The Chalk Circle Man Part 8

X.

AS ADAMSBERG HAD BEEN HOPING, MATHILDE WAS NOT AT HOME. He found her elderly a.s.sistant, Clemence, leaning over a table covered with photographic slides. On a chair alongside her lay a newspaper, open at the personal ads.

Clemence was too chatty to be intimidated by him. She wore several layers of nylon overalls, one on top of the other, like onion skins. A black beret was perched on her head, and she was smoking a military-strength Gauloise. She hardly opened her mouth when she spoke, so it was hard to get a glimpse of the famous pointed teeth for which Mathilde liked to provide zoological comparisons. She wasn't timid, she wasn't vulnerable, she wasn't bossy, yet her manner wasn't exactly affable either. Clemence was such an odd individual that one couldn't help wanting to listen to her for a while, to find out what it was, underneath all the ba.n.a.l trappings behind which she barricaded herself, that fuelled her energy.

'How were the small ads today?' Adamsberg asked.

Clemence shook her head doubtfully.

'Not up to much, monsieur. See this one: "Male, retired, fond of quiet life, own maisonette, seeks female companion, under 55, with taste for eighteenth-century engravings." Engravings? Not my cup of tea. Or this one: "Pensioner, ex-retail trade, seeks attractive woman, nature lover, for friends.h.i.+p, more if we click." Nature lover? No, I don't think so. They all write the same thing, never the truth. What they really should say is: "Self-centred old creep, running to seed, seeks young woman for s.e.x." Why don't people say what they mean? Makes you waste a lot of time. Yesterday, now, I tried three of these, none of them any good. What it is, though, the minute they see what I look like they lose interest. So it's pointless, really. But, my sakes, what else can I do, I ask you?'

'You're asking me? But why are you so keen to find a husband, Clemence?'

'That's a question I don't ask, monsieur. You're probably thinking, poor old Clemence, she's a bit funny in the head because her fiance disappeared long ago, leaving her a note. Ah, but you'd be wrong, because I didn't care then, when I was twenty, and I don't care now. Tell you the truth, monsieur, I'm not so keen on men. No, it must be for a bit of excitement in life. Can't think of anything else to do, that's the long and short of it. Plenty of women are like that, you want my opinion. I'm not so keen on women either, tell you the truth. They all think, like me, you get married, that's it, it'll give you a purpose in life. And you know what, I go to church as well. But if I didn't keep doing all this, what would I do? I'd probably be out shoplifting, pinching things, spitting at people in the street. Well, there we are, Mathilde thinks I've got saving graces. Better to be nice in this world, isn't it? Less trouble.'

'What about Mathilde?'

'If it wasn't for Mathilde, monsieur, I'd still be waiting for a miracle down at the metro station. It's lovely being here with her. I'd do anything to help Mathilde.'

Adamsberg didn't try to disentangle all the contradictory messages he was getting. Mathilde had told him that Clemence could call something blue for an hour and red for the next hour, and made up stories about her life depending on who she was talking to. You would need to listen to Clemence for months before you could work out what it all meant. You'd need to be determined. Or a psychiatrist, some would say. But even that would be too late. Everything seemed to be too late for Clemence, that was clear enough, but somehow Adamsberg couldn't feel sorry for her. Maybe Clemence did have some saving graces, give her the benefit of the doubt, but she wasn't very appealing, so he wondered why Mathilde had felt like giving her lodgings in the first place, up there in the Stickleback, and then hiring her as an a.s.sistant. Now if there was a good person in the basic sense of the word, it was Mathilde. Haughty and sarcastic, but courteous and consumed with generosity. It struck you with violence in Mathilde, and more tenderly in Camille. Danglard, however, didn't agree about Mathilde.

'Does Mathilde have any children?'

'A daughter, monsieur. Very beautiful. Would you like to see a photo?'

Suddenly Clemence had become genteel and respectful. It was perhaps time to take what he had come for, before her mood changed again.

'No, no photos, please,' said Adamsberg. 'What about her friend, the philosopher, do you know him?'

'You're asking a lot of questions, monsieur. This isn't getting Mathilde into trouble, is it?'

'Not at all on the contrary, so long as we can keep this confidential.'

This was the kind of police trick that Adamsberg disliked, but how else was he to answer questions like that? So he brought out his formulae like his multiplication tables, to move things on.

