Seeking Whom He May Devour

by Fred Vargas

  “How come?”

  “If we’d kept on investigating to the bitter end, the link between the Sernot, Deguy and Hellouin cases would eventually have shown up: their common denominator is Ariane Germant. That would have led us back to the Padwell case. Padwell is dead, but he has a son, a son who was present at the original murder. I’d have followed that lead, I’d have got a photograph of the son. And it would have been a photograph of Lawrence Donald Johnstone.”

  “And what if you hadn’t kept on to the bitter end?”

  “I would have.”

  “And what if you hadn’t followed the lead on the son?”

  “But I would have followed it, Sol.”

  “But if you hadn’t?”

  “Well, if I hadn’t, the whole thing would have taken even longer. Who knows about wolves? Johnstone does. Who was the first person to mention a werewolf? Johnstone was. Who went to look for Massart? Johnstone did. Who put about the idea that Massart had murdered Suzanne? Johnstone once again. We’d have got him in the end, Sol.”

  “And maybe you wouldn’t.”

  “Maybe, maybe. But there were the wolf hairs, Sol. We wondered why there weren’t any – and hey presto, some hairs turn up. Who was in the know? Only the five of us, and the police.”

  “I’m going to see Watchee,” said Soliman. “He has to be told.”

  “No,” said Adamsberg, holding the young man back by the arm. “You’ll wake Camille.”

  “So what?”

  “I don’t know how to tell her. Be kind.”

  Soliman stopped in his tracks. “Fuck,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Adamsberg.

  XXXV

  ADAMSBERG SAT ON the side of the bed waiting for Camille to wake up. As soon as she was dressed he took her for a country walk and broke the news to her very, very gently. Camille sat on her haunches in the grass. She was utterly devastated. She sat gripping her boots and staring at the ground while Adamsberg held her shoulder, waiting for the shock to subside. He spoke softly but without interruption so as not to leave Camille all alone in silence with such a sinister revelation.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, barely audibly. “I saw nothing, suspected nothing. There was nothing disturbing about him at all.”

  “No,” said Adamsberg. “He was a man in two parts. There was the quiet man, and then there was the agonised child. Laurence, and then Stuart. You only saw one of the pair. You shouldn’t be sorry about having loved him.”

  “He’s a murderer.”

  “He’s a child. He was messed-up.”

  “He killed Suzanne.”

  “He’s a child,” Adamsberg said once again, firmly. “He wasn’t given the remotest chance of having a normal life. That’s the truth of it. Think of it that way.”

  Watchee learned with stupefaction from the mouth of Soliman that there remained not a chance that the killer would turn out to be a werewolf. That there would be no point at all in slitting Johnstone open from the neck to the crotch, and that harmless Massart had been dead for sixteen days. The old man found it mighty hard to swallow these squalid truths, but paradoxically he seemed to be relieved by knowing the real circumstances of the death of Suzanne, eliminated like a mere pawn in a game of chess. He had been eaten by remorse for not having been at hand when Suzanne was attacked by the wolf. But Suzanne had not been the surprise victim of an unforeseeable act of violence. She had been lured into a trap that all Watchee’s vigilance could not have headed off. Johnstone had had the foresight to get Watchee out of the way before calling Suzanne. Neither he nor anyone else would have made any difference. Watchee could breathe easily again.

  “You, young fella,” he said to Adamsberg, “you owe your life to me.”

  “I should repay you somehow,” Adamsberg said.

  “You already have.”

  “You mean the wine?”

  “Suzanne’s murderer. But take care of yourself, young fella. He nearly got you, and so did that red-haired lass.”

  Adamsberg said nothing.

  “You’re too much of a dreamer, young fella,” Watchee went on, “and you don’t look out enough. Not a good idea, in your line of work. But you have to admit I ain’t called Watchee for nothing. Fair legs, a broad bottom, and a good eye.”

  “What did you see, Watchee?”

  “I saw the Canadian going out after you, and I saw he meant no good. I’m not blind. I thought it was all about the young lady. And I saw he meant to have your guts for garters on her account. I saw it plain as a pikestaff.”

