by Fred Vargas
‘Oh, what sort of story is that?’ asked Danglard.
‘It is a story, exactly, I didn’t say it was true. I just said that people have said this. That Louis XVI designed the perfect instrument, the one that would later cut his own head off.’
Danglard looked grumpy, blowing out smoke between his teeth.
‘Where did you read that?’
‘Didn’t read it at all. Do you remember that old guy who knew lots of history, used to sit about in the Place Edgar-Quinet? He told me this one day, and he drew the picture with his finger on a wet tabletop in the Viking cafe. I’m sorry,’ said Adamsberg, starting the car, ‘it’s not humiliating not to know things. If it was, I’d be covered in mud.’
‘I’m not humiliated, I’m astounded.’
‘But what do you think now, about his sign?’
‘It’s not revolutionary anyway. Or there wouldn’t be that allusion to the king.’
‘To a king who was executed, Danglard. Not the same. You could see it as a sign of the supreme Terror, the supreme punishment.’
‘If that’s what the killer wanted to represent.’
‘It could be a coincidence. But it would be a very strange one.’
‘You mean a killer who’s interested in history?’
‘Not necessarily. After all, I’d seen the image. It could just be a killer who remembers everything he’s heard.’
‘A hypermnesiac.’
‘Like Victor, for instance.’
Adamsberg drove on in silence, as they approached the outskirts of Paris.
‘We’re not the only people in the world,’ he said, as he overtook a lorry. ‘It’s surely someone who’s thinking about the Revolution.’
‘No doubt about that.’
XI
UNLIKE DANGLARD, ADAMSBERG did not need much sleep. He opened his eyes at 7 a.m., and started fixing the coffee while his son, Zerk, cut the bread. Zerk was as casual as his father, and the slices came out thick and uneven.
‘Was there some trouble last night?’
‘A death out in the Chevreuse valley. We were called in to question people: there’s a son who’s pretty as a girl and very edgy, a secretary with a phenomenal memory, a stud farm, a brute of a man who runs it, a woman who lives in a hut in the forest, a wild boar, a local inn, Louis XVI’s guillotine, a haunted tower full of bird droppings, and all this out at some place called Le Creux, which isn’t on any map.’
‘Got off to a bad start then?’
‘Well, let’s say it’s very concentrated.’
‘The pigeon dropped in yesterday. You missed him.’
‘He hasn’t been for a couple of months. Was he looking well?’
‘Yes, very, but he crapped on the table again.’
‘Think of it as an offering, Zerk.’
By nine o’clock, Adamsberg had gathered almost all his colleagues in the largest room in their headquarters building, the one that Danglard had pretentiously baptised ‘the council chamber’. That was as opposed to the smaller ‘chapter room’, used for meetings of limited size. The names had stuck. Danglard was present at the council this morning, but only half awake, and he reached for the coffee which Estalère was serving. In the council, as everywhere else, the young officer had voluntarily devoted himself to fetching the coffees, a function he fulfilled to perfection – the only one, according to some ill-wishers. Otherwise, his wide green eyes made him look perpetually startled. Estalère venerated two idols in the squad, Commissaire Adamsberg and the imposing and powerful Violette Retancourt, to whom her parents, failing to realise that she would grow to 1m 84, and weigh 110 kilos, all of it solid muscle, had given the incongruous name of a fragile flower. The fundamental dissimilarity of his twin gods left Estalère in a state of rueful perplexity, unable to choose between such divergent paths.
Adamsberg had no gift for organised presentations and syntheses, and on this occasion, he turned the task over to Danglard, who provided a summary of events, from the woman in her bath – fully clothed, he added, for the benefit of Lieutenant Noël, the most tabloid-minded officer in the squad – through to the chase in the forest after the boar. He recounted it all in chronological order, while introducing the main thematic points, in a skilful narrative which Adamsberg admired. Everyone knew of course that from time to time Danglard would launch into some scholarly digression, which would make his speech longer, but they were used to that. The woman in the log cabin and the haunted tower attracted the interest of Commandant Mordent, whose head jerked up on his scrawny neck, giving him the weird aspect of an old heron, watching gloomily for a fish. Mordent was a specialist on fairy tales, which was of no great use to the squad’s usual work, any more than Voisenet’s encyclopedic knowledge of ichthyology – the study of fish, as Adamsberg had had to learn. Particularly freshwater fish. Voisenet’s passion extended to other forms of wildlife, and he was already wondering which species of corvids lived in the tower: jackdaws, crows, rooks – ravens, even?
