XXIV

ON WAKING, VEYRENC FOUND THE COMMISSAIRE ALREADY UP AND DOING. Veyrenc, having lain down fully dressed, had slept badly: now and then a picture of either the vineyard or the High Meadow would flash before his eyes. One or the other. His father was lifting him up off the ground, he was in pain. Was it November or February? Before the late grape harvest, or after? He could no longer see the scene clearly, a headache was pulsing at his temples. Caused either by the rough wine served in the café in Haroncourt, or by the painful confusion of his memories.

‘We’re going back to Paris, Veyrenc. Don’t forget, no shoes in the bathroom. She’s had a tough life.’

Oswald’s sister served them a huge breakfast, the kind that kept ploughmen going until midday. Contrary to the tragic person whom Adamsberg had been expecting, Hermance was cheerful and talkative, and indeed kind-hearted enough to melt a hundred hearts of stone. She was a tall, rather angular woman who moved around cautiously, as if she was surprised to find herself alive. Her chatter was composed of the most trivial non sequiturs, some pointless, some completely odd, and she could evidently keep it up for hours. In a sense, it was a work of great artistry, a lacy network of words, woven so fine that it contained only holes.

‘… eat something before going to work, that’s what I say every day,’ Adamsberg heard. ‘Work makes you tired, yes, when I think of all that work. Yes, indeed, that’s it, isn’t it? You must have some work to do, I expect, I saw you came in a car. Oswald has two cars, one for work, he ought to wash that van. It carries mud everywhere, and that just makes more work, well, there you are. I didn’t make your eggs too hard. Gratien, now, he won’t eat eggs, of course. That’s how he is, other people are different, aren’t they? One thing and another, that’s what makes it all so difficult, so there you are.’

‘Hermance, said Adamsberg cautiously. ‘Who suggested you talk to me? About the thing in the graveyard, I mean.’

‘Oh yes, that’s what I said to Oswald. Yes, better do that, it can’t do any harm, but if it doesn’t do any good, come to that, well, there you are, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, er, there you are,’ said Adamsberg, trying to communicate on the same wavelength as Hermance. ‘So someone advised you to talk to me about it? Hilaire, perhaps, or Anglebert? Or Achille? Or the priest?’

‘Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? We can’t have disgusting things like that in the graveyard, and afterwards you just wonder, don’t you, and that’s what I said to Oswald, it wouldn’t hurt to ask you. Yes, indeed.’

‘We’re on our way now, Hermance,’ said Adamsberg, intercepting a glance from Veyrenc who was signalling to him to give up.

The two men put their shoes on outside the house, after taking care to leave their room as tidy as a stage set. From behind the door, Adamsberg could hear Hermance continuing to talk to herself.

‘Ah yes, that’s work isn’t it? Mustn’t let things get on top of you.’

‘A bit missing there,’ said Veyrenc sadly, as he tied his laces. ‘Either she was born like that or she lost it somewhere.’

‘Lost it somewhere, I think. Both her husbands died young and suddenly, one after the other. We can mention that here, but we’re not allowed to repeat anything about it outside Opportune-la-Haute.’

‘That’s why Hilaire hinted that Hermance brought bad luck. Men would be afraid to marry her, it could be the death of them.’

‘Once you get a reputation like that, you can never get rid of it. It sticks to you like a tick in your flesh. You can pull the tick off, but the jaws stay in there, still working away.’

A bit like Lucio’s spider, Adamsberg thought to himself.

‘Since you seem to know a few of the people round here, who do you think advised her to see you?’

‘I don’t know, Veyrenc. Maybe nobody at all. She was probably worried about the ghost for her son’s sake. I think she’s scared stiff of the gendarmes, after the inquest on Amédée. And she had must have heard Oswald mention me.’

‘Do people really think she killed both her husbands?’

‘They don’t really think that, but they wonder about it. Whether she could have killed them in person, or maybe just by willing it. We’ll take a look at the graveyard before we go back.’

‘What are we looking for?’

‘Whatever the ghost was up to. I promised the young man I’d sort it out. But Robert didn’t talk about a ghost, he talked about a “thing,” and Hermance talked about “disgusting things” in the graveyard. Or perhaps we should try another tack.’

‘What?’

‘To try and understand why they dragged me all the way out here.’

‘If I hadn’t driven you,’ Veyrenc objected, ‘you wouldn’t be here at all.’

‘Yes, lieutenant, I know. But it’s just a feeling.’

A shade passing, thought Veyrenc.

‘Apparently Oswald gave his sister a puppy,’ he remarked. ‘But it died.’

Adamsberg was walking up and down the grassy alleyways of the little graveyard, holding an antler in each hand. Veyrenc had offered to take one of them for him, but Robert had made it very clear that they were not to be separated. Adamsberg paced round the site, taking care not to knock the great horns against the monuments on the tombs. It was a modest graveyard, and only minimally maintained. Grass was growing up through the gravel in the walks. Most people here could not afford large funeral vaults and many graves were simply grassy mounds, some marked with a wooden cross bearing a name painted on it in white. The tombs of Hermance’s two husbands had been covered by thin limestone slabs, plain grey and without flowers. Adamsberg was anxious to leave, yet he lingered, enjoying the obstinate ray of spring sunshine as it warmed the back of his neck.

‘Where did this lad Gratien see the figure?’ asked Veyrenc.

‘Over there,’ said Adamsberg, pointing.

‘And what should we be looking for?’

‘Dunno.’

Veyrenc nodded, without showing annnoyance. Except when it came to Pyrenean valleys, the lieutenant was not the kind of man to be impatient or short-tempered. This near-cousin did resemble Adamsberg in a way, as he calmly accepted the improbable or the difficult. He too was enjoying the sunshine on his back, and was tempted to stay as long as possible, walking through the wet grass. Adamsberg strolled round the little church, noticing the spring brightness which announced its presence by making the slate roof and the marble stones shine.

‘Commissaire,’ Veyrenc called.

Adamsberg walked over to him, taking his time. The sunlight was playing on the red streaks in Veyrenc’s hair. If the stripes had not been the result of torture, Adamsberg would have found them quite attractive. Out of evil came forth sweetness.

‘I know we don’t know what to look for,’ said Veyrenc, pointing to a grave. ‘But this is another woman who had bad luck. Dead at thirty-eight, a bit like Elisabeth Châtel.’

Adamsberg considered the grave, a mound of earth, waiting for a headstone. He was beginning to understand the lieutenant a little, and knew that he would certainly not have called him over for nothing,

‘The song of the earth, can you hear it?’ said Veyrenc. ‘Can you decipher what it’s telling us?’

‘If you’re talking about the grass growing on the grave, I can see some blades that are short and some that are long.’

‘One might think – but only if one was looking for something to think – that the short blades have grown later than the others.’

The two men fell silent, each asking himself at the same moment whether he was really looking for something to think.

‘They’ll be waiting for us in Paris,’ Veyrenc objected to himself.

‘One might think,’ said Adamsberg, ‘that the grass at the head of the grave is shorter, and therefore a later growth than the rest. It makes a sort of circle. And this woman is from Normandy, like Elisabeth.’

‘But if we spent all the time visiting graveyards, we’d probably find thousands of blades of grass all different lengths.’

‘Yes, that’s right. But there’s no reason not to check whether there’s a hole under the short grass, is there?’

‘It’s for you to judge, my lord, if the signs we see here

Are the products of chance, or are something to fear.

And if the dark pathway you now desire to trace

Will lead us to success or else into disgrace.’

‘Better find out right away,’ said Adamsberg, placing the antlers on the ground. ‘I’ll tell Danglard we’re extending our stay in the country.’

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