This Night’s Foul Work

XXIII

OSWALD’S SISTER, HERMANCE, OBSERVED TWO RITUALS WHICH WERE supposed to protect her from the dangers of the world: not to stay awake after ten at night, and not to allow anyone into the house wearing shoes. Oswald and the two policemen went up the stairs silently, holding their muddy shoes in their hands.

‘There’s only one spare bedroom,’ Oswald whispered, ‘but it’s a big one. Is that all right?’

Adamsberg nodded, though he was far from eager to spend the night with the lieutenant. Similarly, Veyrenc was relieved to note that the room contained two high wooden bedsteads, about two metres apart.

‘Between the two couches, the valley must be deep,

So that bodies and souls are separate in sleep.’

‘The bathroom’s next door,’ Oswald added. ‘Don’t forget to stay barefoot. You put your shoes on, you could be the death of her.’

‘Even if she doesn’t find out?’

‘Everything gets found out here, especially things that didn’t ought to be. I’ll be downstairs, man from the Béarn. We should have a word.’

Adamsberg threw his damp jacket over the rail of the left-hand bed and gently laid the antlers on the floor. Veyrenc had already lain down fully dressed, facing the wall. The commissaire joined Oswald in the little kitchen.

‘You cousin’s asleep already?’

‘He’s not my cousin, Oswald.’

‘The hair, I suppose that’s something personal?’

‘Very,’ said Adamsberg. ‘Now, what have you got to tell me?’

‘It’s not me wants to tell you, it’s Hermance.’

‘But she doesn’t know me, Oswald.’

‘Maybe someone told her about you.’

‘Who?’

‘Parish priest, perhaps. Don’t ask. Hermance, she’s not what you might call reasonable. She’s got her own ideas all right, but we don’t always know where they come from.’

Oswald’s voice had trailed off sadly, and Adamsberg changed the subject.

‘Never mind, Oswald. Tell me about the ghost.’

‘Wasn’t me that saw it, it was my nephew. Gratien.’

‘How long ago?’

‘Over five weeks ago, one Tuesday night.’

‘And where?’

‘In the graveyard, of course. Where do you think?’

‘What was your nephew doing in the graveyard?’

‘He wasn’t in there, he was in the lane that goes up the top of it. Well, goes up or down, depending which way you’re facing. Tuesdays and Friday nights, he meets his girlfriend up there when she’s worked her shift. Whole village knows about it, except his mother.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Seventeen. With Hermance going off to sleep at ten, like clockwork, it’s easy for him to slip out. Mind now, don’t give him away.’

‘So what next, Oswald?’

Oswald filled two small glasses with calvados and sat down with a sigh. He raised his pale eyes towards Adamsberg and drank it off.

‘Good health.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Want me to tell you something?’

He’s going to tell me anyway, thought Adamsberg.

‘This is the first time an outsider’s been let take the antlers out of the district. I’ve seen it all now.’

‘Seen it all’ is a bit much, thought Adamsberg. But obviously this business with the stag was serious. ‘They were offered to you, you yourself gripped the knife.’ The commissaire was both surprised and annoyed at himself for having memorised one of Veyrenc’s lines of verse.

‘Does it bother you if I take them?’ he asked.

Faced with a direct and intimate question, Oswald gave an oblique anwer.

‘It’s like this. Robert, he must have a deal of respect for you, do a thing like that. Then again, I suppose he knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t make mistakes, as a rule.’

‘So it’s not so bad, then?’ said Adamsberg, with a smile.

‘No, I suppose not. When all’s said and done.’

‘Well, what next, Oswald?’

‘Like I said. Then he saw this ghost.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘This shape, like a tall woman, if you could call it a woman, all grey, all muffled up, no face. Figure of death, sort of. I wouldn’t say that if my sister was here, but man to man we can say that kind of thing, can’t we?’

‘Yes.’

‘So I’ll say it. Death. Didn’t walk like ordinary people. Kind of gliding along in the cemetery, very stiff and slow. Not in a hurry, going step by step.’

‘Does your nephew like a drink?’

‘No, not yet. Just because he’s sleeping with his girlfriend doesn’t mean he’s a man yet. As for this ghost, what it did I can’t say. Or what it was looking for. Afterwards we watched to see if anyone died in the village. No, nothing like that.’

‘And that’s all he saw?’

‘Well, he ran straight home without waiting to find out. What would you do? So why did she come? Why here?’

‘I have no idea, Oswald.’

‘The priest says she appeared before, in 1809, and that was the year the apple harvest failed. The branches were bare as my arm.’

‘No other consequences? Besides the apples?’

Oswald stole a glance at Adamsberg. ‘Robert says you’ve seen a ghost too.’

‘I haven’t seen mine, I’ve just thought about it. It’s a sort of dark cloud, a Shade, a veil that falls over me when I’m in the office. A doctor would say I’m imagining things. Or perhaps reviving some bad memory.’

‘Doctors don’t reckon much to this sort of thing.’

‘Well, maybe they’re right. It’s probably just a dark thought. Not yet out of my head, roaming about inside.’

‘Like the deer’s antlers before they grow.’

‘Exactly,’ said Adamsberg, with a sudden smile.

This idea greatly pleased him, since it almost resolved the matter of his own dark Shade. The weight of a dark idea, formed inside the mind but not yet making its way to the outside. Like a child struggling to be born.

‘This idea, you just get it at work?’ asked Oswald, thoughtfully. ‘You don’t get it here?’

‘No.’

‘Well, something must have come into your squad,’ explained Oswald, gesturing. ‘Then the thing got in your head, because you’re the boss. That’s logical, isn’t it?’

Oswald emptied the last drop of calvados into the glasses.

