‘Does he still visit?’
‘Not very often. That’s what I was going to tell you. You know his story, everyone does. He’s the son of peasants from the Berry, and he’s always behaved like a peasant, deliberately using colourful language, even in his classes. Just a few years ago, he was still a force of nature. As he lives not far from here, in Rue de Miromesnil, he’d often drop by, and the children loved him. Not everyone liked that.’
‘Especially not Madame Parendon.’
‘There definitely wasn’t any love lost between them. I don’t know anything specific. The servants mentioned a violent scene that took place. Whatever happened, he doesn’t come here any more and his son goes to see him every two or three days.’
‘In other words, the Gassins have won out against the Parendons.’
‘More than you think …’
The air was blue with smoke, both from Maigret’s pipe and from Mademoiselle Vague’s cigarettes. She went to the window and opened it a little more to clear the air.
‘The children also have all the aunts and uncles and cousins to deal with,’ she continued in an amused tone. ‘Monsieur Gassin de Beaulieu had four daughters, and the other three also live in Paris. They have children ranging from ten to twenty-two. Incidentally, last spring one of the girls married an officer who works at the Ministry of the Navy … That’s the Gassin de Beaulieus … If you like, I can make you a list, with the names of the husbands …’
‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary at this stage. Do they come here often?’
‘One or other of them, every now and again. Although they all made good marriages, as they say, they still consider this apartment the family home.’
‘Whereas …’
‘You know what I’m getting at before I say it. Monsieur Parendon’s brother, Germain, is a doctor specializing in paediatric neurology. He’s married to a former actress who’s still young and lively.’
‘Does he look like …’
Maigret was a little embarrassed by his question.
She understood. ‘No, he’s as broad and strong as his father, and much taller. He’s a very handsome man, and surprisingly gentle. He and his wife don’t have any children. They don’t go out much and only see a few close friends.’
‘But they don’t come here.’
Maigret sighed: he was starting to get a fairly clear picture of the family.
‘Monsieur Parendon goes to see them on the evenings when his wife has a bridge party, because he hates cards. Every now and again, Monsieur Germain comes and keeps him company in the office. I know it when I arrive in the morning because the room smells of cigars.’
It was as if Maigret suddenly changed tone. He didn’t become threatening, or stern, but there was no trace now of banter or amusement in his voice or his eyes.
‘Listen to me, Mademoiselle Vague. I’m convinced that you’ve answered me with complete honesty, and you’ve even sometimes anticipated my questions. I have one more question to ask you and I’d like you to be just as honest. Do you think those letters are a hoax?’
She replied without hesitation:
‘No.’
‘Before they were written, had you already sensed that something dramatic was brewing in the apartment?’
Now she took her time, lighting another cigarette.
‘Perhaps.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know. I’m trying to think. Perhaps after the holidays … Around that time anyway …’
‘What did you notice?’
‘Nothing in particular. It was in the air. A kind of suffocation, I’d be tempted to say.’
‘In your opinion, who’s the person under threat?’
She abruptly turned red and said nothing.
‘Why don’t you answer?’
‘Because you know perfectly well what I’m going to say: Monsieur Parendon.’
He stood up with a sigh.
‘Thank you. I think I’ve tortured you enough this morning. It’s quite likely I’ll be back to see you soon.’
‘Are you going to question the others?’
‘Not before lunch. It’s almost midday. Later, probably.’
She watched him leave — big, heavy, clumsy-looking — then, abruptly, when the front door had closed, she started crying.
3.
In Rue de Miromesnil, there was a relic of the old days, a dimly lit little restaurant where the menu was still written on a slate and where you caught a glimpse of the owner’s wife through a glass door, a huge woman with legs like columns, officiating at her oven.
The regulars had their serviettes in pigeonholes and scowled when they found their seats occupied. This didn’t often happen, because the waitress, Emma, didn’t like new faces. The place was frequented by a number of veteran inspectors from the Sûreté, as well as clerks of a kind you seldom saw any more, whom you could well imagine in black oversleeves at ancient black desks.
The owner, who was at the counter, recognized Maigret and came out to greet him.
‘Haven’t seen you around here for a while. Well, you always did have a good nose. We have andouillette today.’
Every now and again, Maigret liked to eat alone like this, letting his gaze wander over an old-fashioned setting and people who worked mostly in the kind of courtyards where you found unlikely offices, small-time lawyers, pawnbrokers, orthopaedists, stamp dealers and so on.
As he liked to say, he wasn’t thinking, he was ruminating. His mind roamed from one thought to the next, one image to the next, sometimes mixing old cases in with the current one.
Parendon fascinated him. In his mind, as he ate the crisp, juicy andouillette, with its accompaniment of frites that didn’t smell of burned fat, the gnome took on a now touching, now alarming aspect.
‘Article 64, Monsieur Maigret! Don’t forget 64!’
Was it really an obsession? Why was this business lawyer, whom people came from far and wide, at great expense, to consult on all matters maritime, so mesmerized by the only article in the Code that actually dealt with human responsibility?
Very cautiously, of course. Without giving the slightest definition of insanity. And limiting it to the moment of the act, in other words, the moment when the crime was committed.
