This Night’s Foul Work

XXIX

‘WE’LL HAVE TO BE DISCREET,’ SAID ADAMSBERG, PARKING IN FRONT OF THE priest’s house in Le Mesnil. ‘We don’t want to upset a man who’s mourning the relics of Saint Jerome.’

‘I wonder,’ said Danglard, ‘whether the fact that his church in Opportune appears to have let a stone fall and kill a parishioner might not also have shaken him.’

The curate, who was not best pleased at their arrival, showed them into a small, dark but warm room, with low ceiling beams. The priest in charge of the fourteen parishes did indeed look like any other man. He had abandoned clerical garb for ordinary clothes and sat peering into a computer screen. He got up to greet them, a rather ugly man but healthy and ruddy-complexioned, looking more as if he were on holiday than suffering from depression. However, one of his eyelids was twitching like the heartbeat of a small creature, suggesting a troubled soul, as Veyrenc would have put it. In order to obtain the interview, Adamsberg had had to make a fuss about the theft of the relics.

‘I don’t imagine the Paris police would normally come as far as Le Mesnil-Beauchamp just because some holy relics go missing,’ said the priest as they shook hands.

‘No, you’re right,’ Adamsberg admitted.

‘And you’re in charge of Serious Crime, as I discovered. Am I supposed to have done something?’

Adamsberg was relieved to find that the priest did not express himself in the customary hermetic and mournful sing-song of some churchmen. This chant tended to inspire in him an irresistible melancholy, inherited from the interminable services in the freezing-cold village church of his childhood. Those were some of the only moments when his indomitable and indestructible mother had allowed herself to sigh and dab her eyes with a handkerchief, thus revealing to him, in a spasm of embarrassment, painful intimate feelings that he would rather not have witnessed. And yet it was during those Masses that he had also had the most intense daydreams. The priest now motioned them to sit opposite him, on a long wooden bench, with the result that the three policemen lined up like so many schoolboys in class. Adamsberg and Veyrenc were both wearing white shirts, thanks to the unpredictable contents of the emergency packs. Adamsberg’s was too big and the cuffs were slipping down over his hands.

‘Your curate wanted to keep us out,’ said Adamsberg, twitching his sleeves. ‘So I thought Saint Jerome would get us in.’

‘The curate is protecting me from the outside world,’ replied the priest, as he gazed at an early bluebottle flying round the room. ‘He doesn’t want me to be seen. He’s ashamed, so he’s keeping me hidden. If you’d like something to drink, it’s in the sideboard. I don’t drink now. I don’t know why, it just doesn’t interest me.’

Adamsberg made a negative sign to Danglard. It was only nine o’clock in the morning. The priest looked up, surprised not to hear questions coming from them in return. He was not a Norman, and seemed able to speak quite openly. This embarrassed the three police officers. To discuss the mysteries of a priest – which they assumed to be sensitive matters – was more difficult than to interview a criminal suspect across a table. Adamsberg felt he was being obliged to walk over a delicate patch of lawn in hobnailed boots.

‘The curate’s hiding you,’ he ventured, using the Norman device of the statement-containing-a-question.

The priest lit his pipe, still following with his gaze the fly that was swooping low over his keyboard. He cupped his hand ready to catch it, brought it down on the table, missed.

‘I’m not trying to kill it,’ he explained, ‘just to catch it. I take an interest in the frequency of the vibrations of flies’ wings. They’re much more rapid and loud when they’re caught in a trap. You’ll see.’

He puffed out a large smoke ring and looked at them, his hand still cupped like a lid.

‘It was my curate who had the idea to put it about that I was suffering from depression,’ he went on, ‘to let things settle down. He practically placed me in solitary confinement, at the request of the diocesan authorities. I haven’t seen anyone for weeks, so I don’t mind talking about it, even if it is to policemen.’

Adamsberg hesitated at this puzzling remark, unselfconsciously offered by the priest. The man needed to be listened to and understood, why not? After all, priests spent their lives listening to the problems of their parishioners without ever having the right to complain themselves. The commissaire envisaged various hypotheses: a love affair, regrets of the flesh, the loss of the relics, or the accident that had happened in the Opportune church.

