Fred Vargas: An Uncertain Place

But Radstock certainly didn’t want to go up there alone. Not when he was a few months from retirement. He had had some difficulty persuading the amiable ‘Donglarde’ to go with him: it was as if the Frenchman was reluctant to embark on this particular expedition. But how would a Frenchman know anything about Highgate, anyway? On the other hand, he had had no trouble with Adamsberg, who was perfectly willing to agree to a detour. This French commissaire seemed to go around in a peaceful and conciliatory state of being only half awake. One wondered whether even his profession engaged his attention. Their young colleague, however, was the exact opposite: his wide eyes were glued to the window, as he goggled at the sights of London. In Radstock’s view, this Estalère fellow was a halfwit: it was a wonder they had let him come to the conference at all.

‘Couldn’t you have sent a couple of your men?’ asked Danglard, who was still looking vexed.

‘I can’t send a team off just because Clyde-Fox has started seeing things, Donglarde. After all, he’s a man who tried to eat pictures of his mother. But we do have to go and check, don’t we?’

No, Danglard didn’t think they were obliged to do any such thing. He was happy to be in London, happy to be dressed like an Englishman, and especially happy that a woman had been paying him attention, from the first day of the conference. He had given up expecting such a miracle years ago, and having fatalistically accepted that he would never have any more dealings with women, had not made the first approach himself. She had come up to him, had smiled at him, and found excuses to meet up with him at the conference. If he was not much mistaken, that is. Danglard was wondering how such a thing could be possible, torturing himself with questions. He found himself endlessly going over the tiniest signs that could confirm or invalidate his hopes. He classified them, estimated them, manipulated them to see how reliable they were, as one tries the ice gingerly before venturing on to it. He was examining them for consistency, for possible meaning and trying to decide whether they were encouraging, yes or no. So much so that the signs were becoming more insubstantial the more he worried away at them. He needed some further clues. And at this very moment, the woman in question was no doubt in the hotel bar with the other people from the conference. Now that he had been whisked off on Radstock’s expedition, he would miss her.

‘Why do we need to check? Your Lord Clyde-Fox was indeed as drunk as a lord,’ said Danglard, proud of his command of English idiom.

‘Because it’s Highgate,’ said the chief inspector through gritted teeth.

Danglard gave a start, feeling cross with himself. His intense speculation about the woman at the conference had prevented him reacting to the name ‘Highgate’. He looked up as if to reply, but Radstock cut him off with a wave of the hand.

‘No, Donglarde, you wouldn’t understand,’ he said in the sad, bitter and resigned tones of an old soldier, who can’t expect other people to share his war memories. ‘You weren’t at Highgate. I was.’

‘But I do understand. Both why you didn’t want to go there, and why you’re going there all the same.’

‘With respect, Donglarde, that would very much surprise me.’

‘I know what happened at Highgate Cemetery.’

Radstock shot him a look of astonishment.

‘Danglard knows everything,’ Estalère explained contentedly from the back of the car.

Sitting next to his young colleague on the back seat, Adamsberg was listening to the conversation, picking up the odd word. It was clear that Danglard knew quantities of things about this ‘Highgate’, of which he, Adamsberg, was quite ignorant. That was normal, as long as you regarded the prodigious extent of Danglard’s knowledge as normal. Commandant Danglard was very different from what might be called a ‘normal educated man’. He was a man of phenomenal erudition, controlling a complex network of infinite and encyclopedic knowledge which, in Adamsberg’s opinion, had ended up by taking over his entire being, replacing each of his organs one by one, so that you wondered how Danglard managed to move around like an ordinary mortal. Perhaps that was why he did find it hard to walk, and never strolled. On the other hand, he was sure to be able to tell you the name of the man who had eaten his wardrobe. Adamsberg looked at Danglard’s imprecise profile, at that moment subject to a kind of trembling which indicated the ongoing process of knowledge retrieval. No doubt about it, the commandant was quickly passing in review his compendious collection of facts about Highgate. At the same time he was desperately preoccupied by something else: the woman at the conference of course, on account of whom his mind was dealing with a whirlwind of questions. Adamsberg turned towards the British colleague whose name he could never remember. Something Stock. He was not thinking about a woman, nor scanning his mind for information. Stock was quite simply scared.

‘Danglard,’ said Adamsberg, tapping him on the shoulder, ‘Stock doesn’t want to go and see these shoes.’

‘I’ve already told you that he can pick up bits of French. Speak in code please.’

Adamsberg obeyed. In order not to be understood by Radstock, Danglard had advised him to speak very fast and in an even tone, slurring his syllables, but this kind of exercise was impossible for Adamsberg, who pronounced his words as slowly as he placed his feet when pacing about.

‘No, he doesn’t want to go at all,’ said Danglard in this same fastspeak. ‘He has certain memories of the place and he wants nothing to do with it.’

‘What do you mean, “the place”?’

‘One of the most romantic and baroque cemeteries in the Western world, absolutely over the top, an artistic and macabre fantasy. It’s full of Gothic tombs, burial vaults, Egyptian sculptures, excommunicated people and murderers. All tangled together in one of those rambling English gardens. It’s unique, a bit too unique, a place where madness lurks.’

‘OK, I get it, Danglard. But what happened in this tangled garden?’

‘Ghastly events, and yet nothing much. But it’s the kind of “nothing much” that can traumatise anyone who witnesses it. That’s why they put watchmen on it at night. That’s why our colleague doesn’t want to go there on his own, that’s why we’re in this car, instead of having a nice quiet drink in our hotel.’

‘A nice quiet drink. Who with, Danglard?’

Danglard pulled a face. The complex threads of other people’s lives did not escape the notice of Adamsberg, even if those threads were whispers, minute sensations, puffs of air. The commissaire had spotted the woman at the conference. And while Danglard had been going over every little incident obsessively, so much so as to blank them out, Adamsberg must already have formed a firm impression.

‘With her,’ said Adamsberg into the silence. ‘The woman who chews the arms of her red spectacles, the woman who keeps looking at you. It says “Abstract” on her badge. Is that her first name?’

Danglard smiled. If the only woman who had ever made eyes at him in ten years was called ‘Abstract’, that would have been painfully appropriate.

‘No, it’s her job. She’s supposed to collect and distribute summaries of the papers. They call them “abstracts”.’

‘Ah, I see. So what is her name?’

‘I haven’t asked.’

‘But you need to know her name before anything else.’

‘No, before anything else I want to know what’s going on inside her head.’

‘Because you don’t know?’ asked Adamsberg, genuinely surprised.