The Ghost Riders of Ordebec: A Commissaire Adamsberg Mystery Read online

  A PENGUIN MYSTERY

  THE GHOST RIDERS OF ORDEBEC

  Fred Vargas was born in Paris in 1957. A historian and archaeologist by profession, she is a #1 bestselling author in France and Italy. She is the author of seven novels featuring Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, including Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand, This Night’s Foul Work, The Chalk Circle Man, and An Uncertain Place, also available from Penguin. Her books have been published in forty countries and have sold more than ten million copies.

  Praise for Fred Vargas and Her Commissaire Adamsberg Mysteries

  “Spry, ironic, yet fully engaged with the horror of contemporary reality.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “It’s a full, rich, and strange plate.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “Few crime stories are as apt to leave a reader wondering so ardently: Who dunnit?…Vargas’s characters are like something out of a fairy tale—eternal opposites, ever-renewing archetypes despite their fresh adventures each time. That’s why each novel’s opening feels new.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Vargas writes with the startling imagery and absurdist wit of a latter-day Anouilh about fey characters who live in a wonderful bohemian world that never was but should have been.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Anyone who enjoys kooky characters and intricate detail will happily follow Vargas along.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  Also available in the Commissaire Adamsberg mystery series

  The Chalk Circle Man

  Seeking Whom He May Devour

  Have Mercy on Us All

  Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

  This Night’s Foul Work

  An Uncertain Place

  Fred Vargas

  The Ghost Riders

  of Ordebec

  A COMMISSAIRE ADAMSBERG MYSTERY

  Translated from the French by

  Siân Reynolds

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com

  First published in Paris as L’armée furieuse by Éditions Viviane Hamy 2011

  First published in Great Britain by Harvill Secker,

  an imprint of Random House UK, 2013

  Published in Penguin Books 2013

  Copyright © Éditions Viviane Hamy, 2011

  English translation copyright © Siân Reynolds, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Vargas, Fred, author.

  [Armée Furieuse. English]

  The Ghost Riders of Ordebec / Fred Vargas ; translated from the French by Siân Reynolds.

  pages cm

  “A Penguin Mystery.”

  ISBN: 978-1-101-59874-0

  I. Reynolds, Siân, translator. II. Title.

  PQ2682.A725A8913 2013

  843’.914—dc23 2012042668

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Praise for Fred Vargas

  Also by Fred Vargas

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI

  Chapter XXXVII

  Chapter XXXVIII

  Chapter XXXIX

  Chapter XL

  Chapter XLI

  Chapter XLII

  Chapter XLIII

  Chapter XLIV

  Chapter XLV

  Chapter XLVI

  Chapter XLVII

  Chapter XLVIII

  Chapter XLIX

  Chapter L

  Chapter LI

  Chapter LII

  Chapter LIII

  Chapter LIV

  Chapter LV

  Chapter LVI

  Chapter LVII

  Author’s Note

  Translator’s Note

  I

  A trail of tiny breadcrumbs led from the kitchen into the bedroom, as far as the spotless sheets where the old woman lay dead, her mouth open. Commissaire Adamsberg looked down at the crumbs in silence, pacing slowly to and fro, and wondering what kind of Tom Thumb – or what ogre in this case – might have dropped them there. He was in a small, dark, ground-floor apartment, with just three rooms, in the eighteenth arrondissement, in northern Paris.

  The old woman was lying in the bedroom. Her husband was in the dining room. He showed neither impatience nor emotion as he waited, just looked longingly at his newspaper, folded open at the page with the crossword puzzle, which he didn’t dare try to solve while the police were there. He had told them his brief life story. He and his wife had met at work, in an insurance company: she was a secretary, he an accountant. They had married in their careless youth, not knowing it was destined to last fifty-nine years. Then his wife had died in the night. Heart attack, according to the local commissaire, who was ill in bed and had called on Adamsberg to replace him. Just do me a favour, it won’t take more than an hour, a routine morning call.

  One more time, Adamsberg walked the trail of crumbs. The flat was impeccably kept: the armchairs had antimacassars, the Formica surfaces were gleaming, the windows were spotless and the dishes washed. He went over to the bread bin, which contained part of a baguette, and a large half-loaf, wrapped in a clean tea towel and hollowed out in the middle. He returned to the husband sitting in his armchair, and pulled up another chair alongside.

  ‘No good news this morning,’ the old man said, lifting his eyes from the paper. ‘And it’s so hot, the ink is smudged. Still, here we’re on the ground floor, it’s a bit cooler. That’s why I leave the shutters closed. And you have to drink plenty, that’s what they tell you.’

  ‘You didn’t notice anything?’

  ‘She seemed all right when I went to bed. I always checked, because she had heart trouble. It was only t
his morning that I realised she’d gone.’

  ‘There are breadcrumbs in her bed.’

  ‘Yes, she liked to nibble some bread or perhaps a biscotte last thing before going to sleep.’

  ‘I would have thought she’d clean the crumbs up afterwards.’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed. She cleaned things from morning to night, you’d think her life depended on it. It wasn’t so bad at first, but over the years it got to be an obsession. She’d even make things dirty, just for the pleasure of washing them. You should have seen her. Still, poor woman, it gave her something to do.’

  ‘But what about this bread? She didn’t sweep it up last night?’

  ‘No, because it was me that brought it her. She was too weak to get up. She did tell me to clear the crumbs away, but I couldn’t be bothered. She’d have done it in the morning. She turned the sheets every day. What for, I couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘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?’

&n
bsp; ‘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.’