The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg) (43 page)

‘Why is it you that has to cart all these lumps of sugar around? Is it so that his uniform pockets won’t bulge? Or because he’s ashamed of it?’

‘Well, both, commissaire. But we’re not supposed to mention it.’

‘And the lumps of sugar, they always have to be wrapped in paper?’

‘Yes, sir, it’s more hygienic. They can stay in my pockets weeks without him needing any.’

‘Your sugar papers, Blériot, are the same ones that I found on the Chemin de Bonneval, by the fallen tree trunk. Émeri had a crisis right there. He sat down and ate six lumps and left the wrappers on the ground. And then Léo found them.
After
Herbier’s murder. Because ten days earlier, they weren’t there. Léo knows everything. She puts two and two together, details like butterfly wings. Léo knows that there are times when Émeri needs to eat several sugar lumps to recover his normal state. But what was Émeri doing on the Chemin de Bonneval? Well, he came to tell her why, that is, he came to kill her.’

‘But that’s impossible, sir, the capitaine never carries sugar around himself, he asks me for it.’

‘Yes, but
that
night, Blériot, he went alone to the chapel, and he took some with him. Because he knows he’s got this problem. Strong emotion and a sudden discharge of energy might set off a diabetic crisis. He didn’t want to risk fainting after killing Herbier. How does he tear the paper? From the side? From the middle? What does he do next? He crumples them into a ball? Or leaves them as they are? Or folds them? We all have our little ways of dealing with the wrappers. But you screw them up into a tiny little ball and put them in your pocket.’

‘So as not to leave litter.’

‘And the capitaine?’

‘He opens them from the middle and undoes three sides.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘He just leaves them like that.’

‘Precisely, Blériot. And Léo surely knew that. I’m not going to ask you to arrest your capitaine. Veyrenc and I will put him in the back of the car. You get in the front. And all I’ll ask you to do is drive us to the gendarmerie.’

LIII

Adamsberg had removed the handcuffs and freed Émeri’s legs once they were inside the interview room. He had alerted Commandant Bourlant at Lisieux. Blériot had been sent to Léo’s cellar to fetch the sugar wrappers.

‘Unwise to leave his hands free,’ said Retancourt, in as neutral a tone as possible. ‘Remember how Mo got away. Suspects try to escape at the drop of a hat, you know.’

Adamsberg met Retancourt’s eyes and found there without any doubt a glint of provocative irony. Like Danglard, Retancourt had understood how Mo escaped, but had kept her counsel. And yet nothing should have displeased her more than that unorthodox manoeuvre of uncertain result.

‘But this time, you’re here, Retancourt,’ said Adamsberg with a smile. ‘So there’s no danger. We’re waiting for Bourlant,’ he said, turning to Émeri. ‘I’m not authorised to question you in this gendarmerie where you’re still an officer. The station doesn’t have a chief, so Bourlant will transfer you to Lisieux.’

‘That’s fine by me, Adamsberg. At least Bourlant respects principles based on the facts. Everyone knows that you just shovel clouds, and your opinion carries no weight in any police force, whether gendarmes or regular cops. I hope you realise that?’

‘Was that why you were so insistent that I come to Ordebec? Or because you thought I’d be easier to deal with than your colleague, who wouldn’t have let you get near the inquiry?’

‘Because you’re nothing, Adamsberg. Wind, clouds, an illiterate mass of ectoplasm, incapable of the slightest reasoning.’

‘You’re well informed.’

‘Obviously. It was
my
investigation, and I had no intention of letting some super-efficient cop take over. As soon as I set eyes on you, I realised that what they say about you is true. That I’d be able to have my hands free, while you were wandering around in the mist. You got precisely nowhere, Adamsberg, you did fuck all, and everyone can testify to that. Including the press. All you achieved was to stop me arresting that bastard Hippo Vendermot. And why are you protecting him? Do you even know that? So that nobody lays a hand on his sister. You’re useless and obsessed. All you’ve done while you were in Ordebec is stare at her tits and fuss over your fucking pigeon. Not to mention that the police disciplinary team came down here to do a search. Think I didn’t know about that? So what
were
you doing here, Adamsberg?’

‘Picking up sugar wrappers.’

Émeri opened his mouth, then breathed in and said nothing. Adamsberg sensed that what he was about to say was: ‘Poor fool, the sugar wrappers won’t do you any good.’

Right, that meant he wouldn’t find any fingerprints on them. Just some pieces of paper, unidentified.

