by Fred Vargas
‘What’s to say it’s a mistake? We haven’t got the DNA from the teeth yet. For crying out loud, Jean-Baptiste, it was you that insisted we dig to find them.’
‘There’s another name that’s creaking and flying around in that house and it’s Irène’s. She’s got a double-barrelled name too, Louis, like Dr Martin-Robinson. She doesn’t use it much but it’s Irène Royer-Colombe.’
Adamsberg stopped, picked up his glass but did not drink from it.
‘So now you know everything.’
‘No, I don’t. Irène’s got a double-barrelled name, lots of people do.’
‘Good grief, have you forgotten that the Seguin sisters will certainly have had permission to change their names? And that when you do that, you are almost bound to keep some link with your previous life.’
‘So why would a Seguin girl choose the name Royer-Colombe?’
‘Royer, forget it, means nothing. But Colombe. Because that’s where she had escaped from. You told me yourself, remember, when I couldn’t recall the word for dovecot, you told me other names. One was columbarium, because you said columba, Latin, colombe in French, was another word for pigeon. She’s given herself the name Colombe. And another word you gave me was pigeon loft. So now. What’s the definition of a pigeon loft, not a dovecot, look it up on the internet.’
Veyrenc took out his phone and after a minute said : ‘A little space under the eaves, to keep pigeons in. OK, it’s like an attic. The pigeon loft where she was sequestered.’
‘Then there’s the actual dovecot, where she shut herself up.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘And now think about her first name, Irène. Remind you of anything?’
‘Yes, there’s a St Irénée, second century, first real theologian.’
‘Try for something more simple and onomatopoeic.’
‘Don’t see.’
‘Wait.’
Adamsberg pulled out his phone, faster than usual, and chose a name. He put it on speaker and waited. The ringtone was repeated, no answer.
‘I’ll start again, he’s a heavy sleeper.’
‘Who are you calling? Don’t you know the time? Nearly midnight.’
‘Never mind. Who am I calling? Danglard, that’s who.’
This time the commandant answered in a sleepy voice.
‘Danglard, did I wake you?
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me, Danglard, what are the old words for spider. We say araignée today, but before that?’
‘Pardon?’
‘What was the word for araignée in the olden days?’
‘Just a sec, commissaire, let me sit down. Wait a minute. Well, it all started with the young Greek woman, Arachne, who was a gifted spinner. Athene turned her into a spider out of revenge. The Greek word for spider is arachne. She’d challenged Zeus’s daughter to a competition –’
‘No, no, just the names please,’ Adamsberg interrupted.
‘All right. In old French, we get various versions, aragne, araigne and yraigne, from the twelfth century or thereabouts. That’s all I can think of.’
‘How do you spell the last one, yraigne?’
‘Y-r-a-i-g-n-e.’
‘Did it go on being used?’
‘Yes, you get variants of it right down the ages, in the seventeenth century for instance, you find Aragne in the fables of La Fontaine.’
‘Fables for children?’
‘Well, the one I’m thinking of isn’t much read today. But recently, I’ve seen people use Yraigne as a first name on social media. The La Fontaine verse goes like this: La pauvre Aragne n’ayant plus / Que la tête et les pieds, artisans superflus. And poor Arachne was bereft / Head and legs were all she had left.’
‘Many thanks, Danglard, go back to sleep. Yraigne, Veyrenc, say it out loud,’ repeated Adamsberg, stressing the word. ‘And it’s almost the same as Irène. The spider. The ones she lived with in the attic – the pigeon loft – the spiders that the stink bugs used to torment boys, the spiders that kept her company in her cell, the ones she ended up identifying with, the recluse spider. Irène-Yraigne Colombe-Pigeon, the sequestered child of Nîmes, the recluse of the Pré d’Albret, the older sister, Bernadette Seguin.’
‘The older one. But she wasn’t raped by the ten bullies.’