The slight and discreet Justin, sitting next to Retancourt who looked as if she could blow him away with one puff of breath, was the only one taking continuous notes.
While Adamsberg was still pulling burrs off his trousers, Danglard passed the drawing of the sign round the table and they all shook their heads as they saw it, except for Veyrenc de Bilhc, a Pyrenean who came from the same mountain range as Adamsberg. Veyrenc held on to the paper for a moment, under the attentive gaze of the commissaire, who knew that his fellow countryman had been a history teacher in another life.
‘Mean anything to you, Veyrenc?’ asked Adamsberg.
‘Not sure. Are those burrs you’re pulling off?’
‘Yes, but they’re old, from last year. They’re dried up, so they cling like hell. Well, it reminds me of a guillotine. Go on, Danglard, explain this bit, but don’t get too carried away about Joseph-Ignace Guillotin.’
A general air of uncertainty followed Danglard’s next explanation, delivered without much conviction, about Louis XVI, the convex blade, and the change to a straight, oblique one. Veyrenc alone sent a quick smile to Adamsberg, that charming smile of his, with a curl of the lip indicating discreet satisfaction.
‘The French Revolution?’ said Retancourt, folding her arms. ‘I think we can rule that out, can’t we?’
‘I didn’t say it was that,’ Adamsberg replied, ‘I just said it reminded me of a guillotine. And the analyses that have been done seem to show that this was the way the sign was drawn: first the two uprights, then the curved line, then the oblique one.’
‘It’s a nice idea,’ intervened Mercadet, who was for once wide awake and with his mind operating at maximum sharpness.
Mercadet suffered from narcolepsy, which meant he had to have a nap every three hours, and the squad had managed to protect him from the divisionnaire discovering any hint of this.
‘But if it’s true,’ he went on, ‘I find it very hard to see what a guillotine – half-royal and half-revolutionary – has to do with this business in Iceland.’
‘Not just hard to see, impossible,’ Adamsberg agreed.
‘Especially since we still don’t know if these were murders,’ growled Noël, stuffing his fists into his leather jacket. ‘Maybe those two – Alice Gauthier and Henri Masfauré – were secret lovers, and they had some kind of suicide pact?’
‘But there’s no record of any phone calls between Gauthier and Masfauré,’ said Danglard. ‘Bourlin checked back a whole year.’
‘Perhaps she wrote to him. They both kill themselves, and the drawing’s a sign of their collusion. There’s nothing to prove they were murdered.’
‘There is, now,’ said Adamsberg, taking out his mobile, ‘the lab has worked fast. Danglard has told you that both Henri Masfauré’s hands were blackened with gunpowder. Whereas a possible killer, wearing gloves, and covering up Masfauré’s thumb to pull the trigger, would have left the thumbnail free of residue. But no, that wasn’t the case, the gunpowder was everywhere. Conclusion, suicide.
But I asked for a more detailed examination.’
‘I see,’ said Estalère seriously, this remark being followed by a moment of consternation all round.
‘And,’ Adamsberg went on, ‘there are indeed gaps in the residue on the wrists, where the killer would have had to hold on to Masfauré’s hands. And a quite unequivocal clue on the right thumb. A line, a white stripe about three millimetres wide. So the killer did press the victim’s thumb down on the trigger, but with the aid of a piece of string, or rather something more solid, like a leather shoelace. Conclusion: Masfauré was murdered.’
‘So if it is the same sign,’ Estalère persisted, rubbing his brow, ‘the woman must have been deliberately drowned in her bath.’
‘Exactly, and it must have been the killer who drew the sign, not her.’
‘But that doesn’t hold up,’ interjected Retancourt. ‘If he wanted to disguise these two murders as suicide, why draw the sign at all? If it hadn’t been for the sign, the two deaths would have been registered separately, and no one would have been any the wiser. So?’
