The Chalk Circle Man (17 page)

‘You’ve finished what?’

Danglard was anxious to get back to his office, and anxious about this discussion which he knew would lead nowhere, but he couldn’t prevent himself thinking that Adamsberg had some idea, perhaps some hypothesis, and that alerted his curiosity, even though he suspected that whatever it was had not yet become clear to Adamsberg himself.

The
commissaire
looked back at the notebook.

‘This fashion magazine,’ he said, ‘contained an article signed Delphine Vitruel. That was Delphine Le Nermord’s maiden name. The editor told me that she was a regular contributor, writing an article almost every month about what was in fashion, skirt lengths or seams in stockings. And that interested me. I read the whole lot. It took some time. And then there’s the smell of rotten apples. I’m starting to understand some things.’

Danglard shook his head. ‘What about the rotten apples?’ he said. ‘We can’t arrest Le Nermord for smelling of fear. So why are you still worrying about him, for heaven’s sake?’

‘Anything small and cruel intrigues me. You’ve been listening too much to Mathilde. Now you’re defending the circle man.’

‘I’m doing nothing of the kind. I’m just concerned about Clémence, so I’m leaving him alone.’

‘I’m concerned about Clémence too, nothing but Clémence. Doesn’t alter the fact that Le Nermord is a creep.’

‘
Commissaire
, one should be sparing with one’s contempt, because of the large number of those in need of it. I didn’t make that up.’

‘Who did?’

‘Chateaubriand.’

‘Him again. Not good for you, is he?’

‘No, he isn’t. But anyway. Sincerely,
commissaire
, is this circle man such a contemptible person? He’s an eminent historian …’

‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that.’

‘I give up,’ said Danglard, sitting down. ‘ To each his obsession. Mine’s Clémence right now. I’ve got to find her. She’s out there somewhere, and I’m going to run her to ground. It’s got to happen. It’s logical.’

‘Ah,’ said Adamsberg, with a smile, ‘foolish logic is the demon of weak minds. I didn’t make that up either.’

‘Who did?’

‘The difference between you and me, Danglard, is that I don’t know who said it. But I like that quotation, it suits me. Because I’m not logical. I’m off for a walk now. I need it.’

Adamsberg went for a walk until evening. It was the only way he had found to sort out his thoughts. As if, thanks to the exercise, his thoughts were being stirred, like particles in a suspension. That way, the heavier ones fell to the bottom and the more delicate ones floated to the top. In the end, he came to no conclusion, but at least he now had a decanted version of his thoughts, organised by gravity. At the top, there bobbed up and down things like that pathetic character Le Nermord, his retreat from Byzantium, and his habit of tapping his pipe against his teeth, which were not even stained yellow by tobacco. Dentures, obviously. And the rotten-apple smell. And Clémence, the murderer, disappearing with her black beret, her nylon overalls and her red-rimmed eyes.

He froze. In the distance a young woman was hailing a taxi. It was getting late, he couldn’t see her very well, and he began to run. But it was too late, a waste of time, the taxi had pulled away. He stood on the pavement, panting. Why had he run? It would have been good just to see Camille get into a taxi, without running after her. Without even trying to catch her.

He clenched his fists in his jacket pockets, feeling a little emotional. Well, that was normal.

Quite normal. Not worth making a fuss about it. If he had seen Camille, been surprised, and run after her, it was perfectly normal to feel a little upset. It was the surprise. Or the speed. Anybody’s hands would be trembling the same way.

But was it even her? Probably not. She lived on the other side of the world. And it was absolutely indispensable that she should go on living on the other side of the world. But that profile, that body, the way of holding the car window with both hands to speak to the driver … So what? Plenty of people might look like that. Camille is on the other side of the world. No need to discuss it, or to get upset about seeing a girl getting into a taxi.

But what if it was Camille? Well, if it was, he’d missed her. That was all. She was catching a taxi to go back to the other side of the world. No point wondering about it, the situation remained exactly the same as before. Camille vanishing into the night. Appearing. Disappearing.

He went on his way, feeling calmer, and chanting those two words to himself. He wanted to get to sleep quickly, so as to forget Le Nermord’s pipe, Clémence’s beret and the tousled hair of his
petite chérie
.

