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A woman is found murdered in her bathtub, and the murder made to look like a suicide. A strange symbol is found near the body.

Then a second victim is discovered, who was also part of a group of tourists on a doomed expedition to Iceland ten years earlier.

How are these deaths, and rumours of an Icelandic demon, linked to the secretive Association for the Study of the Writings of Maximilien Robespierre? And what does the mysterious symbol signify?

About the Author

Fred Vargas was born in Paris in 1957. A historian and archaeologist by profession, she is now a bestselling novelist. Her books have sold over 10 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 45 languages.

ONLY ANOTHER TWENTY metres, twenty little metres to reach the postbox, it was harder than she had expected. That’s ridiculous, she told herself, there aren’t little metres and big metres. There are just metres, that’s all. How curious that at death’s door, even from that privileged position, you should go on having such futile thoughts, when anyone might think you would come up with some important pronouncement, one that would be branded with red-hot iron in the annals of human wisdom. A pronouncement that people would repeat now and then in days to come: ‘Do you know what Alice Gauthier’s last words were?’

Even if she had nothing memorable to declare, she nevertheless had an important message to deliver, one that would certainly be inscribed in the most despicable annals of humanity, which are infinitely larger than those of wisdom. She looked at the letter, held in her shaking hand.

Come on, just sixteen little metres. From the door of her building, Noémie was watching over her, ready to intervene at the slightest stumble. Noémie had done everything she could to stop her patient venturing out on to the street alone. But Alice Gauthier’s imperious character had been too strong for her.

‘Everyone does things like that, Noémie. I had a friend – an old rogue he was too – who always said: “If you want to keep a secret, well, keep it.” I’ve kept this secret for a long time, but it’s going to hinder my getting to heaven. Although I’m not sure if heaven’s where I’m going, whether or no. Just get out of my way, Noémie, and let me out.’

Alice, get a move on for God’s sake, or Noémie will come running. She leaned on her Zimmer frame, and forced herself forward another nine metres, well, eight anyway. Past the pharmacy, then the launderette, then the bank, and she’d be there, by the little yellow postbox. And just as she was starting to smile at her approaching success, her sight clouded over and she lost her grip, falling down at the feet of a woman in red, who caught her in her arms with a scream. Alice Gauthier’s handbag spilled open on the ground and the letter fell from her grasp.

The pharmacist came running out of her shop, and was quickly feeling her everywhere, asking questions, applying first aid. The woman in red was meanwhile putting the scattered objects into the handbag, before placing it back at its owner’s side. This bystander’s brief role was coming to an end, the emergency services had been called, she had no further part to play, so she straightened up and moved away. She would have liked to go on making herself useful, to be more important at the scene of the accident, or at least to give her name to the paramedics who were arriving in force, but no, the pharmacist had now taken complete charge, with the help of a distraught woman who said she was the nurse-companion: this one was talking loudly, on the verge of tears, protesting that Madame Gauthier had absolutely refused to be accompanied, she lived just a stone’s throw away, at number 33a, and she, the nurse, had not been the least bit negligent. They were putting the old woman on to a stretcher now. On your way, Marie-France, it’s none of your business any more.

But it is, she thought, as she went down the street, yes, she really had done something. By catching the woman as she fell, she’d prevented her striking her head on the pavement. Perhaps she had saved her life, who could deny that?

The first days of April, and the weather was milder now in Paris, but there was still a nip in the air. A nip in the air. If there was a ‘nip’, where in the air did it lie? In the middle somewhere? Marie-France frowned in irritation at the silly questions that flew at random through her head like gnats. Just when she had saved someone’s life too. Or was the nip scattered everywhere in the air? She fastened her red coat more tightly and pushed her hands deep into her pockets. On the right, her keys and her wallet, but on the left her fingers met a thick wad of paper that she had not put there. Her left-hand pocket was the one she used for her travelcard and the forty-eight centimes for bread. She stopped under a tree to think. And there in her hand was the letter belonging to the poor woman who had fallen down in the street. Turn your thought over seven times in your head before you act, her father always used to say to her, though he had never in his life taken his own advice. No doubt he barely managed more than four times. The writing on the envelope was very shaky, and the sender’s name on the back, Alice Gauthier, was printed in big wobbly letters. Yes, this was certainly her letter. Back there, Marie-France had returned everything to the handbag, and in her haste to pick up the papers, purse, pills and tissues before the wind whisked them away, she had stuffed the letter into her pocket. The envelope had fallen on the other side from the bag, the woman must have been holding it in her left hand. That’s what she had set off to do all on her own, Marie-France thought: post a letter.

