Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

much more stimulating and distracting than fear. He had been thinking about this for a moment or two, smiling to himself, when their flight for Montreal-Dorval was called, bringing them all to their feet.

They were seated in a compact group in the middle of the plane, and Adamsberg saw to it that Danglard was seated to his right, as far as possible from a window. The safety instructions which were mimed by a smiling flight attendant, explaining what to do if there was a loss of pressure, or a landing on water, and how to evacuate the aircraft via the escape chutes, did not help at all. Danglard fumbled under his seat for his lifejacket.

‘Don’t bother,’ said Adamsberg. ‘If there really was any trouble, you’d be sucked out through the window without even being conscious, and disappear like the toad. Puff, puff, bang.’

This kind remark failed to bring a smile to the capitaine’s face.

When the plane stopped to rev up to full power, Adamsberg really thought he was going to lose his deputy, just like the damned toad. Danglard survived take-off by clinging to the armrests. Adamsberg waited till the plane had finished its ascent before trying to distract him.

‘Look,’ he explained, ‘you have your own TV screen. They put on some good films. There’s a cultural channel too. See here,’ he added, consulting the programme. ‘There’s a documentary about the precursors of the Italian Renaissance. That’s for you, isn’t it? The Italian Renaissance?’

‘Already know all that stuff,’ muttered Danglard, his expression fixed, his fingers still gripping the armrests.

‘Even the precursors?’

‘Know all that too.’

‘If you switch on your radio, there’s a debate about Hegel’s aesthetics, it says here. What about that?’

‘Know all about that too,’ Danglard repeated gloomily. So if neither the precursors nor Hegel could captivate Danglard, the situation was indeed desperate, Adamsberg thought. He glanced at his neighbour on the other side, Helene Froissy, who had turned towards the window and was already fast asleep, or else lost in sad thoughts.

‘Danglard, do you know what I did on Saturday?’ Adamsberg asked.

‘Don’t give a damn, Adamsberg.’

‘I went to visit the last known residence of our deceased judge, near Strasbourg, a residence that he left like a thief in the night, six days after the Schiltigheim murder.’

In the capitaine’s distraught features, Adamsberg thought he could detect a slight flicker of interest.

‘I’ll tell you about it.’

Adamsberg dragged out his account, omitting none of the details, the Bluebeard’s attic, the stable, the summer house, the bathroom, and taking care to refer to the owner only as ‘the judge’, ‘the dead man’, or ‘the spectre’. Although the tale did not quite manage to provoke anger, it did stimulate a sort of irritable interest on the capitaine’s face.

‘Interesting, eh?’ said Adamsberg. ‘A man who’s invisible to everyone, an impalpable presence?’

‘Just some recluse,’ Danglard objected in a distant voice.

‘Yes, but a recluse who systematically wipes out all his traces? Who leaves behind, and then only by accident, a few stray hairs, snow-white incidentally.’

‘You can’t do anything with those hairs,’ muttered Danglard.

‘Yes, I can, Danglard, I can compare them.’

‘With what?’

‘With those in the judge’s grave, in Richelieu. I’d just have to apply for an exhumation. Hair survives a long time, so with a bit of luck…’

‘What’s that noise?’ interrupted Danglard in a changed voice. ‘That whistling sound?’

‘It’s just the cabin pressure, it’s normal.’

Danglard subsided in his seat with a long sigh.

‘But I couldn’t remember what you told me about the meaning of “Fulgence”,’ Adamsberg said, untruthfully.

‘It comes from fulgur, lightning or a thunderbolt,’ Danglard could not resist replying. ‘Or from the verb fulgeo: to shine, dazzle, light up. In a figurative sense to be brilliant, illustrious, to shine forth brightly.’

Adamsberg registered mentally the new meanings his deputy was reeling off with erudition.

‘And what about “Maxime”?’

‘Don’t tell me you don’t know that,’ grumbled Danglard. ‘It’s maximus, of course, the biggest or most important.’

‘I didn’t tell you the name our man used when he bought the Schloss. Would you like to know?’

‘No.’

In fact, Danglard was perfectly aware of the efforts Adamsberg was making to distract him from his panic, and although he found the Schloss story irritating, he was grateful for this kindness. Only another six hours twelve minutes to go. They were over the Atlantic by now and would be for some time.

‘Well, it was Maxime Leclerc. What do you say to that?’

‘That Leclerc is one of the commonest surnames in France.’

‘You’re just trying not to see it. Maxime Leclerc: the biggest, the most brilliant, the most dazzling. The judge couldn’t resign himself to some ordinary name.’

‘You can play games with names just as you can with numbers. You can make them mean anything you like. There’s no end to it.’

‘If you weren’t so wedded to your bloody rationality,’ Adamsberg insisted, trying to be provocative, ‘you’d have to admit that I’ve got some interesting things to say about this Schiltigheim business.’

The commissaire at this point stopped a benevolent attendant who was passing with a tray of glasses of champagne, unnoticed (remarkably) by the capitaine. Since Froissy had refused hers, he took two glasses and placed them in Danglard’s hands.

‘Drink these,’ he ordered. ‘Both of them, but one at a time, like you promised.’

Danglard made a slight nod of gratitude.

‘Because from my point of view, it may not be all right, but it may not be all wrong.’

‘Who says?’

‘Clementine Courbet. Remember her? I went to see her.’

‘If you’re going to start quoting the sayings of Clementine Courbet as your new bible, the whole squad is going to hell in a handcart.’

‘Don’t be so pessimistic, Danglard. But it’s true, one can play with names ad infinitum. Mine for instance. Adamsberg, Adam’s mountain, the First Man. That’s good, isn’t it? And on a mountain as well. I wonder. Perhaps it was because of that, that…’

‘The stuff about Strasbourg Cathedral,’ Danglard cut him off.

‘Got it in one. And what about your name, Danglard, what does it mean?’

‘It’s the name of the traitor in The Count of Monte Cristo. A real bastard.’

‘That’s interesting.’

‘Actually, there’s more to it,’ added Danglard, having downed the two glasses of champagne. ‘It was originally D’Anglard, and Anglard comes from the Germanic Angil-hard.’

‘And that means? You’ll have to translate it for me.’

‘Angil has two roots, meaning “sword” and “angel”. As for hard, it means, well, “hard”.’

‘So you’re a sort of inflexible angel with a sword. That’s a lot better than the poor old First Man waving from the top of a mountain. Even Strasbourg Cathedral would be impressed by an Avenging Angel. Anyway, its door’s blocked.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘By a dragon.’

Adamsberg glanced at his watches. Another five hours forty-four and a half minutes to go. He thought he was doing quite well, but how much longer could he carry on? He had never had to talk for seven hours running before.

Suddenly all his good work was interrupted by a set of red signals going on at the front of the cabin. ‘What’s the