Have Mercy On Us All (20 page)

“He’s sticking shards of palaeolithic flint back together in the basement,” Vandoosler Junior explained.

Adamsberg nodded without trying to understand. What he realised nonetheless was that it would take more than the odd interrogation to get the hang of this household and its inhabitants. A whole seminar would hardly suffice and he didn’t have time for that.

“Obviously Mathias might be lying,” Marc said. “But if you want to crosscheck, you could try asking each of us separately what colour the sheets were. He can’t have invented the date because I picked up the laundry that morning from Mme Toussaint at 22 Avenue de Choisy and you can check that out with her. I washed and dried it during the day and we ironed it in the evening. I returned it to Mme Toussaint the next day. One pair of light blue bed sheets with a shell motif, and another flesh-coloured pair with grey turn-downs.”

Adamsberg nodded. The housekeeping alibi was rock solid. The fellow knew what he was talking about as far as linen was concerned.

“OK,” he said. “I’ll put you in the picture.”

Adamsberg was a slow talker and it took him all of twenty-five minutes to tell the tale of the 4s, the town crier, and the Tuesday murder. Vandoosler Senior and Junior listened intently. Marc kept on nodding his head as if he was checking off each paragraph of Adamsberg’s account. He gave his verdict as soon as Adamsberg finished talking.

“OK, so what you’ve got on your hands is a would-be plague-monger. But he also likes playing saviour. That means he thinks he’s in full control.
Has
happened, but the vast majority of them were fantasies.”

“Sorry?” said Adamsberg as he opened his pad to start taking notes. Marc explained.

“Every outbreak of plague caused such fear and panic that people invented culprits they could actually get at, that’s to say, culprits other than God, comets and miasma. They looked for
plague-mongers
. They would accuse bods of spreading the disease on purpose by smearing unguents or oils or potions on doorbells, handles, railings and so forth. Any poor yokel who leaned his hand on a wall when this sort of panic was abroad most likely got lynched. He would be denounced as a ‘spreader’ or ‘greaser,’ as they called people who were supposed to sow the seeds of the disease. Nobody stopped to ask why anyone should want to do that kind of a job. But it’s perfectly obvious that we’re dealing with just such a person in the present case. On the other hand he’s not casting his plague seeds just anywhere, is he? He’s taking aim at a particular individual and acting as a saviour for all the rest. He’s God, so he can use God’s curse for his own purposes. It’s up to God to decide whose turn it is.”

“We’ve been looking for a link between all the people in the line of fire. We haven’t come up with anything yet.”

“If there’s a plague-monger at work, then there ought to be a hand tool too. Did you find any smears on the unmarked doors? Or on the keyholes?”

“We haven’t been looking for that. But why would he need a hand tool if he kills by strangling?”

“Well, I suppose that in his own mind he doesn’t think he’s a murderer. If he was aware of his own murderous intent he wouldn’t have needed to set up all these theatricals. He’s using the scourge as a screen. The plague is like a convenient fog in between the victim and the murderer. He can’t see himself killing. It’s the plague that does it for him.”

“Which accounts for the ads he has the town crier read out.”

“That’s right. The plague scare is a wind-up but its aim is to make the disease the one and only cause of what happens next. So he obviously needs a tool as well.”

“Those fleas?” Adamsberg suggested. “My deputy got bitten by fleas at the dead man’s flat yesterday.”

“Good Lord, did you say fleas? Are you telling me there were fleas in the flat?”

Marc jumped up and strode around the room with his hands clenched in his trouser pockets.

“What kind of fleas? Cat fleas?”

“I don’t know. I’m having Danglard’s clothes looked at by the path lab.”

“If they’re cat fleas or dog fleas, no need to worry,” Marc said as he paced up and down. “They aren’t carriers. But if we’ve got rat fleas, if the fellow has really infected rat fleas and then released them, then we’ve bloody well got a disaster on our hands.”

“Are they really dangerous?”

Marc looked at Adamsberg as if he’d just been asked whether sharks had sharp teeth.

“Let me call the lab,” he added.

Adamsberg went to one side to make the call. Marc signalled to Lucien to stop making so much noise putting away the dishes.