Should she take it back to her? But where? She must have been taken to the emergency department of some hospital or other. Should she give it to that nurse or whatever she was at number 33a? Watch it, little Marie-France, watch it. Turn your thought over seven times. If this Gauthier woman had taken the big risk of going out to post a letter, it must mean she hadn’t meant it to fall into anyone else’s hands. Turn your thought over seven times, but not ten, or twenty, her father would say, otherwise it gets worn out and you’ll never find the answer. There are people like that, who go on thinking in circles for ever, it’s sad, just look at your uncle.

So no, not the nurse. It must be significant that Madame Gauthier had set out on an expedition without her help. Marie-France looked around to see if there was a postbox nearby. Over there, the little yellow rectangle across the square. Marie-France smoothed the envelope out against her leg. She had a mission, she had saved the woman and now she’d save the letter. It had been intended for the postbox, hadn’t it? So she was doing no harm, on the contrary, in fact.

She slipped the envelope into the slot labelled Paris suburbs, after checking several times that it was to an address in the Yvelines département, postcode 78, to the south-west of the city. Seven times, Marie-France, not twenty, or this letter will never get sent. Then she slid her fingers inside the box to check that it had fallen down inside. Yes. Last collection 6 p.m., it’s Friday today, the recipient will get it first post Monday.

DURING THE MEETING with his officers, Commissaire Bourlin from the 15th arrondissement of Paris was chewing the inside of his cheeks, looking undecided, hands clasped over his large paunch. He had been a handsome man once, older colleagues remembered, before he had put on an enormous amount of weight in a few short years. But he still had plenty of presence, as the respectful attitude of his listening staff indicated. Even when he blew his nose noisily, almost ostentatiously, as he just had. It was a spring cold, he had explained. No different from an autumn cold or a winter cold, but it was airier, less commonplace, more light-hearted, somehow.

‘We should close the file, sir,’ said Feuillère, the most eager of his lieutenants, summing up the general feeling. ‘It’ll be six days ago this evening that Alice Gauthier died. Suicide, an open-and-shut case, surely.’

‘The man in the rue de la Convention a couple of months ago didn’t leave a note either,’ said a junior officer who was almost as fat as his chief.

‘Yes, but he was drunk out of his skull, lonely and penniless, not the same at all. Here we have a woman of very orderly habits, a retired maths teacher, having lived an extremely conventional life, we’ve checked her out. And I don’t like suicides who have just washed their hair that morning, and who are wearing perfume.’

‘That’s just it,’ a voice said, ‘some people like to look their best when they’re dead.’

‘So one evening,’ the commissaire said, ‘Alice Gauthier, wearing perfume and a tailored suit, runs a bath, takes off her shoes and gets into the water, fully dressed, before slitting her wrists?’

Bourlin took a cigarette, or rather two, since his thick fingers prevented him taking one at a time. Consequently, there were always lone cigarettes lying alongside his packets. For the same reason, he never used a lighter, because he was too clumsy to roll the wheel, but had a large box of outsize matches bulging from his pocket. He had declared this office in the police station a smoking zone. The nationwide smoking ban was driving him to distraction, at a time when the world was bombarding beings – all beings, not just human beings – with 36 billion tons of CO₂ a year. 36 billion, he would say. And you can’t even light up a cigarette on a station platform in the open air!

‘Commissaire, this woman was dying, and she knew it,’ Feuillère insisted. ‘Her nurse told us: the Friday before she died, she had tried to go out and post a letter, she was absolutely determined, wouldn’t hear a word against it, but she didn’t manage it. Result: five days later, she slits her wrists in the bath.’

‘A letter that may have contained a farewell message. That would explain why there wasn’t a note in her home.’

‘But who was she writing to?’ asked the commissaire, taking a deep pull on his cigarette. ‘She had no direct heirs, and her savings didn’t amount to a huge fortune, anyway. Her lawyer hasn’t received any change to her will, and her twenty thousand euros will go to saving polar bears. And in spite of this vital letter going astray, she kills herself instead of writing again?’

‘Because the young man called to see her,’ replied Feuillère. ‘On the Monday and then again on the Tuesday, the neighbour is sure about that. He heard him ring the bell and say he’d come by appointment. At a time when she was alone every day, between seven and eight in the evening. She must have told him about her last wishes, so the letter would be beside the point.’

‘A young man whose name we don’t know, who’s now disappeared. At the burial, there were only some elderly cousins. No young man. So? Where did he go? If he was a close enough acquaintance for her to call him in urgently, he must have been a relative or a friend. In which case, he ought to have come to the funeral. But no, he’s vanished into thin air. Carbon-dioxide-laden air, let me remind you. And the neighbour heard him say his name from behind the door. What was it again?’

