The Chalk Circle Man (16 page)

‘You’re quite free to do that,’ said Adamsberg, ‘so long as you keep us informed of your whereabouts. That’s all we will ask.’

‘Thank you. I think I could move down there in a couple of weeks. I’m going to clear everything out. Byzantium’s finished for me now.’

Adamsberg let another pause go past before he asked:

‘You aren’t by any chance diabetic, are you?’

‘What a strange question,
commissaire
. No, I’m not diabetic. Is that … er … important?’

‘Well, it is quite. I’m going to trouble you again one last time, although it’s about something trivial. But this trivial thing is hard to explain, and I hoped you might be able to help me. All the witnesses who saw you have spoken of a smell you left behind. A smell of rotten apples, one said, vinegar or a liqueur of some sort, others said. So I thought at first that you might be suffering from diabetes, since as you may know diabetes is associated with a slight aroma of fermentation. However, I don’t detect anything like that about you – just your pipe tobacco. So I thought possibly the smell they spoke of might have come from your clothes, or from a clothes cupboard. And yesterday I looked in your wardrobes and cupboards, and sniffed at the clothes. Nothing. Just a smell of wooden furniture, dry cleaning, pipe tobacco, books, even chalk, but nothing acid or alcoholic. I was disappointed.’

‘I don’t really know what to say,’ said Le Nermord, looking rather disorientated. ‘What exactly are you asking me?’

‘Well, how do
you
explain it?’

‘I don’t know! I never realised I left any
smell
behind me. It’s rather humiliating, in fact, to learn this.’

‘I have a suggestion. Perhaps it comes from outside your house, from some other cupboard where you used to leave the clothes you wore when you were being the circle man.’

‘My clothes when I was “being the circle man”? But I didn’t wear anything special! I wasn’t demented enough to dress up for my outings! No,
commissaire
. Your witnesses will surely have said that I was dressed in ordinary clothes, like I am today. I wear practically the same things every day: flannel trousers, white shirt, tweed jacket, raincoat. I hardly ever dress any differently. Why on earth would I go out wearing a tweed jacket and go “somewhere else” to put on another tweed jacket, especially one that smelled odd?’

‘That’s exactly what I was wondering.’

Le Nermord was looking miserable again and Danglard felt vexed with Adamsberg once more. In the end the
commissaire
wasn’t so bad at torturing his suspects.

‘I do want to help you,’ said Le Nermord, his voice on the point of breaking, ‘but that’s asking too much. I don’t understand this business of a smell and why it’s so interesting.’

‘It may not be as interesting as all that.’

‘Perhaps, you know, it might have something to do with nervousness, because these circles were a very emotional thing for me. Maybe I was giving off a sort of “smell of fear”? I suppose it’s possible. When I was in the metro afterwards, I’d be dripping with sweat.’

‘It really doesn’t matter,’ said Adamsberg, scribbling on the table. ‘Forget it. I get these ideas fixed in my head and they don’t mean anything. I’ll let you go, Monsieur Le Nermord. I hope you find some peace in the countryside. People say it’s possible.’

Peace in the countryside indeed! Danglard, infuriated, gave a snort of exasperation. Everything about the
commissaire
was getting on his nerves this morning, his aimless meanderings, his pointless questions and his banal remarks. Oh, for a glass of white wine. Too early, much too early, control yourself for heaven’s sake.

Le Nermord gave a tragic smile and Danglard tried to cheer him up a bit by shaking his hand warmly. But Le Nermord’s hand remained limp. A lost soul, Danglard thought.

Adamsberg stood up and watched Le Nermord go down the corridor, stooping slightly and looking thinner than ever.

‘Poor sod,’ said Danglard. ‘He’s finished now.’

‘I’d have preferred it if he
had
been diabetic,’ was Adamsberg’s only reply.

Adamsberg spent the rest of the morning reading
Ideology and Society under Justinian
. Danglard, feeling almost as exhausted as his victim after the long joust with the chalk circle man, would have liked Adamsberg to stop thinking about him and move the investigation on in some other direction. He felt so saturated with Augustin-Louis Le Nermord that the last thing in the world he wanted to do was read a line he had written. Out of every page, the cloudy blue gaze of the Byzantine scholar would have seemed to stare at him, reproaching him for his persecution.

Danglard came to find Adamsberg at one o’clock. He was still plunged in his book. Danglard remembered that the
commissaire
had told him that he read slowly, one word after another. He did not look up as he heard Danglard come in.