'I've seen him twice,' said Clemence with a touch of pride, dragging on her cigarette. 'He wrote this.'

She spat out a few shreds of tobacco, reached over to the bookshelf and held out a thick book towards Adamsberg: The Subjective Zones of Consciousness by Real Louvenel. Real, that was a French-Canadian name. Adamsberg allowed a few recollections evoked by the name to swim up in his memory. None of them was very distinct.

'He used to be a doctor,' Clemence was saying in her distinctive closed-mouth way of speaking. 'Supposed to be a great genius, I warn you. I don't know if you'd be able to keep up with his talk. Not wanting to give offence, but you've got to be on the right wavelength to understand a word he says. Mathilde seems to know what he's on about. What I can tell you is that he lives on his own with twelve Labradors. Imagine! Phew, his place must stink!'

Clemence had switched out of genteel mode. It hadn't lasted. Now she was being the village idiot again. Then, suddenly, she came out with: 'And what about you, anyway? This circle man, is that interesting? What do you want out of life? Are you in a mess, like everyone else?'

The old woman was going to unsettle Adamsberg soon, something that happened only rarely. Not that her questions embarra.s.sed him. They were perfectly ordinary questions. He just found that everything about her made him uncomfortable: her clothes, her pinched lips, her hands in gloves so as not to smudge the slides, her weird bursts of conversation. If Mathilde was kind enough to rescue Clemence from her troubles, that was fine. But he didn't want to be involved. He had the information he had come for, that would do. He withdrew, muttering a few polite words so as not to hurt her feelings.

Taking his time, Adamsberg looked up the address and phone number of Real Louvenel. A male voice, strident and highly strung, replied that he could see him that afternoon.

Real Louvenel's house did indeed stink of dog. He was a man constantly in motion, so completely unable to sit for long in a chair that Adamsberg wondered how he managed to write anything at all. He found out afterwards that the philosopher dictated his books. Although he replied quite willingly to Adamsberg's questions, Louvenel was doing half a dozen other things at the same time: emptying an ashtray, putting papers in the bin, blowing his nose, whistling to one of the dogs, strumming on the piano, doing up his belt another notch, sitting down, getting up again, closing the window, stroking the arm of his chair. A fly wouldn't have been able to keep up with him, still less Adamsberg.

Adapting as best he could to this exhausting nervous energy, Adamsberg tried to register the information that emerged from Louvenel's complex sentences, making strenuous efforts not to let himself be distracted by the sight of the philosopher as he ricocheted off all the surfaces of the room, or by the hundreds of photographs pinned to the walls, mostly representing litters of Labradors, or youths in a state of undress. He understood Louvenel to say that Mathilde would have been more eminent and a deeper thinker if she didn't always allow her instincts to distract her from her original projects, and that they had known each other since their university days, when they'd sat together at lectures. Then he said that during the evening at the Dodin Bouffant she'd had a bit too much to drink, and had caused a sensation among the customers by saying that she and the chalk circle man were big pals, that only she and he understood anything about the 'metaphorical renaissance of the pavement as a new field of scientific endeavour'. She had also announced that the wine was excellent and that she would like another gla.s.s, that she had dedicated her latest book to the chalk circle man, that his ident.i.ty was no mystery to her, but that this man's painful existence would remain a secret, a 'Mathildism'. As it might be an 'esoterism'. A 'Mathildism' was something she would tell n.o.body else about, though in any case it was of no intrinsic interest.

'Since I couldn't stop the flow, I left without hearing the end,' Louvenel concluded. 'I find Mathilde embarra.s.sing when she's had a few drinks. She gets boring, talkative, trying as hard as she can to get everyone to love her. Don't ever let her start drinking when you're with her.'

'Did anyone else in the cafe seem particularly interested in what she was saying?'

'I seem to recall that people were laughing.'

'But why do you think Mathilde follows people in the street?'

