The Inspector Adamsberg Series
The Chalk Circle Man
Have Mercy On Us All
Seeking Whom He May Devour
Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand
This Night’s Foul Work
An Uncertain Place
The Ghost Riders of Ordebec
A Climate of Fear
The Three Evangelists Series
The Three Evangelists
Dog Will Have His Day
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781473522923
Version 1.0
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Harvill Secker
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
Harvill Secker is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © Editions Viviane Hamy, Paris 1997
English translation copyright © Siân Reynolds 2017
Fred Vargas has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Harvill Secker in 2017
First published with the title Sans feu ni lieu in France by Editions Viviane Hamy in 1997
penguin.co.uk/vintage
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Paris, July 1997
‘PARIS KILLER STRIKES again! See page 6.’
Louis Kehlweiler threw the newspaper down on the table. He’d seen enough and felt no urge to turn straight to page 6. Later maybe, when the whole business had calmed down, he’d cut out the article and file it.
He went into the kitchen and opened a bottle of beer. The last but one. He wrote a big B on the back of his hand in biro. In this July heatwave, you had to increase your fluid intake. Tonight he would sit down to read the latest about the government reshuffle, the rail strike, and the melons that French farmers had dumped on the roads. And he’d keep calm, avoiding page 6.
Shirt unbuttoned, bottle in hand, Louis went back to work. He was translating a huge biography of Bismarck. It was well paid, and he was counting on living for several months off the Iron Chancellor. He carried on for a page, then stopped, his hands hovering over the keyboard. His thoughts had left Bismarck and were focused on a box with a lid, big enough to hold all his shoes and offering one way of decluttering his cupboard.
Feeling rather annoyed with himself, he pushed back his chair, then paced across the room, running his hand through his hair. A shower of summer rain was hammering on the zinc roof overhead. The translation was going well, no reason to get anxious. Thoughtfully, he passed a finger over the back of his pet toad which was sleeping on his desk, snug inside the basket for pencils. He leaned across and read out quietly from the screen the sentence he was in the middle of translating: ‘In those early days of May, it is unlikely that the thought had crossed Bismarck’s mind …’ Then his eyes fell once more on the newspaper, lying folded on the table.
‘PARIS KILLER STRIKES AGAIN! SEE PAGE 6.’ Never mind, back to work, nothing to do with him. He returned to the screen, where the Iron Chancellor was waiting for him. No need to trouble his head about page 6. Quite simply, it wasn’t his job any more. His job, just now, was to translate stuff from German into French, and to say as clearly as possible why, in those first days of May, Bismarck had not yet thought of … something or other. A calm, instructive occupation that paid the bills.
Louis typed another twenty or so lines. He had reached: ‘For indeed at this stage, there is no evidence that he had taken offence …’ when he broke off again. His mind had returned to the box and was obstinately trying to resolve the question of the untidy pile of shoes at the bottom of the wardrobe.
He got to his feet, took the last beer out of the fridge and sipped it standing up. He wasn’t fooled. If his thoughts were turning to domestic reorganisation, it was a sign of something. In fact, he knew very well that it was a sign of disturbance. Disturbance to his current plans, with his ideas wandering in trivial directions, a niggling mental blockage. It wasn’t so much that he was thinking about his jumble of shoes that bothered him. Anyone could have that kind of thought from time to time, without making a big deal out of it. No, it was that he was actually getting some pleasure from the thought.
Louis took another swig or two. Shirts, too. Yes, he’d thought about sorting out his shirts, no more than a week ago.
No question, this was a serious crisis. Only people who don’t know what the hell to do with themselves start thinking about decluttering, for want of being able to set the world to rights. He put the beer bottle on the kitchen counter and went to look at the newspaper. Because, in the end, it was on account of these wretched murders that he was on the brink of a domestic calamity, namely reorganising his lodgings from top to bottom. Not because of Bismarck, no, no. He had no quarrel with a figure from the past who provided him with a living. That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was those damned murders. Two women murdered in two weeks, the whole country was talking about it, and he was obsessing about them too, as if he had any right to think about them and their killer, whereas it was absolutely none of his business.
