Free Doctor Death by Lene Kaaberbøl Page A

merely presenting it as an excuse for the fact that her first testimony regarding the night the priest died was not as complete as one might have wished.”
    It took Inspector Marot a few seconds to grasp that what the Commissioner was handing him was not really an excuse for Madame Brunot but rather for the inadequacy of that first interview. But he had not yet grasped the rest of the implications.
    “I still fail to see . . .”
    “Madame Brunot now describes the boy who came with the message as eight or nine years old, but she could barely see his face because his cap covered his eyes. Louis Mercier, who disappeared the same night as the priest was murdered, was most likely wearing a milkman’s cap that was much too big for him.”
    Marot fell silent for a while. “We had better find him,” he finally said.
    “Yes,” said the Commissioner. “I think so, too.”

    Four days later, two events occurred in Varbourg that appeared to have no connection but nonetheless turned out to be of significance for the investigation of our two deaths. A sudden warm front swept over the town and made flowers and treesexplode with growth, and Cecile Montaine’s father attempted suicide.
    My father had just begun to move around a bit with the help of a crutch. Because of his broken arm he could use only one, which we constantly had to pad with fresh rags so that it would not rub his armpit raw. He grew sweaty and disgruntled from having to fight like this for minimal mobility, but at least he was now capable of descending to our modest bathroom and, of much greater importance to him, to his laboratory.
    He was in the middle of taking as much of a bath as the plaster cast would allow when there was a knock on our door. Adrian Montaine Junior suddenly appeared in the hallway, unannounced and clearly shaken. He would not reveal the nature of his errand until “the Doctor himself” was present. At first he would have nothing to eat or drink, but in the end he accepted a glass of cognac, which he swallowed in one gulp without even tasting it. He began to cough and then had to drink a glass of water.
    “I am sorry,” he said. “It has been an utterly horrible day.” He was in his early twenties, a slender and extravagantly clad young man with a smooth-shaven chin and a narrow little mustache that looked as if a child penciled it on his upper lip. The closest Varbourg came to a dandy, I presumed. I think that he typically had an open and happy nature, but the burden that weighed on him now made him restless and distracted, one foot tapping ceaselessly on our faded Boukhara carpet, and several of his sentences hung incomplete in the air between us.
    The door to the rooftop garden was open, and the scent of pansies and daffodils wafted in from outside.
    “Would you like me to show you the garden?” I asked to lighten the mood. “It is quite pleasant right now.”
    “Yes, please,” he said, and got up at once, more likely because he found it hard to sit still than because of a true interest in horticulture.But he was nonetheless surprised when we stepped out into our little oasis.
    “What an enchanting place,” he said. “Is this your work?”
    “No,” I said. “My mother created this garden. I just take care of it.”
    “Your mother was an artist in her medium,” he said.
    We walked in silence among the flowerbeds, and he especially admired the corner display of ferns and climbing ivy, currently providing a dark, sylvan background for the last spring snowflakes. My mother had not attempted to cultivate exotic orchids or palm trees from more southern climes. Instead, she had grasped the essence of our own rich nature here in the province of Varonne and had re-created it en miniature in the few square meters she possessed. The surrounding walls now suggested a mountain backdrop, and the very modest goldfish pond was somehow transformed into a shaded woodland lake.
    “I am so sorry about your sister,” I said at last.
    He