'The short answer could be that she collects oddities,' said Louvenel, fiddling with the creases in his trousers and then with his socks. 'You could say that these people she preys on are like her fish, she spots them in the street, she chases after them, then she pigeonholes them. But really it's the opposite. Mathilde's problem is that she'd be perfectly capable of going and living alone under the sea. Yes, she's made it her life's work, she's a tireless researcher and a distinguished scientist, but all that means very little to her. The real draw is the territory she's found for herself, underwater. Mathilde is the only deep-sea specialist I know who won't let anyone accompany her which is actually very dangerous. "I want to be afraid of everything, and understand everything for myself, Real, and to go down when I feel like it into a deep trench, into the origins of the Earth." That's how she is. Mathilde is a piece of the universe. Since she can't dissolve into it, she's made up her mind to study it, so as to grasp its hugest physical dimensions. But the ocean takes her away from human society, and she realises that. Because she's also got a big slice of good-heartedness, or generosity if you like, that can't be satisfied with the underwater life. So at regular intervals she comes back to the surface, and gives in to the other temptation, the one that draws her to people, I mean people, not humanity. So she makes her peace with all the millions of little steps people take as they tread the Earth's crust. She takes everything to extremes, and every sc.r.a.p of behaviour she can capture, wherever it is, seems a miracle to her. She memorises it all, she notes it all, she "Mathildises" it all. And she picks up lovers along the way, because she's quite capable of love. And then when she's tired of all that, when she thinks she has loved her fellow creatures enough, she goes diving again. That's why she follows strangers in the street. To get a kick out of the flicker of someone's eyelids or the twist of an elbow, before she goes off again to defy the immensity of the universe on her own.'

'And what about you? Does the chalk circle man suggest anything to you?'

'Don't think I'm being arrogant, but I'm not interested in such infantile things. Even murder I consider infantile. Child-adults bore me, they're cannibals. They're fit only to feed off other people's vitality. They can't perceive themselves. And because they can't perceive themselves, they can't live unaided, they're greedy for the sight and the blood of other people. Since they have no self-perception, they bore me. You may know that it is man's self-perception that interests me note that I'm saying perception, sensation, not understanding, or a.n.a.lysis more than all other human approaches, even if I live from day-to-day expedients like everyone else. That's all I can say about the chalk circle man and his murder, about which I know next to nothing anyway, except that Mathilde talks about him a good deal too much.'

Real was retying his shoelaces as he spoke.

Adamsberg sensed that Real Louvenel had made an effort to adapt his way of speaking to his interlocutor. He didn't feel annoyed with him. As it was, he couldn't be sure that he had exactly understood what this excitable man had meant by self-perception, which was clearly a key word for him. But while listening to the philosopher he had started to think about himself, inevitably as did everyone else, no doubt. And he had felt that while being unable to observe himself, he did indeed 'perceive himself', perhaps in precisely the way Louvenel meant, if only because he sometimes felt 'uncomfortable at being conscious'. He knew that this perception of one's own existence could take underground paths, where one's boots became embedded in mud, and where no answer was forthcoming, and that one needed physical courage not to dismiss it all from one's mind and get rid of it. But he didn't dismiss the feeling when it came over him, since it was a moment when he felt quite sure that to do so would doom him to being nothing at all.

At any rate, the chalk circle man didn't seem to be worrying anyone else. But Adamsberg was untroubled that n.o.body else was willing to accompany him in his apprehension. That was his own business. He left Louvenel to his fidgety movements, which had calmed down considerably once he had taken a small yellow tablet. Adamsberg deeply distrusted all medicines, and preferred to drag himself round with a high temperature all day rather than take any kind of pill. His little sister had told him that it was very presumptuous always to hope that he would come through it on his own, and that n.o.body had yet lost their ident.i.ty by taking an aspirin. His little sister could be a pain sometimes, you wouldn't believe.

Back at the station, Adamsberg found Danglard quite far gone. He had acquired some companions to help him start on the afternoon's bottle of white wine earlier than usual. Sitting round his desk, as if round a cafe table, Mathilde Forestier and the handsome blind man were knocking the wine back merrily in plastic cups. Things were getting noisy.

