That sounded just as false, and by way of contrast Maigret had probably never conveyed such an impression of quiet, confident power. He was enormous. When he was just below the ceiling light, he touched it with the top of his head, and his shoulders filled the rectangle of the window, in the same way as the lords of the Middle Ages with their huge sleeves fill the frames of old pictures. He was still slowly tidying up the room.
‘Because you know I didn’t kill anyone, don’t you?’ said Saint-Hilaire in a fevered tone. He took his handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose noisily.
‘Sit down,’ Maigret told him.
‘I’d rather stand …’
‘Sit down!’
He obeyed, like a frightened child, the moment when the inspector turned to face him. He had a shifty look in his eyes, and the defeated face of a man who does not feel up to his role, and is trying to swim upstream again.
‘I imagine,’ grunted Maigret, ‘that it won’t be necessary for me to get the inspector of indirect taxes for Nevers to come and identify his old comrade Émile Gallet? Oh, I’d have worked out the truth without him; it would have taken longer, that’s all. I felt for too long anyway that there was something creaky about this story. You needn’t try to understand, but when all the material clues manage to confuse matters rather than clarify them, it means they’ve been faked … and everything, without exception, is fake in this case. It all creaked. The gunshot and the knife wound. The room looking out on the courtyard and the wall. Severe bruising on the left wrist and the lost key … and even the three possible suspects. But most of all Gallet. He sounded as wrong dead as he did living. If the inspector of taxes hadn’t spoken up, I was going to go to the school he attended, and I’d have found out the truth there. By the way, you can’t have stayed very long at the school in Nantes.’
‘Two years! They chucked me out.’
‘Good heavens. You were playing football already – and no doubt chasing the girls! Can you hear how the story creaks? Look at this photograph – go on, look at it! At the age when you were climbing the school wall to go and meet your girlfriends, this poor fellow was worrying about his liver. I ought to have devoted some time to collecting the proofs, but I knew what mattered most: my man, who needed 20,000 francs in a hurry, was in Sancerre only to ask you for the money. And you talked to him twice! Then, in the evening, you were watching him over the wall! You were afraid he was going to kill himself, am I right? Perhaps he even told you he was?’
‘No! But he seemed to me feverish. In the afternoon he was talking in an abrupt tone that made quite an impression on me.’
‘And you refused him his 20,000 francs?’
‘I couldn’t do anything else … it was beginning all over again. In the end I think I’d have been broke.’
‘It was at your notary’s in Saigon that you learned he was going to inherit?’
‘Yes … an odd sort of client had come to see my boss. An old maniac who’d been living in the sticks for over twenty years, didn’t see another white man more than one year in every three. His health was undermined by fevers and opium abuse. I heard their conversation. I’m not long for this world, that’s literally what he said, and I don’t even know if I have any family somewhere. Could be there’s a Saint-Hilaire left, but I doubt it because when I left France the last of them was in such a bad way I guess he’s died of consumption. If there’s a descendant, and if you can track him down, then he’ll be my sole heir.’
‘So you already had the bright idea of getting rich at a stroke!’ said Maigret thoughtfully. And behind the sweating, ill-at-ease fifty-year-old man before him he thought he could see the unscrupulous jolly companion who organized a grotesque ceremony to get his hands on a young Malay girl.
‘Go on.’
‘I had to go back to France anyway. It was about women … I went too far when I was out there. There were husbands and brothers and fathers who bore me a grudge. So I had the idea of looking for a Saint-Hilaire, and I can tell you it wasn’t easy. I picked up the trail of Tiburce at the school in Bourges. They told me they had no idea what had become of him. I knew he was a gloomy young man, reserved, who never had a friend at school …’
‘Good God!’ Maigret laughed. ‘He never had a penny in his pocket! There was just enough money to pay for his board until he’d finished his studies.’
