The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg) (32 page)

Veyrenc broke off the verse he had started, and shrugged his shoulders.

‘No,’ he said to himself, ‘no stomach for it.’

*   *   *

Dr Turbot had arrived and was attending to Danglard. He kept shaking his head and muttering ‘went under the train, under the train!’ as if convincing himself of the exceptional nature of the event he was being called to.

‘It was probably a strong dose of anaesthetic,’ he said, looking up and motioning to the two paramedics accompanying him, ‘but I think it’s almost worn off now. We’ll take him back and I’ll go on reviving him, but carefully. He won’t be capable of speaking for a couple of hours, so don’t come before that, commissaire. He’s got some bruising, with the blow to the side of the neck and falling on to the track, but I don’t think anything’s broken. Survived going under the train, can’t get over that!’

Adamsberg watched Danglard being stretchered to the ambulance with a wave of retrospective distress. But the bubble of electricity hadn’t reappeared on his neck. Down to Dr Hellebaud, presumably.

‘And how is Léo?’ he asked the doctor.

‘Last night she sat up and had something to eat. We’ve taken the catheter out. But she can’t speak, she just gives us a smile from time to time. Looking as if she’s got something to say, but she can’t get there. Almost makes me think your Dr Hellebaud has blocked her powers of speech, like turning down a dimmer switch. And he’ll turn it back up again when he sees fit.’

‘That’s pretty much how he operates, yes.’

‘I wrote to him at his Fleury place, to report on her progress. I addressed it to the governor as you suggested.’

‘Fleury
jail
,’ said Adamsberg meaningfully.

‘I know that, commissaire, but I don’t like saying it or thinking it. Like I know that it was you that arrested him, and I don’t want to hear what he’d done. Not medical malpractice at least?’

‘No.’

‘Under the train, can’t get over that. Only suicides throw themselves under trains.’

‘Quite, doctor. Not a normal MO for murder. But since it is indeed a normal method of killing oneself, Danglard’s death might easily have been thought a suicide. For your hospital staff, the suicide version will be best, and make sure no wind of anything gets outside. I don’t want the murderer to be alerted. Right now, he must be imagining that his victim has been cut to bits by the wheels of an express train. Let’s let him think that for a few hours.’

‘I see,’ said Turbot, taking on a would-be knowing expression by screwing up his eyes. ‘You want to take him by surprise, watch and wait.’

*   *   *

In fact, Adamsberg did nothing of the kind. As the ambulance moved off, he walked up and down Platform A, on a short stretch of twenty metres, not wanting to go too far from Veyrenc, to whom Blériot – he noticed – had given three or four lumps of sugar. Blériot the sugar carrier. Without intending to, he noticed too that the brigadier didn’t drop the wrappings on the ground, but screwed them up in tiny balls which he put into his trouser pocket. Émeri, whose uniform was less impeccable than usual, since he had had to dress in a hurry when called, came towards him shaking his head.

‘I can’t see any sign of anything on the bench. Nothing, Adamsberg. Nothing to go on.’

Veyrenc gestured to Émeri, asking for a cigarette.

‘I’d be surprised if Danglard can help us,’ Veyrenc said. ‘The attacker came from behind, he didn’t even have time to turn his head.’

‘How come the train driver didn’t see him?’ Blériot asked.

‘This time of day, he’d be driving into the sun, facing due east,’ Adamsberg replied.

‘Well, even if he had seen him,’ Émeri said, ‘he wouldn’t be able stop the train for several hundred metres. Lieutenant, why did you decide to follow him?’

‘Obeying rules, I suppose,’ said Veyrenc with a smile. ‘Saw him go out and decided to tail him. Because you shouldn’t go off alone in a case like this.’

‘But why did
he
go off alone? He looked the careful type to me.’

‘Yes, but inclined to do things by himself,’ said Adamsberg, trying to excuse Danglard.

‘And whoever arranged this rendezvous probably insisted he come alone,’ sighed Émeri. ‘Always the way. Let’s meet up again back at the gendarmerie to organise surveillance at Mortembot’s place. Adamsberg, can you get the backup from Paris?’

‘Couple of men should be here by two o’clock.’

Veyrenc had recovered enough to drive, and Adamsberg followed him to Léo’s place, where the lieutenant ate some tinned soup and then went straight to bed. As he returned to his room, Adamsberg remembered that he had forgotten to feed the pigeon any birdseed the night before. And the window had been open.

