This Night’s Foul Work

Adamsberg opened the meeting by distributing to everyone the photographs of the exhumation at Opportune, which were particularly horrific. His movements were quick and concentrated, and everyone understood that the investigation had taken a new turn. Their chief rarely made them stay for conferences at the end of the afternoon.

‘We didn’t have victims, murderer, or motive with these graves. Now we have all three.’

Adamsberg rubbed his cheeks, wondering how to proceed. He didn’t like summing up, not being gifted at the task. Danglard always helped him out in this respect, rather like the punctuator in the village, providing links, transitions and repetitions in the conversation.

‘The victims,’ Danglard proposed.

‘Neither Elisabeth Chatel nor Pascale Villemot died by accident. Both of them were murdered. Retancourt has brought the evidence back from the Evreux gendarmerie this afternoon. The stone which had supposedly “fallen” out of the south wall of the church, fracturing Pascaline’s skull, had been lying on the ground for at least a couple of months. While it was there, it had acquired a deposit of dark lichen on one of its surfaces.’

‘And the stone couldn’t have jumped up off the ground to hit her,’ observed Estalere attentively.

‘Correct, brigadier. Someone used it to bash her head in. That enables us to deduce that someone had most likely tampered with Elisabeth Chatel’s car as well, causing a fatal accident once she drove it on the main road.’

‘Devalon’s not going to be happy about this,’ observed Mercadet. ‘It’s what you could call rubbishing his investigation.’

Danglard smiled as he chewed his pencil, feeling pleased that Devalon’s aggressive refusal to listen had led him straight into trouble.

‘But why didn’t Devalon think of examining the stone?’ Voisenet asked.

‘Because he’s as thick as two planks, according to local opinion,’ explained Adamsberg. ‘But also because there was no reason in the world to think anyone would murder Pascaline.’

‘How did you find her grave?’ asked Maurel.

‘By chance, apparently.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘Correct. I think we were deliberately pointed in the direction of the graveyard at Opportune. The murderer is telling us where to look, but from way ahead.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Back to the victims, then,’ prompted Danglard. ‘Pascaline and Elisabeth.’

‘They were about the same age. They both led very quiet lives and there was no man in sight. Both of them were virgins. Pascaline’s grave had been treated in exactly the same way as Elisabeth’s. The coffin had been broken open, but the body hadn’t been touched.’

‘Was their virginity something to do with the motive for the killings?’ asked Lamarre.

‘No, it was the criterion for choosing the victims, but not the motive.’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Lamarre, frowning. ‘This murderer, she kills virgins, but her aim isn’t to kill virgins?’

The interruption had disturbed Adamsberg’s concentration, so he signed to Danglard to carry on.

‘Remember what the pathologist told us,’ the commandant said. ‘Diala and La Paille were killed by a woman, measuring about one metre sixty-two or so, someone who was a perfectionist, who knew how to use both a scalpel and a syringe, and wore navy-blue leather shoes. The shoes had been polished under the soles, indicating a possible dissociative pathology, or at least a desire to provide a protective layer between herself and the ground on which the crimes were committed. Claire Langevin, the angel of death, presents all these characteristics.’

Adamsberg had opened his notebook without noting anything in it. He doodled as he listened to the summary by Danglard, who would, in his opinion, have made a better chief of squad than him.

‘Retancourt has found a pair of shoes that belonged to her,’ Danglard added. ‘They were made of navy-blue leather. That’s not enough to provide any certainty, but in the meantime we’re still closely investigating this nurse.’

‘She finds everything, Retancourt,’ muttered Veyrenc.

‘She can channel her energy,’ Estalere responded passionately.

‘This angel of death is a fantasy,’ said Mordent irritably. ‘Nobody ever saw her talking to Diala or La Paille at the Flea Market. She’s invisible, she’s vanished into thin air.’

‘That’s how she used to operate all her life,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Like a ghost.’

‘No, it doesn’t fit,’ Mordent persisted, stretching his long heron-like neck out of his grey pullover. ‘This woman killed thirty-three old people, always the same method, never changing it at all. And suddenly she’s transformed herself into a different kind of monster, she goes chasing after virgins, opens graves, cuts the throats of two big lads. No, it just doesn’t fit. You can’t change a square into a circle, and someone who goes round quietly killing off helpless elderly folk doesn’t turn into a wild necrophiliac. Shoes or no shoes.’

‘I agree it doesn’t fit,’ said Adamsberg, nodding. ‘Unless, that is, some profound shock might have opened up a different crater in the volcano. The lava of madness might have flowed in a different direction. Maybe her stay in prison could have had a strong effect, or the fact that her Alpha caught sight of her Omega.’

‘I know about Alpha and Omega,’ piped up Estalere. ‘They’re the two halves of a dissociating murderer, one each side of the wall.’

‘The angel of death is a dissociator. Her arrest may have broken down her inner wall. After that, any kind of change is conceivable.’

‘All the same,’ said Mordent, ‘it doesn’t tell us what she’s after with her virgins, or what she’s looking for in their graves.’

‘That’s the black hole,’ said Adamsberg. ‘To get in there, we can only work backwards, since we have traces of her actions. Pascaline owned four cats. Three months before her death, one of them was killed. The only male among them.’

‘Was that some kind of early threat to Pascaline?’ asked Justin.

‘No, I don’t think so. It was killed to get at its genitals. Since it was already a neutered tom, its penis was the part that was taken. Danglard, explain about the bone.’

The commandant repeated his lesson about penile bones in carnivores – all pinnipeds, felids, etc.

‘Anyone else here know about that before?’ asked Adamsberg.

Only Voisenet and Veyrenc raised their hands.

‘Voisenet, that figures, since you’re a zoologist. But Veyrenc, how did you know that?’

‘My grandfather told me. When he was a boy, a bear was killed in the valley. Its corpse was dragged around the villages. My grandfather kept the bone from its penis. He said it shouldn’t be lost or sold at any price.’

‘Do you still have it?’

‘Yes, it’s still there, back home.’

‘Do you know why he valued it so much?’

‘He just said it kept the house standing and the family safe.’

‘How big is the penile bone of a cat?’ asked Mordent.

‘This big,’ said Danglard, showing about two or three centimetres between finger and thumb.

‘Not enough to keep a house standing,’ remarked Justin.

‘It’s symbolic,’ said Mordent.

‘I dare say,’ said Justin.

Adamsberg shook his head, without pushing back the hair that was falling into his eyes.

‘No, I think this cat’s bone has some precise significance for whoever took it. I think it’s something to do with the male principle.’

‘Contradiction with the value of the virgins, then,’ objected Mordent.

‘Depends what she’s looking for,’ said Voisenet.

‘She’s looking for eternal life,’ said Adamsberg. ‘And that’s the motive.’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Estalere after a silence.