‘Or maybe it’s something personal to you,’ he added. ‘Anyway, I got the boy here. He’s waiting outside.’

No choice. Adamsberg followed Oswald outside.

‘You haven’t put your shoes back on,’ Oswald pointed out.

‘It’s fine like this. Ideas can circulate through the soles of your feet.’

‘Well, if that were true,’ said Oswald with a half-smile, ‘my sister’d have plenty of ideas.’

‘And she doesn’t?’

‘Tell you God’s truth, she’s kind enough to melt a heart of stone, but there’s nothing between her ears. But there it is. She’s my sister.’

‘What about Gratien?’

‘No comparison. Takes after his father, sharp as a needle.’

‘And his father is…?’

Oswald clammed up immediately, drawing in his horns like a snail.

‘Amédée left your sister, then?’ Adamsberg insisted.

‘How do you know his name?’

‘It was written on a photo in the kitchen.’

‘No, Amédée’s dead. Long time ago. We don’t talk about it.’

‘Why not?’ asked Adamsberg, ignoring the warning signs.

‘What’s it to you?’

‘You never know. With a ghost about, understand? You have to think of everything.’

‘Well, perhaps so,’ Oswald conceded.

‘My neighbour says that the dead don’t leave us if they haven’t finished their lives. They come back to worry the living for centuries.’

‘You mean Amédée hadn’t finished living?’

‘You tell me.’

‘He was coming back home from another woman, one night,’ Oswald said, with some reticence. ‘He had a bath, so my sister wouldn’t guess. And he drowned.’

‘In the bathtub?’

‘Like I said. He must have taken a queer turn or a stroke. And in the bath, there was water, right? And if your head goes under water, you can drown, just like in a pond. That was what finished my sister’s mind off.’

‘Was there an inquest?’

‘Of course. They got everyone sweating with panic for weeks. You know what the cops are.’

‘They suspected your sister?’

‘They drove her crazy, yes. Poor woman. She hasn’t the strength to lift a sack of potatoes. So how she could have drowned a big lad like Amédée in his bath, I don’t know. Especially since she was barmy about him, stupid bugger that he was.’

‘Wait a minute. You said he was as sharp as a needle.’

‘You catch on quickly too, don’t you?’

‘What do you mean, then?’

‘He’s not the boy’s father. Gratien’s from her first marriage, her first husband. He died and all, if you want to know, two years after they married.’

‘What was his name?’

‘He was from Lorraine. Not from round here. Cut his legs with a scythe when he was mowing a meadow.’

‘Your sister doesn’t seem to have much luck.’

‘You can say that again. That’s why, round here, they don’t make fun of her little ways. She’s entitled, if it comforts her.’

Oswald jerked his head, as if relieved to have finished with the subject.

‘Now what I’ve told you, please don’t go shouting it from the rooftops. This is a family story, and it stays in the village. We’ve forgotten it, and that’s that.’

‘I never repeat things, Oswald.’

‘Don’t you have stories like this as well, kept in your village?’

‘I’ve got one, yes. But at the moment it’s getting out of the village.’

‘Not a good idea,’ said Oswald, shaking his head. ‘It might seem a little thing but it’s like a monster getting loose.’

Oswald’s nephew, a lad with freckled cheeks like his uncle’s, was standing in front of Adamsberg, his shoulders drooping. He didn’t dare refuse to speak to the senior policeman from Paris, but it put him severely to the test. Stare fixed on the ground, he described the night he had seen the ghost; the story echoed what Oswald had said.

‘Did you tell your mother?’

‘Course I did.’

‘And she wanted you to tell me about it?’

‘Yes. After you came here for the concert.’

‘Do you know why?’

The boy suddenly hunched his shoulders.

‘People say all kinds of rubbish,’ he said. ‘My mother’s got her own ideas, you got to understand her, that’s all. Anyway, she must be right, ‘cos here you are asking about it.’

‘Your mother’s quite right,’ said Adamsberg, to calm the lad.

‘People say things their own way,’ Gratien insisted. ‘Ain’t any one way better than another, though.’

‘No, no,’ Adamsberg agreed. ‘Just one more thing and I’ll let you go. Shut your eyes. Now tell me what I look like and what clothes I’m wearing.’

‘Really?’

‘If the commissaire says so,’ Oswald intervened.

‘OK, you’re not so tall,’ Gratien began, timidly. ‘’Bout the same as my uncle. Brown hair… is it OK to say anything?’

‘Everything you can think of.’

‘Hair’s bit of a mess, then, some of it’s hanging in your eyes, the rest pushed back. Big nose, brown eyes, black jacket, canvas, lot of pockets, sleeves pushed up. Trousers… black as well, I think, a bit worn, and you’re not wearing shoes.’

‘Shirt, sweater, tie? Concentrate.’

Gratien shook his head, his eyes squeezed tight shut.

‘No,’ he said firmly.

‘What, then?’

‘Grey T-shirt.’

‘Open your eyes. You’re a perfect witness, very rare.’ The teenager smiled, reassured by having passed this test.

‘It’s dark as well,’ he said proudly.

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘You didn’t trust what I said before? About the ghost?’

‘Anyone’s memories can change a bit, over time. What do you think the ghost was doing? Just walking about? Drifting here and there.’

‘No.’

‘Looking in the air? Pacing up and down, waiting? Do you think it was expecting someone?’

‘No, what I think it was doing, it was looking for something, a grave maybe, but it wasn’t in no hurry. It wasn’t going quickly.’

‘So what scared you about it?’

‘It was the way it walked. And all that grey floaty stuff wrapped round it. I’m still scared.’

‘Try and forget it – I’ll take care of it now.’

‘But what can you do about it, if it was the figure of Death?’

‘We’ll see, said Adamsberg. ‘We’ll think of something.’