‘My idea at that moment was to share the inheritance by some means or other, I didn’t yet know just how. But I realized it would be harder to share it than to take the lot. It took me three months to lay hands on him, in Le Havre, where he was trying to get taken on as a steward or interpreter on a liner. He had ten or twelve francs left … I bought him a drink and then I had to get the information out of him word by word – he never replied except in monosyllables. He’d been a tutor at a chateau, a proof-reader, an assistant in a bookshop … he already wore a ridiculous jacket and a strange straggly beard, reddish-brown … So I staked everything on getting it all. I told him I wanted to go to America and make my fortune and I said that out there nothing helps a man more, particularly with women, than an aristocratic name, and I offered to buy his. I had a little money, because my father, a horse dealer in Nantes, had left me a small sum of money. I paid 30,000 francs for the right to call myself Tiburce de Saint-Hilaire.’
Maigret cast a brief glance at the portrait photograph, inspected the man he was talking to from head to toe and then looked straight into his eyes in such a way that he began talking at exaggerated speed of his own accord.
‘It’s what a financier does, isn’t it? He buys up securities at 200 francs because he knows he can sell them for five times more a month later. But I had to wait four years to inherit! The old madman out there in his jungle couldn’t make up his mind to die. I was the one who almost died of starvation now that I had no money.
‘As for the real Saint-Hilaire, we were almost the same age. All we’d had to do was exchange our papers. The other man promised never to set foot in Nantes, where he might have met someone who knew me. As for me, I had to take hardly any precautions. The real Tiburce had never had any friends, and in his various jobs he often didn’t use his real name, which didn’t sound right for him … I mean, how many bookshop assistants are called Tiburce de Saint-Hilaire? Well, at long last I read a little paragraph in the newspapers about the old man’s estate and asking anyone with a claim to make himself known. Don’t you think I earned the 1,200,000 francs that the old man in the backwoods left?’
He was recovering his self-confidence, encouraged by Maigret’s silence, and looked as if he might almost have winked at him.
‘Of course, Gallet, who had just got married at that point and wasn’t rolling in money, turned up and blamed me for his plight – there was a moment when I thought he was going to kill me. I offered him 10,000 francs, and he finally took them. But he came back six months later … and then he came back again. He was threatening to tell the truth. I tried to show him that he’d be thought as culpable as me. What was more, he had a family – and he seemed afraid of that family. Gradually he calmed down … he was ageing fast. I really felt sorry for him with his close-fitting jacket, his beard, his yellow skin and the rings round his eyes. His manner was becoming more and more like a beggar’s. He always began by asking me for 50,000 francs – just once and never again, he swore. Then I would fob him off with 1,000- or 2,000-franc notes. But add up those sums over eighteen years! I tell you again that if I hadn’t stood firm I’d have been the loser. I was working hard, at that! I was looking for good investments. I planted all the land you see on the higher reaches of the property with vines. While he, on the other hand, was claiming to be a commercial traveller, but the truth was that he was nothing but a scrounger … and he got a taste for it. Under the name of Monsieur Clément, as you know, he went around looking for people … well, so tell m
e, what should I have done?’
His voice rose, and automatically he got to his feet.
‘So on the Saturday in question he wanted 20,000 francs on the spot. I might have been inclined to give them to him, but I couldn’t, because the bank was closed. And then again I’d paid enough, don’t you think? I told him so. I told him he was degenerate. He returned to the attack that afternoon, taking such a humble tone that it disgusted me. A real man has no right to let himself sink to such a level as that! A man stakes his life, he wins or he loses, but he keeps more pride than that!’
‘Did you tell him that as well?’ Maigret interrupted, in a surprisingly gentle voice.
‘Why not? I was hoping to stiffen his backbone. I offered him 500 francs.’
Elbows propped on the mantelpiece, the inspector had drawn the portrait photograph of the dead man towards him.
‘Five hundred francs,’ he repeated.
‘I’ll show you the notebook where I write down all my expenses. It will show you that at the end of the day he’d got more than 200,000 francs out of me. I was in the grounds that evening …’
‘And not very much at your ease …’
‘I was nervous, I can’t say why. I heard a noise from beside the wall, and then I saw him fixing I don’t know what in the tree. I thought at first he wanted to play some nasty trick on me, but he disappeared just as he had come. When I stood on a barrel for a better look he’d gone into his room, where he was standing upright beside the table, turned to me although he couldn’t see me. I couldn’t make it out. I swear to you that at that moment I was afraid. The gun went off ten metres from where I was standing, and Gallet hadn’t moved … only his right cheek was all red, and blood was flowing. But he still stood there staring the same way, as if he was expecting something.’