‘Loss of vocation?’ guessed Danglard.

‘You’ve got it,’ said the priest, nodding towards Danglard as if to give him a good mark.

‘Sudden or gradual?’

‘Is there any difference? If something feels sudden, it’s only the end of a long hidden process that one may not have been aware of.’

The priest’s hand came down on the fly, which once again managed to escape between the thumb and the index finger.

‘A bit like a stag’s antlers, when they show through its hide,’ suggested Adamsberg.

‘If you like. The idea grows, like a larva inside its hiding place, and then it suddenly emerges and takes off. You don’t just mislay your vocation one day, like you lose a book. Anyway, you generally find the book again, but you never get your vocation back. That proves that the vocation had been dwindling away for a long time, without drawing attention to itself. Then one morning it’s all over, you’ve gone past the point of no return during the night without even realising it: you look out of the window, a woman goes past on a bicycle, there’s snow lying on the apple trees, and you feel a terrible sickness, life outside is calling you.’

‘Yesterday I still loved this great calling of mine

I rejoiced to break bread, I rejoiced to serve wine.

But now on a sudden, all is ashes and dust

And I must leave the church to another man’s trust.’

‘Pretty much, yes.’

‘So these lost relics weren’t really worrying you, after all?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘Do you want me to start worrying about them?’

‘Well, I was thinking of doing a deal: I would have tried to get Saint Jerome back for you, and in exchange you could tell me something about Pascaline Villemot. I suppose the deal wouldn’t appeal to you now.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. My predecessor, Father Raymond, was very attached to the relics, the ones in Le Mesnil or indeed relics in general. I wasn’t up to his level of scholarship, but I remember quite a lot about it. Even if it’s just for his sake, I’d like to get Saint Jerome back.’

The priest turned to indicate the bookshelf behind him, as well as a weighty volume on a lectern, protected by a plexiglas cover. This ancient book had already irresistibly attracted Danglard’s attention.

‘All that stuff comes from him. The book too, of course,’ he said, gesturing respectfully towards the lectern. ‘Given to Father Raymond by a certain Father Otto who died during the bombing of Berlin. Are you interested?’ he asked Danglard, who was gazing hungrily at the book.

‘Yes, I admit I am. If it’s what I think it is.’

The priest smiled, recognising a connoisseur. He puffed at his pipe, making the silence last, as if to herald the arrival of a famous person.

‘It’s the De sanctis reliquis,’ he said, savouring his announcement, ‘in the unexpurgated edition of 1663. You can consult it if you like, but please use the tongs to turn the folios. It’s open at the most famous page.’

The priest gave a curious snort of laughter, and Danglard headed immediately for the lectern. Adamsberg watched him raise the lid and lean over the book, and realised that Danglard would not hear another word they said.

‘It’s one of the most famous books on relics,’ the priest explained, with a casual wave of his hand. ‘Actually, it’s worth a lot more than any bones belonging to Saint Jerome. But I’d only sell it in a case of dire necessity.’

‘So you are interested in relics, then.’

‘I do have a weakness for them. Calvin described the people who hawked relics around as “traffickers in ordure,” and he wasn’t entirely wrong. But that ordure gives a bit of spice to a holy place, helps people to concentrate. It’s hard to concentrate in a vacuum. That’s why it doesn’t bother me that in our reliquary of Saint Jerome, most of the bones came from sheep, and there’s even one from the snout of a pig. Father Raymond used to laugh at that. He would only tell the secret, with a twinkle in his eye, to certain people, the ones strong enough to stomach such a down-to earth revelation.’

‘You mean to say there’s a bone in a pig’s snout?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘Yes,’ the priest replied, smiling. ‘Just a little bone, quite elegant and symmetrical, a bit like a double heart in shape. Not a lot of people know that, which explains why there’s one among the Le Mesnil relics. It used to be thought of as a mysterious bone, and people thought it had special qualities. Like a narwhal’s tusk gave rise to the idea of the unicorn. The world of fantasy fills the gaps in people’s knowledge.’

‘And you knowingly left these animals’ bones in the reliquary?’ asked Veyrenc.

The fly went past again and the priest raised his arm, ready to pounce.

