This Night’s Foul Work

‘It’s about acquiring eternal life,’ commented Danglard sulkily. ‘You won’t manage that with a couple of spoonfuls of something.’

Half an hour later, Adamsberg and his colleagues were putting their bags back in the car and heading for Paris. Danglard complained about the fireguard, not to mention the stag’s antlers which were taking up the back seat.

‘There’s only one solution,’ said Adamsberg. ‘We’ll put the antlers in front and the two passengers in the back, with the fireguard between us.’

‘We’d do better to leave the antlers here.’

‘You must be joking, capitaine. You drive, you’re the tallest, Veyrenc and I will sit either side of the fireguard. It’ll be fine.’

Danglard waited until Veyrenc was sitting in the car, before drawing Adamsberg aside.

‘He’s got to be lying, commissaire. Nobody could memorise a text like that. Nobody.’

‘I’ve already told you, Danglard, he’s got special gifts. Nobody else can make up verses like he does.’

‘It’s one thing to make stuff up, and another to remember it. He recited that damned text pretty well word- perfect. He’s lying. He must already have known that recipe off by heart.’

‘Why would that be, Danglard?’

‘No idea. But it’s been a potion known to damned souls for centuries and centuries.’

XXX

‘SHE DID WEAR NAVY-BLUE SHOES,’ RETANCOURT ANNOUNCED, PLACING A plastic bag on Adamsberg’s desk.

Adamsberg looked at the bag, then at the lieutenant. She was carrying the cat under her arm, and the Snowball, looking blissful, was allowing himself to be carried round like a rag doll, head and paws hanging down. Adamsberg had not been expecting such rapid results, nor indeed any result at all. But now here were the shoes belonging to the angel of death, sitting on his table: worn, out of shape, and definitely navy blue.

‘There’s no sign of shoe polish on the soles,’ Retancourt added. ‘But that’s not surprising, because they’ve been worn a lot over the last couple of years.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Adamsberg, hoisting himself on to one of the Swedish bar stools he had brought into his office.

‘The estate agent just left the nurse’s house as it was, knowing it would be impossible to sell. Nobody went round to clean it after the arrest. But when I got there it was empty – no furniture, no crockery, no clothes.’

‘Why? Looters?’

‘Yes. In the neighbourhood, everyone knew the nurse had no family, and that she had some stuff in good condition. Gradually people started taking things. I had to go round a few squats and a travellers’ camp. With the shoes I found one of her blouses and a blanket.’

‘Where?’

‘In a caravan.’

‘With people living in it?’

‘Yes. But you don’t need to know who they are, do you?’

‘No.’

‘I promised this lady I’d get her another pair of shoes. She doesn’t have any others, just bedroom slippers. So she’ll miss these ones.’

Adamsberg swung his legs.

‘This district nurse,’ he mused, ‘went around knocking off old people with her injections for forty years. It was virtually her mission in life for about half a century, almost a tradition. Why would she suddenly turn to the occult, and start hiring ruffians to dig up graves belonging to virgins? I don’t get it, the switch just isn’t logical.’

‘The nurse wasn’t logical either.’

‘Yes, she was. All forms of mania have a certain rigidity, they follow a pattern.’

‘Maybe being in prison threw her off balance.’

‘That’s what the pathologist suggested.’

‘Why did you say “virgins”?’

‘Because they both were, Pascaline and Elisabeth. And I’m supposing that had some significance for the grave-robber. The nurse never had a husband or partner either.’

‘She would have needed to find out if it was true of Pascaline and Elisabeth.’

‘Yes, so she would have had to spend some time in Upper Normandy. Nurses get told a lot of things they don’t ask about.’

‘Have we any record of her being there?’

‘No, no victims towards the west at all, except for one in Rennes in Brittany. But that might not mean anything. She travelled a lot from place to place, staying a few months, then moving on.’

‘What are those doing here?’ asked Retancourt, pointing to the two large antlers taking up space on the office floor.

‘A trophy. Someone gave me them the other night. I cut them off myself.’

‘Ten points, eh?’ said Retancourt approvingly. ‘And what did you do to deserve them?’

‘They asked me to go up there and I went. But I’m not sure that I was really being called there for him. He was known as the Red Giant.’

‘Who?’

‘Him. The stag.’

‘Why would someone do that? Do you think it was a lure, to get you to go to the graveyard at Opportune?’

‘Possibly.’

Retancourt lifted up one of the antlers, weighed it and put it down delicately.

‘You’re not supposed to separate them,’ she said. ‘So what else did you pick up there?’

‘I learned that there’s a bone in the snout of a pig.’

Retancourt let this remark pass, hoisting the cat up on her shoulder.

‘It’s in the shape of a double heart,’ Adamsberg went on. ‘I also learned that one could cure the vapours with a saint’s relics, and acquire eternal life for centuries and centuries, and that the remains of Saint Jerome might include some sheep’s bones.’

‘Anything else?’ asked Retancourt, patiently waiting for the information that really interested her.

‘That the two men who dug out the grave of Pascaline Villemot were probably our Diala and La Paille. That Pascaline died of a fractured skull, caused by a stone falling from the church, that one of her cats was slaughtered and emasculated three months before her death, and had been left in that state on her doorstep.’

Adamsberg suddenly raised his hand, twined his legs round the foot of the stool and called up a number on his mobile.

‘Oswald? Did you know that Pascaline’s cat had been left bleeding at her door?’

‘Narcissus? Reckon everyone knew about him in Opportune. Famous for his weight, he was. Over eleven kilos. He nearly won a prize at the show. But that was last year. Hermance gave her a new cat. Hermance likes cats, they’re nice clean creatures.’

‘Were Pascaline’s other cats male too, do you know?’

‘No, all girls, they were. Narcissus’s daughters. Not important, is it?’

Another trick of the Normans, Adamsberg reflected, consisted of putting a question while apparently not being interested in the reply. As Oswald just had.

‘I was just wondering why whoever killed Narcissus went to the trouble of cutting his balls off.’

‘Whoever told you that don’t know his arse from his elbow. Narcissus was neutered, oh, years ago. He used to sleep all day. A cat that weighs eleven kilos, ever seen that happen by chance?’