Have Mercy On Us All (36 page)

“It’s Clichy,” he reported.

“Bull’s-eye. Heart of the 1920 outbreak. It’s in his family, it’s his phantom. That’s where he used to live, I’ll bet you. Come on, man, give me the name and address.”

“Clémentine Courbet, 22, rue Hauptoul.”

“Look her up.”

As Danglard got himself into the central ID data base Adamsberg strode up and down, trying not to step on the kitten, who was playing with a loose thread trailing from his trouser ankle.

“Clémentine Courbet, maiden name Journot, born Clichy, married Jean Courbet.”

“Anything else?”

“Drop it, sir. She’s eighty-six, damn it, she’s an old lady. Let it go.”

Adamsberg pursed his lips.

“She gave birth to a daughter, in Clichy, in 1942,” Danglard continued, following routine. “Name of Roseline.”

“Click on Roseline Courbet.”

Adamsberg picked up Woolly and stuck it back in its basket. It jumped out again.

“Roseline, maiden name Courbet, married name Heller-Deville, forename Antoine.”

Danglard looked up mutely at Adamsberg.

“Did they have a son? Arnaud?”

“Arnaud Damascus,” Danglard read off the screen.

“It’s his granny,” said Adamsberg. “He calls Granny on the QT from the phone box down the road. What about Granny’s parents, Danglard?”

“They died, sir. We’re not going to take this all the way back to the Norman Conquest, are we?”

“Names, please.”

A few quick taps on the keys.

“Emile Journot and Célestine Davelle, born in Clichy, Cité Hauptoul.”

“So there they are. The plague-beaters. Damascus’s grandma was six years old during the epidemic.”

He picked up Danglard’s extension and dialled Vandoosler.

“Marc Vandoosler? Adamsberg here.”

“One moment,
commissaire
, let me switch off the iron.”

“Cité Hauptoul, in Clichy, does that ring a bell?”

“It was the epicentre of the outbreak. A rag pickers’ shanty. Is there a special that mentions it?”

“No, we’ve got an address.”

“The shanty was bulldozed years ago and they built back-to-backs over it. Narrow streets, small houses, for the poor.”

“Thank you, Vandoosler.”

Adamsberg put the receiver down slowly.

“Two
lieutenants
, Danglard. We’re getting over there. Fast.”

“You want four men? To pick up an old lady?”

“Four men, Danglard. On the way we’ll stop by the magistrate’s to get a search warrant.”

“When do we get lunch?”

“On the hoof.”

XXXIV

THEY MADE THEIR
way over ancient cobbles and down a rubbish-strewn alley to a dilapidated house with a ramshackle clapboard lean-to on one side. Rain plashed on the tiles. It hadn’t been much of a summer, and September was no better.

“Fireplace,” said Adamsberg, pointing to the chimney. “Wood. Apple tree.”

He knocked on the door and it was opened by a tall, fat old lady with a creased and heavy face and her hair done up in a flower-printed head-scarf. Without saying a word she turned her dark eyes on each of the policemen in turn. Then she removed the drooping cigarette from between her lips.

“
Flics
,” she said.

It was not a question but a diagnosis.

“The
flics
,” Adamsberg confirmed as he went inside. “Clémentine Courbet, I presume?”

“Herself,” answered Clémentine.

The old woman showed them into the lounge and pummelled the cushions before she let them sit on the sofa.

“So they have lasses in the force these days, do they?” she said with a sneer for
Lieutenant
Hélène Froissy. “Can’t say I think much of that. There’s too many fellows playing around with guns already, that’s what I say. No need for girls to go and play with them. Ain’t you got nothing better to do, miss?”

Clémentine’s accent seemed to come from long ago, from the days when life was spent toiling in the fields.

She huffed and puffed as she went to the kitchen and brought back a tray of glasses and a plate of girdle cakes.

“The trouble is, people never have enough imagination, that’s what I say.” She put the tray on a low table covered with a lace doily, next to the flowery sofa. “Can I interest you in some Madeira and girdle cakes made with the skin of the milk?”

Adamsberg looked at her with surprise, finding something attractive in that strong, battered face. Kernorkian made it plain that he wouldn’t say no to the cakes, since his system had made light work of the sandwich he’d bolted down in the car.