‘He couldn’t hear clearly. André or Dédé, some name like that, he can’t be sure.’

‘André is a rather old-fashioned name. So why did he say it was a young man?’

‘Commissaire,’ called another lieutenant, ‘the examining magistrate wants us to close this one. We’re still getting nowhere with the schoolboy who was stabbed, or the woman who was attacked in the Vaugirard car park.’

‘I know,’ said the chief, grabbing the second cigarette lying by the packet. ‘I had a conversation with him last night. If you can call it a conversation. Suicide, suicide, close the file, move on, never mind if you bury some facts, small ones, I grant you, by trampling on them like dandelions.’

Dandelions, he thought, the poor relations of the flower world, no one respects them, you tread on them or feed them to rabbits, whereas no one would tread on a rose. Still less feed it to a rabbit. There was a silence, each of the men in the room torn between the impatience of their new examining magistrate and the negative mood of the commissaire.

‘All right, let’s close it,’ sighed Bourlin, as if physically surrendering. ‘On condition we have one more stab at finding out about the sign she drew by the side of the bath. It was very firm and very clear, but incomprehensible. That was it, her last message.’

Nevertheless, Bourlin reflected, pursuing his train of thought, dandelions are tough plants, whereas a rose is always delicate.

‘Do you mean Commandant Adrien Danglard?’ asked a junior officer. ‘From the Serious Crime Squad in the 13th?’

‘Yes, but behind him,’ murmured the officer, ‘there’s Commissaire Adamsberg.’

‘So what?’ said Bourlin, standing up almost majestically, fists on the table.

III

ADAMSBERG PICKED UP his phone, pushed aside a heap of files and put his feet on the table, leaning back in his chair. He had hardly slept at all the night before, since one of his sisters had gone down with pneumonia, out of the blue.

‘The woman in 33a?’ he asked. ‘The one who cut her wrists in the bath? Why the hell are you bothering me with this at nine in the morning, Bourlin? From the internal report, it was a straightforward suicide. You’ve got suspicions?’

Adamsberg liked Commissaire Bourlin. A man with a large appetite for food, drink and tobacco, perpetually on the boil, living life at full tilt, skirting precipices but solid as a rock himself, with a shock of curly hair like the fleece of a newborn lamb, he was someone to respect, and would still be at his post when he was a hundred years old.

‘Our new examining magistrate, Vermillon, he’s keen as mustard, and on to me like a tick,’ said Bourlin. ‘You know what they do, ticks?’

‘You extract it by using a very tiny clawhammer. You’re not calling me for that?’

‘So you want us to use a huge clawhammer, the two of us, and extract him too?’

‘No, but he wants me to close the file on this woman, and I don’t want to.’

‘This suicide, a woman who had washed her hair that morning and was wearing perfume, didn’t leave any note.’

‘An incomprehensible sign? Alongside the bath? And what do you want from me?’

‘Nothing from you. I want you to send me Danglard’s brain to have a look. He might know what it means, he’s the only person I can think of. Then at least I’ll have a clear conscience.’

‘Danglard isn’t in yet. As you may know, he keeps different hours depending on the day. Or should I say the evening before?’

‘Haul him out of bed, I’ll be expecting both of you over at her apartment, 33a. Just one thing, Adamsberg, my trainee, the brigadier, is something of a young brute. Needs a bit of polish.’

Sitting on Danglard’s old sofa, Adamsberg drank a strong coffee, while the commandant got dressed. It had seemed the quickest solution simply to drive over to Danglard’s, wake him up and take him off directly in his car.

‘I haven’t even had time to shave,’ Danglard grumbled, as he bent his large ungainly body to look in the mirror.

‘That’s different. I’m being consulted now as an expert, and experts shave.’

Adamsberg was registering reluctantly the two wine bottles on the coffee table, the glass lying on its side on the still-damp carpet. White wine doesn’t stain. Danglard must have dropped off to sleep on his sofa without needing to worry about the keen eyes of his five children, whom he was bringing up as a single parent, like cultured pearls. The second pair of twins had in fact now left to go to university, and the empty-nest feeling didn’t help. The youngest one was still there though, the one with blue eyes who was not Danglard’s own, and whom his wife had left with him, as a baby, when she walked out down the corridor, without a backward glance, as he had told everyone at least a hundred times. Last year, at the risk of a serious quarrel, Adamsberg had become his torturer, hauling Danglard off to the doctor’s, and Danglard had waited for his test results in a zombie-like alcoholic daze. The tests had shown he was in perfect shape. There are some people who manage miraculously to escape everything that life throws at them, this was such a case, and it was not the least of Danglard’s talents.

