The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg) (2 page)

‘So, you brought her some bread, then you put the rest back in the bread bin?’

‘No, I threw it in the
pedal
bin. It was too hard, she couldn’t manage it. I brought her a
biscotte
instead.’

‘But the loaf isn’t in the pedal bin, it’s in the bread bin.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘And there’s nothing inside the loaf. She ate all the heart of it?’

‘No, good heavens, commissaire. Why would she just eat the inside of it – and stale at that? You
are
a commissaire, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, Serious Crime Squad.’

‘Why didn’t the local police come?’

‘This district’s commissaire’s in bed. Summer flu. And his team isn’t available.’

‘Have they all got the flu?’

‘No, there was a disturbance last night. Two dead, four injured. All because of a stolen scooter.’

‘What’s the world coming to? Still, this heat, it gets to people. My name is Tuilot, monsieur. Tuilot, first name Julien, accountant, retired, for the insurance company ALLB.’

‘Yes, I’ve got a note of that.’

‘She always nagged me about my name, Tuilot, she thought her maiden name was nicer, Kosquer. She was right, I suppose. I thought you must be a commissaire to ask questions about the breadcrumbs. Your colleague up here, he’s not like that.’

‘You think I’m making too much fuss about the crumbs?’

‘Oh, you just do whatever you want, monsieur. It’s for your report, you have to have something to write on the report. I understand, that’s all I ever did at ALLB, accounts and reports. Not that the reports were strictly honest. Think about it. The boss had this motto, he brought it out all the time: an insurance company shouldn’t pay, even if it ought to pay. Fifty years cheating like that doesn’t do your brain any good. I used to say to my wife, if you could just wash out my head instead of the curtains, you’d be doing something really useful.’

Monsieur Tuilot, Julien, gave a little laugh at his joke.

‘It’s just that I don’t understand what you’re telling me about the half-loaf over there.’

‘Ah, to understand, you have to be logical, commissaire, logical and cunning. That’s me, Tuilot, Julien, I’ve won sixteen top-level crossword championships in thirty-two years. One every other year on average. Just with my brain. Logical and cunning. It brings in good money at that level. This one,’ he said, pointing to his newspaper, ‘is just kids’ stuff. But you have to sharpen your pencils and it leaves shavings. Oh, she was always on at me, because of the shavings too. So what bothers you about the bread?’

‘Well. It’s
not
in the pedal bin, it doesn’t seem all that stale to me, and I don’t understand why the crust has been hollowed out.’

‘Aha. A domestic mystery!’ said Tuilot, who seemed to be enjoying himself. ‘Well, I have two little tenants, Toni and Marie, a sweet little couple, who love each other dearly. But they’re not at all to my wife’s taste, believe me. One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but she did all she could to kill them. I’ve been one step ahead of her for three years. Logic and cunning, that’s my secret. My poor Lucette, you’ll never beat a crossword champion, I used to tell her. No, we’re a little gang of three, these two and me, they know they can count on me, and I can count on them. A little visit every night. They’re crafty and careful, they never come until Lucette’s in bed. They know I’ll be waiting for them, you see. Toni always arrives first, he’s bigger and stronger.’

‘And they ate all the crumbs? While the bread was in the
pedal bin
?’

‘They love doing that.’

Adamsberg glanced at the crossword, which didn’t look as simple as all that to him, then pushed the paper aside.

‘So who are “they”, Monsieur Tuilot?’

‘I don’t like to say, people disapprove. People are very narrow-minded.’

‘Animals? Dogs, cats?’

‘Rats. Toni’s darker than Marie. They’re so fond of each other they can be in the middle of their meal, and they stop to stroke each other’s head with their paws. If people weren’t so prejudiced, they’d see sights like that. Marie’s the lively one. After eating, she climbs on my shoulder and puts her paws in my hair. She’s combing it, sort of. Her way of saying thank you. Or perhaps she just likes me. Who knows? It’s comforting. Then after we’ve said nice things to each other, we say goodbye till next evening. They go back to the cellar, through a hole behind the drainpipe. One day Lucette cemented it up. Poor Lucette. She had no idea how to mix cement.’

‘I see,’ said Adamsberg.

The old man reminded him of a certain Félix, who used to prune his vines, eight hundred and eighty-eight kilometres from Paris. He had tamed a grass snake that he used to feed with milk. One day a neighbour killed the snake. So Félix killed the neighbour. Adamsberg went back to the bedroom where Lieutenant Justin was keeping watch over the dead woman, while waiting for the doctor to arrive.

