‘What woman?’
‘Mother Canut, the wife of the gardener opposite. I told you about the little chateau, remember?’
‘Didn’t she say anything, then?’
‘She’s not that stupid! Since there’s a reward on offer she’s not about to give anything away, but for all that she may know something.’
Maigret had put the pink file on the table along with the photograph of Gallet.
‘Ask someone to find the woman and get me the gendarmerie on the phone.’
A little later he was speaking to the sergeant, who told him that, according to instructions, he had picked up all the vagrants in the neighbourhood and was holding them at Maigret’s disposal.
‘Anyone interesting among them?’
‘They’re vagrants,’ was all the sergeant said to that.
Maigret stayed alone in his room for three or four minutes, facing a pile of paperwork. And there was more of it to come! He had sent a telegram to Paris asking for information about Henry Gallet and his mistress, and just in case he had alerted Orleans to find out if there was a Monsieur Clément in that city.
Finally, he hadn’t had time yet to look at the room where the crime was committed, or the clothing worn by the dead man, which had been placed in that room after the post-mortem.
At first the case had looked like nothing to speak of. A man who did not seem out of the ordinary had been killed by someone unknown in a hotel room. But each new item of information complicated the problem instead of simplifying it.
‘Do I get her to come in and see you, inspector?’ called a voice in the yard. ‘I’ve got Mother Canut here.’
A strong, dignified old lady, who had probably cleaned herself up more thoroughly than usual for the occasion, came in, immediately looking for Maigret with the wary glance of a countrywoman.
‘Do you have something to tell me?’ he asked. ‘About Monsieur Clément?’
‘It’s about the gent who died and got his picture in the paper. You’re handing out fifty francs, right?’
‘Yes, if you saw him on Saturday 25 June.’
‘Suppose I saw him twice?’
‘Well, maybe you’ll get a hundred! Come on, out with it!’
‘First you’ve got to promise not to say a word to my old man. It’s not so much that he likes to be the boss as on account of the hundred francs. All the same, I’d not like Monsieur Tiburce to know I been talking, because it was with him I saw the gent who got killed. First time was in the morning, about eleven, when they were walking in the grounds.’
‘Are you sure you recognized him?’
‘Sure as I’d recognize you! There aren’t so many look like him. Well, they were chatting for maybe an hour. Then I saw them through the sitting-room window in the afternoon, and it looked like they were arguing.’
‘What time was that?’
‘It had just struck five … so that makes twice, right?’
Her eyes were fixed on Maigret’s hand as he took a hundred-franc note out of his wallet, and she sighed as if she was sorry she hadn’t stuck close to Monsieur Clément’s trail all that Saturday.
‘And could be I saw him a third time,’ she said hesitantly, ‘But I s’pose that doesn’t count. A few minutes later I saw Monsieur Tiburce taking him back to the gate.’
‘You’re right, it doesn’t count,’ agreed Maigret, impelling her towards the door.
He lit a pipe, put his hat on and stopped opposite Monsieur Tardivon in the café. ‘Has Monsieur de Saint-Hilaire lived in the little chateau for long?’
‘About twenty years.’
‘What kind of man is he?’
‘Very pleasant fellow! A little, fat man, cheerful, straightforward. When I have guests in summer we hardly see him, because, well, they’re not his class. But he often drops in here in the hunting season.’
‘Does he have any family?’
‘He’s a widower. We almost always call him Monsieur Tiburce, because that’s not a common first name. He owns all the vines you can see on the slope there. He tends them himself, goes to live it up in Paris now and then and comes back to get his hobnailed boots. What did Mother Canut have to tell you?’
‘Do you think Monsieur Tiburce is at home now?’
‘Could be. I didn’t see his car pass this morning.’
Maigret went to the barred gate and rang the bell, noticing that as the Loire described a bend just outside the hotel, and the villa was the last property in the area, you could go in and out of it at any time without being seen.
Beyond the gate, the wall surrounding the vineyard went on for another three or four hundred metres, and after that there was nothing but undergrowth.
A man with a drooping moustache, wearing a gardener’s apron, came to open the gate, and the inspector concluded, from the strong smell of alcohol about him, that he was probably Madame Canut’s husband.
‘Is your master here?’
At the same moment, Maigret caught sight of a man in shirtsleeves inspecting a mechanical sprinkler. The gardener’s glance told him that this was indeed Tiburce de Saint-Hilaire, and moreover, abandoning the device, he turned to the visitor and waited.
Then, as Canut looked awkward, to say the least of it, he finally picked up the jacket that he had left on the grass and came over.
‘Is it me you want to see?’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret of the Police Judiciaire. Would you be kind enough to give me a moment of your time?’
‘That crime again, is it?’ The owner of the property jerked his chin at the Hotel de la Loire. ‘What can I do for you? Come this way. I won’t invite you into the drawing room, because the sun’s been beating on the walls all day. We’ll be more comfortable under that arbour. Baptiste! Glasses and a bottle of the sparkling wine … the row at the back.’
He was just as the hotelier had described him, small and stout, red-faced, with short hands not very well cared for, wearing an off-the-peg khaki hunting and fishing outfit.