After that affair with the dog and the grill round the tree in the Place de l’Estrapade, he’d decided he was going to give up on crime: it was ridiculous to embark on a career as an unpaid criminal investigator, simply on the grounds that he’d picked up bad habits during the previous twenty-five years, carrying out special inquiries for the Ministry of the Interior. As long as he had had an official position, the work had seemed legitimate. Now that he was left to his own devices, the job of private eye seemed somehow sleazy, like being a shit-stirrer or a scalp-hunter. Poking about in crimes when nobody had asked you to, grabbing the newspapers the moment they came out, filing away piles of articles, what else was that but a creepy distraction, and a very questionable way of leading your life?
And that was how Kehlweiler, a man all too ready to suspect himself before suspecting anyone else, had turned his back on being an unofficial private eye, something that had seemed suddenly to veer between the perverted and the grotesque, and to which the most suspect part of himself seemed to be drawn. But now, stoically reduced to the company of Otto von Bismarck, he had surprised his thoughts in the act of turning to domestic decluttering. You start with a plastic box and who knows where you will end up.
Louis dropped the empty bottle into the bin. He glanced over at his desk where the folded newspaper crouched menacingly. Bufo, the toad, had momentarily emerged from his slumber to install himself on top of it. Louis lifted him off gently. He considered his toad to be an impostor. He was pretending to hibernate, at the height of summer what was more, but that was just a ruse: he moved when you weren’t looking. Truth to tell, Bufo, having been affected by his state of domesticity, had lost his innate knowledge of hibernation, but refused to admit it, because he was too proud.
‘You’re a ridiculous purist!’ Louis told him, as he put him back in the pencil basket. ‘Your phoney hibernation isn’t impressing anyone. Just stick to what you know about.’
Slowly, he slid the newspaper across the desk towards him.
He hesitated for a moment, then opened it at page 6. ‘PARIS KILLER STRIKES AGAIN!’
CLÉMENT WAS PANICKING. If ever there was a time he needed to be intelligent, this was it; but Clément was stupid, for over twenty years everybody had been telling him so: ‘Clément, you’re so dumb, just make an effort!’
His old teacher, at his special school, had taken a lot of trouble with him: ‘Come on, Clément, try to think of more than one thing at a time, for instance, two things, do you understand? Look, take a bird and a branch. Think about a bird, perching on the branch of a tree – (a) is the bird, (b) is the worm, (c) the bird’s nest, (d) the tree, and (e) is you sorting out your ideas, you make connections, and you use your imagination. Do you see what I’m getting at, Clément?’
Clément sighed. It had taken him days to work out what the worm was doing in the story at all.
Don’t think about the bird, think about today – (a) Paris, (b) the murdered woman. Clément wiped his nose with the back of his hand. His arm was trembling. (c) Try to find Marthe in Paris. He’d been looking for her for hours, asking for her everywhere, going to all the streetwalkers he’d met. At least twenty, maybe forty, well, lots of them anyway. It was surely impossible that any of them could have forgotten Marthe Gardel. (c) Find Marthe. Clément walked on, sweating in the heat of early July, gripping his blue accordion under his arm. Perhaps she’d left Paris, his own dear Marthe, in the fifteen years he’d been away. Perhaps she was even dead.
He stopped abruptly on the boulevard du Montparnasse. If she’d left town, or if she was dead, then he was sunk. Completely sunk. Marthe was the only person who could help him, Marthe was the only person who would hide him. The only woman who had never treated him as a cretin. The only one who ruffled his hair. But what’s the use of Paris, if you can’t find someone there?
Clément shifted the accordion on to his shoulder. His hands were sweating too much to hold it under his arm, and he was afraid of dropping it. Without his accordion, and without Marthe, and with the murdered woman, yes, he was sunk. At the crossroads, he looked around. On a little side street, he spotted two prostitutes, and that boosted his courage a little.
The young woman leaning against a wall in the rue Delambre watched as he approached: a man of about thirty, shabbily dressed, wrists protruding from the cuffs of a shirt that was much too small, carrying a backpack and an accordion, and looking a bit clueless. She stiffened, there were some guys you wanted to avoid.
‘Not me,’ she said, shaking her head as Clément stopped in front of her. ‘Go try Gisèle.’
The young woman jerked her thumb towards her colleague standing three doors further along. Gisèle had been on the game thirty years. Nothing frightened her.
Clément opened his eyes wide. He wasn’t offended by being repulsed before he had asked for anything. He was used to it.
‘I’m looking for a woman, a friend of mine,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Her name’s Marthe. Marthe Gardel. She’s not in the phone book.’