He knew a few veteran psychiatrists, the kind judges were happy to have as expert witnesses because they didn’t go in for subtleties.
The only things they knew that could limit a criminal’s responsibility were lesions or malformations of the brain, plus — since the Penal Code mentioned it in the following article — epilepsy.
But how to establish that a man, at the moment he killed another man, at the exact instant of the homicidal act, was in complete possession of his faculties, let alone state that he was capable of resisting his impulse?
Article 64, yes … Maigret had often discussed it, especially with his old friend Pardon. It was also discussed at almost every congress of the International Society of Criminology, and there were thick volumes on the subject — the very volumes that filled most of Parendon’s bookshelves.
‘Well? Do you like it?’
The jovial owner refilled his glass with a Beaujolais that was perhaps a little young but ideally fruity.
‘Your wife hasn’t lost her touch.’
‘She’ll be happy if you tell her that before you leave.’
The apartment on Avenue Marigny was very much in the image of Gassin de Beaulieu, a man used to ermine, a commander of the Legion of Honour, a man who had never had any doubts about the Code, the law or himself.
Around Maigret sat thin men, fat men, men of thirty and men of fifty. Almost all of them were eating alone, staring into space or at a page of a newspaper, and they all had in common that particular patina caused by a humble, monotonous life.
We have a tendency to imagine people the way we would like them to be. In point of fact, one had a crooked nose or a receding chin, another drooping shoulders, while his neighbour was obese. Half of them
were balding and at least half wore glasses.
Why was Maigret thinking about this? No reason. Because Parendon, in his vast office, looked like a gnome — some would have said, more cruelly, a monkey.
As for Madame Parendon … He had barely seen her. She had put in only a brief appearance, as if to provide him with a glimpse of her brilliant personality. How had she and her husband met? Was it a chance meeting or the result of a family arrangement?
Between the two of them, there was Gus, who played music on his hi-fi and experimented on electronics in his room with a boy whose father owned a patisserie. He was taller and stronger than his father, fortunately, and if Mademoiselle Vague was to be believed, he was a well-adjusted young man.
There was also his sister, Bambi, who was studying archaeology. Did she really plan to spend her life digging in the deserts of the Near East, or were her studies nothing but an alibi?
Mademoiselle Vague was fierce in her defence of her boss, even though she was only ever able to make love to him on the sly, in a corner of the office.
Why didn’t they arrange to meet somewhere else, for heaven’s sake? Were they both so afraid of Madame Parendon? Or else was it through a sense of guilt that they insisted on giving their relations this furtive, impromptu character?
There were also the ex-legionnaire who’d become a butler, and the cook and the cleaner who hated each other because of working hours and wages. There was a maid named Lise, whom Maigret didn’t know and whom nobody had said much about.
There was René Tortu, who had slept just once with Mademoiselle Vague and who was dragging out his engagement to another woman, and finally the Swiss, Julien Baud, who was taking his first steps in Paris as a pen-pusher while dreaming of a life in the theatre.
Which side was each of these individuals on? The Gassins’ or the Parendons’?
In all this, someone wanted to kill someone else.
And, downstairs, almost ironically, a former Sûreté inspector was working as a concierge!
Opposite, the gardens of the Elysée Palace and, through the trees that were starting to turn prematurely green, the famous steps where the president was always being photographed shaking hands with important guests.
Wasn’t there a certain inconsistency? The bistro around Maigret seemed more real, more solid. It was everyday life. People of modest means, of course, but they outnumber the rest, even if they are less noticeable, even if they dress in dark clothes, speak less loudly, keep close to the walls or crowd together in the Métro …
Without asking for it, he was served a rum baba smothered in whipped cream, another speciality of the owner’s wife. Maigret made sure he went and shook her hand in the kitchen. He even had to kiss her on both cheeks. It was tradition.
‘I hope you won’t stay away so long next time?’
If the murderer took his time, there was a good chance Maigret would be back here often …
Yes, he was again thinking about the murderer. The murderer who wasn’t yet one. The potential murderer.
Aren’t there thousands and thousands of potential murderers in Paris?
Why did this one feel the need to alert Maigret in advance? Was it a kind of romanticism? Was it to make himself interesting? To have Maigret testify for him eventually? Or else was it because he wanted to be stopped?
Stopped how?
Once out in the sun, Maigret walked as far as Saint-Philippe-du-Roule and turned left, stopping occasionally to look in a shop window: very expensive, often pointless things that nevertheless got sold.
He passed Roman’s Stationers, where he was amused to read double-barrelled names from the upper classes on business cards or engraved invitations. It was here that the writing paper that had started everything had come from. Without those anonymous letters, Maigret would never have heard of the Parendons, the Gassin de Beaulieus, the aunts and uncles and cousins.
Like him, other people were walking the streets for the pleasure of blinking in the sun and breathing in blasts of warm air. He felt like shrugging his shoulders, jumping on the first bus with a platform and going back to headquarters.
‘To hell with the Parendons!’