‘Did you know Monsieur Clément?’ asked Maigret, sitting down on one of the wrought-iron chairs.
‘According to the newspaper that wasn’t his real name, he was called … what was it? … Grelet? Gellet?’
‘Gallet, yes. It doesn’t matter. Were you in business with him?’
At that moment, Maigret could have sworn that the other man was not entirely at his ease. Furthermore, Saint-Hilaire felt a need to lean forwards out of the arbour, murmuring, ‘That fool Baptiste is perfectly capable of bringing us the demi-sec, and I’m sure you’d rather have the sec, like me. It’s our own wine, made by the champenoise method … Now, about this Monsieur Clément – might as well go on calling him that – what shall I say? It would be exaggerating to say I was in business with him! But it wouldn’t be exactly true to say I’d never seen him either …’
As he was talking, Maigret thought of another interrogation, the questions he had asked Henry Gallet. The two men had entirely different attitudes. The murder victim’s son did nothing to appear likeable, and he didn’t care about the oddity of his attitude either. He waited for questions with a suspicious air, took his time and weighed up his words.
Tiburce talked away with animation, smiled, gestured with his hands, paced up and down, appeared extremely friendly – and yet there was the same latent anxiety in each of them: perhaps the fear of being unable to hide something.
‘Well, you know how it is. We country landowners come into contact with all sorts. And I’m not just talking about vagrants, commercial travellers, peripatetic salesmen. Now, to return to this Monsieur Clément … Ah, here comes the wine! That’s fine, Baptiste. Right, you can be off now. I’ll come and look at that sprinkler soon. Whatever you do don’t touch it.’
As he spoke, he slowly removed the cork and filled the glasses witho
ut spilling a drop.
‘So to cut a long story short, he came here once, it’s some time ago now. I expect you know that the Saint-Hilaires are a very old family, and at the moment I’m the last offshoot of the family tree. In fact it’s a miracle that I’m not a clerk in some office in Paris or further afield. If I hadn’t inherited money from a cousin who made his fortune in Asia … but never mind, I was going to tell you that my name features in all the yearbooks of the aristocracy. My father, some forty years ago, was noted for his legitimist opinions … but so far as I myself am concerned, well, you know!’
He smiled, drank his sparkling wine, clicking his tongue in a distinctly democratic way and waited for Maigret to empty his own glass before refilling it.
‘So this Monsieur Clément, whom I don’t know from Adam or Eve, came looking for me, got me to read his references from Royal Highnesses in France and elsewhere and then gave me to understand that he was, so to speak, the official representative of the legitimist movement in France. I let him go on talking, and he took his chance to get what he wanted: he was asking me for 2,000 francs for the propaganda fund. And when I said no, he carried on about – oh, some ancient family or other reduced to penury, and a subscription that had been opened for it … We began at 2,000 francs, and haggled the sum down to a hundred. In the end I gave him fifty.’
‘How long ago was this?’
‘Oh, several months. I can’t say exactly. It was in the hunting season. The beaters were at work in the grounds of one of the local chateaux here almost every day. I heard about that fellow everywhere and I felt sure he was a specialist in that kind of swindle. But I wasn’t about to sue him over fifty francs, was I? To your very good health! Only the other day he had the nerve to come back … that’s all I know!’
‘What day was it?’
‘Erm … at the weekend.’
‘On Saturday, yes. In fact he called twice, if I remember correctly …’
‘You’re brilliant, inspector! Yes, you’re right, twice. I refused to see him in the morning. But he buttonholed me in the grounds that afternoon.’
‘He was after money?’
‘You bet he was, but I’d be hard put to it to say what for. However, he was still on about the restoration of the monarchy. Come on, drink up! It’s not worth leaving any in the bottle. Good lord … you don’t think he committed suicide, do you? He must have been at the end of his tether …’
‘The shot was fired from seven metres away, and the revolver hasn’t been found.’
‘In that case, then he didn’t. What do you think of it? A vagrant who happened to be passing and …?’
‘That’s difficult to accept. The windows of the room look out on a lane that leads only to your property.’
‘By a disused entrance,’ objected Monsieur de Saint-Hilaire. ‘It’s many years since the gate to the nettle lane was last opened, and I’d be hard put to it to say where the key is … How about getting another bottle brought out?’
‘No, thank you … I don’t suppose you heard anything?’
‘What kind of thing?’
‘The gun being fired on Saturday evening.’
‘No, nothing like that. I go to bed early. I didn’t hear about the crime until the next morning, when my manservant told me.’
‘And you didn’t think of mentioning Monsieur Clément’s visit to the police?’
‘Good heavens, no …’ He tried to laugh, covering up for his uneasiness. ‘I told myself the poor devil had been punished enough anyway. When you have a name like mine, you don’t much like seeing it in the papers anywhere but the society column.’
Maigret still had the same vague and annoying sensation, coming back again and again like a musical chorus: the sensation that everything touching on the death of Émile Gallet creaked, sounded out of tune and wrong, from the dead man himself to his son’s voice, and Tiburce de Saint-Hilaire’s laughter.
