This Night’s Foul Work

the erotic question still in suspense. But by the time they arrived, he was fast asleep, having forgotten about the Shade, the pathologist and the tomb of the unknown Elisabeth. Ariane was standing on the pavement, holding the car door open and gently shaking his shoulder. She had left the engine running, a sign that there was strictly nothing to be attempted, therefore no problem to resolve. As he went into the house, he checked the kitchen to see if his car keys were on the hook. They weren’t.

I’m a man, he concluded. At least, allowing for a margin of error of twelve per cent, as Ariane would say.

XX

VEYRENC HAD LEFT THE TEAM IN MONTROUGE AT THREE P.M. AND GONE straight to bed, where he had slept like a log. So by nine in the evening he was up again, refreshed but full of detestable nocturnal thoughts which he would have liked to escape. But how and where? Veyrenc knew there was no way out until the tragedy of the two valleys had reached its resolution. Only then would a space open up in front of him.

I shall move more surely if I move without speed.

Desp’rate conflicts are lost if one does not take heed.

Very true, Veyrenc said to himself, relaxing a little. He had rented a furnished room for six months, and there was no hurry. He switched on his small television set and sat down quietly. A natural-history documentary. Perfect, that would do very well. Veyrenc saw once more Adamsberg’s fingers clenched on the door handle. ‘They came from the Gave de Pau valley.’ Veyrenc smiled.

And at these words, my lord, I saw your face turn pale,

You who until today could make vast empires quail,

Striding proud and careless across the conquered plain,

Without a backward glance for the soldier in pain.

Veyrenc lit a cigarette and put his ashtray on the arm of his chair. A herd of rhinoceroses was charging rowdily across the television screen.

Too late now, when your throne is shak’n with sudden dread

To seek the forgiveness of a child who has fled,

For the child is a man, whose face is like your own.

Veyrenc jumped up, suddenly irritated. What throne, what lord, what soldier, what forgiveness? Who precisely is shaken with sudden dread? He paced up and down for an hour in his room before making up his mind.

He had made no preparations, thought of no words to say or reasons to give. So when Camille opened the door he stood there without speaking. He seemed to recall afterwards that she was aware that he was no longer on duty, that she had not been surprised to see him – perhaps even relieved, as if she’d known that the inevitable would happen, and welcomed it with both embarrassment and naturalness. Later, he remembered things more clearly. He had stepped inside and stood looking at her. He had touched her face with his hands. He had said – probably it was the first thing he had said – that he could leave at once. Then they both knew that he could not possibly leave and that what happened was inevitable. That it had been laid down and agreed from his very first day on the landing. That there was no way of avoiding it. Who had kissed the other first? He had, perhaps, since Camille was as anxious as she was adventurous. He was unable to reconstruct that first moment, except that he was still aware of the simple fact that he had reached his goal. He it was, again, who had taken the dozen steps towards the bed, leading her by the hand. He had left her at four in the morning with a gentle embrace, for neither of them wanted to speak next day of this predictable, fore-ordained and almost silent coming together.

When he arrived home, the television was still on. He switched it off and the grey screen swallowed up both his complaint and his resentment.

Ah, soldier, what is this?

If a woman should yield to your ardent embrace

Will that make you forget why you came to this place?

And Veyrenc fell asleep.

Camille had left the lamp on and was wondering whether giving in to the inevitable was a mistake or a good idea. ‘In affairs of the heart, it is better to regret things done than to regret things left undone.’ A Byzantine proverb is sometimes the only thing that can help you organise your life – almost – to perfection.

XXI

THE DRUG SQUAD HAD BEEN OBLIGED TO GIVE UP ITS CLAIM, BUT Adamsberg was not far off doing the same. His road was blocked: doors seemed to be closing on the investigation whichever way he looked.

Perhaps the Swedish stools weren’t so bad after all, because you couldn’t really sit on them, only perch there as if on horseback, with your legs dangling. Adamsberg had settled on one, quite comfortably, and was looking out of the window at the cloudy spring sky, which seemed as sunk in gloom as his inquiries. The commissaire did not enjoy sitting at his desk. After an hour sitting still, he felt the itch to get up and walk around, even if it was only round his office. This high bar stool gave him a new possibility, a sort of halfway house between standing and sitting, allowing his legs to swing gently as if he were suspended in the void, or flying through the air – something that suited the shoveller of clouds. Behind him, on the foam cushions, Mercadet was dozing.

The soil under the fingernails of the two men did, of course, come from the grave. It had been confirmed. But where did that lead? It said nothing about whoever had sent them to Montrouge, nor about what they had come to dig for underground, something sufficiently terrible to have cost them their lives two days later. Adamsberg had checked the recorded height of the nurse at his first opportunity: one metre sixty-five – neither too tall nor too short to be ruled out of the picture.

The information about the dead woman threw his thoughts into even greater confusion. Elisabeth Chatel, from the village of Villebosc-sur-Risle, in Upper Normandy, had been employed by a travel agent in Evreux. She hadn’t been handling dodgy sex tourism or adventurous safaris, just coach trips for elderly tourists. She had not been wearing any jewellery when she was buried. A search of her home had revealed no hidden wealth, nor any passion for valuables. Elisabeth had been austere in her tastes, never wearing make-up, and dressing plainly. Her relatives described her as religious and, from what one gathered, underlying their words was the assumption that she had never had any relationship with a man. She had paid no more attention to her car than to her person, and that was what had caused her death on the dangerous three-lane road between Evreux and Villebosc. The brake fluid had leaked and her car had been crushed by a truck. The previous most significant event in the Chatel family had been in 1789, when the family had been split between those who favoured the Revolution and those who opposed it. There had been a death as a result, and since then the two feuding branches of the clan had not spoken to each other. Even in death they were divided, with one branch being buried in the village graveyard at Villebosc, the other in a concession in the cemetery at Montrouge.

This cheerless summary seemed to contain the entire life of Elisabeth, a life apparently devoid of either friends or secrets. The only remarkable thing that had happened to her was the interference with her grave. None of that made sense, thought Adamsberg, swinging his legs. For the sake of this woman, who had apparently attracted no desire during her lifetime, two men had died after trying to reach her head in the coffin. Elisabeth had been placed in the coffin at the hospital in Evreux, and nobody could have had the opportunity to slip anything inside it.

At two o’clock there was to be a hasty conference at the Brasserie des Philosophes, where half the staff was still eating lunch. Adamsberg was not one to fuss about the conferences, either their regularity or the venue. He walked the hundred metres across to the brasserie, trying to find, on the map which kept flapping in the wind, the location of Villebosc-sur-Risle. Danglard pointed it out to him.

‘Villebosc comes under the Evreux gendarmerie,’ he said. ‘It’s one of those villages with half-timbering and thatched roofs, and you should know it, because it’s only fifteen kilometres from your Haroncourt.’