included in the natural world. Adamsberg introduced himself by his surname.
‘Which Adamsberg is this?’
‘The one who used to look at your old books.
What god, what harvester of eternal summertime,
Had, as he strolled away, carelessly thrown down
That golden sickle…’
‘Abandoned, Jean-Baptiste, abandoned, you mean,’ said the priest, without appearing surprised at being telephoned.
‘Thrown down.’
‘Abandoned.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Father. I need to ask you something. I hope I didn’t wake you up.’
‘Oh, I get up when the chickens do, you know. And the older I get… Wait a minute, I have to check. You’ve sown a doubt in my mind.’
Adamsberg sat with the phone in his hand, anxiously. Didn’t Gregoire understand these days when something was urgent? He was known in the village for being able to spot the slightest worry on the part of one of his parishioners. Nothing could be concealed from Father Gregoire.
‘Thrown down. You were right, Jean-Baptiste,’ said the priest, disappointed. ‘I must be getting old.’
‘Father, do you remember the judge? The one we called the Lord and Master?’
‘Still fretting about him, are you,’ said Gregoire, with reproach in his voice.
‘He’s come back from the dead. I’ll get the old devil by the horns or lose my soul in the attempt.’
‘Jean-Baptiste, don’t talk like that!’ ordered the priest sharply, as if he were still talking to a child. ‘What if God could hear you?’
‘Father, can you remember what his ears looked like?’
‘Do you mean his left ear?’
‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg quickly, picking up a pencil. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but that ear was deformed. Not by God, but by doctors.’
‘God sent him into the world with ears sticking out.’
‘But He had also given him great beauty. God shares things out in this world, Jean-Baptiste.’
Adamsberg thought that God was not currently doing his work very well, and that it was a good thing there were Josettes in the world to help sort out the mess.
‘Tell me about the ear,’ he said, hoping Gregoire would not launch into a sermon about God’s mysterious ways.
‘It was big and deformed, with a long lobe. The entrance to the ear was very narrow, and the rim was scarred. Remember the time we got that mosquito out of Raphael’s ear? We managed it in the end with a lamp, like when you go fishing at night.’
‘I remember very well. It hissed in the flame with a funny little sound, remember?’
‘Yes, I remember, I made a joke about it.’
‘Yes, indeed. But tell me more about the judge. You’re sure his ear was out of shape?’
‘Oh yes. And let me see, he had a wart on his chin, on the right, which must have given him some trouble shaving,’ said Gregoire, who was now launched into instant recall. ‘The right nostril was larger than the left, and his hair grew low down on his cheeks.’
‘How on earth do you do it?’
‘I can describe you as well, if you like.’
‘No thanks, Father. I’ve got enough problems as it is.’
‘The judge is dead, my son, don’t forget. Don’t get into trouble.’
‘I’m doing my best, Father.’
Adamsberg thought about the old priest, sitting at his greasy old wooden table, then returned to the photos with a magnifying glass. Yes, the wart on the chin was visible, as was the irregularity of the nostrils. The old priest’s memory was as efficient as ever, a real telephoto lens into the past. Apart from the problem of the age difference insisted upon by the doctor, it was as if Fulgence had stepped out of the grave. Or had been pulled out by his ear. It was true, he thought, as he looked at the photographs of Fulgence taken at the time of his retirement, that the judge had never looked his age. He had always had much greater strength than one would anticipate and Courtin couldn’t be expected to know that. Maxime Leclerc was no ordinary patient, and by the same token he was no ordinary ghost.
Adamsberg made some more coffee and waited impatiently for Clementine and Josette to come back from shopping. Now that he had had to leave the sheltering tree trunk of Retancourt, he felt the need of their support and an urge to tell them of any little progress he made.
‘We’ve got him by the tips of his ears, Clementine,’ he announced as he helped her empty her shopping basket.
‘Aha, it’s like a ball of wool, once you find the end, you just have to pull it.’
‘Shall we try a new line,
‘I keep telling you, Josette. He isn’t a policeman any more. It’s a funny old world.’
‘Let’s try the town of Richelieu, Josette. Can you find the name of the doctor who signed the death certificate, sixteen years ago?’
‘Child’s play,’ she said, dismissively.
It took her only twenty minutes to find the GP, Colette Choisel, the judge’s doctor ever since he had come to live in Richelieu. She had examined the body, diagnosed a heart attack, and signed the certificate for the burial.
‘And her address, Josette?’
‘She closed the practice, four months after the judge died.’
‘Retired?’
‘Hardly. She was only forty-eight.’
‘Perfect. Let’s check her out.’
‘That might not be so easy. She has a common enough name. But if she’s sixty-four, she might still be in practice, and then she’d be on the medical register.’
‘And take a look at court records too, to see if her name crops up.’
‘If she had a record, she wouldn’t be able to practise.’
‘Exactly. We’re looking for an acquittal.’
Adamsberg left Josette to her Aladdin’s lamp and went to give a hand to Clementine who was peeling vegetables for their lunch.
‘She slips in there like an eel under a rock,’ he said, sitting down.
‘Well, that’s her work, you know,’ replied Clementine who was unaware of the complexity involved in Josette’s hacking activities.
‘It’s like spuds,’ she went on. ‘Now mind you peel them properly for me, Adamsberg.’
‘I know how to peel potatoes, Clementine.’
‘No, you don’t. You leave the eyes in. Got to take them out, they’re poisonous.’
Clementine showed him, with the practised movements of a professional, how to dig the end of the peeler into the eye and dig out the little black cones.
‘They’re only poisonous when they’re raw, Clementine.’
‘Never mind. I want those eyes out, please.’
‘OK. I’ll be careful.’
The potatoes, checked over by Clementine, were cooked and on the table by the time Josette returned with her results.
‘Any luck?’ asked Clementine as she served up.
‘I think so, yes,’ said Josette putting a sheet of paper on the table.
‘I don’t really like people working when they’re eating. Not that it upsets me, you understand, but my old father wouldn’t have let us do that. But seeing as you’ve only got six weeks.’
‘Colette Choisel has been in practice in Rennes for the last sixteen years,’ Josette said. ‘When she was very young, twenty-seven, she was involved in a court case. One of her patients died, an elderly woman. She’d been