‘What difference would it make?’ he replied. ‘The human bones were unlikely to be Saint Jerome’s either. In those days, relics were bandied about like sweets. Supply expanded to meet demand. Seems that Saint Sebastian had four arms, Saint Anne three heads, Saint John six index fingers, and so on. In Le Mesnil, we’re not so presumptuous. Our sheep’s bones date from the late fifteenth century, which is already pretty good. Remains of men or animals, what does it really matter in the end?’

‘So the guy who robbed the church has just got the remains of someone’s Sunday joint?’ said Veyrenc.

‘No, because funnily enough, the thief seemed to pick and choose. He only took the human fragments, a bit of a tibia, a second cervical vertebra, and three ribs. Must have been either an expert, or else somebody local who knew all about the shameful secret of the reliquary. That’s why I’m trying to find him,’ he added, pointing to the computer screen. ‘I just wonder what he has in mind.’

‘You think he’ll try to sell them?’

The priest shook his head.

‘I’ve been scanning offers on the Internet, but I can’t find anyone selling Saint Jerome’s tibia. Obviously not for sale. But what are you looking for? They tell me you’ve been digging up Pascaline’s body. The gendarmes have already finished their inquiry about the stone that killed her. A sad accident, it seems, nothing suspicious. Pascaline never hurt a fly, and she didn’t have any money to leave.’

The priest brought down his hand on to the table. This time the fly was trapped, and immediately started buzzing more loudly.

‘Hear it?’ he said. ‘Its response to stress?’

‘Yes,’ said Veyrenc politely.

‘Is it sending a message to its friends? Or working up the energy to escape? Do insects have emotions? That is the question. Have you ever listened to a fly when it’s dying?’

The priest had put his ear to his hand, appearing to count the thousands of beats per second of the fly’s wings.

‘We didn’t dig her up,’ said Adamsberg, attempting to bring the conversation back to Pascaline. ‘But we do want to know why someone took the trouble to open her coffin three months after her death, to get at the head.’

‘Good Lord!’ gasped the priest, letting the fly disappear vertically into the air. ‘What an abomination!’

‘The same thing has happened to another woman. Elisabeth Châtel from Villebosc-sur-Risle.’

‘I knew Elisabeth as well. Villebosc is one of my parishes. But she wasn’t buried there. She was buried in Montrouge, in Paris, because of a family quarrel.’

‘That’s where her grave was opened.’

The priest pushed away his computer screen, then rubbed his left eye, to try and stop the tic in his eyelid. Adamsberg wondered whether, apart from his loss of vocation, the man was perhaps genuinely suffering from depression, and whether his odd behaviour was an indication of that. Danglard, who was wholly absorbed in consulting his treasure trove, using the tongs, was no help in trying to get their host to concentrate on the matter in hand.

‘To the best of my knowledge,’ the priest went on, lifting up his thumb and index finger, ‘profanation of the dead has only two causes, each of them extremely repugnant. Either violent hatred, in which case the body is attacked.’

‘No,’ said Adamsberg. ‘They weren’t damaged.’

The priest lowered his thumb, abandoning this theory.

‘Or else passionate love, which is, alas, very close to hate, with a morbid sexual fixation.’

‘And did Elisabeth and Pascaline inspire anyone with unbridled passion?’

The priest lowered his finger, abandoning the second theory as well.

‘Both of them were virgins, and very determined to remain so, believe me. They were both women of absolutely unassailable virtue, no need to preach it to them.’

Danglard pricked up his ears, wondering how to interpret that ‘believe me’. His eyes met those of Adamsberg, but the latter signalled to him not to say anything. The priest pressed his finger on his eyelid again.

‘Some men are particularly attracted to women of great virtue,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Well, there is a challenge there,’ the priest agreed. ‘The temptation of an unusually difficult conquest. But neither Elisabeth nor Pascaline ever complained of anyone harassing them.’

‘So what did they come and tell you so often at confession?’ the commissaire asked.

‘Secrets of the confessional,’ the priest replied, raising his hand. ‘Sorry.’

‘So they did have something to say?’ put in Veyrenc.