  “What made it so clear to you?”

  “The way he walked.”

  “Where did you get the bullets?”

  “I went through your things. Ain’t that how you got them off me in the first place?”

  Adamsberg went into the gendarmerie at three o’clock. Fromentin, Hermel, Montvailland, Aimont and four other gendarmes were standing around Johnstone, who was sitting on the edge of his chair, in handcuffs, and staring at them with calm confidence. The Canadian kept his eye on Adamsberg as the commissaire shook hands all round.

  “Brévent’s just called, old chap,” said Hermel, taking Adamsberg’s left hand. “They’ve just dug up Massart, eight metres downhill from his hut. He was buried with his mastiff, his money and all his mountaineering gear. His fingernails are cut right down.”

  Adamsberg looked up at Johnstone, who was still staring at him with a query in his eyes.

  “Camille?” Johnstone asked.

  “She’s not sorry for what she did,” Adamsberg answered, not knowing whether he was telling the truth.

  Something seemed to go slack in Johnstone’s body.

  “There’s something only you know,” Adamsberg said as he brought a chair up to sit down next to the killer. “Did you have any more men to kill, or was Hellouin the last on the list?”

  “He’s the last,” Johnstone said with a hint of a smile. “Got the lot.”

  Adamsberg nodded and realised that Johnstone would never lose his composure ever again.

  Johnstone withstood twenty hours of police questioning without trying to deny anything at all. He was calm, detached, and, in his own way, cooperative. He asked for a clean chair because he found the one he had been given filthy. As was the whole gendarmerie.

  He replied with truncated and elliptical expressions, but his answers were nonetheless quite precise. He never thought to volunteer help and never expressed any opinions; less out of ill will than out of inherent unforthcomingness, he just waited for questions to be asked. As a result the flics took two full days to drag the whole story out of him, bit by bit. Camille, Soliman and Watchee, in their capacity as leading witnesses, were interviewed in the course of the Tuesday.

  At the end of the third day Hermel volunteered to dictate a short draft charge sheet in Adamsberg’s place. The commissaire did not have the heart for that kind of logical summing up so he accepted the offer with gratitude and went to lean against the office wall. Hermel took a quick look at his notes and those of his colleagues, laid them all out on the table, and switched on the tape recorder.

  “What date is it, old chap?” he asked.

  “Wednesday, 8 July.”

  “Good. We’ll get it in the can in a trice and finish it off properly tomorrow. ‘Date of Wednesday, 8 July, time of 23.45, location Châteaurouge gendarmerie, department of Haute-Marne. Follows a report of the questioning of a male person, name of Stuart Donald Padwell, age thirty-five, son of a John Neil Padwell, US national, and of Ariane Germant, French national, accused of a number of murders with malice aforethought. The interviews were conducted on 6, 7 and 8 July by Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg with the assistance of Adjudant-chef Lionel Fromentin, in the presence of Commissaire Jacques Hermel and Capitaine Maurice Montvailland. John N. Padwell, father of the accused, served a sentence at the corrections facility at Austin, TX, from 19 . . .’ – you can fill in the dates for me, old chap – ‘for the first-degree murder of his wife’s lover, Simon Helloui
n, a crime committed in the presence of his son, then aged ten.’”

  Hermel paused the recorder and caught Adamsberg’s eye with a nod of his head.

  “Can you imagine that, old chap? In front of the boy. Where did he go afterwards?”

  “He stayed with his mother until the trial.”

  “But after that? When she took off?”

  “He was in a home, a sort of state orphanage.”

  “Iron discipline?”

  “No, it seems to have been a reasonable place, according to Lanson. But if the child ever had a chance of not going psychotic, the father knocked it right on the head.”

  “By letter?”

  “Yes. He wrote to the boy five or six times in the first year, then it got more intense. A letter a month, then one a week from when the boy was thirteen up to his nineteenth year.”

  Hermel drummed his fingers on the table.

  “What about the mother?”

  “Never sent news. Never saw her son again. She died in France when the boy was twenty-one.”