‘Look inside her mouth,’ he said. ‘Just take a look and see if you can see some white residue that could be breadcrumbs.’

‘I really don’t want to do that.’

‘Just do it. I think the old man could have choked her by stuffing bread down her throat. Then he took it out and chucked it away.’

‘You mean the inside of the loaf?’

‘Yes.’

Adamsberg opened the bedroom window and shutters. He looked out at the little courtyard, strewn with birds’ feathers, and partly transformed into a junkyard. In the centre, a grid covered the drain. It was still wet, although there had been no rain.

‘After that, go and lift up the grid. I think he chucked the bread down there and emptied a bucket of water after it.’

‘This is nuts,’ muttered Justin, as he shone a torch inside the old woman’s mouth. ‘If he did that, why didn’t he throw away the crust, or clean up the crumbs?’

‘To throw away the crust, he would have had to go to the dustbins on the street, and that would mean going out on the pavement at night. There’s a cafe terrace next door, and these warm nights plenty of people about. He’d have been seen. He’s invented a good story about the crust and the crumbs. So original that it seems plausible. He’s a crossword champion, he has his own way of linking ideas.’

Adamsberg, feeling rather regretful and yet slightly admiring, came back to Tuilot.

‘When Marie and Toni turned up, you took the bread out of the pedal bin?’

‘No, they know how it works, they like it. Toni sits on the pedal, the lid goes up and Marie gets out anything they want. They’re great, aren’t they? Really smart, got to hand it to them.’

‘So Marie got the bread out. Then they ate it up. While making little loving gestures?’

‘That’s right.’

‘
All
the inside of the loaf?’

‘They’re big rats, commissaire, they need to eat a lot.’

‘So what about those crumbs on the floor, why didn’t they eat those?’

‘Commissaire, are you here to take care of Lucette or the rats?’

‘Well, I still don’t understand why you wrapped up the remains of the loaf after the rats had eaten out its inside. Whereas before that, you’d put it in the pedal bin.’

The old man filled in a couple of crossword clues.

‘You’re probably no good at crosswords, commissaire. If I’d thrown the empty loaf into the pedal bin, Lucette would have realised that Toni and Marie had been here.’

‘You could have put it in the dustbin outside.’

‘The door squeaks like a pig being slaughtered. You must have noticed.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘So I just wrapped it in a tea towel to avoid a scene in the morning. Because believe me, there are scenes all day long. Fifty years or more she’s been yelling at me and wiping up under my glass, under my feet, under my bum. You wouldn’t think I had the right to walk about or sit down. If you’d been living like that, you’d have hidden the loaf too.’

‘She wouldn’t have seen it in the bread bin?’

‘No, no. In the morning she eats
biscottes
with raisins. She must do it on purpose, because they make plenty of crumbs. Then she can busy herself for hours afterwards cleaning them up. See?’

Justin came into the room and nodded briefly to Adamsberg.

‘But yesterday,’ Adamsberg said, with a slightly heavy heart, ‘that’s not what happened. You hollowed out the loaf, two big fistfuls of solid bread, and you crammed them into her mouth. When she stopped breathing, you pulled it all out and put it down the drain in the courtyard. I’m amazed that you chose this method of killing her. I’ve never come across a case of someone being choked with bread.’

‘Yes, it’s inventive,’ Tuilot agreed calmly.

‘As you will know, Monsieur Tuilot, we’ll find your wife’s saliva on the bread. And since you are logical and cunning, we’ll also find signs of the rats’ teeth on the hollowed-out loaf. You let them eat the remains, to bolster your story.’

‘They like nothing better than burrowing inside a loaf, it’s a pleasure
to watch them. We spent a good evening here last night, really. I had a couple of drinks, while Marie combed my hair. Then I washed and dried my glass to avoid a row. When she was already dead.’

‘When you had just killed her.’

‘Yes,’ said the man, sighing casually as he filled in a few blanks in his crossword. ‘The doctor’d been round the day before, he told me she could last months. Dozens of Tuesdays having to eat sausage rolls for supper, endless recriminations, thousands of little wipes with a duster. At eighty-six, a man’s got the right to live a little. There are nights like that. When a man just gets up and takes some action.’

Tuilot got up and opened the shutters in the dining room, letting in the stifling heat of these early-August days.