But Hellebaud had nestled into one of Adamsberg’s shoes, the way some of his fellow pigeons might settle on a chimney pot, and was patiently waiting for him.

‘Now come on, Hellebaud,’ said Adamsberg, lifting up the shoe, pigeon and all, and putting it on the windowsill. ‘We need a serious talk. You’re getting away from the state of nature, you’re sliding down the slope towards civilisation. Your feet are better, you can fly. Look out there! Sunshine! Trees! Female pigeons! And all the grubs and insects you want.’

Hellebaud cooed, which seemed a good sign, and Adamsberg placed him more firmly on the windowsill.

‘Take off when you want,’ he said. ‘No need to leave a note, I’ll understand.’

XXXVI

Adamsberg had remembered that one ought to offer flowers to Madame Vendermot, and at 10 a.m. he was knocking gently at the door. It was Wednesday, so there was a chance Lina would be there, since she had the morning off to make up for coming in on Saturdays. It was the two of them that he wanted to see, Lina and Hippo, separately, for more serious questioning. He found the whole family sitting round the breakfast table, the younger members not yet dressed. He greeted them all in turn, examining their sleepy faces. Hippo’s crumpled look was convincing, but with the already oppressive heat of the day, it would perhaps be easy to give the impression of someone who had just woken up. The puffy eyes of one roused from a night’s sleep are hard to fake, but Hippo’s eyelids were naturally heavy and as a result he did not always look either wide awake or friendly.

The mother, the only one who was properly dressed, accepted the flowers with real satisfaction and immediately offered the commissaire a cup of coffee.

‘I hear something bad’s happened at Cérenay station,’ she said, and it was the first time he had heard her speak more than a few words since Paris, in a voice that was as humble as it was clear and calm. ‘Is it this horrible case going on? Has something happened to Mortembot?’

‘Who told you?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘Was it Mortembot?’ she insisted.

‘No, it wasn’t him.’

‘Holy Mother of god,’ she went on with a sigh. ‘Because if this goes on, we’ll all have to move away, me and my children.’

‘No, no,
maman
,’ said Martin automatically.

‘I know what I’m talking about, son. You none of you want to see anything, the way you are. But one of these days, someone’s going to come along and kill us all.’

‘No, forget it,
maman
,’ said Martin. ‘They’re all too scared of us.’

‘They don’t understand,’ the mother went on, addressing Adamsberg this time. ‘They
won’t
understand that people think we’re all guilty. My poor girl, if only you’d held your tongue.’

‘I didn’t have the right to,’ said Lina rather severely, without seeming to be troubled by her mother’s anxiety. ‘You know that perfectly well. You have to let the people who are seized take their chances.’

‘Well, that may be,’ said her mother, sitting back down at the table. ‘We’ve got nowhere to go, but I’ve got to protect them,’ she said, turning to Adamsberg again.

‘
Maman
, nobody’s going to touch us,’ said Hippolyte, lifting his two deformed hands up towards the ceiling, and everyone burst out laughing.

‘See, they don’t understand a thing,’ the mother repeated quietly, looking distressed. ‘Don’t play games with your fingers, Hippo, when someone’s been killed at Cérenay.’

‘What happened?’ Lina asked. Adamsberg tried not to look her way, since her breasts were strikingly visible through her white pyjamas.

‘
Maman
told you,’ said Antonin. ‘Someone threw himself under the Caen train. Suicide, that’s what she meant.’

‘How did you hear about it?’ Adamsberg asked Madame Vendermot.

‘I was down at the shops. The stationmaster was up there at a quarter to eight and he saw the police cars and the ambulance. He asked one of the paramedics.’

‘Quarter to eight? But no train stops there before eleven.’

‘The train driver had phoned through. He thought he’d seen someone or something on the track, so the stationmaster went in to check. Do you know who was killed?’

‘Did they tell you?’

‘No,’ said Hippo. ‘Perhaps it was Marguerite Vanout.’

‘Why would it be her?’ asked Martin.

‘You know what they say in Cérenay.
Yttun sa a ekactiurf
.’

‘Nutty as a fruitcake,’ Lina translated.

‘Oh really?’ said Antonin, looking frankly interested, as if unaware that he inclined slightly towards the fruitcake end of the spectrum himself.

‘Since her husband left her. She goes round shouting, she tears her clothes, she writes on the walls of the houses. On the walls.’