So that was what he did.

XVIII

T
HE FOLLOWING WEEK BROUGHT NO MORE NEWS OF
C
LÉMENCE
. By three every afternoon, Danglard was drifting off into an alcoholic haze, punctuated by a few verbal outbursts to vent his frustration. Dozens of reported sightings of her had come in. Morning after morning, Danglard would place on Adamsberg’s desk the negative results of the follow-up searches.

‘Report from Montauban. False alarm again,’ said Danglard.

And Adamsberg had raised his head to say, ‘Fine, OK, very good.’ Worse still, Danglard suspected that Adamsberg was not even reading the reports. In the evening, they were still sitting where Danglard had left them in the morning. So he picked them up again and filed them away in the dossier marked ‘Clémence Valmont’.

Danglard couldn’t help keeping count. It had been twenty-seven days now since Clémence Valmont had disappeared. Mathilde often telephoned Adamsberg to see if there was any news of her weird little shrew-mouse, and Danglard heard him say, ‘No, nothing. No, I haven’t given up, what makes you think so? I’m waiting for some facts to trickle in. No hurry.’

‘No hurry.’ Adamsberg’s motto. Danglard was in a state of high nervous tension, whereas Castreau seemed to have changed his spots and was taking life as it came, with unusual tolerance for him.

In addition to this, Reyer had come in several times at Adamsberg’s request. Danglard found him less off-putting than before. He wondered whether that was because Reyer was more familiar with the police station now that he could find his way along the corridors by feeling the walls, or because the identification of the murderer had left him feeling relieved. What Danglard did not want to think, at any cost, was that the handsome blind man was in a better mood because he had found his way to Mathilde’s bed. No, anything but that. How would he know, though? He had listened to the beginning of his interview with the
commissaire
.

‘Take you now,’ Adamsberg had said, ‘you can’t see any more, so you have different ways of seeing. What I’d like is for you to talk to me about Clémence Valmont for as long as you like, just give me your impressions of her, how it struck you when you listened to her, all the sensations you felt in her presence, all the details you guessed at when you went near her, or heard her, or felt she was in the room. The more I know about her, the more likely it is I’ll get somewhere. You’re the person, Reyer, along with Mathilde, who must have known her best. And you have a knowledge of the para-visible. You pick up on all the things that we fail to understand because we get a quick visual fix with our eyes, which satisfies us.’

And every time he came, Reyer stayed there for a long while. Through the open door, Danglard could see Adamsberg leaning against the wall and listening attentively.

* * *

It was three-thirty in the afternoon. Adamsberg opened his notebook at page three. He waited for a long-drawn-out moment, then wrote as follows:

Tomorrow I’ll go out into the country to look for Clémence. I don’t think I’m mistaken. I can’t remember when it came to me, I should have made a note. Was it at the very beginning? Or when I heard about the smell of rotten apples? Everything Reyer tells me points in the same direction. Yesterday I took a walk as far as the Gare de l’Est. I wondered why I was a policeman. Perhaps because it’s a job where you have to look for things with some chance of finding them, and that makes up for the rest. Because in the rest of your life, nobody ever asks you to look for anything and you don’t stand much chance of finding anything, since you don’t know what you’re looking for. Leaves, for instance. I don’t know why it is, really, that I keep drawing them. Yesterday in the café in the Gare de l’Est, someone said to me that the way not to be afraid of death was to live as stupid a life as possible. That way there’d be nothing to regret. It didn’t seem a very good solution to me
.

But I’m not afraid of death, not all that much. So it didn’t really concern me, what he said. And I’m not afraid of being lonely either
.

All my shirts need replacing, now I think of it. What I’d like is to find some sort of universal clothing. Then I’d buy thirty sets and I wouldn’t have to worry about clothes for the rest of my life. When I told my sister what I thought, she shrieked. The very idea of a universal uniform horrified her
.

I’d like to find a universal uniform so that I wouldn’t have to think about it
.

I’d like to find a universal leaf too, so that I wouldn’t have to bother about that
.