‘You think you can convince a jury with your scraps of paper?’

‘You’re forgetting something, Émeri. Whoever tried to kill Danglard had also killed those other people.’

‘Obviously.’

‘A tough man, a good runner. You said, like I did, that Denis de Valleray had committed the murders and that therefore it must have been him who gave Danglard the rendezvous at Cérenay. It’s in your first report.’

‘Naturally.’

‘And that he killed himself when the secretary of that club came and informed him about some kind of inquiry.’

‘Not a
club.
The Compagnie de la Marche.’

‘Whatever, it doesn’t impress me. My own ancestor was a conscript in your famous Napoleonic Wars, and he died aged twenty, in case you’re
interested. At Eylau, if you want to know why that name stuck in my memory. His legs caught fast in the mud of the battlefield, while your forefather was holding a victory parade.’

‘The family curse, eh?’ said Émeri with a smile, holding his back straighter than ever, and resting a confident arm on the back of the chair. ‘You’ll have no better luck than your forefather, Adamsberg. You’re already over your knees in mud.’

‘Denis killed himself, you wrote, because he knew he was about to be accused. Of the murders of Herbier, Glayeux and Mortembot, and the attempted murder of Danglard and Léo.’

‘Of course. You didn’t see the final report from the lab. He’d taken enough anxiolytics and neuroleptics to kill a horse and he had almost five grams of alcohol in his blood.’

‘Could be, perfectly well. It’s quite easy to push all that down the throat of a man who’s been knocked half conscious. You pull up his head and the swallowing reflex follows. But you have to ask this question, Émeri: why on earth would Denis have wanted to kill Danglard?’

‘Come on, shoveller, you told me yourself. Because Danglard had found out the truth about the Vendermot children. Because of the birthmark like an insect.’

‘A crustacean.’

‘What the hell does
that
matter?’ said Émeri exasperatedly.

‘Yes, I did say that to you myself, and I was wrong. Because you tell me, how did Denis de Valleray find out so soon that Danglard had seen the crustacean? And realised what that meant? I only heard it myself the night Danglard left.’

‘Rumour, gossip.’

‘That’s what I thought too. But I called Danglard and he hadn’t told anyone else except Veyrenc. The man who slipped the note in his pocket did so very soon after the count had his attack in the hospital. The only people who could have seen Danglard putting Lina’s shawl back on her shoulders, and
also
known that Danglard had seen the count with his shirt off, the
only
people who could have seen Danglard stare in surprise at the purple birthmark, were: the count, Dr Turbot, the nurse, the
prison warders, Dr Hellebaud, Lina and you. Rule out the warders and Hellebaud, they were far away. Rule out the nurse, who hadn’t seen Lina’s birthmark, and rule out Lina, who hadn’t seen the count’s own birthmark.’

‘She saw it that day.’

‘No, she was at the far end of the corridor, as Danglard confirmed. So Denis de Valleray couldn’t possibly know that the commandant had worked out the origins of his half-brother and – sister. So he had no motive to try and push him under the Caen-Paris express.
You
did. Who else would?’

‘Turbot. He operated on Hippo’s fingers when he was a boy.’

‘Turbot wasn’t in the little crowd in front of Glayeux’s house. And in any case, Valleray’s descendants were of no interest to him.’

‘Lina could have seen, never mind what your commandant says.’

‘But she wasn’t at Glayeux’s house, either.’

‘Yeah, but her clay brother was, yes, Antonin. Who’s to say she didn’t tell him?’

‘Turbot would. Lina didn’t leave the hospital until after everyone else. She was chatting to a friend at reception. You can rule her out.’

‘That leaves the count,’ Émeri declared firmly. ‘He didn’t want anyone to know they were his children. Not in his lifetime anyway.’

‘But he wasn’t at Glayeux’s house, he was still under observation at the hospital. You’re the only one who could have both seen and understood, and you were the only one who could have put the note in his pocket. Probably when he went into Glayeux’s house.’

‘What the fuck do I care if the count is the father of those devil children? I’m not in the Valleray family. You want to look at my back? Just find one thing that links me to the death of all those lowlifes.’

‘Easy, Émeri. Terror. And the need to eliminate the cause of the terror. You’ve always been lacking in courage and mortified not to be as brave as your ancestor. It was your bad luck that they gave you his name.’

‘Terror,’ said Émeri, spreading his hands wide. ‘For the love of god, what am I supposed to be terrified of? That drip Mortembot, who died with his pants down?’