‘Because he wanted to claim the murders?’ suggested Voisenet. ‘He’s drawing a sign of power. With this so-called guillotine?’
‘That’s just banal pop psychology,’ said Retancourt.
‘Still,’ said Mordent, ‘life is always banal. Just now and then a pearl, a grain of sand, a shining particle, falls on our shoulder. And in the ocean of ordinary waves, power is the most banal vice among mankind. So why not draw a symbolic guillotine to indicate your power?’
‘Is it royalist?’ asked Adamsberg. ‘Or revolutionary? It may not matter in the end. It’s a sign indicating the supreme form of execution.’
‘Why supreme?’ asked Mercadet.
‘Because of Iceland. He had had eleven people under his thumb, he is still holding them there, and he’s turned on by it. Only there are just six of them left now.’
‘All in mortal danger,’ said Justin.
‘Only if they talk.’
‘But the wall of silence is starting to crack,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Two deaths in two days. Reported in the press. The other six will have understood. Will they keep quiet, or go to ground, or will they panic?’
‘It’s impossible to protect them,’ added Danglard. ‘Apart from Victor, we don’t know any of their names. We have a civil servant called “Jean”, a “Doc”, the ecologist who was Gauthier’s woman companion, an expert on little auks and a sportsman. That’s all. And we can add Amédée to the list of those in danger.’
‘If Amédée isn’t the killer himself,’ objected Mordent. ‘He had plenty of motive. I’m wondering why we don’t just put the screws on him at once.’
‘Because at the moment, the screws would be turning in a vacuum,’ said Adamsberg. Who had gathered a little pile of burrs, and was letting a long pause go past.
‘Right, eight of you will leave for Le Creux after lunch,’ he ordered. ‘That means you too, Estalère.’
‘Estalère could hold the fort here,’ said Noël mockingly.
‘Estalère makes the people he’s questioning feel at ease,’ said Adamsberg, ‘unlike most cops, starting with you, lieutenant. I want you to collect all the gen you can out there. Gossip, lies, truths, suspicions, grudges, . . . Interview the villagers, the local bigwigs, the mayors of Sombrevert and Malvoisine, anyone you can. Who was Henri Masfauré? What do they say about his wife? Or about Céleste, Pelletier, Amédée, Victor? Everything there is to pick up.’
‘Funny thing,’ observed Danglard. ‘The very first person to be executed with the new guillotine in 1792 was a thief called Pelletier.’
‘Danglard, please,’ said Adamsberg resignedly, ‘they’re all hungry and they’ve got to leave at 1400 hours. You too, by the way. I’d like you to go and see Henri Masfauré’s lawyer, take Mercadet with you, he’s good with figures. The inheritance is huge, apparently. Mordent, take anyone you like and find out about the past of his wife. Noël, you can concentrate on the tough guy who runs the stud farm, he’s an ex-con, right up your street. Take Retancourt. When you meet him, you’ll see that won’t be overkill. And don’t stand behind the horses, he’s quite capable of ordering them to kill you, just by whistling. Veyrenc, I want you to stick to the son, Amédée. Froissy, stay here please, and concentrate on Alice Gauthier, question the nurse again, the neighbour, her ex-colleagues, everyone.’
‘Can we go and take a look at the tower?’ asked Voisenet, still thinking about the birds.
‘What for?’
‘To get a general idea.’
‘Well, go there if you like, lieutenant, and while you’re about it, collect a bucketful of bird droppings and scatter them around outside Céleste’s cabin. Don’t tell her they come from the tower, she’s scared stiff of it. She’s difficult at first, but she’s OK.’
‘Why?’ asked Kernokian.
‘Why is she difficult?’
‘No, why the droppings?’
‘To keep vipers away. There are some in the wood. Or she imagines there are. And her cabin isn’t well insulated. You need to make a ring round it.’
‘Yes, fair enough,’ agreed Voisenet, ‘they don’t like the smell. But what about her? Difficult but OK? What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It can often happen with someone who’s been protecting a child through thick and thin. And why is she defending him anyway? Dig deep, all of you. And have a meal at the Auberge du Creux, the cooking’s excellent, as Bourlin will confirm.’