‘And we are expected for what, exactly?’ asked Danglard, adjusting his cufflinks. ‘What’s this all about? Some kind of hieroglyph?’

‘The last drawing made by someone who committed suicide. A sign nobody can decipher. Commissaire Bourlin is very worked up about it, he wants to understand it before closing the file. The magistrate is on his back like a tick. A very big one. We have just a few hours.’

‘Oh, if it’s Bourlin,’ said Danglard, relaxing, but smoothing down his jacket. ‘He thinks the new magistrate’s going to burst a blood vessel, does he?’

‘What you mean, if we’re talking about a tick, is that Bourlin is afraid it will inject the contents of its salivary glands into him,’ Danglard corrected him, as he tied his tie. ‘Nothing like a snake or a flea. Actually a tick isn’t an insect, it’s an arachnid.’

‘Yeah, right. So what do you think about the contents of Vermillon’s salivary glands?’

‘You don’t want to know. But I’m no expert on obscure signs. I’m just a miner’s son from Picardy,’ the commandant reminded him with pride. ‘I only know a few bits and pieces.’

‘Well, he’s placing his hopes in you, in any case. For his conscience’s sake.’

‘If it’s to act as someone’s conscience for once, I certainly wouldn’t want to let him down.’

DANGLARD HAD PERCHED on the edge of the blue bathtub, the same one in which Alice Gauthier had slit her wrists. He was looking at the side of the white washstand, on which she had drawn the sign with an eyebrow pencil. In the tiny bathroom, Adamsberg, Bourlin and the latter’s young officer were waiting in silence.

‘Talk among yourselves, dammit! I’m not the oracle of Delphi,’ said Danglard who was annoyed that he had not been able to identify the sign at once. ‘Brigadier, would you be good enough to get me a cup of coffee? I’ve been fetched straight from bed.’

‘From bed or from an early-morning bar?’ the young man whispered to Bourlin.

‘And my hearing’s perfect,’ said Danglard, still poised elegantly on the edge of the old bath, without taking his eyes off the drawing. ‘I didn’t ask for any comment, I just asked you, very politely, for some coffee.’

‘One coffee, you heard,’ said Bourlin, gripping the arm of the young officer, his large hand easily encircling it.

Danglard took a battered notebook out of his back pocket and copied the drawing. It looked like a capital H but the central bar was slanting, and then entwined with the bar was a concave line.

‘Her name was Alice Gauthier, maiden name Vermond. But she had two other first names, Clarisse and Henriette, so H could be for Henriette.’

‘No,’ said Danglard, shaking his heavy jowls, just now shadowed with grey stubble. ‘It’s not an H. The line across is clearly oblique, it goes up. And it’s not a signature. Any signature always ends up changed, it absorbs the writer’s personality, it gets deformed, contracted, fixed. Nothing like the straight lines in this letter. This is a faithful, almost childlike reproduction of some sign or emblem, with which the writer isn’t familiar. If she wrote it once or five times, it would be a maximum. Because it looks like the work of a pupil trying hard to get it right.’

The brigadier came back with some coffee, provocatively offered in a boiling hot thin plastic cup directly to Danglard’s hand.

‘Thank you,’ the commandant said without reacting. ‘If she killed herself, she might be pointing her finger at the people who drove her to it. But why draw a coded sign in that case? Out of fear? But fear on whose behalf? Her relatives? She’s invited us to search, but without wanting to give anything away. If someone killed her – and that’s your worry, isn’t it, Bourlin? – no doubt it indicates whoever attacked her. But then again, why not something more direct?’

‘May I?’ asked Adamsberg, leaning against the wall and deliberately pulling a crushed cigarette out of his jacket pocket.

This was the magic word, allowing Bourlin to strike a huge match and light his own cigarette. With the tiny bathroom suddenly full of smoke, the brigadier stalked out, to stand in the doorway.

‘That’s not it either. It’s not a mathematical or physics symbol. It’s not the zodiac or a hieroglyph. It’s not a Freemason’s sign or a satanic cult. Nothing like that.’

‘Unless,’ he went on, ‘it’s an Old Norse letter, some kind of rune, or a Japanese or even Chinese character. There are various characters like an H with an oblique bar. But they don’t have that concave loop underneath. That’s the tricky bit. So we’re left with the hypothesis that it’s a Cyrillic character but badly drawn.’

‘Russian but also Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Ukrainian, plenty of choice.’

With a meaningful glance, Adamsberg cut short the learned disquisition he sensed Danglard was about to launch into on Cyrillic characters. And indeed Danglard regretfully abandoned his story of the disciples of St Cyril who had invented that alphabet.