‘A friend?’ said the young woman warily. ‘And you don’t know where she works?’
‘She doesn’t work now, but in the old days she was so pretty! By the Mutualité, Marthe Gardel, everyone knew her.’
‘I’m not everyone, and I’m not the flipping phone book either. What do you want her for?’
Clément took a step back. He didn’t like people to speak loudly to him.
‘What do I want her for?’ he repeated.
He mustn’t say too much about that, not to arouse suspicion. Marthe was the only one who would understand.
The young woman shook her head. This fellow was some sort of simpleton, no question, and he talked like one. Give him a wide berth. At the same time, she felt a bit sorry for him. She watched as he very gently put his accordion down on the ground.
‘This Marthe, if I get you right, she’s on the game?’
Clément nodded.
‘OK. Stay there.’
The young woman trailed over to Gisèle.
‘Guy over there, looking for a so-called pal of his, she used to work Maubert-Mutualité, name of Marthe Gardel, any idea who she is? Not in the phone book.’
Gisèle jerked her chin up. She knew plenty of things that weren’t in the phone book, on account of which she took herself rather seriously.
‘Lina, my sweet,’ said Gisèle, ‘if you don’t know who Marthe is, you’ve missed out on your education. The busker over there? Tell him to come over, I don’t like leaving my doorway, you know that.’
Lina waved to Clément. He felt his heart start to beat faster. He picked up the accordion and hurried over to the statuesque woman called Gisèle. His steps were clumsy.
‘Looks a bit dumb,’ Gisèle diagnosed under her breath, drawing on her cigarette. ‘And at the end of his tether, I’d say.’
Clément carefully put the accordion down again at Gisèle’s feet and looked up.
‘You’re asking for old Marthe, are you? And what do you want with her? Because you don’t just get to see old Marthe like that, let me tell you. She’s a classified monument, got to have a permit. And pardon me for saying so, but you look a bit of a weirdo. I don’t want any harm coming to her. So what do you want with her, eh?’
‘Old Marthe?’ repeated Clément.
‘Yeah, right, she’s over seventy, didn’t you even know that? Do you really know her, yes or no?’
‘Yes,’ said Clément, stepping back a pace.
‘How do I know that, can you prove it?’
‘I know her, she taught me everything.’
‘That’s her job.’
‘No, no, she taught me to read.’
Lina burst out laughing. Gisèle turned towards her with a frown.
‘Don’t laugh, you ninny. You know nothing about life.’
‘She taught you to read?’ she asked Clément, more kindly this time.
‘When I was little …’
‘Well, OK, that’s the sort of thing she might do. And what do you want? What’s your name anyway?’
Clément made an effort. The murder, the murdered woman. He had to lie, invent something – (e) use your imagination. That was the hardest part.
‘I want to give her back some money.’
‘Well, that might be possible,’ said Gisèle. ‘She’s always short of cash, Marthe is. So how much?’
‘Four thousand francs,’ said Clément at random.
This conversation was wearing him out. It was all going a bit fast for him, and he was terribly afraid of saying the wrong thing.
Gisèle paused for thought. He did look a bit strange, but Marthe could look after herself. And four thousand francs was four thousand francs.
‘OK, I believe you,’ she said. ‘Now, the booksellers on the embankments, by the river, know what I mean?’
‘The river? The Seine?’
‘Yes, of course the Seine, dummy. The embankments, there aren’t a million of them. So you take the left bank, round about the rue de Nevers, you can’t miss her. She’s got a little bookstall, this friend got it for her. Because she doesn’t like twiddling her thumbs. Can you remember that? You’re sure? Because pardon me for saying so, you don’t look all that bright to me.’
Clément stared at her without replying. He didn’t dare ask her to repeat it. And yet his heart was hammering, he had to find Marthe, everything depended on that.
‘OK, I give in,’ sighed Gisèle. ‘I’ll write it down for you.’
‘You’re taking too much trouble,’ said Lina with a shrug.
‘Shut up,’ said Gisèle. ‘What do you know about it?’
She felt in her bag, took out an empty envelope and a stub of pencil. She wrote clearly in capitals, because she did indeed suspect that the young man was not too intelligent.
‘There you are, that’ll find her. Tell her hello from Gisèle in the rue Delambre. And don’t do anything stupid. I’m trusting you, OK?’
