This Night's Foul Work (2 page)

A
DAMSBERG WAS MAKING COFFEE IN THE LARGE KITCHEN-LIVING ROOM OF
his new house, still feeling unaccustomed to the space. The light glanced in through the small window-panes, and shone on the ancient red floor-tiles dating from the century before the one before. The room smelled of damp, of woodsmoke, of the new oilcloth on the table, an atmosphere that reminded him of his childhood home in the mountains, when he thought about it. He put two cups without saucers on the table, in a rectangular patch of sunlight. His neighbour was sitting bolt upright, clasping his knee with his good hand. That hand was large enough to strangle an ox between its thumb and index finger, having apparently doubled in size to compensate for the absence of the other.

‘You wouldn't have anything to pep up the coffee, by any chance? If that's not too much trouble.'

Lucio looked suspiciously at the garden, while Adamsberg searched for something alcoholic in the cases he had not yet unpacked.

‘Your daughter wouldn't like a drink, would she?' asked the
commissaire
.

‘She doesn't encourage me.'

‘Now what's this one?' asked Adamsberg, pulling out a bottle from a tea chest.

‘A Sauternes, I'd say,' was the opinion of the old man, screwing up
his eyes like an ornithologist identifying a bird from a distance. ‘It's a bit early in the day for a Sauternes.'

‘Doesn't seem to be anything else here.'

‘We'll settle for that, then,' decreed the old man.

Adamsberg poured him a glass and sat down alongside, letting his back feel the patch of sunlight.

‘How much do you know about the house?' Lucio asked.

‘That the last owner hanged herself in the upstairs room,' said Adamsberg, pointing at the ceiling. ‘And that's why nobody wanted the house. But that doesn't worry me.'

‘Because you've seen plenty of hanged people?'

‘I've seen a few. But it's not the dead who've ever troubled me. It's their killers.'

‘We're not talking about the real dead here,
hombre
, we're talking about the others, the ones who won't go away. And she's never gone away.'

‘The one who hanged herself?'

‘No, the one who hanged herself
did
go away,' explained Lucio, swallowing a gulp of wine, as if to recognise the event. ‘Do you know why she hanged herself?'

‘No.'

‘It was the house that made her go mad. All the women who've lived here have been troubled by the ghost. And then they die.'

‘What ghost?'

‘The convent ghost. A silent one. That's why the street is called the rue des Mouettes.'

‘I don't follow,' said Adamsberg, pouring out coffee.

‘There used to be a convent here, in the century before the one before. Nuns who were forbidden to speak.'

‘A silent order.'

‘Right. It used to be called the rue des Muettes, the Street of Silent Women, but as people forgot the real name, and said it wrong, they
started to call it the rue des Mouettes, which just means the Street of Seagulls.'

‘Nothing to do with birds, then,' said Adamsberg, disappointed.

‘No, they were nuns, but the old name was harder to pronounce. Anyway, one of these silent sisters dishonoured the house. With the devil, they say. Well, I have to admit, there isn't any evidence for that bit.'

‘So what
do
you have evidence of, Monsieur Velasco?' asked Adamsberg, smiling.

‘You can call me Lucio. Oh yes, there's evidence all right. There was a trial at the time, in 1771. The convent was closed and the house had to be purified. The wicked Silent Sister had managed to get herself called Saint Clarisse. She promised any women prepared to come up with a sum of money and go through a ceremony that they would have a place in paradise. What these poor women didn't know was that they were going straight there. When they turned up with their purses full of cash, she cut their throats. Seven of them she killed. Seven,
hombre
. But one night, she got her come-uppance.'

Lucio laughed like a boy, then gathered himself once more.

‘We shouldn't laugh at anyone so wicked,' he said. ‘The spider bite's itching again, that's my punishment.'

Adamsberg watched as Lucio scratched in the air with his left hand, waiting placidly for the rest of the story.

‘Does it help when you scratch it?'