“There’s a good boy,” said Clémentine. “But you can’t get the skin of the milk any more. The milk you get these days is just dishwater. So I have to make do with cream. I’m sorry, but I have to.”

Clémentine filled the five glasses, took a sip of Madeira, and looked at the party.

“Now no more of this nonsense,” she said as she lit another cigarette. “What’s this all about?”

“Arnaud Damascus Heller-Deville,” Adamsberg began as he reached out for one of the girdle cakes.

“I beg your pardon, but it’s Arnaud Damascus Viguier. He prefers it that way. The name of Heller-Deville is not uttered under this roof. If you can’t help yourself, go say it somewhere else.”

“Is he your grandson?”

“Whoa there, pretty face, what you do take me for? A donkey?” said Clémentine, jutting her chin towards Adamsberg. “If you didn’t know that you wouldn’t have come here, would you? How do you like my cakes? Tasty? Or not?”

“Tasty,” Adamsberg asserted.

“Very tasty,” Danglard insisted, and quite sincerely too. To tell the truth, he’d not had such delicious girdle cakes in forty years, and the sensation filled him with joy.

The old woman had not sat down all this time.

“Now no more of this nonsense,” she said once more, sizing up the policemen. “Give me a few minutes to take off my apron, switch off the gas and tell the neighbour, and I’m all yours.”

“Clémentine Courbet,” said Adamsberg, “I have here a search warrant. We will first search the premises.”

“What’s your name, then?”

“Commissaire Principal Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg.”

“Mr Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, I’m not in the habit of endangering the lives of people who done me no wrong,
flics
included. The rats are in the attic,” she said, pointing to the ceiling. “Three hundred and twenty-two of them, plus ten cadavers crawling with ravenous fleas, what I don’t recommend approaching, or I’ll not answer for your life. If you want to poke around up there, you’ll have to call in pest control. There’s no great mystery. That’s where I breed ’em, and the side room is where you’ll find Arnaud’s machine, what he types his messages on. With the envelopes. Anything else you want to clap eyes on?”

“The book collection.”

“Attic as well. But you have to get past the rats first. Four hundred volumes, quite something, ain’t it?”

“All about the plague?”

“What else?”

“Clémentine,” Adamsberg asked gently as he took another cake, “wouldn’t you like to sit down?”

Clémentine lowered her large frame into a flowery armchair and crossed her arms.

“Why are you telling us all this? Why aren’t you denying it?”

“What, the plaguey stuff?”

“I mean, the five murders.”

“Murder my arse,” said Clémentine. “They’re the murderers, every one of them.”

“Yes, murderers and torturers,” Adamsberg agreed.

“They can drop dead. The more of ’em drop dead, the more Arnaud comes back to life. They took everything off him, they drove him right to the bottom of the pile. Arnaud’s got to come back to life. And he can’t
do
that as long as that dogshit stays on the face of the earth.”

“But dogshit doesn’t just wipe itself off the face of the earth, Clémentine.”

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it did? But dogshit spreads worse than nettles.”

“You had to give it a hand, didn’t you, Clémentine?”

“A big hand.”

“Why plague?”

“The Journots are lords of the plague,” Clémentine announced curtly. “You can’t mess with a Journot, and that’s that.”

“Or else?”

“Or else the Journots will put the plague on you. They are lords of the great affliction.”

“Clémentine, why are you telling us all this?”

“Instead of what?”

“Instead of keeping you mouth shut.”

“You found me, didn’t you? And the lad’s inside since yesterday. So no more of this nonsense, I say, let’s get on with it and be done. What difference does it make?”

“It makes all the difference in the world.”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Clémentine with a steely smile. “Job’s done. You get it,
commissaire
? Done. The enemy is within the walls. The next three will die in the coming week no matter what, whether I stay here or go somewhere else. It’s too late now. The job’s done. All eight will die.”

“Eight?”

“The six animals, the girl sadist and the man behind it. By my reckoning that comes to eight. Do you know all about it or don’t you?”

“Damascus hasn’t said anything.”

“Only to be expected. He couldn’t say anything until he was sure the job was over. That’s what we’d agreed, in case either of us got nabbed. How did you find him?”

“The diamond was what gave him away.”

“He hides it.”

“I saw it.”

“Aha,” said Clémentine. “You’ve got the gen, have you, all the gen about the scourge of God? We never reckoned on that.”

“I tried to learn fast.”