‘There is a Cyrillic character Й not to be confused with И,’ he explained, drawing them on his notebook. ‘And you can see that it has a little concave sign like a cup over the top. It’s pronounced “oi” or “ei” depending on context.’

Danglard intercepted another look from Adamsberg which stopped him taking this further.

‘Well,’ he went on, ‘supposing this woman was having difficulty drawing the sign, given the distance between the bath and the washbasin, which meant she had to stretch her arm out, she might have misplaced the little cup sign, putting it in the middle, not on top. But if I’m not mistaken, this character isn’t used at the start of a word in Russian, only at the end. And I’ve never heard of an abbreviation that uses the end of a word. Still, you might look through her address book to see if any of her contacts might have used the Russian alphabet.’

‘I think that would be a waste of time,’ said Adamsberg quietly. It was not to avoid upsetting Danglard that Adamsberg had spoken in an undertone. Except on very rare occasions, the commissaire never raised his voice, taking his time to enunciate, and sometimes running the risk of lulling his interlocutors to sleep with his gentle intonation, hypnotic to some, attractive to others. Results of an interrogation might be very different depending on whether he or one of his officers was conducting them, since Adamsberg could either make the suspect drop off, or else provoke a sudden flow of confessions, as if a magnet had attracted a set of obstinate nails. The commissaire didn’t attach great importance to it, admitting that he sometimes sent himself to sleep without realising it.

‘What I say, Danglard. It would be better to try and find out whether the concave line was drawn before or after the oblique line. And the same for the two vertical strokes of the H, were they drawn before or after?’

‘And,’ Adamsberg went on, ‘whether the oblique line was drawn upwards or downwards.’

‘The oblique line looks as if it’s crossing something out,’ Adamsberg continued. ‘As if to negate it. But only if it was drawn upwards, firmly. Then, if the smile was drawn first, it was struck out afterwards.’

‘Something like that. As for the two uprights, they could be framing the smile, like a sort of simplified face.’

‘Yes, too far-fetched,’ Adamsberg agreed. ‘But check all the same. What order do they use to write the Cyrillic character, Danglard?’

‘You’d write the two uprights then the slanting line, then add the little curve on top. Like we put accents on last.’

‘So if it seems the curved line was drawn first, then it couldn’t be a failed attempt to write the Cyrillic letter,’ remarked Bourlin, ‘and we don’t need to waste time looking for some Russian in her address book.’

Put out by his failure to decipher the mystery sign, Danglard dragged his feet as he followed his colleagues into the street, while Bourlin issued orders on his phone. In fact, Danglard always dragged his feet, which meant he wore out his soles very quickly. And since the commandant was deeply attached to English-style elegance, to make up for having nothing beautiful about his looks, renewing his London-made shoes was a problem. Anyone crossing the Channel was implored to bring him back a pair.

The brigadier had been impressed by the glimpses of Danglard’s knowledge, and was now walking docilely alongside him. He had started to get ‘a bit of polish’ as Bourlin had said. The four men parted on the Place de la Convention.

‘I’ll call you when I get the forensic results,’ said Bourlin, ‘it shouldn’t be long. Thanks for your help, but I think I’m going to have to close the file tonight.’

‘Since none of us understands it,’ said Adamsberg with a wave of his hand, ‘we can say anything we like. It reminds me of a guillotine.’

‘Still,’ said the brigadier, ‘what does he have in his brain, that Commandant Danglard, to know so much stuff?’

Less than two hours later, Bourlin telephoned Adamsberg. The two vertical lines had been drawn first: left, then right.

‘Like when you write an H then,’ he went on. ‘But next, she drew the curved line.’

‘And not the Cyrillic alphabet either. Pity, I liked that theory. Then she added the crossbar, which was drawn upwards from the bottom.’

‘Precisely. We’ve got nothing here, Adamsberg. Not an initial, not a Russian. Just some unknown symbol, addressed to some person or persons unknown.’

‘Whom she’s accusing of driving her to suicide, or alternatively that she wants to warn of some danger.’

‘Or,’ suggested Bourlin, ‘she simply killed herself because she was terminally ill. But first, she wanted to leave a record of someone or something, some event in her life. A final confession perhaps, before leaving this world.’

‘Or a sin, Bourlin. Or a murder. What sin could this dear old Alice Gauthier have committed?’

‘I wouldn’t call her “dear old” Alice. She was authoritarian, a very firm character, tyrannical even. Not a very nice woman.’

‘So did she have some problems with her former pupils? Or with the education authorities?’

‘No, she was very well regarded professionally, she was never censured for anything. Forty years in the same school, in a difficult area. But according to her fellow teachers, the kids, even the toughest of them, dared not open their mouths during her lessons, she wouldn’t put up with any nonsense. So you can imagine that head teachers clung on to her like a sacred treasure. She just had to appear in the doorway of a classroom for the din to stop immediately. Her punishments were dreaded.’