‘Just for a moment, then it starts up again. Well, on the night of 3 January 1771, one more old woman turned up to see Saint Clarisse, hoping to buy her way into paradise. But this time the woman's son, who was suspicious, and mean, came along with her. He was a tanner. And he killed the so-called saint. Like that,' said Lucio, crashing his fist down in the table. ‘He beat her to pulp with his huge hands. Are you with me so far?'

‘Yes.'

‘Because if not, I can start again.'

‘No, no, Lucio, carry on.'

‘Only the thing was, this wicked Sister Clarisse never really went away. Because she was only twenty-six, do you see? And since then, every woman who's ever lived here after her has left the house feet first, after meeting a violent death. Before Madeleine, that's the one who hanged herself, there was a Madame Jeunet in the 1960s. She fell out of a top-floor window. No reason. Before Madame Jeunet, there was a Marie-Louise who put her head in the oven during the war. My father knew them both. Nothing but tragedy.'

The two men nodded simultaneously. Lucio Velasco with gravity, Adamsberg with a certain pleasure. The
commissaire
didn't want to offend the old man. And to tell the truth, this satisfying ghost story suited both of them, so they savoured it, making it last as long as the sugar took to dissolve in their coffee. The horrors of Saint Clarisse made Lucio's life more exciting, and the tale diverted Adamsberg momentarily from the mundane murders he was investigating at the time. This female phantom was more poetic than the two petty criminals who had been slashed to death the previous week at Porte de la Chapelle. He almost decided to tell Lucio about the case, since the old Spaniard seemed to have a definite view about everything. He warmed to this one-armed humorist, though he could have done without the radio buzzing away uninterruptedly in his trouser pocket. At a sign from Lucio, he filled his glass again.

‘If everyone who's ever been murdered was still trailing around in the ether,' Adamsberg said, ‘how many ghosts would I have on my hands in this building? Saint Clarisse, plus her seven victims. Plus the two your father knew, plus Madeleine. That makes eleven. Any more?'

‘No, no, it's just Clarisse,' Lucio pronounced. ‘Her victims were all too old, they didn't come back. Unless they went to their own houses – that's possible.'

‘OK.'

‘And the other three women, they're different. They weren't murdered, they were possessed. But Saint Clarisse hadn't finished her life when the tanner beat her to death. Now do you see why the house was never demolished? Because if it had been, Clarisse would have moved somewhere else. To my house, for instance. And round here, we'd rather know exactly where she is.'

‘Right here.'

Lucio agreed with a wink. ‘And here, so long as nobody comes to disturb her, there's no harm done.'

‘She likes the spot, you're saying.'

‘She doesn't even go into the garden. She just waits for her victims up there in your attic. But now she's got company again.'

‘Me.'

‘You,' Lucio agreed. ‘But you're a man, so she won't trouble you much. It's the women she drives crazy. Don't bring your wife here. Take my advice. Or else just sell up.'

‘No, Lucio, I like this house.'

‘Pig-headed, aren't you. Where are you from?'

‘The Pyrenees.'

‘High mountains,' said Lucio, with respect. ‘So it's no good my trying to convince you.'

‘You know the Pyrenees?'

‘I was born the other side of them,
hombre
. In Jaca.'

‘And the bodies of the seven old women? Did they look for them when they held the trial?'

‘No, in the century before the one before, the police didn't search the way they do now. I dare say the bodies are still under there,' said Lucio, pointing to the garden with his stick. ‘That's why people haven't dug it too deeply. You wouldn't want to disturb the devil.'

‘No, no point.'

‘You're like Maria,' said the old man, with a smile. ‘You think it's funny. But I've seen her often,
hombre
. Mist, vapour, then her breath,
cold as winter on the high peaks. And last week I was out taking a leak under the hazel tree in my garden one night, and I really saw her.'

Lucio drained his glass of Sauternes and scratched the spider's bite.

‘She's got a lot older,' he said, almost with disgust.

‘It
is
a long time, after all,' said Adamsberg.

‘Yes. Well, Sister Clarisse's face is as wrinkled as a walnut.'

‘And where was she?'

‘On the first floor. She was walking up and down in the upstairs room.'

‘That's going to be my study.'

‘And where will you sleep?'

‘The room next to it.'

