Read Online An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas - Free Book Online Page B

before he took back the reins again.
    ‘You don’t happen to ride a horse by any chance?’ Adamsberg asked.
    ‘No, I follow racing a bit in the papers. My father used to be a heavy better at one time. But for years now, he’d only had a flutter about once a month. He’d changed, he’d shrunk into himself. He hardly ever went out.’
    ‘Did he ever go to a trainer’s stables or a racecourse? Did he go out into the country? Could he have brought any horse manure home on his shoes?’
    ‘Papa? Horse manure in the house?’
    Pierre sat up as if this idea had jolted him despite himself.
    ‘Are you telling me there’s horse manure in his house?’
    ‘Yes, on the carpet. Just a few bits from the sole of someone’s boot.’
    ‘He never put boots on in his life. He didn’t like animals, or nature, the earth, flowers, even daisies fading away in a vase, anything like that. Did the murderer come in with boots covered in dung?’
    Adamsberg excused himself to answer his mobile.
    ‘If you’ve still got the son there,’ Retancourt said, without preliminaries, ‘ask him if the old man had a pet, a cat or dog. We found some hairs on the Louis XIII armchair. But there’s no sign of an animal, no cat litter or dog food. So if he didn’t, the hairs could have come off the murderer’s trousers.’
    Adamsberg turned away from the couple, shielding them from Retancourt’s abrupt tones.
    ‘Did your father by any chance have a pet animal? Dog, cat?’
    ‘I just told you, he didn’t like animals. He didn’t put himself out for people, still less for an animal, too much bother.’
    ‘No, not at all,’ said Adamsberg into the phone. ‘But check it out, lieutenant , it could be from a rug or a coat. Check the other chairs as well.’
    ‘Or tissues? Did he use them? We found one crumpled up in the grass outside, but there aren’t any in the bathroom.’
    ‘Tissues?’ Adamsberg asked.
    ‘No, never,’ said Pierre, raising his hands as if to push away this further aberrant suggestion. ‘Only cotton handkerchiefs, folded in three one way and in four the other. He was fussy about them.’
    ‘No, just cotton handkerchiefs,’ Adamsberg relayed.
    ‘Danglard is insisting on talking to you. He’s walking around on the grass in circles with something on his mind.’
    That was spot on, thought Adamsberg, as a description of Danglard’s temperament. Prowling around the basins in the limestone where his worries were becoming calcified. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to remember what stage the interview had reached. Oh yes, boots, horse manure.
    ‘No, not boots covered in manure,’ he explained. ‘Just a few little fragments that must have fallen off the soles, from the damp.’
    ‘Have you seen the handyman, the man who did the garden? He must have boots.’
    ‘Not yet. We’ve been told he’s a rough customer.’
    ‘A ruffian, an ex-convict and a halfwit,’ Hélène completed. ‘Father was besotted with him.’
    ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say he was half-witted,’ Pierre intervened. ‘Why,’ he asked cautiously, ‘was the body treated that way? Killing him, all right, one can perhaps understand. The family of the man who committed suicide, there could be a possible cause there. But why destroy the body? Is this a common modus operandi?’
    ‘Not until this particular killer came along. He wasn’t copying anyone, he seems to have created something entirely unprecedented.’
    ‘Anyone would think you were talking about a work of art,’ said Hélène with a disapproving frown.
    ‘Well, why not?’ said Pierre suddenly. ‘It would be a sort of rough justice. He was an artist.’
    ‘Who, your father?’
    ‘No, Réal, the suicide.’
    Adamsberg made another apologetic sign as Danglard came on the line.
    ‘I knew we were going to be up shit creek,’ the commandant was saying in a studied voice, which told Adamsberg that he had already had several drinks and was making an effort to pronounce