This Night’s Foul Work

And for once, something Estalere didn’t get corresponded to incomprehension all round.

‘At the same time the cat was mutilated,’ Adamsberg said, ‘it was discovered that a reliquary had been looted, in the church at Le Mesnil, just a few kilometres away from Opportune and Villeneuve. Oswald was right, that’s a lot of disturbance for a small area. From the reliquary the thief took only the human bones belonging, supposedly, to Saint Jerome, but left behind various sheep bones, plus the bone from the snout of a pig.’

‘Must have been a connoisseur, then,’ remarked Danglard. ‘It’s not everyone who could recognise the bone from a pig’s snout.’

‘There’s a bone in a pig’s snout?’

‘So it would seem, Estalere.’

‘The same way, it’s not everyone would know that the cat has a penile bone. So one way or another, we’re dealing with a woman who knows what she’s doing.’

‘I don’t see the link,’ Froissy said, ‘between the relics, the cat and the graves. Except that there are bones in all three cases.’

‘That in itself is something,’ said Adamsberg. ‘The relics of the saint, the relics of a male animal, and the relics of virgins. In the priest’s residence in Le Mesnil, alongside Saint Jerome, they have a very old book, which is open and available for anyone to see, where these three elements are combined in a kind of recipe.’

‘More like a remedy or a potion,’ Danglard corrected.

‘What for?’ asked Mordent.

‘To obtain eternal life, with various ingredients. In the priest’s house, the book was open at the page of this recipe. He’s very proud of it, and I think he shows it to all his visitors. So did his predecessor, Father Raymond. This recipe must have been known to about thirty parishes in the area, and over many generations.’

‘And nowhere else?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Danglard. ‘The book’s famous, and especially this con-coction. It’s the De sanctis reliquis, in the 1663 edition.’

‘Never heard of it,’ said Estalere.

And, once more, something that Estalere had never heard of corresponded to ignorance all round.

‘Personally, I wouldn’t want eternal life,’ said Retancourt, in a low voice.

‘Wouldn’t you?’ asked Veyrenc.

‘Just imagine living for ever. You’d end up flinging yourself on the ground and being bored to death.’

‘Carpe diem, Madame:

The span of a lifetime flies as a summer day,

Much more cruel though would be for ever here to stay.’

‘Yes, you could put it like that,’ nodded Retancourt.

‘So we need to analyse what’s in this book, is that it?’ asked Mordent.

‘I think so,’ replied Adamsberg. ‘Veyrenc has memorised the recipe.’

‘The potion,’ Danglard corrected him again.

‘Go on, Veyrenc, but not too fast.’

‘Sovereign remedy for the lengthening of life, through the quality possessed by sacred relics to weaken the miasmas of death, preserved from the truest processes and purged of former errors.’

‘That’s just the title,’ Adamsberg explained. ‘Now for the rest, lieutenant.’

‘Five times cometh the age of youth, till the day thou must invert it, pass and pass again, out of reach of the thread of life.’

‘I don’t understand a word of it,’ said Estalere, this time with a note of panic in his voice.

‘No one really understands it,’ Adamsberg reassured him. ‘But I think it means something about the age you have to be to take the remedy. Not when you’re young.’

‘That’s quite possible,’ agreed Danglard. ‘When you’ve seen the age of youth pass five times. One could say five times fifteen, if you took the average age of marriage in the late Middle Ages in Western Europe. That would make it seventy-five.’

‘Which is exactly the age of the angel of death now,’ said Adamsberg slowly.

There was a silence and Froissy raised her elegant arm to say something.

‘We can’t carry on like this. I propose we continue the discussion across the road.’

Before Adamsberg could say anything there was a general move to adjourn to the Brasserie des Philosophes. The discussion could not begin again until everyone was seated in the bay with the stained-glass windows, in front of a plateful of food and a glass.

‘Right,’ said Mordent. ‘Maybe when she reached the age of seventy-five, it opened up another crater.’

‘The nurse can’t see herself joining the common herd of old folk she’s been bumping off,’ said Danglard. ‘She’s not an ordinary mortal any more. One might imagine that she wants to find the secret of eternal life and hold on to her powers.’

‘And that she’s been preparing for it for some time,’ said Mordent. ‘So she’d need to have got out of prison before her seventy-fifth birthday whatever happened, in order to get the recipe together.’

‘The potion.’

‘I guess that makes sense,’ said Retancourt.

‘Give us the rest of the text, Veyrenc,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Sacred relics thou wilt crush, taking three pinches, mixed well with the male principle which must not bend, and with the quick of virgins, on the dexter side, sorted by three into equal quantities, and grind these with the living cross from the heart of the eternal branches, adjacent in equal quantity, kept in the same place by the valency of the saint, in the wine of the year, and thus wilt thou lay its head on the ground.’

‘I didn’t understand that,’ said Lamarre, getting in before Estalere.

‘Let’s take it again slowly,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Start again, Veyrenc, bit by bit.’

‘Sacred relics thou wilt crush, taking three pinches.’

‘That’s easy enough,’ said Danglard. ‘Three pinches of bones that have been reduced to powder. Saint Jerome would fill the bill.’

‘… Mixed well with the male principle which must not bend…’

‘A phallus,’ suggested Gardon.

‘That doesn’t bend,’ added Justin

‘Well, a penis with a bone in it, for example,’ confirmed Adamsberg. ‘In other words the penile bone of a cat. And since cats have nine lives, that would give a special little eternity as a bonus.’

‘Yes, OK,’ said Danglard, who was taking notes.

‘And with the quick of virgins, on the dexter side, sorted by three into equal quantities.’

‘Look out,’ said Adamsberg, ‘here come our virgins.’

‘Sorted?’ asked Estalere. ‘Does that mean three by three?’

‘No, it means “matching” – you have to take the same quantities as for the relics.’

‘But what are you supposed to take, for heaven’s sake?’

‘Well, that’s the question,’ said Adamsberg. ‘What is “the quick of virgins”?’

‘Blood?’

‘Genitals?’

‘Heart?’

‘I’d say blood,’ said Mordent. ‘That’s the most logical, if you’re seeking eternal life. Virgin’s blood, mixed with a male principle which would fertilise it and create eternity.’

‘Why blood “on the dexter side,” though?’

‘It means on the right,’ said Danglard.

‘Since when is there right-hand and left-hand blood?’

‘Don’t know what that means,’ said Danglard, serving more wine all round.

Adamsberg had put his chin in his hands.

‘None of that fits the opening of a grave,’ he said. ‘You could easily take any of these things from the corpse of a virgin who had recently died. That’s not what happened. And as for blood, you can’t extract blood or indeed any vital part from a body that’s been three months in the ground.’