The Chalk Circle Man

The eyes of the murdered woman were open, with a terrified expression in them, and her mouth was open too, her jaw virtually dislocated. It almost looked as if she had been shouting the rhyme which was written all round the circle surrounding her: ‘Victor, woe’s in store, what are you out here for? ‘

The sound was deafening, enough to make one want to stop one’s ears, and yet the policemen standing in a group around the circle were silent.

Danglard was looking at the woman’s cheap raincoat, buttoned up tightly, at her throat which had been cut, and at the blood which had trickled as far as the door of a building. He felt sick. He had never been able to view a corpse without feeling sick, something which did not however distress him. It wasn’t unpleasant to feel sick. It made him forget his other sorrows, the sorrows of the soul, he thought bitterly.

‘She was killed by a rat, a human rat,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Rats leap at people’s throats like that.’

Then he added.

‘So who is this lady?’

His petite cherie always said ‘lady’ and ‘gentleman’. ‘That’s a pretty lady.’ ‘That gentleman wants to go to bed with me’, and Adamsberg hadn’t been able to rid himself of the habit.

Inspecteur Delille replied:

‘Her papers were on the body – the murderer didn’t take anything. Her name was Madeleine Chatelain, aged fifty-one.’

‘Have you searched her bag?’

‘Not thoroughly, but it doesn’t look as if there’s anything out of the ordinary.’

‘Tell me all the same.’

‘A knitting magazine, a tiny penknife, some of those little soaps you get in hotels, her wallet and keys, a pink plastic eraser and a pocket diary.’

‘Anything in the diary for yesterday?’

‘Yes, but not a rendezvous, if that’s what you were hoping. She’d written “It’s not much fun working in a knitting shop.”‘

‘Any other entries like that?’

‘Quite a few. Three days ago, for instance: “God knows why Maman’s so keen on dry Martinis.” And the week before that: “Nothing could ever persuade me to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower.” ‘

Adamsberg smiled. The police pathologist was muttering that you couldn’t expect miracles if bodies weren’t dis covered quickly enough, that he thought she had probably been killed between ten-thirty and midnight, but that he would prefer to check the stomach contents before stating anything with confidence. The knife wound had been made with a medium-sized blade, following a massive blow to the head.

Adamsberg stopped thinking about the little entries in the diary and looked at Danglard. The inspector was pale and gave the impression of being on the point of collapse, his arms dangling at the sides of his shapeless body. He was also frowning.

‘You’ve seen what’s wrong?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘I’m not sure. What bothers me is that the trail of blood has run over the chalk circle and covered quite a bit of it.’

‘Yes, exactly, Danglard. And the lady’s hand is right up against the line. If he drew the circle after killing her, the chalk might have made a channel through the blood. And if I had been the murderer, I think I would have gone wider around the body to draw the circle. I don’t think I would have gone so close to her hand.’

‘So it’s as if the circle was drawn first, is that what you mean? And then the murderer arranged the body inside it?’

‘Looks a bit like that. But that seems stupid, doesn’t it? Danglard, would you go and check all this out with the scene-of-crime people and with the graphologist – Meunier, I think he’s called. This is where Conti’s photos are going to help us, and so will the dimensions of all the previous circles and the chalk samples you collected. We’ll have to compare them all with this new circle. We have to find out whether it’s the same man who drew it, and whether he drew it before or after the murder. Delille, can you follow up this lady’s address, her neighbours, friends and contacts? Castreau, check her place of work, if she had one, who her colleagues were, and what her income was. Nivelle, you take the family side of things, any family quarrels, inheritances, love affairs.’

Adamsberg had spoken without haste. It was the first time Danglard had seen him giving orders. He did so without seeming either self-important or apologetic about doing so. It was an odd thing, but all the inspectors seemed to be becoming porous, letting Adamsberg’s way of behaving seep into them. It was like being caught in the rain when your jacket can’t help absorbing water. The inspectors were becoming damp and without realising it they were imitating Adamsberg; their movements were slower, they smiled more, and were absent-minded. The one most altered was Castreau, who as a rule liked the gruff, manly responses their previous commissaire had expected of them, the military commands barked out without any superfluous commentary, the ban on looking to either side, the slamming of car doors, the fists clenched in the tunic pockets. Today, Danglard hardly recognised Castreau. He was leafing through the victim’s pocket diary, quietly reading out sentences to himself, glancing attentively at Adamsberg, apparently considering every word, and Danglard thought to himself that he might be able to confess to him his problems about corpses.

‘If I go on looking at her, I’ll be sick,’ Danglard said to Castreau.

‘It gets me in the knees. Especially women, even women like this one, nothing much to look at.’

‘What are you reading in the diary?’

‘Listen: “Had a perm, but I’m still ugly. Papa was ugly, so was Maman. Why would I be any different? A customer came in for blue mohair but I didn’t have any left. Another bad day.”‘

Adamsberg watched the four inspectors get back in the car. He was thinking about his petite cherie, Richard III and the lady’s diary. Once the petite cherie had asked him: ‘Is a murder like a packet of spaghetti that’s all stuck together? You just have to put it in boiling water for it to come untangled again? And the boiling water’s the motive?’ and he had replied: ‘No, what gets it untangled is knowledge, you just have to let the knowledge come to you.’ She had said: ‘I’m not sure I understood that’, which was fair enough, since he didn’t really understand it himself.

He waited for the police doctor, who was still grumbling away, to finish his preliminary check of the body. The photographer and the scene-of-crime people had already left. He stood alone, looking down at the lady on the ground, with the stretcher team waiting nearby. He hoped that a little knowledge would come to him. But until he came face to face with the chalk circle man, he knew it wasn’t worth racking his brains. He just had to keep on picking up information, and for him information had nothing to do with knowledge.

VII

SINCE CHARLES SEEMED TO BE FEELING BETTER ABOUT THINGS, Mathilde decided that she could count on a peaceful quarter of an hour during which he wouldn’t try to reduce the universe to shreds, and that she would therefore be able to introduce him to Clemence that evening. She had asked the elderly Clemence to stay behind in the flat for the occasion, and had taken some pre-emptive action by warning her emphatically that the new tenant was indeed blind, but that it would not do either to exclaim, ‘Oh my sakes, what a terrible affliction!’ or to pretend complete ignorance.

Charles heard Mathilde introduce him and listened to Clemence’s greeting. From her voice, he would never have imagined the naive woman whom Queen Mathilde had described to him. He seemed to hear fierce determination, and weird but recognisable intelligence. What she actually said seemed silly, but in the intonations behind the words there was some secret knowledge, caged but breathing audibly, like a lion in a village circus. You hear it growling in the night and tell yourself this circus isn’t what you thought, it isn’t quite as pathetic as the programme might make you think. And Charles, the expert on sounds and noises, could quite distinctly hear this distant growling, a little unsettling since it was possibly concealed.

Mathilde had offered him a whisky and Clemence was telling him about the incidents in her life. Charles was troubled, because of Clemence, and happy because of Mathilde. A divine creature who was quite indifferent to his