James Jenkins - The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Volume 1

The door at the top of the stairs flew open, and Mélion and Hébiart, preceded by Chief Inspector Gontan, rushed into the basement. The kitchen lights were on; night must have fallen.

‘Good heavens, what’s going on here?’ Gontan shouted.

He jumped the few remaining steps and rushed towards the cadet inspector and the young boy.

‘Explain yourself, Despérine!’

In his superior’s eye, instead of the black pupil, André Despérine perceived the reflection of a glorious medal of honor. The best are very quickly rewarded, Gontan had said. Despérine weighed carefully each word he said then.

‘I simply heard a noise, little Théo was in the cellar, Mme Morille tried to intervene, it was self-­defense,’ he said.

Valdecèze was without a doubt the smallest of France’s départements ; so small that very few people could pinpoint it on a map. André Despérine himself was ignorant of its existence until he was appointed to the post of cadet inspector in the little town of Sacqueroy.

Located several kilometers to the north of Dijon, the territory of Valdecèze included, besides Sacqueroy, three hamlets, a little more than five thousand inhabitants and several hundred cows; an eighteen-­wheeler could cross it in less than an hour, it was devoid of tourism. The population lived there secluded, piled on top of one other in the vicinity of Sacqueroy. The outrageous proximity of the residents – Despérine had noticed – encouraged a climate of constant criminality. That didn’t bother the inspector he had become, since it was his job to arrest the murderers and rapists.

Yet André Despérine was astonished by the supernatural turn taken by the investigations in which he participated. Sometimes he didn’t understand any of it – para­normal phenomena quite simply surpassed his comprehension, although he wondered whether he wouldn’t do better to think up some reasons for being scared. Despérine wasn’t scared, his mother had taught him to hold onto his courage with both hands and clench it like a little bird ready to fly away. And it was no doubt his sangfroid, he remembered, which had won him his first medal: he had found little Théo Juvignan locked up in a madwoman’s cellar.

A lot of water had flowed under the bridge since that day. He had ascended in rank, but he wasn’t more respected by his colleagues. Mélion and Hébiart relied on their years of experience to assign to Despérine as many futile, idiotic, or ridiculous activities as possible. Chasing down coffee in the morning, taming the copy machines, or giving his cheekbones a workout at the victims’ reception desk were his daily lot. Inspector André Despérine held out hope, however, for the situation had every chance of changing very soon: the number of medals of honor hanging above his desk grew each month.

It was however on an order from Mélion that André Despérine had found himself on the picket line at three a.m., a few meters from the hamlet of Branolin – which consisted of only two houses and a small shed at the bend in a wooded path. On a stakeout in the underbrush, the inspector had the impression of being frozen from head to toe. Several days earlier he had finally managed to have his overly large raincoat changed for another one exactly his size. But this new raincoat didn’t allow him to wear a thick sweater as a liner; in the end, Despérine regretted his recent acquisition. He was cold.

The inspector was standing against a tree, shivering slightly in the dark and under the watchful eyes of – he thought – an owl; he had heard it moving among the tree’s branches, but he hadn’t been able to see it, for it was a moonless night. Despérine was cold and would have liked to pour himself a cup of the coffee he was keeping warm in a thermos, but Mélion and Hébiart were supposed to arrive in a few seconds and wouldn’t have liked him to drink without them.

Indeed it was when this idea dissipated that the police car arrived noiselessly on the outskirts of the hamlet. Hébiart had let the car glide in neutral the last fifty meters, controlling the speed with only the brake. They stopped with precision under the trees; Mélion got out first and came to greet Despérine.

For three days now Mélion had been the new chief inspector of the Sacqueroy police department: Inspector Gontan had taken a leave of absence to take part in an African safari and hadn’t returned. Shaking his colleague’s hand, André Despérine hesitated whether to present a face distorted by sadness or a complaisant smile congratulating Mélion on his new promotion. The grimace he sketched left his new superior unmoved.

‘It’s awful . . . That animal must have been a hell of a beast to drag down M. Gontan by its teeth.’

‘You always have to beware of felines,’ Mélion had responded.

Despérine offered him the thermos of coffee and while he was greeting Hébiart, Mélion drank the first cup, then passed it on.

‘All right! Gentlemen, this will be a delicate operation, I fear. Our gang of burglars is definitely using this hamlet to move jewels and bundles of counterfeit bills between Dijon and Sacqueroy. We don’t know if the place is guarded, but we’ll surely be able to seize some of the goods.’

Mélion pulled a sheet of paper rolled in a rubber band from the inside pocket of his raincoat. He handed it to Hébiart without looking at him; Mélion was staring strangely at the hamlet, as if he had been hypnotized by the three buildings of wood and stone.

‘The warrant, Hébiart! The warrant! Keep it safe!’

Then the chief inspector set forth at a determined pace towards the village. Despérine and Hébiart followed him hesitantly, fearing to be noticed by its occupants. Both had the feeling they were being watched. In the heavy silence only the sound of their shoes on the gravel road marked the rhythm of their progress, and Despérine wished the owl would hoot once or twice. But nothing happened until they were all in the courtyard of the first house. Mélion opened the door by turning a brass handle in the shape of a cat’s head; it wasn’t bolted and that didn’t bode well.

The dwelling was empty: no furniture, a tapestry in shreds, some spiders weaving their webs and, on the ground, scattered rat droppings. Mélion pulled out his firearm from under his armpit, then took out a flashlight, which he lit.

‘Let’s take a look around. We’ll see what we find.’

They surveyed the different rooms of the house with an exaggerated slowness. Despérine hadn’t had time to taste the coffee, but the slight tension hovering around them was warming him up little by little.

‘Monsieur Mélion,’ he murmured, ‘there’s nothing here. Let’s try the other house!’

‘Shush!’

Mélion raised his arm. With the beam of the flashlight he indicated a door which, half open, led to the bathroom.

‘Hébiart, go look in there!’

Inspector Hébiart slowly approached the panel, which he pushed with his fingertips. The bathroom had been deboned of its sink and bathtub. There was nothing on the walls but several cracked white ceramic tiles. Yet he took a step back.

‘That stinks! Damn, that really reeks!’

‘Go in!’ Mélion ordered, illuminating the small room.

‘It’s like a corpse decomposed in here. Light up the ceiling for me, there’s a trap door!’

Hébiart leaned against a wall and, leaping, caught the handle of the trap door. The flap broke under his weight, the slab of rotten wood came crashing down, the odor of death was suddenly unbearable and a cat, very much alive, fell onto the inspector’s face. In the flashlight beam, Mélion and Despérine saw the animal slash Inspector Hébiart’s cheeks. The latter tried to get out of the ambush, but found himself huddled on the floor, in a corner of the little bathroom. The cat hissed, leapt, and yowled all around him. It ended by flinging itself on Hébiart, planting its claws in his scalp.