This Night’s Foul Work

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘The quick of virgins,’ said Adamsberg, looking at the photo. ‘This crazy woman has killed them to get at their hair.’

‘Which had resisted death. On the right of the skull, you’ll note. Remember the text?’

‘The quick of virgins, on the dexter hand, sorted by three in equal quantities.’

‘Dexter, on the right. Because the left, sinister, is the dark side, in Latin. The right means life. The right hand leads to life. You follow?’

Adamsberg nodded silently.

‘Ariane did think it might be hair,’ he said.

‘I think you’re a bit sweet on Ariane.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Your blonde lieutenant.’

‘So why didn’t Ariane notice if the hair had been cut?’

Roman laughed, rather cheerfully.

‘Because she wasn’t as good at spotting it as I am. Ariane’s very good, but her father wasn’t a barber. Mine was. I can spot when a lock of hair has been freshly cut. The ends are different – clean, not split. Can’t you see that here?’

‘No.’

‘Well, your father wasn’t a barber either.’

‘No.’

‘Ariane has another excuse. Elisabeth Chatel, from what I’d guess, didn’t pay much attention to her looks. Am I right?’

‘Yes. She didn’t use make-up, didn’t wear jewellery.’

‘And she didn’t go to the hairdresser. She cut her hair herself and made a bit of a mess of it. If her fringe was in her eyes, she picked up the scissors and cut it, just like that. So her hair is all different lengths, some long, some short, some medium. It would be pretty impossible for Ariane to spot which locks had been freshly cut in the middle of that mishmash.’

‘We were working at night under arc lamps.’

‘That would be another reason. And in the case of Pascaline, it’s hard to see anything.’

‘And you told Retancourt all this on Friday?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘Nothing. She looked thoughtful, like you. I don’t think it makes that much difference to your inquiry, though.’

‘Except that now we know why she opens graves. And why she needs to kill a third virgin.’

‘You really think that?’

‘Yes. By three, the number of women.’

‘Possibly. You’ve identified the third?

‘No.’

‘Well, look for a woman with a good head of hair. Both Elisabeth and Pascaline had plenty of hair. Get me to my bedroom, mon vieux, I can’t take any more.’

‘I’m really sorry, Roman,’ said Adamsberg, standing up abruptly.

‘Doesn’t matter. But while you’re looking through those old remedies, try and find one against the vapours for me.’

‘I promise,’ said Adamsberg as he helped Roman towards the bedroom. The doctor turned his head, intrigued by Adamsberg’s tone.

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes, I promise.’

XLV

RETANCOURT’S DISAPPEARANCE, PLUS THE NIGHT-TIME COFFEE HE HAD drunk with Roman, the tender lovemaking of Camille and Veyrenc, the quick of virgins, and Roland’s thuggish face had all disturbed Adamsberg’s sleep. Between two shuddering bouts of wakefulness, he had dreamed that one ibex – but which one, the brown or the ginger? – had gone crashing down the mountain. The commissaire woke feeling sick and aching. An informal conference, or rather a sort of funeral session, had spontaneously opened that morning at the Serious Crime Squad. The officers were all hunched over on their seats, cramped with anxiety.

‘None of us has voiced it,’ Adamsberg began, ‘but we all know Retancourt hasn’t wandered off, or been hospitalised, or lost her memory. She’s fallen into the hands of our maniac. She left Dr Roman knowing something we didn’t know. That the “quick of virgins” means their hair, and that the murderer opened the graves to cut it off their corpses, because it’s the only part of the body that resists decomposition. On the dexter, in other words on the right side of the skull, which is positive compared with the left. And she hasn’t been seen since. So we might deduce that, after leaving Roman, she understood something that took her straight to the killer. Or else something that sufficiently worried the angel of death that she decided Retancourt must disappear.’

Adamsberg had deliberately chosen the word ‘disappear’ as being more evasive and optimistic than ‘die’. But he had no illusions about the nurse’s intentions.

‘With that stuff about the “quick of virgins”,’ said Mordent, ‘and nothing else, Retancourt must have understood something we still haven’t worked out.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of. Where did she go next, and what did she do to alert the killer?’

‘Well, the only way is to try and work out what she understood,’ said Mordent, rubbing his forehead.

There was a discouraged silence and several hopeful faces turned towards Adamsberg.

‘I’m not Retancourt,’ he said, with a shake of his head. ‘I can’t reason as she would, nor can any of you. Even under hypnosis, or catalepsy, or in a coma, nobody knows how to merge themselves with her in spirit.’

The word ‘merge’ sent Adamsberg’s thoughts back to the Quebec expedition, when he had indeed had to merge his body with his lieutenant‘s impressive bulk. The memory made him tremble with chagrin. Retancourt, his tree. He had lost his tree. Suddenly he raised his head and looked round at his motionless colleagues.

‘Yes,’ he said in a near-whisper, ‘there is just one of us who might have merged in spirit with Retancourt, to the point of being able to find her.’

He stood up, still hesitating, but a kind of light dawned on his face.

‘The cat,’ he said. ‘Where’s the cat?’

‘Behind the photocopier,’ said Justin.

‘Hurry up,’ said Adamsberg in a frantic voice, going from chair to chair and shaking his officers as if he were waking soldiers in his exhausted army. ‘We’re all so stupid. I’m so stupid. The Snowball will lead us to Retancourt.’

‘The Snowball?’ said Kernorkian. ‘But that cat’s a waste of space.’

‘The Snowball,’ Adamsberg pleaded, ‘is a waste of space who adores Retancourt. The Snowball wants nothing more than to find her. And the Snowball is an animal. With a nose, sensory organs, a brain as big as an apricot, stuffed with a hundred thousand smells.’

‘A hundred thousand?’ said Lamarre sceptically. ‘Could the Snowball cope with a hundred thousand smells?’

‘Yes, perfectly. And if he remembered only one, it would be Retancourt’s.’

‘Here’s the cat,’ announced Justin, and doubt returned to all minds as they saw the beast draped like a flaccid dishcloth over the lieutenant’s arm.

But Adamsberg, who was pacing up and down at a frantic speed in the hall, refused to give up his idea, and