The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg) (45 page)

‘Vendermot wanted to kill the two children. He found out.’

‘How?’

‘Nobody told him. He delivered some planks to the chateau and Valleray helped him unload. The count got his shirt caught on one of the claws of the digger, and it tore in half. Vendermot saw the birthmark on his back.’

‘But there’s someone else who knows, or half knows.’

The woman lifted her frightened face towards Adamsberg.

‘Lina. She saw you kill him when she was a little girl. That’s why she wiped the handle. Then she tried to wipe out the memory as well, to bury it deep in oblivion. That’s why she had her first crisis soon afterwards.’

‘What crisis?’

‘The first vision of the Ghost Riders. She saw Vendermot being seized. So that way, Lord Hellequin could become responsible for the crime, instead of you. And she kept on nourishing this idea, crazy as it was.’

‘On purpose?’

‘No, as a form of self-protection. But it’s important now to help her get rid of the nightmare.’

‘We can’t. These things are stronger than us.’

‘You can, perhaps, if you tell her the truth.’

‘Never,’ said the little woman, turning back to the line.

‘In a corner of her mind, Lina already suspects it. And if she does, then her brothers do too. It would help them to know that you did it and why.’

‘Never.’

‘It’s your choice, Madame Vendermot. To imagine: Antonin will stop thinking he’s made of clay, Martin will stop eating insects. Lina will be delivered from her visions. Think about it, you’re their mother.’

‘The clay, that’s certainly troubling,’ she said weakly.

So weakly Adamsberg felt sure that at that moment a puff of wind would have been enough to scatter her like dandelion down. A fragile little woman, so at a loss, yet who had split her husband’s head open with an axe. The dandelion is a humble but very persistent plant.

‘But two things won’t change,’ Adamsberg continued. ‘Hippo will go on speaking backwards. And Hellequin’s ghostly army will go on riding through Ordebec.’

‘Oh yes, of course it will,’ said the mother in a firmer voice, ‘that’s nothing to do with us.’

LV

Veyrenc and Danglard manhandled mo ungently into Adamsberg’s office and sat him down forcibly on a chair. He was handcuffed. Adamsberg felt real pleasure on seeing him again, in fact a rather proud feeling of satisfaction that he had saved him from the stake.

Standing either side of Mo, Veyrenc and Danglard played their parts to perfection, their expressions stern and vigilant.

Adamsberg winked surreptitiously at Mo.

‘Now you see how it ends if you go on the run, Mo.’

‘How did you find me?’ the young man asked, in an insufficiently truculent tone.

‘We’d have nabbed you sooner or later. We had a list of addresses.’

‘So what?’ said Mo. ‘I had the right to run away, I had to run away. I didn’t torch that fucking motor.’

‘No, I know that,’ said Adamsberg.

Mo took on a moderately astonished expression.

‘The two sons of Clermont-Brasseur did it,’ Adamsberg went on. ‘Right now, they’re being charged with premeditated murder.’

Before leaving Ordebec three days earlier, Adamsberg had got Valleray to agree to put some pressure on the examining magistrate. The promise had been extracted without difficulty, since the cruelty of the brothers had deeply shocked the old man. He had had his share of atrocities on his doorstep in Ordebec, and was not disposed to indulgence, including towards himself.

‘His sons?’ Mo was asking with false surprise. ‘His own
sons
torched his car with him inside?’

‘And they planned to get you charged with it. Your trainers, your methods. Except that Christian Clermont didn’t know how you do up your laces. And the heat of the fire burnt his hair.’

‘Yeah, it’ll do that every time.’

Mo looked right and left, as if he had suddenly realised that the situation had quite changed.

‘Oh, so I’m free to go now?’

‘Ha! In your dreams,’ said Adamsberg sternly. ‘You forgotten how you left here? Armed threats to a police officer, violence and escaping from custody.’

‘But I
had
to,’ Mo repeated.

‘You may think so, son, but that’s the law. You’re going into preventive custody now, and your case will come up in a month.’

‘But I didn’t really hurt you,’ Mo protested. ‘I only knocked you about a bit.’

‘Knocking me about a bit gets you up in front of a judge. You’re used to it. He’ll take the decision.’

‘How long could it be?’

‘Two years,’ Adamsberg guessed, ‘because of the exceptional circumstances and degree of damages. You might be out in eight months for good conduct.’