‘She wasn’t doing it for herself, she killed them to free her sister.’
Relieved and now out of breath, Adamsberg leaned back. Veyrenc nodded his head three times.
‘Right,’ the commissaire continued, ‘in the list of bubbles, there was something you said as well: “There’s nobody else left to kill.” Well, you know my bubbles crash into each other, and that one met another, same kind, something Retancourt said first: that all ten men had been murdered and we hadn’t been able to stop it, and she was angry about that.’
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘But it bumped into something Irène said very soon afterwards, the morning when we were searching Torrailles’s house after the double attack. I called her to ask if Louise had been out that night. Remember, I told you my certainty was wobbling a bit, something wasn’t right? That’s what it was, Louis. Irène already knew about the two last murders. Of course, because she’d committed them herself. She told me the news was out on social media, which was true. And like Retancourt, she also added right away that it was infuriating that the killer had “got them all” and that the police still hadn’t got anywhere. And I didn’t react. I was too used to her chatter, to her “cooing”, too trusting. If anyone was making a “pigeon” out of me in that sense, it was her, and brilliantly so. One has to admire her.’
‘You didn’t react to what?’
‘You’re tired, Louis, but mainly you still trust her too, you like her, same as me. But tell me this. How could Irène ever have known that he’d “got them all”? I never told her that the Recluse Gang consisted of precisely nine members plus Claude Landrieu? Ten names to wipe out. And the killer’d got them all. How did she know that once Torrailles and Lambertin went, there’d be nobody else left to kill? She should have said “another two”, not “he’s got them all”. And I didn’t react.’
‘Well, you did in a way. You lost faith in the idea that Louise was guilty.’
‘Yes, just at that point, without understanding why. But it was only tonight, after the bubble – a very big bubble, Louis – exploded and told me to think about Irène, that I heard again in my ear that sentence from the phone call when I was sitting on the ground in the courtyard in Lédignan. “Got them all.” She’d finished the job. That alone is proof of her guilt. Her only mistake.’
‘That’s not like her. To make a mistake.’
‘But she must have totally identified with her role in relation to me, and she handled it in a masterly way from the start. She was to be one of my “helpers”, apparently spontaneous, efficient and looking out for clues, taking care even to seem a little stupid or naive at times. That was remarkable, Louis, the impersonation, a work of art. And that morning, she had entered entirely into the role of being that character, so she expressed the same anger that Retancourt felt. She forgot for a moment to be Irène. And she dropped a stitch.’
‘No. I can’t think a woman like her would really have done it by accident. And why did she leave those hairs there? Why not some real hairs belonging to Louise, which would have been very easy?’
‘Because her moral code is stainless steel. She would never have wanted another person actually to be charged with the murders.’
‘So why the hairs then, if they were just like Louise’s? For a joke?’
‘To discourage me. She’d picked up that I suspected Louise. And with those hairs, I was going to go charging off in that direction. Leading to another dead end.’
‘No. Because why did she take the trouble to connect with you in the first place? Why not st
ay unknown, in the shadows? There was no risk.’
‘Why, why, you’re being Socrates again!’
‘I want to understand her. So answer my question, why did she attach herself to you?’
‘She had no choice. We met at the Natural History Museum, remember. She found out that I was actually investigating the deaths by spider venom. That someone, and worst of all, a cop, was doubtful about the first deaths. That was a serious blow. She adapted immediately, and made friends with me so that she could follow the course of the investigation. And influence it or send it into a blind alley, like with those hairs in the box room.’
‘But why had she come to the Natural History Museum?’
‘Along with that slip-up over the phone, I think that was her only real mistake. She was too zealous. She wanted to ask a specialist if there was any chance people might actually suspect these deaths were murders. She would have been able to go away feeling reassured. Except that while she was there, she bumped into a cop.’
‘But it was thanks to her, and what she told us about the conversation in the café between Claveyrolle and Barral, that we followed the lead to La Miséricorde.’