Clément nodded yes. He put the envelope quickly into a pocket and shouldered the accordion.
‘Hey,’ said Gisèle, ‘play us a tune, so I can see you’re for real. Then I’ll feel safer about all this. Sorry to say that, but it’s true.’
Clément strapped on the accordion and extended the squeezebox. Then sticking his tongue out a little, and looking straight down at the ground, he began to play.
‘Right,’ said Gisèle to herself, ‘you can be wrong about morons.’ This was a real musician. A moron-musician.
CLÉMENT THANKED HER profusely, and set off towards Montparnasse. It was almost seven in the evening, and Gisèle had said he’d have to hurry to catch ‘old Marthe’ before she shut up shop. He had to ask the way several times, showing the piece of paper. At last: the rue de Nevers, the embankment, and the green wooden boxes perched on the walls, full of second-hand books. He looked at the stallholders, but no one seemed familiar. He’d have to think some more. Gisèle had said ‘seventy’. Marthe was an old woman now, he shouldn’t be looking for a lady with dark hair, as he remembered her.
With her back to him, an elderly woman with dyed orange hair, wearing brightly coloured clothes, was folding up a little canvas chair. She turned round and Clément put his hand to his mouth. It was his Marthe. Older, yes, but still his Marthe, the one who ruffled his hair without treating him as a cretin. He wiped his nose and crossed on the green light, calling out her name.
Old Marthe examined the man who was approaching her. He seemed to know her. A slightly built man, dripping with sweat, carrying a blue accordion under his arm as if it were a flowerpot. A large nose, blank eyes, a pale complexion and fair wavy hair. Clément came to stand in front of her. He was smiling, he recognised everything, he was safe.
‘Yes?’ said Marthe.
Clément hadn’t imagined that Marthe would fail to recognise him, and he began to panic again. What if Marthe had forgotten him? What if she’d forgotten everything about the past? What if she had lost her memory?
His mind went blank, he couldn’t even think to say his name. He put down the accordion and hunted feverishly through his wallet. Taking care, he found his identity card and held it anxiously out to Marthe. He was very attached to his identity card.
Marthe shrugged and looked at the worn piece of card. Clément Didier Jean Vauquer, twenty-nine years old. Well, that didn’t mean a thing to her. She considered the man with the vague eyes and shook her head, looking rather regretful. Then she stared again at the card, then at the man, who was panting noisily. She felt she should make an effort, that this person desperately wanted something from her. But the bony, unprepossessing and frantic face in front of her, no, she’d never seen it. And yet the eyes, on the verge of tears, the anxious patience, said something. Blank eyes, small ears. A former client? Impossible, too young.
The man wiped his nose with the back of his hand, the rapid gesture of a child without a handkerchief.
‘Clément?’ whispered Marthe. ‘Little Clément?’
Little Clément, for the love of God!
Marthe quickly closed the bookstall’s wooden shutters, locked it, picked up her folding chair, her newspaper and two plastic bags, and nudged the young man’s arm urgently.
‘Come along,’ she said.
How could she have forgotten his last name? Of course she had never had occasion to use it, she’d always called him Clément, just Clément. She dragged him fifty metres further along, to the car park by the French Academy, where she put her stuff down between two cars.
‘Quieter here,’ she explained.
Clément, relieved, let her take charge.
‘You see now, don’t you?’ Marthe went on. ‘I always said you’d end up a head taller than me, and you didn’t believe me. So who was right? What a long time ago! You were what when I met you? Nine or ten years old? And then one fine day, my little pal disappeared. You could have kept in touch. I don’t want to tell you off, but you should have.’
Clément hugged Marthe hard, and Marthe patted his back. He smelled sweaty of course, but he was her little Clément, and anyway Marthe wasn’t fussy. She was happy to find him again, the little boy lost whom she’d tried to teach to read and talk properly for about five years. When she’d first known him, hanging about on the street, abandoned by his godawful father, he couldn’t even speak normally, he’d just kept muttering, ‘Don’t care anyway, they say I’m going to hell.’
Marthe looked at him anxiously. He seemed totally desperate.
‘So, something’s the matter,’ she declared.
Clément had sat down on a car bonnet, his arms dangling. He was staring at the newspaper which Marthe had put down with her plastic bags.
‘Have you seen the paper?’ he managed to say.
