler lets me work in his office, of course I get to know the benches.’
‘All right, all right, no need to hit the roof,’ said Marthe. ‘Just kidding.’
She explained where bench number 102 was, in her loud voice. Fifteen minutes later, Marc arrived within sight of the tree and its metal grid. It was already dark, at half past six. From the other end of the Place de la Contrescarpe, he saw Kehlweiler sitting on a bench. He was leaning forward, elbows on knees, smoking a cigarette. Marc stopped for a few minutes, observing him. His gestures were slow and infrequent. Marc was once more undecided, unsure whether he was the winner or the loser, or whether he should think in those terms at all. He moved back a step. He watched as Kehlweiler stubbed out his cigarette, then ran his hands through his hair, slowly, as if he were holding his head very tightly. He held his head for a few seconds, then both hands fell to his thighs, and he stayed like that, looking down at the ground. This sequence of silent movements made up Marc’s mind for him. He walked over to the bench and sat down at the other end, boots stretched out in front of him. Neither spoke for one or two minutes. Kehlweiler hadn’t looked up, but Marc was sure he had recognised him.
‘You do remember that there’s no money in this?’ Kehlweiler said finally.
‘I remember.’
‘You’ve probably got some other damn thing you’d rather do.’
‘True.’
‘Me too.’
Another silence. Their breath steamed when they spoke. Hell’s teeth, how cold it was!
‘You remember it could just be an accident, a set of coincidences?’
‘I remember everything about it.’
‘Take a look at this list. I’ve got twelve people already: nine men, three women. I eliminated dogs that were too big or too small. In my view, it came from a medium-sized dog.’