‘She’s very subtle. She sensed I wasn’t going to give up on my investigation. So right away, when we were in the Étoile d’Austerlitz, she sent me off towards the orphanage. She knew we would follow the trail about the boys who were bitten. That would give her the necessary time to get on with her programme. Three left to kill, she needed to get the job finished at all costs.’
Veyrenc frowned.
‘But all this is only circumstantial. Her first name, Irène-Yraigne, and her second name Royer-Colombe, a court would never wear that. There’s her mistake on the phone, agreed, but what’s to say you didn’t mishear or misquote what she said?’
‘If I had, Louis, the sentence wouldn’t have stuck to a bubble.’
‘I’m looking at it from the point of view of the judge, the lawyers and the jury, and they’re not going to take any notice of your bubbles. If you hadn’t known about the Lourdes recluse, she’d have got away scot-free.’
‘No, Louis. It would have taken much longer, that’s all. The psychiatrist put us on the right track. Look for a young girl who was sequestered and a contemporary recluse. If we’d launched a media appeal, someone would have put us on to the recluse in the Pré d’Albret, and we’d have done the dig.’
‘Well, so what? Her DNA isn’t on record.’
‘Even without the dig, with ten murders to account for, we would have managed in the end – yes, all right, with great difficulty – to convince an examining magistrate, and activate all the cogs in the story until they came up with the new name of the Seguin daughter. Until the archives turned up the axe that killed the father. We’d have got there, sooner or later. We’ve found a short cut, that’s all.’
‘All right, we’d have found out she was Seguin’s daughter. But which one? What’s to say it wasn’t Annette living in the cell at Lourdes?’
‘It’s the names she chose, Louis. The pigeon loft where she spent her childhood was so embedded in her psyche that she gave herself the name of the bird, Colombe, as an identity. When she was originally freed from the house, she must have gone to Lourdes often, to get help from her patron saint, Bernadette.’
‘So she’d know about the dovecot in the Pré d’Albret.’
‘Where there are a lot of wood-pigeons, taking refuge in the woods. A columbarium. Her ultimate refuge.’
‘So she shut herself up there.’
The two men remained silent. Adamsberg raised the glass from which he had yet to drink.
‘She’s a remarkable woman, Louis. I’m not ashamed to have been deceived by her. But I was so slow, so slow.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Because, Socrates, it’s the way I am.’
‘That’s not the real reason.’
It was past 1 a.m., the café was closing and the owner was putting upturned chairs on the tables. Veyrenc raised his glass as well.
‘A child when you saw her, you feared this wretched soul,
The recluse in a tomb, in poverty and dearth.
Grown up, did you know her, when she returned to earth
And set about reaching her terrifying goal?
Did you slow your footsteps, to let her show her worth?’
XLVI
Adamsberg delegated to Veyrenc the task of explaining to the squad the motive for the excavation of the recluse’s cell in the Pré d’Albret, and the almost certain identification of the killer, even before they had the DNA results or could compare the exhumed molars with the axe used by Enzo Seguin forty-nine years previously. Veyrenc could not, of course, go into details about martins, robins, wood-pigeons and so forth, but he worked out a brilliant way of presenting otherwise the assumptions that had led the commissaire on the trail of Irène Royer-Colombe. Irène or Yraigne, he said, meeting Danglard’s eye. Danglard, this time, nodded sagaciously.
Everyone understood. They all held their breath: after the many false trails, the blocked inlets, after sedition by one of the ship’s commanders (Danglard), after the deaths of ten men, the flagship Trinidad was entering the narrow mouth of the straits, beyond the 52nd parallel.
As they all knew, this strait represented triumph, but it was icy cold. Because arresting this suspect would be one of the most painful tasks Adamsberg had ever had to undertake. The commissaire was duty-bound to wall this woman up for the third time in her life.
An urgent request had been made to police archives to produce the axe wielded by Enzo Seguin, this time through official channels.