“Yes, that’s right,” Adamsberg said into his mobile phone. “You’ve got the results? … What was that you said? …Spell that for me, for God’s sake.”

Adamsberg traced N, then O on his pad but found it hard to get the rest down. Marc grabbed the pencil from his hand and finished the word for him:
Nosopsyllus fasciatus
. Then he added a question mark. Adamsberg confirmed that was right.

“Thank you, I’ve got the word now,” he told the entomologist at the other end.

Marc scribbled “carriers of the bacillus?” on the pad.

“Get them taken down to the bacteriology department,” Adamsberg said into the phone. “Test them for plague. Tell the lads to put their skates on. I’ve already got one man bitten. And for God’s sake don’t go and lose the bloody things in the lab … Yes, same number, any time, day or night.”

Adamsberg folded up his phone and put it back in his pocket.

“There were two fleas in my deputy’s clothing. They were not ordinary human fleas. They were –”

“
Nosopsyllus fasciatus
, rat fleas,” Marc said.

“There was a dead specimen in the envelope we found in the victim’s mail. Same kind.”

“So that’s how he spreads them.”

“Looks like it,” Adamsberg agreed as he too began to pace around the refectory table. “He slits open the envelope and lets the fleas out in the flat. But I don’t believe those bloody insects really are infected. I think it’s all part of his symbolic game.”

“He’s taking the game pretty close to a reality show, though, with his genuine rat fleas. They’re not easy things to get hold of.”

“I think it’s another wind-up. That’s why he killed the victim himself. He knows his fleas won’t do any harm.”

“How can you be so sure? You’d better have every single flea in Laurion’s flat caught and bagged.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?”

“The easiest way is to take a couple of guinea pigs into the flat, and let them poke around on their own for five minutes or so. They’ll pick up any fleas that happen to be there. Then you pop them straight back into a plastic bag and rush them over to the lab. Then you have pest control come and do the flat over from top to bottom. Don’t let the guinea pigs stay in the flat for very long because once the fleas have had their bite they usually hop off and look for another snack. You have to get the beasts while they’re still having lunch.”

“OK, thanks,” Adamsberg said as he scribbled notes on the recommended procedure. “You’ve been very helpful, Vandoosler.”

“A couple of other points before you go,” Marc said as he was showing Adamsberg out. “Your plague-monger is not quite on top of his subject, you know. There are some gaps in his knowledge of the field.”

“You mean he’s making mistakes?”

“Yes.”

“About what?”

“Charcoal. Black Death. It’s just an image, as well as a bad case of mistranslation. The Latin term
pestis atra
means ‘terrible plague,’ not literally ‘black’ plague. Victims’ bodies never did go black. Sure, there could be nasty dark bluey-black blotches here and there, or just about. But the
black
idea came quite late in the history of the plague. It’s a folk thing, a popular misapprehension. Everybody thinks the plague turns you black, but it’s not true. So when your man smudged his victim’s corpse with charcoal, he was making a big mistake. A bloody great howler, if I may say so.”

“Ah,” said Adamsberg.

Lucien came past on his way out. “Keep a cool head,
commissaire
,” he advised. “Marc has a blinkered vision of things, which is only to be expected from a medievalist. He often can’t see the wood for the trees.”

“And what’s the name of the wood, then?”

“Violence,
commissaire
. Human violence.”

Marc smiled and stood aside to let Lucien get out of the front door.

“What does your friend do for a living, then?” Adamsberg asked.

“His principal avocation is to get up everyone’s nose, but that doesn’t pay the rent. He does it not-for-profit, gratis and for free. His secondary activity is modern and contemporary history, with a particular interest in the First World War. We have big fights between periods.”

“Ah, I see. And what was the other thing you wanted to tell me?”

“Am I right in thinking you’re looking for someone whose initials are CLT?”

“It looks like a serious lead.”

“Drop it. CLT is just an acronym. It used to be called the electuary of the three adverbs.”

“Excuse me?”

“Almost every treatise of the plague told you that the very best way to ward off the disease was to say
cito longe fugeas et tarde redeas
. Word for word, ‘Go away fast and for a long time, and come back slowly’. To put it another way, ‘Scram right now and take your time about coming back’. That’s what was meant by the ‘remedy of the three adverbs’ –
fast, long, late
. Latin original:
cito, longe, tarde
, which makes CLT.”