“But not fast enough. The job’s done. The enemy is within the walls.”

“You mean the fleas?”

“Dead right. They’ve already got them in their clothes. They’ve already caught it.”

“Who are
they
, Clémentine?”

“Go find out for yourself. You think I’ll let you save them? It’s what was waiting for them, and it’s got them. They shouldn’t have done down a Journot. They demolished him,
commissaire
, they took him to pieces, him and his girl, the one who jumped out the window, poor kid.”

Adamsberg nodded.

“Clémentine, was it you who persuaded Arnaud to take revenge?”

“We talked about it almost every day when he was in clink. He’s his great-grandfather’s heir, and he inherited the ring. Arnaud had to raise his head high again, like Emile, during the outbreak.”

“Aren’t you scared of prison? For yourself, for Arnaud?”

“Prison?” Clémentine slapped her thigh and guffawed. “You must be joking,
commissaire
. Hold your horses, Arnaud and me, we ain’t killed nobody.”

“So who did, then?”

“The fleas.”

“Releasing infected fleas is like aiming a gun and pulling the trigger.”

“Hold your horses, they didn’t have to bite. It’s the scourge of God, it falleth where it listeth. If anyone done murder, it’s God. You ain’t aiming to arrest God, are you?”

Adamsberg took a long look at Clémentine’s face, which showed the same calm confidence as her grandson’s. He suddenly understood where Damascus’s imperturbable tranquillity came from. Both he and his grandmother felt profoundly unguilty of the five murders they’d just committed and of the three they still had in train.

“No more nonsense,” Clémentine said. “Now I’ve told you all that, do you want me to stay here or come with you?”

“I’m going to ask you to come with us, Clémentine Courbet,” said
Adamsberg
as he stood up. “To make a statement. You are helping us with our inquiries.”

“Suits me down to the ground,” said Clémentine, also rising. “That way I’ll get to see the boy.”

While Clémentine cleared the table, put out the fire and switched off the mains, Kernorkian made it clear to Adamsberg that he was definitely not keen on searching the attic.

“
Brigadier
, the fleas are not infected. Good Lord, where do you think that old lady could have got hold of rats infected with bubonic plague? She’s dreaming, Kernorkian, it’s all in her head.”

“That’s not what she says,” Kernorkian retorted glumly.

“She handles them every day. And she’s not got the plague.”

“The Journots have protection, sir.”

“The Journots have got a phantom, and the phantom won’t do you any harm, young man. You have my word. He only attacks people who have done a Journot grave harm.”

“A family avenger, like?”

“Exactly. Take a sample of the charcoal too and send it off for analysis, rush job.”

When they got her back to the station the old lady caused quite a stir. She had brought a big tin full of girdle cakes which she waved gaily at Damascus when she stopped in front of his cell. Damascus smiled.

“Nothing to worry about, Arnaud,” she said without even trying to lower her voice. “Job’s done. They’ve got them all, the whole lot of them.”

Damascus smiled even wider, took the tin that his granny was holding through the bars of his cell door, and went back with it to sit quietly on his bench.

“Set up the cell next to Damascus’s for her,” Adamsberg instructed. “Get a mattress from the locker room and make it all as comfortable as you can. She’s eighty-six years old. Clémentine,” he said as he turned back to the old lady, “no more nonsense now. Do you want to give your statement right away, or are you feeling too tired?”

“Right away,” she said determinedly.

* * *

Around six in the evening Adamsberg went out for a walk with his head buzzing with all that Clémentine Courbet née Journot had told him. He’d listened to her for two and a half hours, then he’d put the old lady up against the young man. Their certainty that the last three torturers would be dead very soon didn’t waver for an instant throughout the interviews. Not even when Adamsberg proved that the time lag between the release of the fleas and the deaths of the victims was too short, much too short, for the deaths to have been caused by plaguy fleas.
The scourge is ever ready and at the command of God who brings it down and raises it away, as it pleaseth the Lord
, Clémentine kept repeating, quoting word for word the “special” of 19 September. Nor even when Adamsberg showed them the negative lab test results which proved that the fleas were utterly harmless. Nor even when he showed them photographs of the choke marks on the victims’ necks. The faith they had in their insects was utterly unshakeable – and just as steady was their firm belief that three more men would soon die, one in Paris, one in Troyes, and the third in Châtellerault.