‘What does she write?’

‘Pigs. She writes it all over the village and in Cérenay they’re starting to get really fed up with her. Every day, the mayor has to get someone to clean off the graffiti she wrote in the night. And she’s got plenty of money, so she hides banknotes here and there, under stones, up trees, and next morning the village people can’t help going looking for them, like a game of hide-and-seek. Makes ’em late for work. So just this one woman, she’s got everyone running in circles. Still, it’s not a
crime
to hide banknotes.’

‘No, it’s funny,’ said Martin.

‘Yeah, ‘tis rather,’ Hippo agreed.

‘It’s not funny at all,’ answered their mother sharply. ‘She’s just a poor woman who’s lost her wits and is suffering.’

‘Yeah, but it’s still funny,’ said Hippo, bending down to kiss her cheek.

His mother was instantly transformed, as if she suddenly realised that any reprimand was either pointless or unfair. She patted her son’s big hand and went to sit in her armchair in the corner, from where she was unlikely to take any further part in the conversation. It was as if a character had quietly left the stage, while still remaining in sight.

‘We should send flowers to her funeral though,’ said Lina. ‘After all, we do know her aunt.’

‘I’ll go and pick some in the forest,’ suggested Martin.

‘No, you don’t send wild flowers to a funeral.’

‘No, that’s right,’ put in Antonin, ‘you got to buy florist’s flowers. We could get some lilies.’

‘No, lilies are for weddings.’

‘Anyway, we can’t afford lilies,’ said Lina.

‘What about anemones?’ said Hippo.
‘Ton raed, senomena
.’

Adamsberg had let them go on arguing about the kind of flowers they should send for Marguerite. And their conversation, unless it was being invented for his benefit by a set of geniuses, proved to him, better than anything else could, that none of the Vendermots had been involved in the Cérenay incident. Still, they were all strangely gifted, there was no getting away from that.

‘No,’ he said in the end. ‘It’s not Marguerite that’s dead.’

‘No flowers then,’ said Hippolyte emphatically.

‘But who is?’ asked Martin.

‘Nobody’s dead. The man involved lay down between the rails and the train went over him without touching him.’

‘Wow,’ said Antonin. ‘That’s what I call an artistic experience.’

As he spoke, the young man passed a large sugar lump across to his sister, and Lina understood at once and broke it in two for him. It needed strong pressure from her fingers, something Antonin didn’t want to risk. Adamsberg looked away. This constant presence of sugar lumps here, there and everywhere was giving him a strange feeling, as if he were surrounded by a multiple adversary throwing sugar bricks at him from sugar walls.

‘If someone wanted to kill himself,’ said Lina, looking at Adamsberg, ‘he’d have lain
across
the rails.’

‘Quite right, Lina. He didn’t want to kill himself, someone pushed him on to the line. He was my deputy, Danglard, you’ve met him. Someone tried to kill him.’

Hippolyte frowned. ‘Using a train as a weapon’s a rather risky way to do it,’ he said.

‘Yes, but if you wanted to make it look like suicide,’ said Martin, ‘it’s quite clever. People will think of suicide if someone’s killed on a railway line.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Hippolyte, pulling a face. ‘But planning that kind of thing must come from a very twisted brain. Someone ambitious but weird.
Yllatot driew
.’

‘Hippo,’ said Adamsberg, pushing away his cup, ‘I need to talk to you on your own. And then Lina, if possible.’

‘Driew
, really
driew
,’ Hippo went on.

‘I do need to have a word with you,’ Adamsberg insisted.

‘I don’t know who tried to kill your deputy.’

‘No, it’s not about that. It’s about your father’s death,’ Adamsberg went on in a low voice.

‘All right then,’ said Hippo, glancing across at his mother. ‘We’d better go outside. Let me just get dressed.’

*   *   *

Adamsberg was presently walking along the stony little lane, alongside Hippolyte, who was a head taller than him.

‘I don’t know anything about his death,’ said Hippo. ‘He was hit on the head and in the chest with an axe, while he was asleep, that’s all.’

‘But you knew that Lina had wiped the handle.’

‘That’s what I said at the time, but I was only little.’

‘Hippo, why would Lina wipe the handle?’

‘
I
don’t know,’ said Hippo sulkily. ‘But not because she killed him. Come on, I know my sister. Not that she
couldn’t
have wished him dead, we all did. But she went the other way. Stopped my dog Sooty going for his throat.’