‘It’s possible,’ said Adamsberg.
‘But he was mistaken in one thing: any of your shrinks will tell you that I’m perfectly sane, I haven’t lost my mind. I suppose a lunatic might kill two strangers and then his own wife. But not me. I’m not insane. And I would never have killed Delphie and dragged her into one of my circles. Delphie. If it hadn’t been for my damned circles, she’d still be alive.’
‘Well, if you’re as sane as you say,’ asked Danglard, ‘why on earth
‘So that lost things would belong to me, would be grateful to me. No, I’m not putting this very well.’
‘No, you’re not – I don’t get it at all,’ said Danglard.
‘I can’t help it,’ said Le Nermord. ‘I’ll try to write it down, that might work better.’
Adamsberg was thinking of Mathilde’s description: ‘A little man who’s lost everything and is greedy for power, how will he get out of this?’
‘Please find him,’ Le Nermord begged, in distress. ‘Find this killer. Do you think you can find him? Really?’
‘If you help us,’ said Danglard. ‘For instance, did you ever see anyone following you when you went out?’
‘Nothing clear enough to help you, unfortunately. At the beginning, two or three months ago, this woman sometimes followed me. It was long before any murder, and it didn’t bother me. I found her odd, but somehow friendly. I had the feeling that she was encouraging me from a distance. At first I was a bit scared of her, then I got to like seeing her. But what can I say? I think she was fairly tall, dark hair, good-looking and perhaps not young. But I can’t give you more detail than that. Still, I’m certain it was a woman.’
‘Yes,’ said Danglard, ‘we know about her. How many times did you see her?’
‘About a dozen times.’
‘And after the first murder?’
Le Nermord hesitated, as if he didn’t wish to remember something.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘After that I did see someone twice, but it wasn’t the dark woman. Someone else. Because I was scared, I hardly turned to look and ran off once I’d done my circle. I didn’t really have the guts to follow through on my plan, which was to try and see the face of the person. It was quite a small figure. Could have been a man or a woman, a peculiar outline. See, I can’t help you much.’
‘Why did you always have your bag with you?’ Adamsberg interrupted.
‘My briefcase?’ said Nermord. ‘With my papers? After I’d drawn my circle, I would go away quickly, usually by metro. I was so nervous that I needed to read, get back to my notes and return to being a professor. I’m sorry, I don’t know if I can explain it better than that. What will happen to me now?’
‘Well, we’ll probably let you go for now,’ said Adamsberg. ‘The magistrate won’t want to risk a false murder charge.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Danglard. ‘This does somewhat change things.’
Le Nermord looked a little better. He asked for a cigarette and packed the tobacco into his pipe.
‘It’s a pure formality, but I would still like to visit your house, if I may,’ said Adamsberg.
Danglard, who had never seen Adamsberg bother to carry out pure formalities, looked at him uncomprehendingly.
‘As you wish,’ said Le Nermord. ‘But what are you looking for? As I said, I’ll bring you all the proof you need.’
‘Yes, I know. And I’ll trust you to do that. I’m not looking for anything concrete. Meanwhile, can you go over all that with Danglard, and make a statement.’
‘Can you be frank with me,
‘I can’t think the charge will be serious,’ said Adamsberg. ‘There was no disturbance, no offence against public order in the strict sense. If you inspired someone with the idea of committing a murder, that’s not your fault. You can’t be held responsible for giving other people ideas. Your peculiar habit has caused three deaths, but we can hardly blame you for them.’
‘I would never have imagined this. I’m truly sorry,’ murmured Le Nermord.
Adamsberg went out without another word, and Danglard felt annoyed at him for not having shown a little more humanity. He had previously seen the
Next day, Adamsberg asked to see Le Nermord again. Danglard was sulking. He didn’t want them to harass the old man any further. And here was Adamsberg choosing the last minute to call him in, when he’d hardly said a word to him the previous days.
So Le Nermord was convoked once more. He came into the police station timidly, still looking shaken and pale. Danglard considered him.
‘He’s changed,’ he whispered to Adamsberg.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Adamsberg replied.
Le Nermord sat on the edge of a chair and asked if he could smoke his pipe.
‘I was thinking, last night,’ he said, feeling in his pocket for matches. ‘All night, in fact. And now I’ve decided that I don’t care if everyone finds out the truth about me. I’ll just have to accept that I’m the pathetic chalk circle man, as the press calls me. At first when I started doing it, I had the feeling that it was making me incredibly powerful. In fact, I suppose, I was being arrogant and grotesque. And then it all went so wrong. Those two murders. And my Delphie. How could I possibly hope to hide all that from myself? What would be the point of trying to hide it from other people, and trying to salvage my career, which I’ve completely destroyed, however you look at it? No. I was the circle man. If I have to live with that, so be it. Because of all this, because of my “frustration” as that man Vercors-Laury would call it, three people have died. Including my Delphie.’
He plunged his head in his hands and Danglard and Adamsberg waited in silence, without looking at each other. The elderly Le Nermord wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his raincoat, like an old tramp, as if he were abandoning the prestige he had spent years acquiring.
‘So it’s pointless of me to beg you not to let the press know,’ he continued with an effort. ‘I get the impression that it would be better if I just accept what I am and what I’ve done, instead of trying to hide behind my wretched professorial identity. But since I’m a coward, I’d prefer to get away from Paris, now that everything will come out. I meet too many people in the street, you see. If you give me permission, I’d like to retreat to the countryside. Not that I like the countryside. We bought a little house there for Delphie to use. It could be my refuge from the world for now.’
Le Nermord waited for their reply, rubbing the bowl of his pipe against his cheek, an anxious and miserable expression on his face.
‘You’re quite free to do that,’ said Adamsberg, ‘so long as you keep us informed of your whereabouts. That’s all we will ask.’
‘Thank you. I think I could move down there in a couple of weeks. I’m going to clear everything out. Byzantium’s finished for me now.’
Adamsberg let another pause go past before he asked:
‘You aren’t by any chance diabetic, are you?’
‘What a strange question,
‘Well, it is quite. I’m going to trouble you again one last time, although it’s about something trivial. But this trivial thing is hard to explain, and I hoped you might be able to help me. All the witnesses who saw you have spoken of a smell you left behind. A smell of rotten apples, one said, vinegar or a liqueur of some sort, others said. So I thought at first that you might be suffering from diabetes, since as you may know diabetes is associated with a slight aroma of fermentation. However, I don’t detect anything like that about you – just your pipe tobacco. So I thought possibly the smell they spoke of might have come from your clothes, or from a clothes cupboard. And yesterday I looked in your wardrobes and cupboards, and sniffed at the clothes. Nothing. Just a smell of wooden furniture, dry cleaning, pipe tobacco, books, even chalk, but nothing acid or alcoholic. I was disappointed.’
‘I don’t really know what to say,’ said Le Nermord, looking rather disorientated. ‘What exactly are you asking me?’
‘Well, how do