Mathilde's resonant voice rang out above the din, and Reyer kept his face turned towards the Queen, looking happy. Adamsberg mentally noted once more the blind man's prodigiously beautiful profile, but it annoyed him to see Reyer keeping his eyes firmly fixed on Mathilde, if that was the right expression. And why in the world should that annoy him? Was it because he sensed that the blind man was going to be snapped up by Mathilde? No. Mathilde was no ordinary woman, and she would lay no nasty traps in which the weaker party is devoured. But at the same time, when someone laid a hand on Mathilde it was difficult just now not to see a hand being laid on Camille. No, he mustn't confuse them. And anyone had the right to touch Camille, this was a salutary principle he had long ago established. But perhaps it was that Danglard too seemed on the point of being drawn in, despite having been so categorically opposed to Mathilde. It looked as if the two men were engaged in some kind of contest as they sat around the table; the scene smacked of tried and tested seduction gambits, and it had to be admitted that Mathilde, being by now well launched into the white wine, was not insensitive to the atmosphere. After all, she had a perfect right. And Danglard and Reyer too had a perfect right to act like teenagers if they felt like it. What was coming over him, pus.h.i.+ng him to act the censor and dictate rules of conduct? Had his own conduct been above reproach toward the young woman in the flat downstairs, with whom he had spent the night? No, not at all. Although a little taken back by the opportunity when it had presented itself, he had chosen his words carefully and had applied his own rules meticulously throughout. But had his conduct towards Christiane been above reproach? Absolutely not; much worse. That reminded him that he hadn't remembered to think about her. So he might as well have a drink with the others. And ask himself what the h.e.l.l they were doing there anyway.

When he looked more closely, Danglard was not as carried away as all that by the charms of the two suspects sitting at his table. And if one looked more closely again, Danglard the thinker was watching, observing, listening and provoking, however drunk he might appear. Even in his cups, for Danglard's incisive brain Mathilde and Reyer remained a couple of people rather too closely mixed up in a murder case. Adamsberg smiled and went over to the table.

'I know,' said Danglard, indicating the wine, 'it's against the rules. But these persons are not here to see me officially. They're just pa.s.sing through. It was you they wanted to see.'

'And how!' said Mathilde.

From Mathilde's face, Adamsberg could tell that she was furious with him. Better avoid a row in front of everyone. He gave up on the idea of a drink and took them into his office, making a conciliatory sign to Danglard. But Danglard couldn't have cared less he had already returned to his paperwork.

'So. It seems that Clemence didn't hold her tongue?' Adamsberg inquired gently of Mathilde as he sat sideways at his desk.

'Why should she?' said Mathilde. 'Apparently you badgered her with a whole lot of questions about her own life and then about Real. Adamsberg, for heaven's sake, what kind of behaviour is that?'

'Police behaviour, I suppose,' said Adamsberg. 'But I didn't badger her. Clemence has plenty to say for herself unaided, even if she whistles through her teeth. And I wanted to meet Real Louvenel. I've just got back from seeing him.'

'I know!' said Mathilde. 'And that really makes me see red!'

'That's perfectly normal,' said Adamsberg.

'What did you want to see him for?'

' To find out what you said at the Dodin Bouffant.'

'For G.o.d's sake, what's so important about that?'

'Sometimes, but only sometimes, I'm tempted to find out what people are concealing from me. And according to that article in the 5th arrondiss.e.m.e.nt newsletter, you've been acting like a flytrap for anyone who wants to get close to the chalk circle man. So I have to take an interest. I think you have a pretty good idea who he is. I had hoped you would have said a bit more that evening, and that Louvenel would have told me about it.'

'I never imagined you'd go in for such underhand dealings.'

Adamsberg shrugged.

'What about you, Madame Forestier? The first time you came into the police station. Was that straightforward dealing?'

'I had no choice,' said Mathilde. 'But you're supposed to be an honest man. And all of a sudden you've turned slippery.'

'I've got no choice, either. Anyway, that's how I am, I'm slippery. I have to change all the time.'

Adamsberg rested his chin on his hand, still facing sideways. Mathilde was watching him.

'It's as I said,' Mathilde continued. 'You're amoral you should have been a prost.i.tute.'

'Just what I am being, in order to get information.'

'About what?'

'About him. The chalk circle man.'

'Well, you're going to be disappointed. I made it all up about the ident.i.ty of the circle man, based on a few vague memories. I've got no proof of any of it. Pure invention.'

'Little by little,' murmured Adamsberg, 'I'm managing to extract a few fragments of the truth. But it takes a long time. Would you be able to tell me who he is? Even if you're making it up, it still interests me.'