‘Eight months,
shit
,’ said Mo, this time with near-sincerity.

‘You ought to be thanking me for finding who really did set the fire. And I had no reason to help you either. A commissaire who lets a suspect escape, do you realise what trouble he can get into?’

‘See if I fucking care.’

‘No, I don’t suppose you do,’ said Adamsberg. ‘OK, take him away.’

Adamsberg made a sign with his hand to Mo, signifying ‘I did tell you. Eight months. No choice.’

‘That’s true, commissaire,’ said Mo suddenly, holding out his handcuffed wrists. ‘I should thank you.’

As he shook hands with Adamsberg, Mo slipped him a ball of paper.
Larger than the wrapping of a sugar lump. Adamsberg shut the door when they had left, leaned against it to stop anyone interrupting him, and read the message. Mo had written out, in very tiny letters, his reasoning about the string they had found attached to Hellebaud’s feet. At the end of the note, he gave the presumed name and address of the nasty little so-and-so who had done it. Adamsberg smiled and carefully put the paper in his pocket.

LVI

Using his usual channels, the Comte de Valleray had arranged for the osteopath to return to Léo’s bedside on the appointed day. The doctor spent twenty minutes with her, accompanied only by Dr Turbot, who didn’t want to miss a minute of the demonstration, and the warder René. In the corridor, the same scene as before repeated itself, with those waiting pacing up and down: Adamsberg, Lina, the nurse, the count sitting on a chair and tapping the lino with his cane, the warders from Fleury guarding the door. The same silence and tension. But this time, for Adamsberg, the anxiety was of a different kind. It was no longer a matter of saving Léo’s life, but of finding out whether the doctor could restore her powers of speech. Her words would reveal – or not – the name of the Ordebec murderer. Without her testimony, Adamsberg doubted whether the examining magistrate would uphold the charges against Capitaine Émeri. He wasn’t going to take such a momentous decision on the basis of half a dozen sugar wrappers – which had indeed turned out to have no fingerprints on them. Nor on the basis of the assault on Hippo at the well, which proved nothing about the other murders.

In Valleray’s case, it was a matter of finding out whether his old Léo would regain her former vivacity, or would remain forever locked into her calm silence. As for the wedding, he hadn’t mentioned it again. After the shocks, scares and scandals that had rocked Ordebec, it was as if the little town was exhausted, its apple trees more weighed down, the cows turned to statues.

A wave of cool weather with rain had returned Normandy to its normal aspect. So Lina, instead of one of her low-cut blouses, was wearing a high-necked sweater. Adamsberg was concentrating on this problem when Dr Hellebaud at last came out of the room, looking sleek and satisfied. His lunch had been laid for him at a table in the nurse’s office as before. They all accompanied him there in silence and the doctor rubbed his hands together energetically, before assuring them that next day, Léo would be able to speak normally. She had recovered enough psychological strength to face up to the situation, so he had been able to lift the protective fences. Turbot watched him eating, leaning his cheek on his hand, rather in the pose of an old man in love.

‘There is something,’ the osteopath said between mouthfuls, ‘that I would like to know. If a man pounces on you and tries to kill you, it would throw anyone into shock. And if a friend did it, that would seriously increase the trauma. But something much more powerful than that has affected Léo, so she was resolutely refusing to face up to it. It was as if, for example, her own son had attacked her. Absolutely. So I don’t understand that. But I’d say it wasn’t just an acquaintance who hurt her. It must have been someone more important to her.’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Adamsberg pensively. ‘A man she didn’t often see any more. But she had known him long ago in special circumstances.’

‘Which were?’ asked the doctor, gazing at him with a very concentrated glint in his eyes.

‘When this man was three years old, Léo plunged into a frozen pond to rescue him from drowning. She saved his life.’

The doctor nodded his head several times. ‘Yes, that’ll do,’ he said.

‘When can I see her?’

‘Right away. But don’t ask her any questions until tomorrow. Who brought her those ridiculous books? A bizarre love story and a book on horse management. What an idea.’

‘I liked the love story,’ said the nurse.