‘Not even,’ said Bourlin. ‘The punishment was, she would withdraw her affection. Because she loved her pupils. That was the big threat. Losing her affection. Lots of them went to see her after school, on one pretext or another. Just as an example of how tough this little woman was, she got hold of one young drug pusher in the school and, I don’t know how, he gave her the names of a whole gang within the hour. So that’s the kind of woman she was.’

‘No, I was thinking about the lost letter. To this unknown young man. Perhaps one of her former pupils?’

‘So the sign might refer to the pupil? A gang’s emblem? A secret symbol? Don’t get me started again, Adamsberg, I’ve got to close this one down tonight!’

‘Look, find an excuse to hang on to the case. Just one more day. Say you’re still working on the Cyrillic possibility. But whatever you do, don’t tell them we’re involved.’

Bourlin sighed in discouragement. He had known Adamsberg long enough to realise that ‘thinking’ didn’t mean much where he was concerned. Adamsberg didn’t think. He didn’t sit down at a table with paper and pencil, he didn’t stare in concentration out of the window, he didn’t draw up a table of facts with arrows and figures, he didn’t even put his chin in his hand. He pottered about, walking silently, weaving in and out of offices, passing remarks, pacing slowly round a crime scene. But no one had ever seen him thinking. He seemed more like a fish, swimming along aimlessly. No, that’s not right, a fish does have an aim. Adamsberg was more like a sponge, drifting with the currents. But what currents? And some people said that when his vague brown eyes looked even more distracted, it was as if they contained seaweed. He belonged to the sea more than to dry land.

MARIE-FRANCE GAVE a start when she read the death announcement. She had missed a few days, so she had dozens of notices to catch up on. Not that this daily ritual gave her any morbid satisfaction. No, the reason – and this was an awful thing to say, she thought, not for the first time – was that she was watching out for the death of a first cousin who had once been fond of her. And on that side of the family, which had plenty of money, they published a notice in the paper if anyone died. It was in this way that she had learned of the deaths of two other cousins and of the husband of the cousin in question. Who was therefore alone in this world, and rich. Her husband had made his money from balloons, of all things. Marie-France was forever wondering whether there was any chance that the manna of this cousin’s wealth might perhaps descend on her. She’d tried calculating the size of the manna. How much would it be? Fifty thousand? A million? More? After tax, what would there be left? Would her cousin have thought of leaving it all to her? What if she left it all to the Society for the Protection of the Orang-utan? She’d been pretty keen on orang-utans, Marie-France could quite understand that, and was ready to share it with the poor creatures. Don’t get carried away, my girl, just read the announcements. The cousin was getting on for ninety-two, it couldn’t be long, could it? Although in that family, they bred centenarians, the way other families bred large numbers of children. In her family, they produced old people. And they didn’t do a great deal with their lives, which, she thought, probably preserved them. This cousin, though, had got about a bit, to Java, Borneo and all those scary islands – because of the orang-utans – and that might wear you out sooner. She went on reading chronologically.

Régis Rémond and Martin Druot, cousins of the deceased, along with her friends and colleagues, regretfully announce the death of Mme Alice Clarisse Henriette Gauthier, née Vermond, in her sixty-sixth year, after a long illness. The funeral will leave her home, 33a rue de la . . .

33a! She heard again the nurse calling out: ‘It’s Madame Gauthier from 33a . . .’ Poor woman, she’d saved her life – by preventing her head striking the pavement, she was convinced of that now – but obviously it hadn’t been for long.

Unless, that letter . . .? The letter she had decided to post? What if it had been the wrong thing to do? What if the precious letter had triggered some disaster? Was that why the nurse had been so opposed to it? Well, the letter would have been posted anyway, Marie-France consoled herself, pouring out a second cup of coffee. That was fate.

No, it wouldn’t! The letter had fallen to the ground when the woman collapsed. Think, girl, think it over seven times. And if Madame Gauthier, in the end, had committed a . . . what did he used to call it, my old boss? He was always talking about it – an acte manqué, a Freudian slip. Something you don’t mean to do, but you do it all the same, for reasons hidden beneath other reasons. Had the old woman’s fear of what might come from posting the letter made her suddenly feel dizzy? And had she then lost the letter as an acte manqué, abandoning the idea for reasons hidden under other reasons?

In that case, it was she, Marie-France, who had played the role of fate. She had taken the decision to carry out the old woman’s intention. And yet she had thought it over several times. Not too little, not too much, before she had crossed the road to the postbox.

