Free The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas

Vandoosler decided from the stirrings next door that Relivaux was ready. Ready to be called on by him, Armand Vandoosler. He went downstairs, greeted the evangelists who had already gathered in the common room and were sitting side by side eating their breakfast.Perhaps it was the contrast between their talk and their action that amused him. He went next door and rang the bell.
    Pierre Relivaux did not welcome the intrusion. Vandoosler had foreseen as much, and had opted for the direct approach: retired policeman, concerned about the missing woman, a few questions, perhaps we would do better to talk inside. Pierre Relivaux replied as Vandoosler had expected, that it was his business, and nobody else’s.
    ‘That’s quite true,’ said Vandoosler, installing himself in the kitchen without being invited to do so, ‘but there’s a slight problem. The police may come and see you, because they will take the view that it is their business. I thought the advice of a retired policeman might be useful.’
    As expected, Relivaux frowned. ‘The police? Why are they involved? My wife has a perfect right to go away, hasn’t she?’
    ‘Certainly she has. But there has been an awkward sequence of events. Do you remember the three workmen who came a couple of weeks ago to dig a trench in your garden?’
    ‘Yes, of course. Sophia said they were checking old electricity cables. I didn’t pay them much attention.’
    ‘That’s a pity,’ said Vandoosler. ‘Because they weren’t municipal employees at all, nor were they from Électricité de France, or anything else official. There are no cables running through your garden. The men were impostors.’
    ‘What on earth would anyone do a thing like that for?’ Relivaux protested. ‘What the hell is going on? And what does that have to do with the police, or with Sophia?’
    ‘That’s just it,’ said Vandoosler, appearing to be genuinely sympathetic. ‘Someone round here, a busybody, or at any rate someone who doesn’t seem to like you, has found out they weren’t genuine. I suppose he recognised one of the workmen and asked him. Anyway, he’s told the police. I know about it, because I still have a few contacts down at the station.’
    Vandoosler told lies with fluency and enjoyment, and it put him completely at ease.
    ‘The police just laughed at him and didn’t follow it up,’ he went on. ‘But they stopped laughing when this same busybody nosed around some more and discovered that your wife had “gone missing without telling anyone”, as they are already saying in the neighbourhood. And furthermore that this mysterious trench was ordered by your own wife, who wanted it to go under that beech tree over there.’
    Vandoosler pointed casually through the window to the tree.
    ‘Sophia did that?’ asked Relivaux.
    ‘She did. According to this witness anyway. So the police now know that your wife was worried about a tree that appeared from nowhere. Also that she had someone dig underneath it. And that since then she has disappeared. For the police, that looks like a lot to happen in a couple of weeks. You have to look at it from their point of view. They’re programmed to be suspicious of any little thing. So they’ll certainly be round to ask you a few questions, you can count on it.’
    ‘Who is this “witness”?’
    ‘The information was anonymous. People are cowards.’
    ‘And just what is your interest in all this? What if the police do come round to see me, what business is that of yours?’
    Vandoosler was ready for this predictable question too. Relivaux was a conscientious, stiff kind of fellow, apparently without an ounce of originality. That was indeed why the former commissaire was prepared to bet he had a Saturday-and-Sunday mistress. Vandoosler looked at him: moderately bald, moderately fat, only moderately attractive, moderate in everything. For the moment, quite easy to manipulate.
    ‘Let’s say that if I were able to confirm your version of