*   *   *

Adamsberg retraced his steps along the Chemin de Bonneval, strolled past St Antony’s Chapel, walked as far as the old Oison Well, and arrived, feeling somewhat shattered, to dine at the Boar – Blue or Running, whatever it was. Zerk, now back from his sentimental journey to Italy, phoned during the meal to say that Hellebaud had flown away for good. It was excellent news, though Adamsberg could hear the distress in his son’s voice.

At seven next morning, he had taken his breakfast under the apple tree. He didn’t want to be late for the beginning of visiting time, and above all for Commandant Bourlant to forestall him at Léo’s side. With the complicity of Dr Turbot and the nurse, he was being allowed to go in half an hour before the official time. Now feeling better about sugar, he put two lumps in his coffee, then closed the box carefully and put the elastic band back round it.

At eight thirty, the nurse discreetly opened the door to him. Léo was waiting, sitting up in an armchair, and already dressed. Dr Turbot had given permission for her to go home today. It had been arranged for Brigadier Blériot to pick her up, accompanied by Fleg.

‘You haven’t come just for the pleasure of seeing me, have you, commissaire? But I’m being very rude,’ she reproved herself. ‘It was you who got me taken to hospital and stayed by me, and it was you who arranged this special doctor. Where does he practise?’

‘In Fleury.’

‘Turbot even told me you combed my hair. You really are nice.’

We are nice people
, Adamsberg recalled, visualising the faces of the Vendermot children, two fair and two dark, and it was almost true.

Adamsberg had ordered Dr Turbot above all not to mention Émeri’s arrest to Léo. He wanted her testimony to be entirely without influence.

‘Yes, it’s true, Léo. I want to know.’

‘Louis,’ she whispered, ‘it was my little Louis.’

‘You mean Émeri?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you all right, Léo?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened? With the sugar? Because that’s what you said to me, Léo. You said Eylau, the name of the battle, then you said Fleg, and then sugar.’

‘Did I? I don’t remember. When was that?’

‘A day or so after you were attacked.’

‘No, I don’t remember that. But yes, he did have a problem with sugar. And ten days earlier, I’d been to St Antony’s Chapel and I hadn’t seen anything.’

‘That was before Herbier went missing.’

‘Yes. And the day I met you, while I was waiting for Fleg, I saw all these little white papers on the ground by the tree trunk. I hid them under the leaves because they were litter, and I counted at least six. Next morning, I thought about them again. There’s never anyone on the Chemin de Bonneval, you know that. So I thought it odd someone would have been around when Herbier was getting himself killed. And I only know one man who eats six lumps of sugar at a time. And doesn’t crumple up the wrappers. It’s Louis. He sometimes has an attack, you know the sort, and he has to take sugar quickly. Next day, I wondered if Louis had been along there before, looking for the body in the forest, but if so, he hadn’t said anything and, even more surprisingly, he hadn’t found it. I was curious, so I called him again. You wouldn’t have a cigar about you, would you, commissaire? It’s ages since I had a smoke.’

‘I’ve got a half-smoked cigarette.’

‘That’ll do.’

Adamsberg opened the window and gave Léo the cigarette and a light. ‘Thank you,’ said Léo, inhaling. ‘Louis said he’d come over. But when he arrived, he hurled himself at me. I don’t know why, I don’t understand.’

‘He’s the Ordebec killer, Léo.’

‘He killed Herbier, you mean?’

‘Herbier and others.’

Léo took a long drag on the cigarette, which shook a little.

‘Louis, my little Louis?’

‘Yes. We’ll have time to talk about it this evening, if you let me stay for supper. I’ll do the cooking.’

‘It would be nice to have some soup with plenty of pepper. They don’t put pepper in here.’

‘Right you are. But tell me, why did you say “Eylau”, not “Louis”?’

‘It was his nickname when he was a little boy,’ said Léo with that faraway look that accompanies a memory rising up from the past. ‘It was his father who gave it to him, when he had a toy drum, but it was probably meant to make him think of a career in the army. And it stuck to him until he was five: the little drummer boy of Eylau, Little Eylau. Did I really call him that?’

*   *   *

At roughly the same time, the Clermont-Brasseur affair was hitting the news-stands, provoking much scandal. Questions were asked about whether the brothers had been protected in the aftermath of the crime. But the queries didn’t last. Nor was much attention paid to the arrest of young Mohamed. All the flurry wouldn’t last long. In a few days, the affair would be arousing little comment then forgotten, as Hippo would have been if he’d fallen into the well.