Fred Vargas - The Chalk Circle Man

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.

THE FOLLOWING WEEK BROUGHT NO MORE NEWS OF CLÉMENCE. 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 .