Fred Vargas - The Chalk Circle Man

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.

ADAMSBERG LOOKED UP TO SEE DANGLARD 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.’