'It's not based on anything serious. Only the circle man reminds me of someone I used to follow some years ago, over by Pigalle too, as it happens. I used to follow this particular man to a dark little restaurant where he lunched alone. He worked while he was eating, and never took his raincoat off. He covered his table with piles of books and papers. And when he dropped something, which happened all the time, he would lift up the hem of his raincoat as if it was a bridal train, whenever he bent down to pick it up. Sometimes his wife would come along, with her lover, to have coffee with him. Then he looked pathetic, desperate to accept any humiliation in order to hang on to whatever was left. But when the wife and her lover had gone, he would be seized with rage, he'd stab at the paper tablecloth with his knife and obviously he was pretty upset. In his place I would have had a drink, but he seemed not to touch alcohol. I noted in my book at the time "Little man greedy for power but doesn't have it. How will he get out of this?" See, I tend to make snap judgements. Real tells me that too: "Mathilde, you make too many snap judgements." Then I stopped bothering with this man, he made me feel sad and edgy. I follow people to do myself good, not to go poking about in their misery. But when I saw the circle man, and his habit of holding the hem of his coat when he bent down, it reminded me of someone. I looked through my notebooks and remembered the little man who was greedy for power but had none at all, and I thought "Well, why not? Is this perhaps the way he's found to exercise some kind of power?" Another snap judgement, and that's where I left it. You see, Adamsberg, you're disappointed, aren't you? It wasn't worth making all those underhand visits to my place and Real's to get this kind of pointless information.'

But Mathilde's anger had subsided.

'Why didn't you tell me all this in the first place?' Adamsberg asked her.

'I wasn't sure about it, I had no evidence. And anyway, you must have noticed that I feel rather protective towards the circle man. Perhaps he has n.o.body but me on his side. That makes it a duty I can't escape. And anyway, h.e.l.l's bells, I would hate to think that my personal notes could get into police files as reports on someone.'

'Quite understandable,' said Adamsberg. 'Why did you use the word "greedy" about him? Funny thing, Louvenel used the same word. At any rate, when you were holding forth at the Dodin Bouffant you attracted a lot of attention. Anyone would only have had to come to you to find out more.'

'But why?'

'Like I said before. The manic ways of the circle man are an encouragement to murder.'

As he spoke, using the term 'manic' for convenience, Adamsberg remembered that Vercors-Laury had explained to him that the man did not in fact present any of the characteristics of a compulsive mania. And that rather pleased him.

'You didn't get any unusual visits after the night at the Dodin Bouffant and the newspaper article?' he went on.

'No,' said Mathilde. 'Unless perhaps all the visits I get are unusual.'

'After that night, did you follow the circle man any more?'

'Yes, of course, several times.'

'And n.o.body else was around?'

'I didn't notice anything. But I wasn't particularly bothered anyway.'

'What about you?' said Adamsberg, turning towards Charles Reyer. 'What have you come along for?'

'I'm accompanying madame, monsieur le commissaire.'

'Why?'

'For something to do.'

'Or to find out more. They tell me that when Mathilde Forestier goes diving, she goes alone, contrary to the rules of the profession. She's not in the habit of taking someone along to accompany or protect her.'

The blind man smiled.

'Madame Forestier was furious. She asked me if I wanted to come and witness the meeting. I said yes. It gives me something to do at the end of the day. But I'm disappointed too. You managed to calm her down rather too quickly.'

'Don't you believe it,' said Adamsberg, with a smile. 'She's got plenty more lies up her sleeve. But did you, for instance, know about the article in the 5th arrondiss.e.m.e.nt magazine?'

'It's not published in Braille,' said Charles crossly. 'But yes, I heard about it. Happy now? And Mathilde, does that bother you? Does it scare you?'

'Couldn't give a d.a.m.n either way,' said Mathilde. Charles shrugged and ran his fingers under his dark gla.s.ses.

'Someone mentioned it at the hotel,' he went on. 'One of the guests standing in the lobby.'

'See?' said Adamsberg, turning to Mathilde. 'News travels fast, it even reaches people who can't read. And what did he say, this guest in the lobby?'

'Something like "That deep-sea diving lady is at it again. Now she's pally with the madman who does the circles." That's all I heard. Not very informative.'

'Why did you tell me so willingly that you knew about it? It puts you in an awkward position. You know that you're already regarded with some suspicion. You arrived at Mathilde's by some sort of miracle, and you've got no alibi for the night of the murder.'

'You know that, do you?'

'Naturally Danglard's been doing his job.'

'If I hadn't told you myself, you would have tried to find out and you would have found out. Better to avoid being detected in a lie, isn't it?'

Reyer gave one of those wicked smiles with which he would have liked to carve up the universe.

'But I didn't know,' he added, 'that the person I spoke to in the cafe in the rue Saint-Jacques was Madame Forestier. I only made the connection later.'

'Yes,' said Adamsberg, 'you already told me that.'