‘Do you remember that fashion magazine we found in Madame Le Nermord’s handbag, Danglard?’

‘The one you were looking at in the van? Must still be in the lab.’

Adamsberg called the lab and asked for the magazine to be sent down if they had finished with it.

‘What’s bothering you now?’ asked Danglard.

‘I don’t really know. But at least three things are on my mind. The smell of rotten apples, the good doctor Gérard Pontieux, and the fashion magazine.’

Adamsberg called Danglard back in a little later. He was holding a small piece of paper.

‘Here’s the train timetable,’ Adamsberg said. ‘There’s one leaving in fifty-five minutes for Marcilly, the native heath of our Dr Pontieux.’

‘What bothers you about the doctor?’

‘He bothers me because he’s a man.’

‘Still on about that?’

‘I told you before, Danglard. My mind works slowly. Do you think you could catch this train?’

‘Today? Now?’

‘If you would. I want to know everything about this doctor. You’ll find some people there who knew him in his younger days, before he set up his practice in Paris. Ask them about him. I want to know all about him. Absolutely everything. We’re missing something here.’

‘But how can I ask questions if I haven’t the slightest idea what you want to know?’

Adamsberg shook his head. ‘Just go down there, and question anyone you can. I’ve every confidence in you. Don’t forget to phone me.’

Adamsberg waved to Danglard and, looking absent-minded, went downstairs to find something to eat. He chewed his cold lunch as he made his way over to the National Library.

At the reception desk, his shirtsleeves and worn black canvas trousers did not create the most favourable impression. He showed his card and said he wanted to consult the complete works of Augustin-Louis Le Nermord.

Danglard arrived at Marcilly station at ten past six, just the right time for a glass of white wine at a café table. There were six cafés in Marcilly, and he went round all of them, meeting plenty of old people who remembered Gérard Pontieux. But what they had to say held little interest. He was getting bored with the life of the young Gérard, which had apparently been incident-free. It seemed to him that it would have been more profitable to concentrate on his medical career. You never knew: perhaps an assisted death, or a faulty diagnosis somewhere in the past. Anything could have happened. But that wasn’t what Adamsberg was after. The
commissaire
had sent him here, where nobody knew what had become of Pontieux beyond the age of twenty-four.

By ten o’clock, Danglard was dragging himself round Marcilly on his own, light-headed with local wine and having learnt nothing of substance. He didn’t want to return empty-handed to Paris. He felt he should keep trying, although spending the night here was not an attractive option. He called the children to wish them goodnight. Then he went to the address that had been given him in the last café, where there was a possible room for the night. His hostess was an old lady who served him yet another glass of the local wine. Danglard felt like pouring out all his woes to this aged but lively face.

XVI

W
ITHOUT TELLING ANYONE
, M
ATHILDE HAD BEEN FRETTING ALL
week. In the first place, she had not been best pleased to hear Charles coming in at half past one in the morning, and then learning next morning that another woman had been murdered. And as if to rub salt in the wound, Charles had spent the evening joking maliciously, in a thoroughly aggravating way. At the end of her tether, she had thrown him out of her apartment and told him he could come back when he was in a better mood. It worried her, there was no disguising it. As for Clémence, she had come back very late the same night in tears, and completely distraught. Mathilde had spent a fruitless hour trying to sort her out. Finally Clémence, her nerves shattered, had agreed that it would do her good to have a change of scene. The lonely-hearts ads were very bad for her. Mathilde had approved of this immediately, and sent her back up to the Stickleback to pack her case and take a few hours’ rest. She was cross with herself, because next morning as she heard Clémence tiptoeing downstairs trying not to disturb her, she had thought: ‘Good riddance, four days without having to put up with her.’ Clémence had promised to come back the following Wednesday to finish the classification she had started. She probably guessed that her friend the dressmaker wouldn’t be too keen to keep her longer than that. She was fairly clear-eyed, old Clémence. How old was she, anyway? Mathilde wondered. Sixty, seventy, somewhere in between? Her dark red-rimmed eyes and her unattractive pointed teeth made it difficult to guess.

During the week, Charles had continued to pull his own handsome face into infuriating expressions, and Clémence had failed to return as agreed. The slides were still scattered on the table. Charles was the first to say that it was a bit worrying, but maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the old woman had followed some man she met in the train and got herself murdered. This caused Mathilde to have a nightmare. When the funny little shrew-mouse hadn’t returned by Friday evening, she had been on the verge of starting to search for her by calling the dressmaker.