‘Everyone has something to say. That doesn’t mean that it’s worth passing on, still less that graves should be profaned. You stayed at Hermance’s house, didn’t you? So you heard what she has to say? She doesn’t have a life, as most people would see it, but that doesn’t stop her talking about it all day long.’

‘You know as well as I do, Father,’ said Adamsberg gently, ‘that maintaining the secrecy of the confessional is not sustainable or even legal in certain circumstances.’

‘Only in the case of murder,’ the priest objected.

‘I think that’s what we are dealing with.’

The priest relit his pipe. They could hear Danglard turning over another thick page of the book, while the fly, which seemed no calmer than before, continued to buzz loudly, hurling itself at the window. Danglard knew that the commissaire was putting on pressure to over-come the priest’s reluctance. Adamsberg was excellent at eliminating obstacles, slipping inside the resistance of other people with the treacherous power of a trickle of water. He would have made a formidable priest, midwife or purger of souls. Veyrenc got up in turn and walked round the table to look at the book which was so absorbing Danglard’s attention. The commandant let him see it, but with a bad grace, like a dog unwillingly sharing a bone: ‘On sacred relics and all the uses that may be made of them, whether for the health of the body or the salubrity of the mind, and the useful medicines which may be derived from them to lengthen life: edition purged of past errors.’

‘What’s so special about the book?’ Veyrenc asked in a low voice.

‘The De reliquis,’ Danglard whispered, ‘has been famous since the mid-fourteenth century. The Church condemned it, which made it very popular at once. Many women were burnt at the stake for consulting it. This is the 1663 edition, which is a collector’s item.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it re-established the original text, including a diabolical potion banned by the Church. Read it for yourself, Veyrenc.’

Danglard watched as the lieutenant struggled in front of the page that was open in front of him. The text was in French, but an antiquated and very obscure version.

‘Complicated, huh?’ said Danglard, with a thin smile of satisfaction.

‘I can’t understand it, and you’re not about to explain it to me, I suppose.’

Danglard shrugged.

‘There are some other things I ought to explain to you first.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Well, you’d do better to leave the squad, Veyrenc,’ Danglard whispered. ‘Nobody catches Adamsberg, any more than they can catch the wind. And if you’re trying to have a go at him, you’ll have to reckon with me first.’

‘I’m sure I would, commandant. But I’m not trying to do anything.’

‘Kids are kids. You’re past the age of bothering about their fights and so is he. Stay with us and get on with the job, or else push off.’

Veyrenc closed his eyes quickly and went back to his seat on the bench. The conversation with the priest had progressed, but Adamsberg looked disappointed.

‘Nothing else at all?’ he was saying.

‘No, nothing, except that pathological dislike of homosexuality in Pascaline’s case.’

‘So you reckon they they didn’t sleep together or anything?’

‘They didn’t sleep with anyone, man or woman.’

‘Did either one ever talk to you about stags?’

‘No, never. Why on earth would they?’

‘It’s just Oswald. He gets everything mixed up.’

‘Oswald, and this isn’t a secret of the confessional, is a bit special. He’s not as daft as his sister, but he talks off the top of his head, if you see what I mean.’

‘What about Hermance? Did she come and see you?’

The fly, being either provocative or careless, was once more approaching the warm computer top, distracting the priest.

‘She often did, long ago, when the villagers used to say she brought bad luck. Then she lost her wits and she’s never really got them back.’

Like your vocation, thought Adamsberg, wondering whether one morning, if he himself looked out and saw the snow on the branches and a woman on a bicycle, he would leave the squad and never return.

‘So she doesn’t come any more.’

‘Yes, of course she does,’ said the priest, watching the fly again as it moved over his keyboard. ‘But that reminds me of something. Just a little thing. It was about six or seven months ago. Pascaline used to have several cats. One of them was killed and left bleeding on her porch.’

‘Who did that?’

‘Nobody ever owned up. Probably kids, like in every village. I’d forgotten all about it, but it upset her a lot. And she wasn’t just upset, she was frightened.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Frightened that someone would suspect her of being a lesbian. Like I said, she had a thing about it.’

‘I don’t see the connection,’ said Veyrenc.

‘Yes, there was one,’ said the priest, sounding a trifle irritated. ‘It was a tomcat, but they’d cut off its male parts.’