‘You’re staying at old Tardivon’s place, aren’t you? Did you know he used to be a cook at the chateau? He’s made a packet since then. Are you sure you won’t have another little glass? … That fool of a gardener has done something or other to the mechanical sprinkler, and I was just trying to put it right when you turned up … out here in the country we have to do everything for ourselves. Well, if you’re here for a few days, inspector, come and have a chat with me in the evening now and then. Life in the hotel must be tedious with all those tourists …’
At the gate, he took the hand that Maigret had not offered him and shook it with excessive cordiality.
Walking along the side of the Loire, Maigret made a mental note of two points. First, Tiburce de Saint-Hilaire, who must know about the town crier’s announcement and thus the importance that the police ascribed to what Monsieur Clément did on the Saturday, had expected to be interrogated and had not in fact said anything until he realized that his interrogator was up to date with the facts already.
Second, he had lied at least once. He had said that on Saturday morning he had refused to see the visitor, who then buttonholed him in the grounds.
However, it was the morning when the two men went walking in the grounds. And in the afternoon they had certainly been engaged in conversation in the drawing room of the villa.
So the rest of it could also be untrue, the inspector concluded. He was just reaching the nettle lane. On one side of him was the whitewashed wall enclosing Saint-Hilaire’s grounds. On the other rose a single-storey building, part of the Hôtel de la Loire. The ground here was overgrown with long grass, brambles and dead nettles, and the wasps were revelling in it all. The oak trees cast a comfortable shade on the avenue, which ended at an old, beautifully worked gate.
Maigret felt curious enough to go up to this gate, which, according to the owner of the property, had not been opened for years and had lost its key. As soon as he looked at the lock, covered with a thick layer of rust, he noticed that in some places that rust had recently been chipped away. This was better! He took out a magnifying glass and saw, without a shadow of doubt, that a key had left scratch marks as it went into the complicated wards of the lock.
I’ll get that photographed tomorrow, he thought, making a mental note.
He retraced his steps, head bent, rearranging the picture he had of Monsieur Gallet in his mind’s eye, bringing it to light, so to speak. But instead of filling out and becoming more comprehensible, was it not more evasive than ever? The face of the man in the tight-fitting jacket was blurred to the point of having nothing human about it.
Instead of the portrait photo, the only tangible and theoretically complete picture of the murder victim that Maigret had, he saw fleeting images which ought to have made up nothing but one and the same man, but refused to be superimposed into a single whole.
Once again the inspector saw the half of his face, the thin and hairy chest, as he had seen it in the school playground while the doctor danced up and down with impatience behind his back. He also called up images of the blue skiff that Émile Gallet had made in Saint-Fargeau, and the perfectly fashioned fishing tackle, Madame Gallet in mauve silk and then in full mourning, the quintessence of the discreet and formal middle class.
He thought of the wardrobe with the full-length mirror. Gallet must have stood in front of it as he put on his jacket … And all that correspondence on the letterheads of the firm that he didn’t work for any longer. The monthly statements that he drew up carefully, eighteen years after giving up his job as a commercial traveller!
Those goblets and cake slices that he had to buy himself!
Wait a minute, his case of samples hasn’t been found yet, thought Maigret in passing. He must have left it somewhere …
He had automatically stopped a few metres from the window through which the murderer had aimed at his victim. However, he was not even looking at the window.
He was feeling slightly feverish because, at certain moments, he had the impression that with a bit of effort he would be able to reunite all the aspects of Émile Gallet into a single image.
But then he thought of Henry again, both as he knew him, stiffly upright and disdainful, and as a boy with an asymmetrical face ready for his First Communion.
This case, described by Inspector Grenier of Nevers as ‘an annoying little case’, and one that Maigret had tackled reluctantly, was visibly growing larger as the dead man was transformed to the point of becoming a truly outlandish figure.
Ten times, Maigret brushed aside a wasp hovering close to his head with a noise like a miniature aeroplane.
‘Eighteen years!’ he said under his breath.
Eighteen years of forged letters signed Niel, of postcards sent on from Rouen, and all the time he was living his ordinary little life at Saint-Fargeau, without luxuries, without any emotional complications!
The inspector knew the mentality of malefactors, criminals and crooks. He knew that you always find some kind of passion at the root of it.
And that was exactly what he was looking for in the bearded face, the leaden eyelids, the excessively wide mouth.
He made perfectly constructed fishing tackle, and he took old watches apart!
At this point Maigret rebelled.
You don’t tell lies for eighteen years just for that, he thought. You don’t tie yourself to a double life that is so difficult to organize!
That wasn’t the most disturbing part of it. There are difficult situations in which you can manage to live for several months, even several years. But eighteen years! Gallet had grown old! Madame Gallet had put on weight and assumed an air of too much dignity! Henry had grown up … he had taken his First Communion, passed his school-leaving exams, come of age, gone to live in Paris, found a mistress …
And Émile Gallet went on sending himself letters from the firm of Niel, wrote postcards addressed to his wife in advance, patiently copied out fake lists of orders!
He was on a diet …
Maigret could still hear Madame Gallet’s voice. He was so deep in his thoughts – thoughts that made his pulse beat faster – that he had let his pipe go out.
The Late Monsieur Gallet Page 5