‘She didn’t like having the windows open either. But I won’t say all that, commissaire. I’ll say I killed her to put an end to her suffering. With breadcrumbs, because she liked that, a final little treat. I’ve got it all worked out in here,’ he said, tapping his forehead. ‘There’s no evidence I didn’t do it as a mercy killing. Eh? An act of kindness. I’ll be acquitted, and in a couple of months, I’ll be back here, I’ll be able to put my glass on the table without a coaster and the three of us will be happy together, Toni, Marie and me.’

‘Yes, I can believe it,’ said Adamsberg, getting up quietly. ‘But it might turn out, Monsieur Tuilot, that you won’t dare put your glass down directly on the tabletop. You’ll fetch a coaster. And you’ll clean up the breadcrumbs.’

‘Why would I do that?’

Adamsberg shrugged. ‘Just that I’ve seen cases like this. It’s often the way.’

‘Don’t you worry about me, monsieur. I’m cunning.’

‘That’s very true, Monsieur Tuilot.’

*   *   *

Outside, the heat was forcing people to walk in the shade, hugging the walls and breathing hard. Adamsberg decided to walk on the empty pavement exposed to the sun and to head south. A long hike to rid himself of the contented and, yes, cunning face of the crossword champion. Who might, one Tuesday soon, be buying sausage rolls for his supper.

II

He was back at headquarters an hour and a half later, his black T-shirt dripping with sweat and his thoughts back in order. It was rare for an impression, good or bad, to haunt Adamsberg’s mind for very long. So much so that you wondered if he had a mind at all, as his mother had often remarked. He dictated his report for the colleague with the flu, and went to collect any messages from reception. Brigadier Gardon, who was manning the switchboard, was bending his head low to catch the breeze from a little electric fan on the floor. His fine hair was floating in the cool draught, as if under a hairdryer.

‘Lieutenant Veyrenc is waiting for you in the cafe, commissaire,’ he said without moving.

‘In the cafe or the brasserie?’

‘The cafe, the Dice Shaker.’

‘Veyrenc isn’t a lieutenant any more, Gardon. We won’t know till this evening whether he’s going to rejoin the force.’

Adamsberg looked for a moment at Gardon, wondering whether Gardon had a mind and, if so, what he kept in it.

*   *   *

He sat down at Veyrenc’s table and the two men greeted each other with warm smiles and a long handshake. The memory of Veyrenc’s providential appearance in Serbia during his last case still sent a shiver down Adamsberg’s spine. He ordered a salad, and ate it slowly while telling at some length
the story of Madame Tuilot, Lucette; Monsieur Tuilot, Julien; Toni; Marie; their love, the half-eaten loaf, the pedal bin, the closed shutters and the sausage rolls on Tuesdays. Now and then he glanced at the cafe window. Tuilot, Lucette, would surely have made a better job of cleaning it.

Veyrenc ordered two coffees from the proprietor, a large man whose normally grumpy mood got worse in the heat. His wife, a silent little Corsican, went to and fro delivering the food like a dark fairy.

‘One day,’ said Adamsberg, gesturing towards her, ‘she’ll choke him with a couple of handfuls of bread.’

‘Quite possibly,’ Veyrenc agreed.

‘She’s still waiting on the pavement,’ said Adamsberg, looking out at the street again. ‘She’s been there getting on for an hour in this blazing sun. She doesn’t know what to do, she hasn’t decided.’

Veyrenc followed Adamsberg’s gaze, and examined the thin little woman, neatly dressed in a flowered overall, the kind you don’t find in Paris shops.

‘You can’t be sure she wants to see
you.
She’s not standing by the offices, she’s coming and going about ten metres away. She must be waiting for someone who hasn’t turned up.’

‘No, it’s for me, Louis, I’m sure of it. Who’d arrange a rendezvous in this street? She looks scared. That’s what bothers me.’

‘That’s because she’s not from Paris.’

‘Maybe it’s the first time she’s come here. So she must have some serious problem. But that doesn’t help us with yours, Veyrenc. You’ve had months to paddle your feet in the stream and think, and you still haven’t decided.’

‘You could extend the deadline.’

‘I’ve already done that once. You have to sign, or not sign, by six o’clock tonight. You have to decide if you’re going to be a cop again. Four and a half hours,’ said Adamsberg consulting his watch, or rather the two watches he always wore for reasons no one could quite fathom.