‘I was just doing the crossword.’
‘The woman that was murdered, see that?’
‘You bet, everyone’s seen about that. What a brute!’
‘They’re after me, Marthe. You’ve got to help me.’
‘Who’s after you, my little pal?’
Clément waved his arm around in a circle.
‘The woman that was murdered,’ he repeated. ‘They’re after me, it says so in the paper.’
Marthe hurriedly unfolded her canvas chair and sat down. The blood was pounding in her temples. It wasn’t the image of the little boy learning his letters that came to mind now, but all the stupid things Clément had done between the age of nine and twelve. Thefts, fights, as soon as anyone called him an imbecile. Cars vandalised, chalk in petrol tanks, windows broken, dustbins set alight. The skinny little creature had just stubbornly repeated, ‘I’m going to hell, my dad says so, see if I care.’ How many times had Marthe had to go and haul him out of the cop shop? Luckily, because of her profession, she was familiar with all the police stations in Paris and the men who staffed them. At about thirteen years old, Clément had pretty well calmed down.
‘God Almighty, it’s not possible,’ she muttered after a few minutes. ‘It can’t be, God Almighty, that they want you for that?’
‘It’s me, they’re after me, Marthe.’
Marthe’s throat constricted. In her head she heard footsteps clattering on the stairs and the child calling, ‘They’re after me, Marthe, they’re after me,’ as he hammered on her door. Marthe would open it, and the small boy would fling himself into her arms in tears. She would let him curl up in bed under her red eiderdown and stroke his hair till he went to sleep. He wasn’t very bright, her little Clément. She knew that, but she would have allowed herself to be chopped in pieces before agreeing with anyone else who voiced it. There were plenty of people ready to spit on him as it was. It wasn’t his fault, poor kid, he’d get better, he’d learn. And then we’d see what we’d see.
And now, well, we were seeing, as Simon might have said, the old bastard who kept the grocer’s shop back then. Always the first to point the finger. He called Clément ‘bad blood’. Even thinking about that old b stirred Marthe to get going. She knew what she had to do. She rose to her feet, folded the chair and picked up her things.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We can’t stay here.’
THESE DAYS, MARTHE was living in a ground-floor bed-sitting room, in a dead-end street near the Place de la Bastille.
‘My friend found this for me,’ she said proudly to Clément as she opened the door. ‘If it wasn’t for all the junk I’ve got in here, it’d be quite smart. The bookstall by the river, that’s him as well, Ludwig he’s called. Did you ever think one day I’d find myself selling books? Swapped one pavement for another, see? Anything can happen.’
Clément was only half following this.
‘Ludwig?’
‘The friend I’m telling you about. Now, he’s one in a million. And I know what I’m talking about when it comes to men. Put the accordion down, Clément, you’re making me feel tired.’
Clément waved the newspaper at her, he wanted to say something.
‘No,’ said Marthe. ‘Put down your accordion first, then sit, anyone can see you can hardly stand up. You can tell me all about the accordion by and by, no hurry. And listen to me now, my boy: we’re going to have some supper, we’re going to have a little glass of something, and then you’re going to tell me what this is all about, calmly and slowly. Got to do things in the right order. And while I’m cooking, you’re going to clean yourself up. And for the love of Mike, put that accordion down!’
Marthe hauled Clément over to an alcove at the back of the room, and moved a curtain aside.
‘Take a look at that!’ she said. ‘A real bathroom. Fancy, isn’t it? You’re going to have a hot bath, because you should always have a bath, and a hot one, when you’ve got problems. And if you’ve got some clean clothes, you put ’em on. You can give me the dirty ones, I’ll wash them out tonight. It’s so hot, they’ll dry quickly.’ Marthe ran the water and pushed Clément into the bathroom, before drawing the curtain across.
At least he wouldn’t smell sweaty now. Marthe sighed, she felt anxious. She picked up the newspaper without rustling it, and read the article on page 6 again, slowly. The young woman whose body had been found yesterday morning in her flat in the rue de la Tour-des-Dames had been hit on the head, strangled, and stabbed a total of eighteen times with a blade, possibly scissors. A real bloodbath.
‘Help is expected from witnesses living nearby who have all mentioned the presence of a man standing watching the building for several days before the murder.’ The sound of water made Marthe jump. Clément was emptying the bath. She quietly put the paper aside.