At which point Clémence turned up again. ‘Oh shit!’ said Charles who was sitting on the sofa in Mathilde’s apartment, running his fingers over a book in Braille. But Mathilde was relieved. All the same, looking at them both invading her room, the magnificent-looking man, sprawling on the couch, and the little old woman taking off her nylon overall but keeping her beret on her head, Mathilde told herself that something wasn’t right in her house.

XVII

A
DAMSBERG LOOKED UP TO SEE
D
ANGLARD ARRIVING IN HIS OFFICE
at nine in the morning, a finger pressed to his brow but in a state of high excitement. He flopped down heavily into an armchair and took a few deep breaths.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve been running. I took the first train back from Marcilly this morning. Couldn’t reach you by phone, you weren’t home.’

Adamsberg spread his hands in a gesture signifying: ‘Can’t be helped, you don’t always choose which bed you end up in.’

‘The lovely old lady I lodged with,’ said Danglard in between breaths, ‘knew your famous doctor very well. So well, in fact, that he confided in her. I’m not surprised – she’s a special kind of woman. Gérard Pontieux had been engaged, she told me, to the daughter of the local pharmacist, a girl who was plain, but rich. He needed money to set up in practice. And then, at the last minute, he felt disgusted with himself. He told himself that if he started out like that, based on a lie, he wouldn’t make an honest doctor. So he pulled out and jilted the girl, the day after the engagement had been announced, sending her a cowardly letter telling her that he couldn’t go through with it. Well, none of that’s so serious, is it? Not serious at all. Except for the girl’s name.’

‘Clémence Valmont,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Spot on,’ said Danglard.

‘We’re going over there,’ said Adamsberg, stubbing out the cigarette he had just lit.

Twenty minutes later, they were standing at the door of 44 rue des Patriarches. It was Saturday morning and everything seemed quiet. Nobody answered the interphone to Clémence’s flat.

‘Try Mathilde Forestier,’ said Adamsberg, for once almost tense with impatience. ‘Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg here,’ he said into the interphone. ‘Open the street door, Madame Forestier. Be quick, please.’

He ran up the stairs to the Flying Gurnard on the second floor, where Mathilde opened her door.

‘I need the key for upstairs, Madame Forestier. Clémence’s key. You’ve got a spare?’

Mathilde went, without asking questions, to fetch a bunch of keys labelled ‘Stickleback’.

‘I’ll come up with you,’ she said, her voice even huskier first thing in the morning than in the evening. ‘I’ve been worrying myself silly, Adamsberg.’

They all trooped into Clémence’s apartment. Nothing. No sign of life, no clothes in the wardrobe, no papers on the tables.

‘Oh, sod it! Bird’s flown,’ said Danglard.

Adamsberg paced round the room, more slowly than ever, looking at his feet, opening an empty cupboard here, pulling out a drawer there, then pacing round some more. ‘He’s not thinking about anything,’ thought Danglard, feeling exasperated, and especially exasperated at their failure. He would have liked Adamsberg to explode with anger, then to react quickly and dash about giving orders, to try and retrieve this mess one way or the other, but it was no use hoping he would do anything like that. On the contrary, he gave a charming smile as he accepted the coffee offered them by Mathilde, who was distraught.

Adamsberg called the office from her flat, and described Clémence Valmont as precisely as possible.

‘Issue this description to all stations, airports, gendarmeries and so on. The usual thing. And send a man over here. The apartment will have to be watched.’

He replaced the phone quietly and drank his coffee calmly as if nothing had happened.

‘You need to take it easy – you don’t look well,’ he said to Mathilde. ‘Danglard, try and explain to Madame Forestier what’s been happening, as gently as you can. I won’t do it myself, you’ll have to excuse me. I don’t explain things well.’

‘You saw in the papers that Le Nermord had been released without charge over the murders, but that he
was
the blue circle man?’ Danglard began.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Mathilde. ‘I saw his photo. And yes, that was the man I followed,
and
it was the same man who used to eat in the little restaurant in Pigalle, a few years ago! Harmless! I got tired of telling Adamsberg that. Humiliated, frustrated, anything you like, but harmless. I did tell you,
commissaire
!’

