This Night’s Foul Work

XXX

‘SHE DID WEAR NAVY-BLUE SHOES,’ RETANCOURT ANNOUNCED, PLACING A plastic bag on Adamsberg’s desk.

Adamsberg looked at the bag, then at the lieutenant. She was carrying the cat under her arm, and the Snowball, looking blissful, was allowing himself to be carried round like a rag doll, head and paws hanging down. Adamsberg had not been expecting such rapid results, nor indeed any result at all. But now here were the shoes belonging to the angel of death, sitting on his table: worn, out of shape, and definitely navy blue.

‘There’s no sign of shoe polish on the soles,’ Retancourt added. ‘But that’s not surprising, because they’ve been worn a lot over the last couple of years.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Adamsberg, hoisting himself on to one of the Swedish bar stools he had brought into his office.

‘The estate agent just left the nurse’s house as it was, knowing it would be impossible to sell. Nobody went round to clean it after the arrest. But when I got there it was empty – no furniture, no crockery, no clothes.’

‘Why? Looters?’

‘Yes. In the neighbourhood, everyone knew the nurse had no family, and that she had some stuff in good condition. Gradually people started taking things. I had to go round a few squats and a travellers’ camp. With the shoes I found one of her blouses and a blanket.’

‘Where?’

‘In a caravan.’

‘With people living in it?’

‘Yes. But you don’t need to know who they are, do you?’

‘No.’

‘I promised this lady I’d get her another pair of shoes. She doesn’t have any others, just bedroom slippers. So she’ll miss these ones.’

Adamsberg swung his legs.

‘This district nurse,’ he mused, ‘went around knocking off old people with her injections for forty years. It was virtually her mission in life for about half a century, almost a tradition. Why would she suddenly turn to the occult, and start hiring ruffians to dig up graves belonging to virgins? I don’t get it, the switch just isn’t logical.’

‘The nurse wasn’t logical either.’

‘Yes, she was. All forms of mania have a certain rigidity, they follow a pattern.’

‘Maybe being in prison threw her off balance.’

‘That’s what the pathologist suggested.’

‘Why did you say “virgins”?’

‘Because they both were, Pascaline and Elisabeth. And I’m supposing that had some significance for the grave-robber. The nurse never had a husband or partner either.’

‘She would have needed to find out if it was true of Pascaline and Elisabeth.’

‘Yes, so she would have had to spend some time in Upper Normandy. Nurses get told a lot of things they don’t ask about.’

‘Have we any record of her being there?’

‘No, no victims towards the west at all, except for one in Rennes in Brittany. But that might not mean anything. She travelled a lot from place to place, staying a few months, then moving on.’

‘What are those doing here?’ asked Retancourt, pointing to the two large antlers taking up space on the office floor.

‘A trophy. Someone gave me them the other night. I cut them off myself.’

‘Ten points, eh?’ said Retancourt approvingly. ‘And what did you do to deserve them?’

‘They asked me to go up there and I went. But I’m not sure that I was really being called there for him. He was known as the Red Giant.’

‘Who?’

‘Him. The stag.’

‘Why would someone do that? Do you think it was a lure, to get you to go to the graveyard at Opportune?’

‘Possibly.’

Retancourt lifted up one of the antlers, weighed it and put it down delicately.

‘You’re not supposed to separate them,’ she said. ‘So what else did you pick up there?’

‘I learned that there’s a bone in the snout of a pig.’

Retancourt let this remark pass, hoisting the cat up on her shoulder.

‘It’s in the shape of a double heart,’ Adamsberg went on. ‘I also learned that one could cure the vapours with a saint’s relics, and acquire eternal life for centuries and centuries, and that the remains of Saint Jerome might include some sheep’s bones.’

‘Anything else?’ asked Retancourt, patiently waiting for the information that really interested her.

‘That the two men who dug out the grave of Pascaline Villemot were probably our Diala and La Paille. That Pascaline died of a fractured skull, caused by a stone falling from the church, that one of her cats was slaughtered and emasculated three months before her death, and had been left in that state on her doorstep.’

Adamsberg suddenly raised his hand, twined his legs round the foot of the stool and called up a number on his mobile.

‘Oswald? Did you know that Pascaline’s cat had been left bleeding at her door?’

‘Narcissus? Reckon everyone knew about him in Opportune. Famous for his weight, he was. Over eleven kilos. He nearly won a prize at the show. But that was last year. Hermance gave her a new cat. Hermance likes cats, they’re nice clean creatures.’

‘Were Pascaline’s other cats male too, do you know?’

‘No, all girls, they were. Narcissus’s daughters. Not important, is it?’

Another trick of the Normans, Adamsberg reflected, consisted of putting a question while apparently not being interested in the reply. As Oswald just had.

‘I was just wondering why whoever killed Narcissus went to the trouble of cutting his balls off.’

‘Whoever told you that don’t know his arse from his elbow. Narcissus was neutered, oh, years ago. He used to sleep all day. A cat that weighs eleven kilos, ever seen that happen by chance?’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Course I am, ‘cos Hermance chose a tomcat for her, so the other cats could have kittens.’

Frowning, Adamsberg called another number, while Retancourt picked up the bag of shoes, looking annoyed. After twelve hours of difficult investigation, she had turned up a spectacular link between the district nurse and the recent deaths in La Chapelle, but the commissaire was off on quite a different track, wandering down country lanes.

‘This cat’s balls are a matter of urgency, are they?’ she asked sharply.

Adamsberg motioned her to take a seat. He had the parish priest of Le Mesnil on the line.

‘Listen, Oswald tells me that that cat, Narcissus, had already been neutered. So he couldn’t have been castrated when he was killed.’