‘Sit down now, my boy, supper’s on its way.’
Clément had changed his clothes and combed his hair. He had never been good-looking, perhaps because of his pug nose, pale skin, and especially the blank look in his eyes. Marthe said it was because they were so dark that you couldn’t distinguish the pupil from the iris, but if you were prepared to look carefully, he wasn’t so bad, and anyway, what the hell did that matter? As she stirred the pasta, Marthe went over in her head the information from the article: ‘… enquiries are focusing on a young white man, aged twenty-five to thirty, small and slight or very thin, clean-shaven, with curly fair hair, cheaply dressed, wearing grey or beige trousers and trainers.’
The police were confident they’d have an identikit picture available in two days at most.
Grey trousers, Marthe remarked to herself, glancing at Clément.
She ladled the spaghetti out on their plates, adding cheese and sliced hard-boiled egg. Clément looked at his food without speaking.
‘Eat up,’ said Marthe. ‘Pasta gets cold quickly, don’t know why. But cauliflower doesn’t. There’s nobody can tell you the answers to things like that.’
Clément had never been able to talk while eating. He was incapable of doing two things at once. So Marthe decided to wait until they had finished.
‘Don’t think about it, just eat up,’ she repeated. ‘Empty sacks won’t stand upright.’
Clément nodded and obeyed.
‘And while we’re eating, I’m going to tell you some of my stories, like when you were little, OK? Like the client I had who wore two pairs of trousers, one on top of the other, and I bet you don’t remember it at all.’
It wasn’t difficult for Marthe to distract Clément. She was capable of telling story after story for hours, and often found she was talking to herself. So she told him the story of the man with the two pairs of trousers. Then the ones about the fire in the Place de l’Aligre, the politician who had two families, something she was the only person to know, and the little ginger cat that had fallen from the sixth floor and landed on its four paws.
‘My stories aren’t so good tonight,’ Marthe ended, pulling a face. ‘I’m not concentrating. I’ll fix us some coffee and then we’ll have a chat. Take your time.’
Clément wondered anxiously where to begin. He couldn’t work out which should be (a). Perhaps this morning in the cafe?
‘This morning, Marthe, I was drinking coffee in a cafe …’
Clément stopped, his fingers on his lips. He felt stupid. How did other people manage to avoid saying things like ‘coffee in a cafe’?
‘Go on,’ said Marthe, ‘don’t worry if it sounds stupid, I won’t mind.’
‘So I was drinking coffee in a cafe,’ Clément repeated. ‘And one of the men in there, he read out from the paper. And I heard the name of the street, “rue de la Tour-des-Dames”, so I listened personally, and then they described this murderer. And it was me, Marthe. Just me. So I knew I was in trouble after that, I don’t know how they knew. I was very scared, so I went back to the hotel and I got my things, and then all I could think of was to find you, so they wouldn’t catch me.’
‘But what had this girl done to you, Clément?’
‘What girl?’
‘The one that’s dead, Clément. Did you know her?’
‘No. I was just spying on her for five days. But no, she hadn’t done anything to me, no.’
‘And why were you spying on her?’
Clément pressed the side of his nose and frowned. It was very hard to get things in the right order.
‘To know if she had a sweetheart. It was for that. And the pot plant, it was me that bought it, and I gave it to her. They found it, fallen over, with all the earth spilled on the floor, that was in the papers too.’
Marthe got up to fetch a cigarette. As a child, Clément had never been smart, no, but neither had he been crazy or cruel. And the young man sitting at her table, in her bed-sitting room, suddenly made her feel afraid. She wondered for a moment about going out to call the police. Her little Clément, oh God Almighty, it wasn’t possible, was it? What had she been hoping? That he’d killed someone by accident? Or without realising? No, she’d been hoping it simply wasn’t true.
‘But, Clément, what came over you?’ she whispered.
‘For the pot plant?’
‘No, Clément, why did you kill her?’ Marthe shouted.
Her cry ended in a sob. Panic-stricken, Clément came round the table and knelt down beside her.
‘But, Marthe,’ he stammered, ‘Marthe, you know I’m a good kid! You said so, you always said so. Isn’t that the personal truth? Marthe?’
‘I thought so,’ Marthe cried. ‘I gave you your education. And now what have you done? Do you think that was being a good kid?’
‘But, Marthe, she hadn’t done anything to me.’