When it comes down to it, I wish I hadn’t missed Camille the other night in the street. I’d have caught up with her, she’d have been astonished – touched, perhaps. I might have seen her face tremble, she might have blushed or turned pale, I don’t know which. I would have taken her face in my hands to stop her trembling, and it would have been fantastic. I’d have held her in my arms, we’d have stood there in the street for a long time. An hour, say. But perhaps she wouldn’t have felt anything at all. Perhaps she wouldn’t have wanted to stand there holding me. Perhaps she wouldn’t have wanted to have anything to do with me. I don’t know. I can’t imagine. Perhaps she’d have said, ‘Jean-Baptiste, my taxi’s waiting.’ I don’t know. And perhaps it wasn’t Camille at all. And perhaps I don’t care. I don’t know. I don’t think so
.

And as for my intellectual colleague Danglard, I’m getting on his nerves. It’s obvious. I’m not doing it on purpose. Nothing’s happening, nothing’s being said, and that’s what gets on his nerves. And yet since Clémence has gone missing, some key thing has happened. But I couldn’t tell him
.

Adamsberg raised his head as he heard the door open.

It was a warm afternoon. Danglard was returning from a northern suburb, perspiring freely. An interview about stolen goods. It had been quite satisfactory, but it hadn’t satisfied him. Danglard needed more important cases to keep him going, and the murderous shrew-mouse seemed to him to be a worthy challenge. But the fear of having to admit failure was getting sharper every day. He didn’t even dare talk about the case to the children. He was feeling very much like pouring himself a glass of white wine, when Adamsberg came into his office.

‘I’m looking for some scissors,’ Adamsberg said.

Danglard went to look in Florence’s desk and found a pair. He noticed that Florence had laid in a fresh stock of toffees. Adamsberg closed one eye as he threaded a needle.

‘What’s up now?’ asked Danglard. ‘Bit of mending?’

‘The hem of my trousers has come undone.’

Adamsberg sat on a chair, crossed his knee and began to mend his trousers. Danglard watched him, taken somewhat aback, but feeling soothed. It was soothing to watch someone sewing with little stitches, as if the rest of the world didn’t exist.

‘You’ll see how good I am at this, Danglard,’ Adamsberg remarked. ‘I do tiny little stitches. My youngest sister showed me how, one day when we didn’t know what to do with ourselves, as my father used to say.’

‘
I
don’t know what to do with myself,’ said Danglard. ‘For one thing, I’m no good at fixing the hems on the kids’ trousers. And for another, this killer is haunting me. Ghastly, horrible old woman. She’s going to get away, I know it. It’s driving me nuts. Honestly, it’s driving me nuts.’

He got up to take a beer can out of the cupboard.

‘No,’ said Adamsberg

‘No what?’

‘No beer.’

The
commissaire
was biting off the thread, having completely forgotten that he had Florence’s scissors.

‘The scissors are right there,’ said Danglard. ‘Damn it all, I fetched you the scissors for the thread, and look what you’re doing now. And what’s wrong with beer, all of a sudden?’

‘What’s wrong is that you might get launched and drink ten beers, and today that won’t do.’

‘I didn’t think that was any of your business. My body, my responsibility, my belly and my beer.’

‘Of course. But it’s your investigation and you’re my inspector. And tomorrow we’re going to the country. We have a rendezvous with someone we know, I hope. So I need you, and I need you with a clear head. And a strong stomach, too. Very important, the stomach. I don’t know if a settled stomach helps one to think clearly. But I do know that a poor stomach will stop you thinking at all.’

Danglard observed Adamsberg’s tense face. It was impossible to guess whether it was because his thread had just knotted, or because of the projected trip to the country.

‘Oh damn and blast!’ said Adamsberg. ‘My thread’s got a knot. I really hate that. Apparently the golden rule is that you should sew in the same direction as it comes off the reel, otherwise you get a knot. See what I mean? I must have been working the other way without thinking. And now there’s a knot.’

‘I think you had too long a thread in the first place,’ Danglard ventured.

Yes, sewing was a restful kind of occupation.

‘No, Danglard, I had the right length, from my hand to my elbow. Tomorrow, at eight o’clock, I’ll need eight men, a van and some dogs. And we’d better take the doctor along too.’

He poked the needle into the knot to undo it, broke off the thread, and smoothed down his trousers. Then he went out, without discovering whether Danglard would have a clear head and a strong stomach the next day. Danglard didn’t know, either.