And while the squad was buzzing with both excitement and anguish, Adamsberg had slept for eleven hours, after which, sitting at his kitchen table and moving his chair to follow the sun around, he pieced together the broken plate: a traditional white porcelain plate, with three blue flowers in the centre. He stopped only to drink some coffee and send a message to Froissy.
Can you get recent photos of all the victims? Urgently. From their families perhaps? Ask Mercadet to help and print them out on paper.
Want them at work tomorrow, or get delivered to you now?
Send to my home address. I’m doing a ceramic jigsaw.
Pretty?
Very.
In fact, the jigsaw was a desperately sad one. But since Froissy liked the word ‘pretty’, Adamsberg didn’t want to disappoint her.
At about 9 p.m., hunger finally caught up with him and he called Retancourt.
‘Lieutenant, can I rely on you one more time?’
‘You want me to fly the flag for you?’
‘I want to send you one last time down to Cadeirac.’
‘Oh, no, commissaire,’ said Retancourt with determination. ‘I’m not going to arrest that woman. Out of the question.’
‘No, no, I wouldn’t ask you to do such a thing, Violette. I just want you to steal another teaspoon. From Irène this time.’
‘All right, I could do that. But what excuse am I going to use this time? I’m going to photograph the ceilings?’
‘I haven’t thought of that yet. Do you by any chance have any snowstorms?’
‘I don’t have “snowstorms”, no,’ said Retancourt, rather tetchily, ‘but I do have one. After I dropped you at the station at Lourdes, I went past this shop full of tacky religious souvenirs, including snowstorms. I bought one. Not St Bernadette, no. A rather podgy cherub flying about in the snow.’
‘Would you be prepared to give it away?’
‘Yes, of course. Why would I care about a snowstorm?’
‘So take it to Irène as a mark of thanks in return for her hospitality.’
‘And as another mark of thanks, I pinch her teaspoon.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I’m not keen on this, commissaire. But I’ll do it. I’ll go t
here and back in a day and you’ll have your spoon by seven tomorrow evening.’
Adamsberg took out his little snowstorm with the Rochefort ship and shook its flakes. He liked this silly toy as much as he liked intelligent Irène. He put it in his pocket and went out into Paris in search of food and a walk.
* * *
*
The last DNA test, comparing the molar and the second teaspoon, arrived three days later, at three o’clock. Yes, Irène Royer-Colombe was indeed the recluse of the Pré d’Albret. Although it did not surprise him, this news affected Adamsberg deeply. Everything that took him nearer to arresting Irène plunged him into a very dark place. An hour later, confirmation arrived at the squad from the judicial records. Bernadette Marguerite Hélène Seguin had legally changed her name to Irène Annette Royer-Colombe, while her sister, Annette Rose Louise Seguin, had changed hers to Claire Bernadette Michel. Each sister had borrowed a first name from the other, and Annette had chosen as a surname one of her brother’s first names.
This time, it was Adamsberg who announced the news to the squad. The die was cast, the cards had been dealt. All that remained now was to go to Cadeirac.
He went out into the courtyard, where the blackbirds had been regularly fed, and spent two hours there, walking around, or sitting on the stone steps, then pacing about again. No one dared go and disturb him, since they all knew that at this painful stage in the passage of the strait, no one could help him. He was desperately lonely, in sole charge of his ship. At about 7 p.m. he called Veyrenc, who came out to the courtyard.
‘I’m going down there tomorrow. Will you come with me? Not to do anything, I won’t ask that of you. Just to be a witness. When I’m speaking, don’t say anything. And don’t tell anyone.’
‘What time train?’ was all Veyrenc said.
XLVII
In the morning, Adamsberg had sent a friendly text to Irène.
Am in area with red-haired colleague checking details on site. Might we call for coffee?
With pleasure, Jean-Bapt. But two men means I must get Louise away. What time?