‘Be quiet. I don’t want to hear any more of this.’
Clément gripped his head in his hands. Where had he gone wrong? What had he forgotten to say? He’d picked the wrong (a) as usual, and like every time, he’d started off in the wrong place. And he had given Marthe a terrible shock.
‘I didn’t tell you the beginning, Marthe,’ said Clément, shaking her shoulder. ‘I didn’t kill the woman!’
‘So if it wasn’t you, who was it? Did God strike her dead or something?’
‘You’ve got to help me, Marthe,’ Clément whispered, his hands gripping her shoulders, ‘because they’ll come and get me.’
‘You’re telling lies, Clément.’
‘I don’t know how to tell lies, you told me that too. You told me you’ve got to have ideas to tell lies.’
Yes, she did remember that Clément was hopeless at inventing things. He couldn’t make up a little joke or an April fool, still less tell an outright lie. Marthe thought again of the old greengrocer in their street, Simon, who used to spit on the ground and say, ‘That boy’s got bad blood, he’ll end up murdering us in our beds, see if he doesn’t.’ Tears sprang to her eyes. She loosened Clément’s hands from her shoulders, blew her nose loudly in her paper napkin, and took a long deep breath. She and Clément would have to be right, it couldn’t be any other way. It was between themselves and that old Simon, you had to make a choice.
‘OK,’ she said sniffing, ‘start again.’
‘See, Marthe,’ Clément began, breathing fast, ‘(a) I was watching this girl. It was this job I was asked to do. And the rest is just a … a …’
‘Coincidence?’
‘Coincidence, that’s it. They’re looking for me because I was seen in the street, me personally. I was working. And a bit before that, I was watching another girl. Same thing. Work.’
‘Another girl?’ said Marthe, her voice expressing her fear. ‘Do you remember where?’
‘Wait,’ said Clément pressing the side of his nose. ‘I’m trying to think.’
Marthe got up abruptly and went over to a pile of newspapers under the sink. She pulled one out and looked through it quickly.
‘Not the Square d’Aquitaine was it, Clément?’
‘Yes, that’s right!’ said Clément with a big smile, relieved. ‘That’s where the first girl lived. Just a little street, on the way out of Paris.’
Marthe let herself drop on to a chair.
‘My poor boy,’ she murmured. ‘My poor boy, don’t you know?’
Clément, still on his knees, was staring at Marthe, open-mouthed.
‘It wasn’t a coincidence,’ Marthe said quietly. ‘Someone killed a woman ten days ago in the Square d’Aquitaine.’
‘Was there a pot plant?’ Clément asked, whispering now.
Marthe shrugged.
‘It was a pretty fern,’ Clément murmured, ‘I chose it myself, personally. That’s what I was asked to do.’
‘Who asked you? Who are you talking about?’
‘This man, he phoned me in Nevers, and said he wanted an accordionist for his restaurant in Paris. But the restaurant wasn’t ready yet. So he asked me to keep an eye on these two waitresses, he wanted to hire them, but he wanted to know if they were reliable girls.’
‘Oh, my poor Clément …’
‘Do you think someone saw me in the Square d’Aquitaine too?’
‘Well, of course they did. In fact, that’s why you were sent there, my poor child: to be seen. God in heaven, couldn’t you have guessed that it was a very odd job to be given?’
Clément stared wide-eyed at Marthe.
‘I’m an idiot, Marthe. You know that.’
‘No, Clément, you’re not an idiot. And what about the first murder, didn’t you hear that on the news?’
‘I was in this hotel, I didn’t have a radio.’
‘A newspaper then?’
Clément lowered his gaze.
‘Oh, reading … I’ve sort of forgotten some of it.’
‘You can’t read any more?’ cried Marthe.
‘Not very well. It’s too small, the words in the papers.’
‘Oh dear,’ sighed Marthe in exasperation, ‘you see now what happens when you don’t carry on with your education.’
‘I’m caught in a machinery, a horrible machinery.’
‘A horrible machination, Clément. You’re right. And believe me, this is too much for us.’
‘We’re sunk?’
‘No, we’re not sunk. Because you see, my boy, old Marthe has contacts. She knows people who are clever. And that’s where education comes in, see that now?’
Clément nodded.
‘But first of all,’ said Marthe, standing up, ‘did you tell anyone you were coming here?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure? Think. You didn’t mention my name to anyone?’