‘Well, I tell you I saw it with my own eyes, commissaire. Pascaline brought his body up to the church in a cat basket, to ask me to bless it. I had to have a long argument with her, to explain why I couldn’t do it. The cat had had its throat cut and its parts were a bloody mess. What else do you want me to say?’

Adamsberg heard a sharp slap at the other end and wondered whether the priest was still catching flies.

‘In that case, I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘In Opportune, apparently everyone knew that the cat had been neutered.’

‘Maybe whoever did it didn’t know that, perhaps they weren’t from the village. Or it could be this person had a thing against males, if I can add an opinion to your investigation.’

Adamsberg snapped off his phone and started swinging his legs again in perplexity.

‘A thing against males,’ he repeated to himself. ‘The trouble is, Retancourt, that even people who don’t know anything about it would guess that a cat weighing eleven kilos and sleeping all day would have to have been neutered.’

‘Not the Snowball.’

‘The Snowball’s a special case, let’s leave him out of it. The problem’s still the same. Why did Narcissus’s killer try to castrate a cat that had already had its balls cut off?’

‘What if we were to concern ourselves more with whoever killed Diala?’

‘We are. Being fixated on virgins and castrating a male must have some connection. This cat belonged to Pascaline, and only the tom was killed. As if someone wanted to eliminate all masculine presence surrounding Pascaline. To purify her environment, perhaps. Maybe they were trying to purify the graves as well, by putting some invisible potion in there.’

‘As long as we don’t know whether these two women were deliberately killed, we won’t get anywhere. Accidents or murders, a killer or a grave-robber, that’s a huge difference. But we’ve no way of telling.’

Adamsberg slid off the stool and paced round the room.

‘There is a way,’ he said. ‘If you can face it.’

‘Carry on.’

‘If we could find the stone that fractured Pascaline’s skull. If it was an accident, it must have been loose and got dislodged from the wall of the church. But if it was a murder, the stone could already have been on the ground, and the killer would have used it to hit her with. Either a falling stone or a murder weapon. If it was the latter, the stone would surely show some sign of having been exposed to the air. The accident is supposed to have happened on the south side of the church. So there would be no reason for a stone out of the wall to have any moss on it. But if it was lying in the grass, some moss might have grown on its north face. It rains a lot up there, so that would be bound to happen quite quickly. Knowing Devalon, I doubt whether he would have looked for lichen on the stone.’

‘So where’s the stone now?’ asked Retancourt.

‘It must either be in the gendarmerie in Evreux or have been thrown out. Devalon’s an aggressive cop, Retancourt, and an incompetent one. You might have to fight your way to get to the stone. Best not to give him any warning, he’s quite capable of getting rid of it just to bugger us up. Especially since he’s already made some mistakes in this inquiry.’

The cat miaowed anxiously. The Snowball could always sense the moment when his preferred shelter was going to disappear. Three hours later, while Retancourt was making her inquiries in Evreux, the cat was still mewing, its nose glued to the front door of the squad’s office, an obstacle between its little body and the absent woman to whom it was devoted. Adamsberg forcibly dragged the animal over to Danglard.

‘Capitaine, since you seem to have some pull over this creature, can you tell it that Retancourt will be back soon? Give it a glass of wine or something, but for pity’s sake stop it making this din.’

Adamsberg broke off sharply.

‘Shee-it,’ he muttered, letting the Snowball fall heavily to the ground with another pitiful mew.

‘What is it?’ asked Danglard, by now preoccupied with the despairing cat, which had jumped on to his knee.

‘I’ve suddenly understood the story about Narcissus.’

‘About time,’ muttered the commandant.

Just then Retancourt called in. Her voice could be heard clearly on the mobile, and Adamsberg couldn’t guess which of the two, Danglard or the cat, was listening more attentively.

‘Devalon didn’t want me to see the stone. He’s an obstinate man – he would have fought me with his bare fists to stop me getting to it.’

‘You’ll have to find a way, lieutenant.’

‘Don’t worry, the stone’s safe in the boot of my car. One of its surfaces is covered in lichen.’

Danglard wondered whether Retancourt’s methods had been even more physical than Devalon’s fists.

‘I’m on to something else,’ said Adamsberg. ‘I know what happened to Narcissus.’

Yes, thought Danglard resignedly, everybody has known that for about two thousand years. Narcissus fell in love with his reflection in the water, and drowned when he tried to get close to it.

‘It wasn’t his balls they cut off, it was his penis,’ Adamsberg explained.

‘Ah,’ said Retancourt. ‘So where does that get us, sir?’

‘To the very centre of an abomination. Get back here quickly, lieutenant, the cat’s pining for you.’

‘That’s because I went without saying goodbye. Put him on the line.’

Adamsberg knelt down and put the mobile close to the cat’s ear. He had once met a shepherd who telephoned to his bell-wether to keep it calm, so this kind of thing no longer surprised him. He could even remember the ewe’s name: George Sand. Maybe one day George Sand’s bones would find their way into a sacred reliquary. Lying on its back, the cat listened while Retancourt explained that she was on her way home.

‘Can you tell me what this is all about?’ asked Danglard.

‘Both those women were murdered,’ said Adamsberg, getting to his feet. ‘Call everyone together. Conference in two hours.’

‘Murdered? Just for the pleasure of opening their graves three months later?’

‘I know, Danglard, it doesn’t make sense. But it doesn’t make sense to cut off a cat’s penis, either.’

‘That makes more sense,’ retorted Danglard, who always retreated into his bottomless fund of knowledge when he was lost, as another might retreat to a convent. ‘I’ve known zoologists who would think it quite important.’

‘Why?’

‘To get at the bone. There’s a bone in a cat’s penis.’

‘Danglard, you’re having me on.’

‘There’s a bone in a pig’s snout, isn’t there? Well, then.’