‘No, Hippolyte Vendermot. In your eyes he is the cause of all your
failures. For thirty-two years. The thought of ending up like Régis haunts you, you wanted to destroy the man who cursed you when you were both kids. Because you really did believe in the curse. You fell off your bike, and nearly died after he cursed you. You didn’t tell me about that. Am I wrong?’

‘Why should I tell you everything about my childhood? Every kid in the world falls off a bike and gets hurt. Didn’t you?’

‘Of course. But not just after being cursed by the satanic little Hippo. Not just after Regis’s tragic accident. Everything went downhill for you after that. You failed at school, you had no success in Valence or Lyon, you couldn’t have children, your wife left you. Your fear, your caution and your diabetic attacks. You aren’t a marshal like your father wanted you to be, you’re not even a soldier. And all this catalogue of failure, it’s a drama for you, and it gets worse. But it wasn’t
your
fault, Émeri, was it? It was Hippo’s fault for cursing you. He said you’d have no children, he prevented you from having a glorious career or a happy one, because they’re the same thing as far as you’re concerned. Hippo’s the source of all your pain, your bad luck, and he still terrifies you.’

‘Come off it, Adamsberg. Who on earth would be scared of a degenerate who talks backwards?’

‘Do you really think you have to be degenerate to know how to invert letters? Of course not. You have to be gifted with a special kind of genius. A diabolical one. You know that, just as you knew that Hippo had to be destroyed if you were to be able to live. You’re only forty-two, you’ve still got time to make a new life. Since your wife left you and since Régis’s suicide three years ago, which really panicked you, it’s been your obsession. Because you’re a man who gets obsessions. Like your Empire dining room.’

‘That’s a simple mark of respect, you wouldn’t understand.’

‘No, it’s megalomania. Like your impeccable uniform – no sugar lumps in your pockets to make them bulge. Your way of parading like a soldier. There’s just one person responsible for what you consider your unjust, unbearable, shameful and above all threatening downward path, and it’s Hippolyte Vendermot. But the curse can only be removed by his death. You could argue that what happened at the well was simply a neurotic case of self-defence, if it wasn’t that you’d already killed four other people.’

‘Well, in that case,’ said Émeri, leaning back in his chair, ‘why wouldn’t I just have killed Hippo?’

‘Because you were afraid of being accused of his death. Understandably. Everyone here knows about your childhood, the bike accident when you were ten, after being cursed, the hate you have for the Vendermot family. You needed an alibi, to be above suspicion. An alibi or another culprit. You needed a vast and ingenious strategy, like the Battle of Eylau. A well-thought-out strategy, the only way to victory over a much bigger army, like the Emperor had to have. And Hippolyte Vendermot is ten times stronger than you. But then you’re the descendant of a marshal, for heaven’s sake, so you’ll be able to crush him. “Are you going to let yourself be devoured by those people?” as the Emperor would say. Certainly not. But it means reconnoitring every bump and dip in the terrain. You needed a Marshal Ney to back you up, like when Davout was threatened on the right flank. That’s why you went to see Denis.’

‘I’m supposed to have gone to see him, am I?’

‘A year ago, you were at a dinner at the chateau, with the local dignitaries, like Dr Turbot, Denis of course, the head of the salesroom at Evreux and others. The count had one of his attacks, you took him to his room with Turbot’s help. Turbot told me about it. I think it must have been that evening that you learned about Hippo and Lina and the will.’

Émeri laughed out loud, quite naturally. ‘You were there, Adamsberg, were you?’

‘In a way. I asked Valleray to confirm it. He thought he might die, he asked you to fetch his will, he gave you the key of the deed box. Before dying, he wanted to write his two Vendermot children into the will. So with difficulty, he added a few lines on the paper and asked you to sign as a witness. He trusted to your discretion, as capitaine of gendarmes and a man of honour. But you read those few lines, of course. And you weren’t surprised to learn that the count had fathered two limbs of the devil like Hippo and Lina. You had seen the birthmark on his back when Turbot was examining him. You knew about Lina’s, because her shawl is always slipping. For you, the mark wasn’t a woodlouse with antennae, it was the crimson face of a devil with horns. And it only confirmed in you the idea that this was a
bastard and cursed line of descent. And that night, after all the time you’d been looking for the chance to wipe the Vendermot family from the face of the earth – because Lina’s just as bad in your eyes – it finally offered itself. Or almost. You had to think about it, you don’t rush boldly into action, you weigh everything up, and after a while, you decide to have a chat with Valleray’s stepson.’