  Hermel shook his head with a pained expression on his face. “That’s a rotten deal if ever there was, old chap.”

  He put out his hand and set the tape turning again.

  “‘Over a period of almost ten years John Neil Padwell prepared his son by means of numerous letters for the sacred task which he intended him to carry out – those are the accused’s own words. With this in mind, at the age of twenty-one Stuart changed his identity, with the help of a former convict who had befriended his father, and moved to Canada’ – you can fill in the dates, old chap. ‘While serving his sentence and until the decease of his wife, John Padwell employed a private detective’ –I haven’t got the name here – ‘to track down his wife, who had fled to France when the trial was over. That is how father and son kept themselves informed about the love life of Ariane Padwell née Germant, and learned the identities of the two lovers who took the place of Simon and Paul Hellouin, and in turn became guilty of the double crime’ – I’m quoting the accused again – ‘of laying their hands on the wife and of keeping the mother away from her child. There was never any question of killing the woman, since, in the eyes of the father and of the accused, the four men alone were responsible for the shipwreck of the family’ – another textual quotation. ‘With Simon Hellouin dealt with already, Stuart was destined to complete the work of salvation’ – the accused’s words – ‘by eliminating Paul Hellouin, with whom Ariane Germant had first fled to France,’ – you fill in the date, old chap – ‘and in addition Jacques-Jean Sernot and Fernand Deguy, whom she met when she settled in Grenoble some years later, in 19 . . .’ – fill in the blanks, will you. ‘John Padwell maintained very discreet contact with his son since his change of identity, but he urged him to take all the time he needed to work out a stratagem to keep himself in the clear, since what he wanted above all was for Stuart not to have to serve time as he had. Stuart Padwell, aka Lawrence Donald Johnstone, worked out several successive plans of action in turn, but found none of them entirely satisfactory’ – the accused’s words again. ‘In thirteen years working as a warden in the Canadian wilderness areas’ – you tell me what places to put down, old chap, I’m a zero at Canadian geography – ‘the accused became a respected naturalist specialising in caribou.’”

  “In grizzly bears,” Adamsberg corrected.

  “‘Correction: in grizzlies. News of the return of wolves to the French Alps reached Canadian naturalists shortly after the sudden death of John Padwell. Stuart saw the conjunction as a sign and also as an opportunity to carry out his task at long last’ – that’s how he put it himself – ‘and he spent a year putting all the pieces in place. He got himself seconded to the Mercantour National Park, which was not at all difficult given his own standing in the field. He stopped over in Paris in December’ – the dates, old chap, do remember to put in the dates – ‘to complete his research on French traditions regarding werewolves, and he also met Camille Forestier. He encouraged the young lady to come with him both because he had grown fond of her’ – his words – ‘and because a single man attracts comments and curiosity in small villages’ – the accused again. ‘Once he got to Valberg in the Alpes-Maritimes, where he took up temporary residence, he started looking for a patsy. He identified three possible subjects and’ – I quote – ‘picked Auguste Massart as the best of the bunch. Massart resided at Saint-Victor-du-Mont in the Alpes-Maritimes, and the accused moved there in . . .’ sometime around January, check the date. ‘He lived in Saint-Victor for six months, taking all necessary time to research Massart and to establish his own reputation as well as to complete his specialist mission. He launched the operation on Tuesday, 16 June by savaging several sheep during the night, at a sheep farm at Ventebrune, then over the following nights’ – put in the dates, Adamsberg – ‘committing further massacres at Pierrefort and Saint-Victor. He used the skull of an Arctic wolf with filed teeth. On Saturday, 20 June he fomented the rumour of a werewolf at large, whom he identified as Auguste Massart, on the alleged authority of Suzanne Rosselin, a sheep breeder at Saint-Victor-du-Mont. On the night of Saturday to Sunday 21 June, he gave his partner Camille Forestier a sleeping draught, left his residence and murdered Auguste Massart, whom he buried with his dog and his climbing gear, then killed Suzanne Rosselin. He left a road map with an itinerary marked on it at Massart’s house, so as to make an obvious apparent link between Massart and the slaughtered animals. After successive attacks on sheep farms at Guillos and . . .’ What’s the other place called, old chap?”

