The Chalk Circle Man

‘Can I find out what your face looks like?’ asked Charles, stretching out his hands.

‘How?’

‘Like this. You’ll see.’

Charles stretched his fingers out to Mathilde’s face, and ran them across it like a pianist on a keyboard. He was concentrating hard. In fact, he knew perfectly well what Mathilde looked like. She probably hadn’t changed much from the seminars when he had seen her. But he wanted to touch her. It was the first time they had called each other ‘tu’.

XX

NEXT DAY, ADAMSBERG TOOK THE WHEEL OF THE POLICE CAR AS they headed for Montargis. Danglard sat beside him, Castreau and Deville in the back. The van was following them. Adamsberg bit his lip as he drove. Now and then he glanced across at Danglard, or sometimes, after changing gear, put his hand briefly on the inspector’s arm. As if to reassure himself that Danglard was there, alive, alongside him and that he must stay there, alive.

Mathilde had woken early and hadn’t had the heart to follow anyone that morning. The previous day, however, she had been quite entertained by a clandestine couple at the Brasserie Barnkrug. They had obviously not known each other long. But when the man got up in the middle of the meal to make a phone call, the woman had watched him go, with a frown, and then she had snatched some of his chips on to her own plate. Delighted with her booty, she had devoured it, licking her lips after every mouthful. The man had returned and Mathilde had told herself that she knew something essential about the woman that her companion would never find out. Yes, it had been entertaining. A first section.

But this morning she had no interest in anything. Towards the end of a first section, one shouldn’t expect too much. She thought that this was the day when Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg was going to catch the shrew-mouse, that she would struggle and make a squeaking noise, and that it was going to be the devil of a day for old Clemence, who had been so good at sorting out the slides with her gloves on, just as she had sorted out her murders. Mathilde wondered for a moment if she ought to feel responsible. If she hadn’t been showing off at the Dodin Bouffant, boasting that she knew about the chalk circle man, Clemence wouldn’t have come to lodge with her, and wouldn’t have been able to seize the opportunity to murder people. Then she told herself, no, wait a minute, the whole idea was just too far-fetched. For a woman to cut the throat of an elderly doctor just because he had once been her fiance, and for pent-up bitterness to have done the rest.

Too far-fetched by half. She should have told Adamsberg that. Mathilde was muttering her sentences to herself as she leaned on her aquarium-table. ‘Adamsberg, this murder is just too far-fetched.’ A crime of passion doesn’t take place in cold blood fifty years later, especially with a plan as complicated as that worked out by Clemence. How could Adamsberg be so wrong about the old woman’s motive? You’d have to be stupid to believe in a motive as far-fetched as that. And what bothered Mathilde was precisely that she considered Adamsberg to be one of the subtlest people she had ever met. Yet there was obviously something wrong about the motive they were assigning to Clemence. A woman with a blank face. Mathilde had tried to convince herself that Clemence was likeable, in order to try and like her and help her, but in fact everything about the shrew-mouse had set her teeth on edge. Everything – or rather nothing: it was as if there was no body inside her body, no expression on her face, no sound in her voice. Just nothingness.

Last night, Charles had felt her face with his fingers. It had been rather nice, she had to admit, those long hands scrupulously exploring all the contours of her face, as if she were printed out in Braille. She had sensed that he might have liked to go further, but she had not given him any encouragement. On the contrary, she had made some coffee. Very good coffee, in fact. That was no substitute for a caress, of course. But in a way a caress is no substitute for a good cup of coffee, either. Mathilde shook herself: the comparison was silly, caresses and good cups of coffee were not interchangeable.

‘Right,’ she sighed out loud. With her finger she was following a two-spot Lepadogaster swimming under the glass lid. Time to feed the fish. What was she to do with Charles and his caresses? Was it time perhaps for her to go back to the sea, since she didn’t feel like following anybody this morning? What had she collected in three months? A policeman who should have been a prostitute, a malicious blind man who caressed her, a Byzantine scholar who drew chalk circles, and an old murderess. Not a bad haul, after all. She shouldn’t complain. Rather, she should write it all down. That would be more fun than writing about pectoral fins.

‘Yes, but what?’ she said out loud, standing up abruptly. ‘What could I write? What’s the point of writing?’

‘ To tell the story of your life,’ she answered herself.

Stuff and nonsense! At least when you’re dealing with pectoral fins you’ve got something to say that other people don’t know. But as for anything else, why bother? Why do anything or write anything? To attract others? Is that it? To seduce people you’ve never met, as if the ones you have met aren’t enough for you? Because you think you can capture the quintessence of the world in a few pages? What quintessence is there, anyway? What emotions are there in the world? What can you say? Even the story of the old shrew-mouse isn’t interesting enough to tell anyone. Writing is an admission of failure.

Mathilde sat down again in a dark mood. She decided that her thinking had become muddled. Pectoral fins are absolutely fine, nothing wrong with them.

But it’s depressing if all you write about is pectoral fins, because in the end you couldn’t give a damn about them, any more than you do about Clemence.

Mathilde sat up and pushed her dark hair back with both hands. Right, she thought, I’m just having a little attack of metaphysics and it will pass. ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ she muttered again. I wouldn’t be so sad if Camille wasn’t leaving again tonight. Off again. If only she hadn’t met that slippery policeman, she wouldn’t be obliged to travel the world. And is it worth writing that down?

No.

Perhaps it really was time to go back to the depths of the ocean. And above all, it was forbidden to ask herself what the point of it all was.

‘What is the point of it all?’ Mathilde immediately asked herself.

To do you good. To get your feet wet. Yes, that was it. To get your feet wet.

* * *

Adamsberg was driving fast. Danglard had gathered they were going to Montargis, but he knew no more than that. The further they travelled, the tenser the commissaire‘s features became. And the contrasts marking his face became almost unreal. Adamsberg’s face was like one of those lamps that have dimmer switches. Very odd. What Danglard did not understand at all was why Adamsberg had put a black tie on over his old white shirt. A tie for a funeral, but knotted any old how. Danglard voiced his concern.

‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg. ‘I did put this tie on. It’s a fitting custom, isn’t it?’

And that was all. Except for the hand which he sometimes laid on Danglard’s arm. More than two hours out of Paris, Adamsberg stopped the car on a forest track. Here the summer heat failed to penetrate. Danglard read a notice: Bertranges Forestry Estate, and Adamsberg said, ‘This is it,’ as he put on the handbrake.

He got out of the car, took a deep breath and looked around, with a nod. Spreading a map on the bonnet, he called Castreau, Delille and the six men from the van to come over.

‘We’ll go this way,’ he said, pointing. ‘We take this track, then this one and the next. Then we’ll check all the paths in the southern sector. What we’re going to do is search the zone around this lodge in the forest.’

At the same time, his finger described a circle on the map.

‘Circles, always circles,’ he murmured.

He crumpled the map up clumsily and gave it to Castreau.

‘Get the dogs out,’ he added.

Six Alsatians on leads jumped out of the van, barking furiously. Danglard, who didn’t greatly care for the huge beasts, kept to one side, folding his arms and keeping the folds of his floppy grey jacket pulled tight round him as