“Can you write that down for me?” Adamsberg held out his notepad for the historian to use.

Marc scribbled down a couple of lines.

“CLT is a piece of advice that your murderer is giving the people that
he’s
protecting with those 4s,” said Marc as he handed the pad back to the
commissaire
.

“I’d much rather they were initials,” Adamsberg confessed.

“That’s comprehensible. Can you keep me up to date, please? About the fleas?”

“Are you that interested in the case?”

“That’s not the point,” Marc said with a smile. “But you might have a
Nosopsyllus
on you right now. Which means I might have one too. As might other members of this establishment.”

“I see.”

“Here’s another remedy for plague: shower, soap and scrub. SSS.”

On his way out Adamsberg bumped into the blond giant and stopped to ask him a single question.

“One pair was beige,” Mathias replied, “with grey turn-downs, and the other pair was blue, with a seashell pattern.”

Adamsberg left the house by way of the fallow garden, feeling punch-drunk. There were people around who knew a horrendous number of things. People who had paid attention at school, to begin with, and had then gone on storing up truckloads of facts for the rest of their lives. Facts about other worlds. There were people who devoted their lives to learning about mongers and mixtures and fleas and adverbs and Latin and Greek. And it seemed obvious that he’d glimpsed only a sliver of the huge heap of knowledge that Marc Vandoosler had stuffed into his head. It didn’t seem to make it any easier for the young man to get on in life. All the same, in the very particular circumstances they were in, facts were going to make a big difference now. A vital difference.

XX

WHEN ADAMSBERG GOT
back to his office he found several new faxed reports from the lab and he read them straight away. The only fingerprints on the “specials” were the town crier’s and Decambrais’s, and they were easily identifiable on all of the sheets.

“It’s hardly likely our plague-monger would have been careless enough to touch the messages with bare hands,” said Adamsberg.

“Why does he use such expensive stationery?” asked Danglard.

“A sense of ceremony. In his mind, all his acts are of utmost importance, so he can’t possibly put them in common or garden envelopes. He wants them to look distinguished and superior, because all his acts are deeds of exquisite refinement. Not the sort of thing plain folk like you or me might be able to perform, Danglard. You wouldn’t expect a top chef to serve a soufflé in a plastic cup, would you. Same thing here. The envelope fits the crime. Both are
superior
.”

“Le Guern’s and Ducouëdic’s prints,” Danglard said as he put the faxes back on the desk. “Two jailbirds.”

“Yes. But they didn’t do a lot of time. Nine months and six months.”

“That’s quite enough to make useful acquaintances.” Danglard scratched his armpit energetically. “Anyway, lock-picking can be learned when you get out. What were they in for?”

“Le Guern was sent down for grievous bodily harm and attempted manslaughter.”

Danglard whistled. “That’s quite something. Why didn’t he get longer?”

“Mitigating circs. The shipowner he took apart hadn’t done proper maintenance on Le Guern’s trawler, and so it sank. Two crew drowned. Le Guern was crazy with grief when he came off the rescue helicopter and he went horizontal.”

“Did the owner get done too?”

“No. He got off scot-free, and so did the port authority cats who’d been paid off, or so Le Guern said in the box. They passed the word along and got Joss blackballed in every fishing port in Brittany. He never sailed again. So he landed on the platform at Montparnasse fourteen years ago, as lean as a string bean.”

“So he has got a reason for being angry with the whole wide world.”

“Sure, and he’s got a temper, and he can lash out. But as far as we know René Laurion never went near a harbour master’s office.”

“Maybe Le Guern’s displacing. That’s happened before. Choosing to kill people in lieu. The crier is surely in the best position to send messages to himself. What’s more, since we’ve been watching the square – and Le Guern knew we were from the start – there haven’t been any more ‘specials’.”

“He wasn’t the only one to know the police were around. At 9 p.m. in the Viking, they’d all smelled a rat.”

“If the murderer isn’t a local, how would he have known?”

“He’d already done the deed, so he must have realised the police would be moving in. And he must have seen through the plain-clothes officers sitting on the bench in the square.”