Forget it, you’ll never know anything about it. And there’s no reason at all to think the letter might have had lethal consequences. That’s just your imagination running wild, my girl.

But by lunchtime, Marie-France had still not forgotten it, as was proved by her getting no further in her reading of death announcements while still being none the wiser whether the cousin who loved orang-utans had died yet.

She walked towards the toy shop where she worked part-time, her mind troubled, her stomach aching. And that, my girl, means you are chewing it over and you know quite well what Papa used to say about that.

It wasn’t that she had never noticed the police station on her way – after all she passed it six days a week – but this time it shone out to her like a lighthouse in the dark. A lighthouse in the dark – that was her father’s expression again. But the problem with a lighthouse, he would say, is that it switches on and off. So your plan may come and go all the time, and it goes out anyway in daylight. Well, it was daylight now, and the police station nevertheless seemed like a lighthouse in the dark. Proof that you could modify the biblical pronouncements of your father, no offence intended.

She went in timidly, registered the gloomy-looking lad in reception and, in the background behind him, a very large, very heavily built and rather scary woman, talking to a small fair-haired character who didn’t seem of any account, alongside a balding man who looked like an ancient bird huddled on its nest waiting for a last clutch of eggs that would never arrive, while over there was someone reading – she had good eyesight – a magazine about fish, plus a huge white cat sleeping on the photocopy machine, and a tough guy who looked ready to tear people limb from limb. And she almost walked straight out again. No, she told herself firmly, it’s just that the lighthouse goes on and off and just now it’s off. A tall man with a paunch, elegantly dressed, but no oil painting, came over dragging his feet, and gave her a sharp look with his blue eyes.

‘Were you wishing to report anything in particular, madame?’ he asked with perfect diction. ‘Here, we don’t receive complaints about thefts or muggings. This is the Serious Crime Squad. Homicide and murder only.’

‘A very great one,’ the man replied, leaning towards her in an attitude of old-world courtesy. ‘Murder is premeditated killing. Homicide may be unintentional.’

‘Well, yes, in that case, I’m coming about a maybe-homicide, a not deliberate one.’

‘No, no, but it might have been me that did it, the homicide, without meaning to.’

‘Commandant, not commissaire, madame. Commandant Adrien Danglard at your service.’

It was a long time ago, if ever, that anyone had spoken to her with so much courtesy and deference. This man was far from good-looking – he seemed rather ill-assembled to her gaze – but my word, his beautiful way with language won you over. The lighthouse switched on again.

‘Commandant,’ she said, with a little more assurance, ‘I’m afraid I may have sent a letter that caused a death.’

‘Ah no, commandant’ – she liked repeating this word which seemed to give her more importance – ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

‘Yes, I sent it. But I thought about it first. Not too little and not too much.’

‘But why did you post it – that’s what you did, was it? – if you hadn’t written it yourself?’

‘Well, because I picked it up off the ground, and then after that the lady died.’

‘No, no, I didn’t know her at all. But I’d just saved her life. That must count for something, though, mustn’t it?’

Hadn’t Bourlin said that Alice Gauthier had set off to post a letter that had disappeared?

He drew himself to his full height, as far as possible. Danglard was actually very tall, much taller than little Commissaire Adamsberg, but people tended not to notice this.

‘Immense,’ he repeated, being conscious of the distress of the woman in the red coat.

‘But then, later, she died,’ she went on. ‘I read it in the deaths column this morning. I look at the deaths from time to time,’ she explained, a little too quickly, ‘to check I haven’t missed the funeral of someone close to me, an old friend, you see.’

Marie-France cheered up immediately. She felt a kind of affection for this man who understood her so well and who washed away all her sins so promptly.

‘So I discovered that Alice Gauthier, from 33a, had died. It was her letter that I posted. And oh dear, monsieur le commandant, what if I set something off? Like I said, I thought it over seven times, not more or less.’

Danglard had received a jolt on hearing the name of Alice Gauthier, and at his age, receiving a jolt and having his fast-fading curiosity about the minutiae of life reignited meant that he felt gratitude to the woman in the red coat.

‘Would you be so good as to accompany me to see Commissaire Adamsberg?’ he said, ushering her by the shoulders, as if he were afraid that the unknown elements she possessed might spill out on the way, like the contents of a vase.

Obediently, Marie-France allowed herself to be guided. She was going to the big chief’s office. And the big chief’s name – Adamsberg – was not unknown to her.

She was disappointed though, when the gentlemanly commandant pushed open the door of the chief’s office. Inside, a drowsy-looking character wearing a shabby black cotton jacket over a black T-shirt was nodding off, his feet up on the desk: he had nothing in common with the social graces of the man who had greeted her.