‘Yes, you did. But I didn’t agree,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Quite,’ said Mathilde with emphasis. ‘But where’s the poor old shrew-mouse gone now? Why are you looking for her? She came back from the countryside last night, looking much better, full of beans, so I don’t understand why she’s gone off again today.’

‘Has she ever told you about the fiancé who jilted her long ago without warning?’

‘Yes, more or less,’ said Mathilde. ‘But it didn’t affect her that much. You’re not going in for crackpot psychology now, are you?’

‘We have to,’ said Danglard. ‘Gérard Pontieux, the second murder victim, that was him. Clémence’s long-lost fiancé, from fifty years ago.’

‘You can’t be serious,’ said Mathilde.

‘I’m deadly serious, I’ve just got back from Marcilly,’ said Danglard. ‘The town they both came from. She wasn’t originally from Neuilly, Mathilde.’

Adamsberg noted that Danglard was calling Madame Forestier ‘Mathilde’.

‘The rage and madness he’d caused her had been festering for fifty years,’ Danglard went on. ‘So as she was nearing the end of a life that she considered blighted, her thoughts turned to murder. And the chalk circle man offered a unique opportunity. It was now or never. She’d always kept track of Gérard Pontieux, the target of her obsession. She knew where he lived. She left Neuilly to try and find the man who was drawing the circles, and she came to you, Mathilde. You were the only person who could lead her to him. And to his circles. First of all, she killed that poor fat middle-aged woman, who was just someone at random, to start some sort of “series”. Then she killed Pontieux. She took such pleasure in the attack that it was really vicious. And then, because she was afraid the investigation wouldn’t find the chalk circle man fast enough, and would be looking all the more closely at the murder of the doctor, she decided to attack the circle man’s own estranged wife, Delphine Le Nermord. She had to make it look similar to the attack on Pontieux, so that the police doctor wouldn’t be able to point out any differences. Except that he was a man.’

Danglard glanced over at Adamsberg, who said nothing, but motioned to him to carry on.

‘The last murder led us straight to the circle man, just as she’d foreseen. But Clémence Valmont thinks in peculiar ways – very twisted but naive at the same time. Because for the circle man to be the murderer of his own wife was going too far. Unless he was completely mad, Le Nermord would hardly have chosen to bring the police straight to his door. So eventually, yesterday, we let him go. Clémence hears that on the radio. With Le Nermord off the hook, everything looks different. Her plan bites the dust. She still has time to get away. So that’s what she does.’

Mathilde looked from one to the other in consternation. Adamsberg waited for it to sink in. He knew it would take time, and that she would not want to believe it.

‘No, that can’t be it,’ said Mathilde. ‘She’d never have had the physical strength. Remember what a skinny little thing she is?’

‘There are plenty of ways to get round that,’ said Danglard. ‘You could pretend to be ill, sitting on the pavement and wait for someone to bend down, then hit them on the head. All the victims had been knocked unconscious first, remember, Mathilde.’

‘Yes, I remember,’ said Mathilde, distractedly running her fingers through strands of her dark hair as it fell over her forehead. ‘But what about the doctor? How did she catch him?’

‘Very simple. She must have arranged to meet him in a certain place.’

‘Why would he come?’

‘Oh, he would. Someone from your past suddenly calls on your help. You forget, you drop everything and you come running.’

‘Yes, of course, you must be right,’ said Mathilde.

‘The nights of the murders. Was she home? Can you remember?’

‘Well, she used to go out just about every night, for these so-called rendezvous, like the other night. Oh damn it all, that was some act she was putting on for me. Why don’t you say anything,
commissaire
?’

‘I’m trying to think.’

‘ To any purpose?’

‘No. I’m getting nowhere. But I’m used to that.’

Mathilde and Danglard exchanged glances, both looking disappointed. But Danglard was no longer in a mood to criticise Adamsberg. Yes, Clémence had vanished. But all the same, it was Adamsberg who had understood that something wasn’t right and had sent Danglard off to Marcilly.

Adamsberg got up without warning, made a nonchalant pointless gesture, thanked Mathilde for the coffee and asked Danglard to have the technical team come and check Clémence Valmont’s apartment.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ he said, so as not to leave without saying anything. Any excuse so as not to hurt their feelings.