‘The Inn in the Hollow?’ asked Mercadet, looking surprised.
‘Yes, lieutenant, that’s what they call it, a piece of land between two villages, but not marked on the map. There’s an inn, a chapel and the medieval tower.’
‘Medieval tower? Fucking waste of time,’ muttered Noël.
‘No, Noël, nothing is a fucking waste of time. Not the tower, not the pigeon and not Retancourt. Remember?’
Noël gave a grudging nod. It was true that once, during a past emergency, he had turned up to give blood to save the life of Retancourt, with whom he was normally at daggers drawn. Adamsberg hadn’t quite despaired of civilising him one day.
Giving out orders like this – it came with his wretched job and he couldn’t delegate it to Danglard – unsettled him. He finished as quickly as possible and the team split up to go for lunch. Some went to the decadent and rather pricy Brasserie des Philosophes and the others to the little cafe called the Dice Shaker, where the owner’s wife, imperfectly repressing her fury, carried out her authoritarian husband’s orders without a word, but made very good sandwiches. Their nickname for the husband was ‘Glass-of-white’, though actually they didn’t call him anything, because he didn’t like talking to the customers. Social warfare thus existed between the two establishments located opposite each other. It would lead to murder one day, Veyrenc always said.
Adamsberg watched him go out. Veyrenc had understood that the sign could be a guillotine. The sun was now shining into the large room, and in its light the lieutenant’s fourteen strangely coloured locks showed up auburn, against the rest of his jet-black hair.
‘I thought of something when I woke up,’ Danglard murmured before leaving, in a conspiratorial tone which did not promise well. ‘Just one of those thoughts you have in the morning.’
‘Hurry up, commandant, you’ll hardly have time to eat.’
‘Well, it’s about the Comte de Provence.’
‘I’m not with you.’
‘I told you that Guillotin was his personal physician.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘In my half-sleep, the Comte de Provence led me, through one thing after another to the nobility, the counts and the dukes.’
‘You’re lucky, Danglard,’ said Adamsberg with a smile. ‘Waking thoughts don’t usually take us into exalted company.’
‘Then I thought about the first names of Amédée – which is an unusual one, you have to admit – and Victor. They have both been the names for hundreds of years of the du
kes of Savoy. I’ll spare you the list of the Amédées of Savoy.’
‘Thank you, Danglard.’
‘But between 1630 and 1796, there were three dukes of Savoy called Victor-Amédée. Victor-Amédée III opposed the Revolution, and consequently his duchy was invaded by the French revolutionary army.’
‘So what?’ said Adamsberg, sounding tired.
‘So nothing. But it tickled me that we’re dealing with a Victor and an Amédée.’
‘Oh please, Danglard,’ said Adamsberg, detaching another burr from his trousers, ‘don’t get in the habit of saying something without good reason. Or we’ll never get very far together.’
‘OK, understood,’ said Danglard, after a pause.
Well, Adamsberg was right, he thought as he pushed the door. His influence was subtle, like rising flood water, and it’s true that he should watch out. And keep away from the slippery banks of his river.
XII
ADAMSBERG HAD KEPT Justin back to monitor the reports coming in from Le Creux. They were on a speakerphone and Justin could use a computer keyboard faster than Adamsberg, who was a two-finger typist.
‘The dead man married the irresistible Adélaïde twenty-six years ago,’ Mordent told them in his flat voice. ‘But their son only came to live with them when he was five years old. The boy’s arrival surprised everyone else. They learned that he had been placed in some specialised home for the first few years, because of psycho-motor problems. That wasn’t the term they used, but it’s what they meant. That the little boy wasn’t “normal” in some sense.’
‘But Amédée has almost no memory of that time, or of the institution,’ came the deeper voice of Retancourt. ‘He can just remember some ducks having their heads chopped off, that’s all.’
‘What?’ asked Justin, looking up, pushing back a stray lock of blond hair, which made him look like a model schoolboy from the thirties. ‘You did say “ducks”? Not “bugs” or something?’