‘Commissaire, madame says she posted Alice Gauthier’s last letter. I thought it was important for you to hear what she has to say.’

Although she had thought him practically asleep, the commissaire opened his eyes at once and sat up properly. Marie-France stepped forward awkwardly, irked at having to leave her friendly commandant for this odd-looking man.

‘Yes, I’m the commissaire,’ Adamsberg smiled, being both accustomed and indifferent to the disconcerted faces he often met. With a wave of his hand, he invited her to sit down opposite him.

Never believe in the authority of the authorities, her father used to say, they’re the worst. And in fact he would add: ‘bastards, the lot of ’em’. Marie-France clammed up. Aware of her retreat into her shell, Adamsberg motioned to Danglard to sit down beside her. And indeed it was only after prompting by the commandant that she decided to open her mouth.

‘I’d been to the dentist. I don’t live in the 15th arrondissement. It just happened, she was coming along with her walking frame, she took ill and she fell over. I caught her in my arms, so her head didn’t hit the pavement.’

Not even a ‘madame’, which the commandant would have added. No ‘immensely’ either. Just a cop making an ordinary remark and, anyway, she had no great love of the police. While the other man was a real gentleman – though one who’d strayed into the wrong job – this one, the boss, was a run-of-the-mill cop, and in a couple of minutes he’d be accusing her of something! Go to the police and in no time you’re guilty of something.

Adamsberg glanced at Danglard again. No question of asking her for her ID papers, as they normally would, or they’d lose her completely.

‘Madame happened to be there by a miracle,’ the commandant explained with some insistence. ‘She saved Madame Gauthier from a blow that could have been fatal.’

‘Destiny must have set you on her path,’ Adamsberg took over. No ‘madame’, but still, it was a compliment. Marie-France turned the anti-cop half of her face towards him.

No answer. Danglard stood up, and from behind Marie-France, he mouthed at Adamsberg ‘ma-da-me’ , in three syllables. The commissaire took the hint.

After a slight nod from the woman in the red coat, Danglard headed upstairs to the coffee machine. Adamsberg had caught on, it seemed. This woman had to be reassured, treated politely, and her wavering narcissism had to be cultivated. The commissaire would have to alter his manner of speaking, which was too casual and natural. But of course he’d been born like that, natural, straight out of a tree or a rock or a stream. He was from the mountains of the Pyrenees.

Once the coffee had been served – in cups, not plastic beakers – the commandant took charge of the conversation.

‘Yes, and her nurse came running to help at once. She was shouting, she said that Madame Gauthier had absolutely refused to let her come along with her. Then the lady from the pharmacy took over, and I just picked up her things that had fallen out of the handbag. Because who else would have done it? The emergency people, they don’t think of that. But in your handbag, well, everything’s in here, your whole life.’

‘Very true,’ Adamsberg said encouragingly. ‘Men stuff everything in their pockets. So you picked up a letter?’

‘She must have had it in her left hand, because it was the other side from the handbag.’

The smile suited him. It was gracious. And now she felt that she was of interest to the big chief.

‘Yes, but I didn’t realise at once. It was only afterwards, when I was on my way to the metro, that I felt the letter in my coat pocket. Now don’t go thinking I pinched the letter, will you?’

‘No, of course not, one does this kind of thing inadvertently,’ said Danglard.

‘That’s right, inadvertently. I saw that it was marked with the sender’s name, Alice Gauthier, so I realised it was the old lady’s letter. After that I thought it over, seven times, not any more.’

‘Not five, and not twenty. My father always said you should think something over seven times in your head, before you act, not less, because you might do something silly, but especially not more, or you’d go round and round in circles. And end up corkscrewed into the ground. Then you’re stuck. So I thought: this lady went out on her own to post this letter. So it must have been important, don’t you think?’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Marie-France more confidently. ‘And I checked it was her letter, she’d written her name in big letters on the back. First, I thought I’d better return it to her, but she’d been taken off to hospital, and which one would it be? I didn’t know, the paramedics never even spoke to me, or asked my name, or anything. Then I thought I should take it back to number 33a, because the nurse person had said that’s where she lived. That was the fifth time of thinking. But then I said to myself, no, absolutely not, because the lady had stopped the nurse coming with her. Perhaps she didn’t trust her or something. So at the seventh turn, I decided to finish what the poor lady hadn’t been able to do. And I posted it.’

‘And did you by any chance note the address, madame?’ asked Adamsberg with a note of anxiety.

Because it was quite possible that this woman, with all her elaborate precautions, tormented by her conscience, could have refrained from reading the name of the addressee, in order to respect the old woman’s privacy.

CONTENTS

Also by Fred Vargas

About the Book

About the Author

I

II

III

IV

V