Danglard stayed for a while with Mathilde. They couldn’t stop talking about Clémence, trying to understand. The fiancé who abandons you, the cruel procession of lonely-hearts advertisements, neurotic feelings, little pointed teeth, bad impressions, ambiguities. From time to time, Danglard would get up and see how the technicians were getting on upstairs, and come back saying: ‘They’re in the bathroom now.’ Mathilde poured out some more coffee after adding hot water to the pot. Danglard felt comfortable. He would gladly have stayed there for ever with his elbows on the table with its fish swimming under the glass, lit up by Queen Mathilde’s dark-skinned face. She asked him about Adamsberg. How had he guessed all this?

‘No idea,’ said Danglard. ‘And yet I’ve watched him working, or rather not working. He sometimes seems so casual and offhand that you’d think he’d never been a policeman, then at other times his face is all tense and screwed up, so preoccupied that he doesn’t hear a thing you say. But preoccupied by what? That’s the question.’

‘He doesn’t look as if he’s satisfied,’ Mathilde remarked.

‘No, that’s true. Because Clémence has done a runner.’

‘No, Danglard. I think he’s worried about something else.’

One of the technicians, Leclerc, came into the room.

‘About the prints,
inspecteur
. None at all. She must have wiped everything, unless she was wearing gloves the whole time. Never seen anything like it. But in the bathroom, I found a drop of dried blood on the wall, down behind the washbasin.’

Danglard ran upstairs behind him.

‘She must have washed something. Maybe the rubber gloves, before throwing them away. We didn’t find any near Delphine’s body. Get it analysed, fast as you can, Leclerc. If it’s blood from Madame Le Nermord, that pins it on Clémence once and for all.’

A few hours later, analysis had confirmed that the blood was that of Delphine Le Nermord. A wanted notice went out for Clémence.

On hearing the news, Adamsberg remained depressed. Danglard thought about the three things that had been on Adamsberg’s mind. Number one was Dr Pontieux. Well, that was resolved now. That left the fashion magazine. And the smell of rotten apples. He was certainly fretting about the rotten apples. But what point was there in that now? Danglard reflected that Adamsberg had found a different method from his own for making himself unhappy. In spite of his casual manner, Adamsberg had discovered an effective way of stopping himself finding any rest.

Most of the time, the door between the
commissaire
‘s office and Danglard’s remained open. Adamsberg didn’t need to isolate himself to be alone. So Danglard came and went, put down files, read him a report, went off again or sat down for a brief chat. And now, more often since Clémence’s disappearance, Adamsberg didn’t seem receptive to anything, but carried on reading without looking up. Not that this hurt Danglard’s feelings, since it was obviously unintentional. It was more a kind of absence than a lack of attention, Danglard thought. Because Adamsberg did pay attention. But to what? He had an odd way of reading too, usually standing up, gripping his arms by the elbows and peering down at notes on the table. He could stay like that for hours on end. Danglard, who was aware all day of his body feeling weary and of his legs being unwilling to carry him, wondered how he managed it.

Just then, Adamsberg was standing up, looking at a little notebook with blank pages, open on his desk.

‘Sixteen days now,’ said Danglard, sitting down.

‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg.

This time he looked up at Danglard. It was true that there was nothing to read in the notebook.

‘It’s not normal,’ Danglard went on. ‘We should have found her by now. She’s got to go out, to eat and drink, she must sleep somewhere. And her description’s all over the papers. She can’t possibly escape. Especially looking the way she does. But there we are. She’s managed it somehow.’

‘Yes,’ said Adamsberg, ‘she’s managed it. There’s something wrong somewhere.’

‘I wouldn’t put it like that,’ said Danglard. ‘I’d say we’ve taken too long to find her, but we will in the end. She’s good at keeping a low profile, the old trout. In Neuilly, nobody seems to have known much about her. What do the neighbours say? That she didn’t bother anyone, that she was independent, funny-looking, always with her little beret on, and addicted to the lonely-hearts ads. Nothing else. She lived there for twenty years, for heaven’s sake, and nobody knows whether she had any friends, nobody knows whether she had another hideaway, and nobody remembers just when she left there. Apparently she never went on holiday. There are people like that who go through life without anyone else taking any notice of them. It’s not so strange that she ended up murdering someone. But it’s only a matter of time. We’ll find her.’

‘No, there’s something wrong here somewhere.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That’s just what I’m trying to puzzle out.’

Discouraged, Danglard pulled himself heavily to his feet in three stages – trunk, buttocks, legs – and paced round the room.

‘I’d like to try to know what
you
‘re trying to know,’ he said.

‘By the way, Danglard, the lab can have the fashion magazine back now. I’ve finished.’