‘Yes, yes I did, to the girls. I asked about forty street girls, trying to find you. I can’t read the phone book properly, it’s too small.’
‘And would these girls recognise you from the description in the paper? Did you talk to them for long?’
‘No, they wouldn’t even talk to me, personally. Except this one, Madame Gisèle and her friend, they were nice to me. She said to say hello to you, Gisèle in the rue …’
‘Delambre.’
‘That’s right. They would recognise me. But perhaps they can’t read either?’
‘Yes, they can, Clément. Everybody can read. You’re an exception.’
‘I’m not an exception. Just an idiot.’
‘Someone who says he’s an idiot isn’t one,’ pronounced Marthe firmly, taking Clément’s shoulder. ‘Now listen to me, my boy. You’re going to sleep now, I’ll fix the camp bed behind the screen for you. And I’m going to nip out to see Gisèle and tell her to keep her mouth shut, and the other girl, her pal, too. Do you know the pal’s name? Could it be Lina, a young one, working in the rue Delambre just now?’
‘Yes, that’s it. You’re so clever!’
‘It’s just education, remember.’
Clément suddenly clapped his hands to his cheeks.
‘They’ll say that I was coming to see you,’ he whispered, ‘and then people will come for me here. I must go away, they’ll get me.’
‘Just stay right where you are. Gisèle and Lina won’t say anything, because I’ll ask them not to. Rules of the profession, simple as that. But I’ve got to get a move on, go and see them right now. And you, just stay here, don’t go out, whatever you do. Or answer the door. I’ll be late back. Go to sleep.’
IT WAS PAST eleven when Marthe tapped Gisèle on the shoulder. Gisèle was standing, half asleep, in a doorway. She had the gift of being able to drop off anywhere, like horses do, she said. She was as proud of this as if she was a champion at some sport, but Marthe had always found it a bit sad. The two women hugged: it was four years since they’d seen each other.
‘Gisèle,’ said Marthe, ‘I’m in a hurry. It’s about this man who was asking for me this evening.’
‘Thought so. Did I make a mistake sending him?’
‘No, you did the right thing. But if anyone comes asking, you don’t know anything. You might even see stuff about him in the paper. But don’t tell anyone anything.’
‘The cops, you mean?’
‘For instance. He’s a little boy belongs to me, I’ll take care of it. See what I’m saying, Gisèle?’
‘There’s nothing to see. I won’t tell, that’s all. What’s he done?’
‘Nothing. He’s a kid belongs to me, like I said.’
‘Hey, it isn’t that little lad from way back, is it, the one you were teaching to read?’
‘Quick off the mark, aren’t you, Gisèle?’
‘Well, just since I saw him, the little grey cells have been working,’ said Gisèle with a smile, twirling a finger on her temple. ‘Though pardon me for saying so, but he doesn’t have a lot upstairs, your kid does he?’
Marthe shrugged, looking awkward.
‘He’s never been able to say the right thing.’
‘You can say that again. But if it’s your little Clément, well, that’s the way it is. Can’t change it, can we?’
Marthe smiled.
‘You remembered his name?’
‘Like I said,’ Gisèle went on, finger to temple again. ‘Little grey cells at work. You know what it is, you stand round here on your tod, nothing to do, you got to do something, so you get to thinking. As you would know.’
Marthe nodded pensively.
‘Work it out,’ Gisèle was saying, ‘after all, you spent thirty-five years on the street, thinking about things. Adds up.’
‘Look, by the end,’ Marthe said, ‘I was working with a call phone in my room.’
‘Yeah, but. You can think just as well if you’re sitting in a room. But if you’re always busy with your hands, working in the post office or something, you don’t get time to think a lot.’
‘True, you need a bit of breathing space to be able to think.’
‘Like I’m saying.’
‘But Clément, you’d better forget about him, please. Don’t say a thing. Keep mum, got that?
‘Excuse me, you already told me that.’
‘Don’t take offence, I just wanted to be sure.’
‘So he’s in trouble, your Clément?’
‘He hasn’t done anything. But there are all these other people after him.’
‘Other people? Who would they be?’
‘Stupid buggers.’
‘OK, I get it.’
‘I’m off now, Gisèle. I’m counting on you, you’re pure gold. And tell Lina too. Love to the kids. And get a bit of sleep.’