  “La Castille.”

  “‘. . . La Castille, he went to see Adjudant-chef Brévent, and also set in pursuit of the alleged wolf-man a group consisting of Soliman Diawara, ward of Suzanne Rosselin, and Philibert Fougeray, known as Watchee, a shepherd resident at Saint-Victor. The accused’s partner, Camille Forestier, being also part of the group. The accused then murdered in succession Jean Sernot, at Sautrey, department of Isère, on the night of 24 to 25 June, and Fernand Deguy, at Bourg-en-Bresse, department of Ain, on the night of 27 to 28 June. He lured the police investigating the case to a hotel at Combes, where he placed two fingernail clippings and a hair coming from the body of the deceased . . . Massart. Subsequently he murdered Paul Hellouin, at Belcourt, department of Haute-Marne, on the night of 2 to 3 July, while also savaging a number of sheep at farms lying on his route at . . .’ – you’ll provide the list, old chap, won’t you? I get them all in a muddle, I do – ‘with the aim of substantiating the belief that a werewolf was responsible. An identical modus operandi was employed for all the murders. The accused used his motorbike to get to the scene of the crime, while his work in the Mercantour National Park provided him with an alibi – an area so vast and remote that his presence there could never be checked. Nonetheless he did make a few short trips to the area for safety’s sake’ – dixit the accused – ‘and on his final visit obtained the three strands of wolf coat which were found on the body of Paul Hellouin. In the night of Sunday to Monday, 5 to 6 July, at Châteaurouge, department of Haute-Marne, with the investigation led by Commissaire Adamsberg on the Padwell affair hanging over him, he attacked the commissaire at the place known as Camp du Tondu. The attack was repulsed thanks to action taken by Soliman Diawara. Commissaire Adamsberg admits having thrown a projectile at Stuart D. Padwell, aiming at his head, and causing an injury which Dr Vian certified as minor at Montdidier Hospital on Monday, 6 July at 01.50 hours. Accused arrested by Adjudant-chef Lionel Fromentin the same day at 01.10 hours.’”

  Hermel switched off the tape recorder.

  “Did I forget anything?”

  “Crassus the Bald and Augustus.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Two wolves. Johnstone must have disposed of the first one as soon as he got to the Mercantour. Unless Crassus just disappeared of his own accord, and that’s not impossible. It was the largest wolf in the pack. Augustus was an old wolf he took under his wing. When he was on his campaign he wasn�
��t there to give Augustus his food, so the old wolf died. Johnstone was very sad about that.”

  “He murdered five people and cried for a wolf?”

  “It was his wolf.”

  XXXVI

  IT WAS AFTER one in the morning when adamsberg got back to the lorry. Camille was squatting on her bed reading her A to Z of Tools for Trade and Craft by the light of a torch. Adamsberg sat down next to her and looked at the page displaying drills and sanders.

  “What do you see in all of that?” he asked.

  “Comfort.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Everything is haphazard, confused and precarious, outside the A to Z.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  Camille shrugged her shoulders and smiled fleetingly.

  “Johnstone is being transferred to Paris tomorrow,” Adamsberg said. “I’ll be taking him up.”

  “How is he?”

  “As ever. At peace. He finds that the gendarmes smell of sweat.”

  “Is he right?”

  “Of course he’s right.”

  “I’ll write to him. When I’m back in the Alps.”

  “Are you going back to Saint-Victor?”

  “I’m driving them back to Les Écarts. And I’m going home too.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m the driver.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “They can’t drive.”

  “Yes. Be careful on that road.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do be careful.”

  “I will be.”

  Adamsberg put his good arm around Camille’s shoulder and looked at her by the light of the torch.

  “Will you come back?” he asked.

  “I’ll stay down there for a few days.”

  “And then leave?”

  “Yes. I’ll miss them.”

  “Will you come back?”

  “Where to?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Paris?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh sod that, Camille, stop talking like I do. We’ll never get anywhere if you speak like me.”