‘You're not easily scared, are you?' said Lucio, getting to his feet. ‘I hope you don't think I was too blunt? Maria thinks I'm wrong to come in and tell you all this straight off.'

‘No, not at all,' said Adamsberg, who had unexpectedly acquired seven corpses in the garden and a ghost with a face like a walnut.

‘Good. Well, perhaps you'll manage to calm her down. Though they say that only a very old man can get the better of her now. But that's just fancy. You don't want to believe everything you hear.'

Left to himself, Adamsberg drank the dregs of his lukewarm coffee. Then he looked up at the ceiling, and listened.

A
FTER A PEACEFUL NIGHT SPENT IN THE SILENT COMPANY OF
S
AINT
C
LARISSE
,
Commissaire
Adamsberg pushed open the door of the Medico-Legal Institute, which housed the pathology lab. Nine days earlier, at Porte de la Chapelle, in northern Paris, two men had been found a few hundred metres apart, each with his throat cut. According to the local police inspector, they were both small-time crooks, who'd been dealing drugs in the Flea Market. Adamsberg was keen to see them again, since
Commissaire
Mortier from the Drug Squad wanted to take over the investigation.

‘Two lowlifes who got their throats cut at La Chapelle? They're on my patch, Adamsberg,' Mortier had declared. ‘And one of them's black, what's more. Just hand them over. What the devil are you waiting for?'

‘I'm waiting to find out why they've got earth under their fingernails.'

‘Because they didn't take a bath too often.'

‘Because they'd been digging somewhere. And if there's digging going on, it's a matter for the Crime Squad.'

‘Have you never seen these characters hide drugs in window boxes? You're wasting your time, Adamsberg.'

‘That's OK by me. I like wasting time.'

The two bodies were stretched out, unclothed, alongside each
other: one very big white man, one very big black man, one with a hairy torso, the other smooth, both harshly illuminated by the strip lighting in the morgue. With their feet neatly together and their hands at their sides, they seemed in death to have turned abruptly into docile schoolboys. In fact, Adamsberg thought, as he considered their sober appearance, the two men had led lives of classic regularity, since there's not a great deal of originality in human existence. Their days had followed an unchanging pattern: mornings asleep, then afternoons devoted to dealing, evenings to women, and Sundays to their mothers. On the margins of society, as elsewhere, routine imposes its rules. Their brutal murder had cut abnormally short the thread of their uneventful lives.

The pathologist was watching Adamsberg as he walked round the two bodies.

‘What do you want me to do with them?' she asked, her hand resting negligently on the black corpse's thigh, idly patting it as if in ultimate consolation. ‘Two dealers from the wrong side of town, slashed with a knife – looks like the Drug Squad had better take care of it.'

‘Yes, they're shouting for them.'

‘So what's the problem?'

‘Me.
I'
m the problem. I don't want to hand them over. And I'm hoping you'll help me hang on to them. Find some excuse.'

‘Why?' asked the pathologist. Her hand was still resting on the black corpse's thigh, signifying that for the moment the man was still under her jurisdiction, in a free zone, and she alone would make any decision about sending him either to the Drug Squad or the Crime Squad.

‘They had newly dug earth under their fingernails.'

‘I expect the drugs people have their reasons too. Do they have files on these two?'

‘No, not at all. So these two are mine, full stop.'

‘They told me about you,' said the pathologist calmly.

‘What did they tell you?'

‘That you're sometimes on a different wavelength from everyone else. It causes trouble.'

‘It wouldn't be the first time, would it, Ariane?'

With her foot the doctor pulled over a stool. She sat down on it and crossed her legs. Twenty-three years earlier, Adamsberg had thought her a beautiful woman and, at sixty, she still was as she posed elegantly on her perch in the mortuary.

‘Gracious me!' she said. ‘You know my name.'

‘Yes.'

‘But I don't know
you.'

The doctor lit a cigarette and thought for a few seconds.

‘No,' she said at last. ‘I can't say I remember you. I'm sorry.'

‘It was twenty-three years ago, and we were only in contact for a few months. I remember your surname and your first name, and indeed that we were on first-name terms.'