‘A bit violent for kids messing about,’ observed Danglard, pulling a face.

‘Did Elisabeth have cats too?’

‘Just the one. But nothing ever happened to it, nothing like that.’

The three men sat in silence on the way back to Haroncourt. Adamsberg was driving at a snail’s pace, as if the car needed to go at the same slow speed as his thought processes.

‘What do you think of him, capitaine?’ Adamsberg asked at last.

‘A bit on edge, a bit weird, but that’s understandable if he’s going to take a big step like that. Still, it was worth the trip.’

‘Because of the book? Is it an inventory of relics?’

‘No, it’s the best-known treatise on how to use them. ‘On sacred relics and the uses that may be made of them.’ The priest’s copy is in very good condition. I couldn’t possibly afford it – it’d cost four years of my pay.’

‘Relics were used for something?’

‘For everything. For stomach upsets and earache, fever, piles, weakness, the vapours.’

‘Ah, we should offer some to Dr Roman, then,’ said Adamsberg with a smile. ‘So why is this edition so valuable?’

‘I already told Veyrenc. Because it contains the most famous potion, one the Church outlawed for centuries. It’s a bit disconcerting, in fact, to find it in the possession of a priest. And he’s left it open at exactly that page, oddly enough. A sort of provocation, I suppose.’

‘My guess is he’s the best-placed person to have taken Saint Jerome’s bones himself. But what was this medicine supposed to do, Danglard? Give him back his vocation? Remove all devilish temptations?’

‘No – it’s a potion for acquiring eternal life.’

‘On earth or in heaven?’

‘On earth, for centuries and centuries.’

‘Go on then, capitaine. Tell me what it contains.’

‘How do you expect me to remember that?’ Danglard grumbled.

‘Actually, I remember it,’ said Veyrenc, discreetly.

‘OK, lieutenant, I’m listening,’ said Adamsberg, still smiling. ‘Maybe it’ll tell us what the priest had in mind.’

‘All right,’ said Veyrenc, hesitantly, not yet able to guess whether Adamsberg was serious or just joking. ‘Sovereign remedy for the lengthening of life, through the quality possessed by sacred relics to weaken the miasmas of death, preserved from the truest processes and purged of former errors.’

‘Is that it?’

‘No, that’s just the heading.’

‘It’s after that that it gets more complicated,’ said Danglard, stupefied and offended.

‘Five times cometh the age of youth, till the day thou must invert it, pass and pass again, out of reach of the thread of life. Sacred relics thou wilt crush, taking three pinches, mixed well with the male principle which must not bend, and with the quick of virgins, on the dexter side, sorted by three into equal quantities, and grind these with the living cross from the heart of the eternal branches, adjacent in equal quantity, kept in the same place by the valency of the saint, in the wine of the year, and thus wilt thou lay its head on the ground.’

‘Did you know about this before, Veyrenc?’

‘No, I just read it today.’

‘Do you understand it?’

‘No.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘It’s about acquiring eternal life,’ commented Danglard sulkily. ‘You won’t manage that with a couple of spoonfuls of something.’

Half an hour later, Adamsberg and his colleagues were putting their bags back in the car and heading for Paris. Danglard complained about the fireguard, not to mention the stag’s antlers which were taking up the back seat.

‘There’s only one solution,’ said Adamsberg. ‘We’ll put the antlers in front and the two passengers in the back, with the fireguard between us.’

‘We’d do better to leave the antlers here.’

‘You must be joking, capitaine. You drive, you’re the tallest, Veyrenc and I will sit either side of the fireguard. It’ll be fine.’

Danglard waited until Veyrenc was sitting in the car, before drawing Adamsberg aside.

‘He’s got to be lying, commissaire. Nobody could memorise a text like that. Nobody.’

‘I’ve already told you, Danglard, he’s got special gifts. Nobody else can make up verses like he does.’

‘It’s one thing to make stuff up, and another to remember it. He recited that damned text pretty well word-perfect. He’s lying. He must already have known that recipe off by heart.’

‘Why would that be, Danglard?’

‘No idea. But it’s been a potion known to damned souls for centuries and centuries.’