There, he might find some poor loser who had killed someone because he couldn’t stand it any more, or some young Pigalle tearaway who’d moved to Paris from Marseille or Bastia and had shot down a rival to show that he was a man.
He sat down on a café terrace, near a brazier, and had a coffee. Then he went inside and shut himself in the phone booth.
‘Maigret here. Put me through to someone from my office, please … It doesn’t matter … Janvier, Lucas or Lapointe preferably.’
It was Lapointe who answered.
‘Anything new, son?’
‘A phone call from Madame Parendon. She wanted to speak to you personally, and I had a hard time getting her to understand that you had lunch like anyone else.’
‘What did she want?’
‘She wanted you to go and see her as soon as possible.’
‘At home?’
‘Yes. She’ll wait for you until four. After that, she has an important appointment.’
‘Probably with her hairdresser. Anything else?’
‘Yes. But this other thing may be a joke. Half an hour ago, the switchboard operator took a call from someone, she wasn’t sure if it was a man or a woman, the voice was odd, it might have been a child. Anyway, the person was panting, either because they were in a hurry or they were upset, and said very quickly, “Tell Inspector Maigret to hurry up.” The switchboard operator didn’t have time to ask any questions, they’d already hung up. This time, it’s not a letter, which makes me wonder …’
Maigret almost said:
‘Don’t.’
He wasn’t wondering anything, wasn’t trying to play guessing games. All the same, he was worried.
‘Thanks a lot, son. I’m going back to Avenue Marigny now. If there’s anything new, I can be reached there.’
The fingerprints on the two letters hadn’t produced any results. For years now, compromising prints had been becoming increasingly rare. They had been mentioned so often in newspapers, in novels, on television, that even the dumbest criminals took precautions.
He passed the lodge, from which the former Sûreté man waved to him with respectful familiarity. The Rolls was driving through the carriage entrance, with nobody behind the chauffeur. Maigret climbed to the first floor and rang the bell.
‘Good afternoon, Ferdinand.’
Hadn’t he become part of the household?
‘I’ll take you to madame.’
Ferdinand had been informed. She hadn’t left anything to chance. Relieved of his hat, as if he was in a restaurant, he walked for the first time across a huge drawing room that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a ministry. Not a single personal object left lying about, no scarf, no cigarette holder, no open book. No cigarette ends in the ashtrays. Three tall windows open on to the quiet courtyard, drenched now by the sun, where no cars were being washed.
A corridor. A bend. The apartment seemed to comprise a central body and two wings, like an old chateau. A strip of red carpet on the white marble tiled floor. Everywhere, those high ceilings that made you feel smaller.
Ferdinand knocked softly at a double door, opened it without waiting and announced:
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.’
He found himself in a boudoir. There was nobody there, but immediately Madame Parendon emerged from an adjoining room with her arm extended, walked up to Maigret and vigorously shook his hand.
‘I feel embarrassed to have phoned you, inspector, or rather, to have phoned one of your employees.’
Here, everything was blue: the silk brocade covering the walls, the Louis XV armchairs, the carpet; even the Chinese rug had a yellow pattern on a blue background.
Was it chance that she was still in a dressing gown, a turquoise blue dressing gown, at two in the afternoon?
‘Forgive me for receiving you in
this cubby hole, as I call it, but this is the only place where we won’t be constantly disturbed.’
The door through which she had entered was still ajar, and he glimpsed a dressing table, also Louis XV, indicating that it was her bedroom.
‘Please take a seat.’
She indicated a flimsy-looking armchair into which Maigret slid cautiously, vowing not to move too much.
‘Do smoke your pipe.’
Even if he didn’t feel like it! She wanted him to look just the way he did in newspaper photographs. The photographers never failed to remind him:
‘Your pipe, inspector.’
As if he sucked at his pipe from morning to evening! What if he wanted to smoke a cigarette? A cigar? Or not smoke at all?
He didn’t like the armchair he was sitting in — he expected to hear it crack at any moment. He didn’t like this blue boudoir, this woman in blue giving him a veiled smile.
She had sat down in a wing chair and was lighting a cigarette with the help of a gold cigarette lighter, the kind he had seen in the window of Cartier’s. The cigarette box was gold, too. A lot of things in these rooms were probably made of gold.
‘I’m a little jealous that you’ve seen the Vague girl before me. This morning—’
‘I wouldn’t have dared disturb you so early.’
Was Maigret getting used to high society? He could have kicked himself for his own smooth demeanour.
‘I assume you’ve been told that I get up late and dawdle in my bedroom until midday. It’s both true and untrue. As it happens, I’m very active, Monsieur Maigret, and begin my days early. First of all, there’s this large household to run. If I didn’t call the suppliers myself, I don’t know what we would eat, or what bills we’d get at the end of the month. Madame Vauquin’s an excellent cook, but the telephone still terrifies her and makes her stammer. The children take up a lot of my time, too. Even though they’re grown-up now, I still have to see about their clothes, their activities. If it weren’t for me, Gus would live all year in drill trousers, a pullover and tennis sandals. Well, that’s of no matter … There’s also the charity work I do. Others merely send cheques or attend cocktail parties, but when there’s real work to be done they all disappear …’
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