Maigret took the revolver off the mantelpiece. A guitar string made of several strands of metal, like those you use when fishing for pike, was still tied to it. A small tin box was firmly fixed under the gun and attached to the trigger with a stiff thread.
Opening the box with his fingernail, Maigret found the sort of mechanism you can buy in shops these days allowing you to take a photograph of yourself. All you have to do is load a spring, which releases of its own accord after a certain number of seconds. But in this case the device had a triple movement and so should have set off three shots.
‘The spring must have got stuck after the first bullet was fired,’ he said slowly, in a rather muted voice. And the other man’s last words echoed in his ears: Only his right cheek was all red, and blood was flowing. But he still stood there staring the same way, as if he was expecting something.
The other two bullets, for heaven’s sake! He hadn’t entirely trusted the precision of the device for firing the gun. With three bullets, he was sure of getting at least one of them in his head. But the other two had never gone off! So he had taken his knife out of his pocket.
‘He was unsteady on his feet when he pressed its blade against his chest … he was straight as he fell … dead, of course. The first thing to come into my head was that it was vengeance, that he’d been careful to leave papers revealing the truth, perhaps even accusing me of his murder.’
‘You’re certainly a prudent man! And talk about a cool head! You went to find rubber gloves in your kitchen …’
‘You think I was going to leave my fingerprints in his hotel room? I went through the gate and put the key in my pocket. But my visit wasn’t any use. He’d burned all his papers himself. I didn’t like the look in his open eyes, so I got out of there in such a hurry that I forgot to lock the gate again. Well, what would you have done in my place? Seeing that he was certainly dead … I was even more frightened on the day when I was playing cards at the notary’s and I learned that the revolver had been fired again. I went to take a look at it, close to, but I didn’t dare to touch it, because if anyone got round to suspecting me it was the proof of my innocence. An automatic with six bullets in the chamber … I realized that the spring must have stuck after the gun went off, and then slackened again a week late … probably because of the atmospheric conditions. But there could still be three bullets left, couldn’t there? It’s since then that I’ve spent so much time walking in the grounds, listening for them. Just now, when the two of us were here together, I avoided standing close to the table.’
‘But you let me stand there! And it was you who threw the key into the nettle lane when I threatened you with a visit to your home.’
Some of the hotel guests who had finished their dinner were walking along the road. There was an intermittent noise of plates being moved about from the kitchen.
‘It was a mistake for me to offer you money …’
Maigret almost burst out laughing, and if he had not controlled himself the sound of his laughter would probably have been terrifying. The other man was a head shorter than the inspector, with much narrower shoulders, and standing in front of him, Maigret looked at him with an expression that was both benevolent and fierce, swinging his hand as if to seize him suddenly by the throat or smash his head against the wall.
And yet there was something pitiable about this pseudo Tiburce de Saint-Hilaire, in his desire to justify himself, to regain his self-assurance.
A poor sort of villain, who didn’t even have the courage of his villainy, perhaps was not even fully aware of it himself! And he was trying to show off! Every time it looked as if Maigret might move he flinched back. If the inspector had raised his hand he would probably have fallen flat on the floor!
‘And by the way, if his wife needs anything I am prepared, discreetly and within my means, to help her.’
He knew he was on safe ground here, but all the same he was not easy in his mind. He’d have given much for a kind word from this police officer, who looked as if he were a cat playing with a mouse.
‘He’s provided for her himself.’
‘Yes, I read that in the papers. Three hundred thousand francs’ life insurance! That’s extraordinary.’
Maigret could contain himself no longer.
‘Extraordinary, isn’t it? A man who spent his childhood without a penny to spend on his small pleasures. And you know what those schools are like. Among the former pupils of the school in Nantes are most of the great men of the centre of the country. He has a fine name. A name as old and lustrous as theirs, apart from that ridiculous first name, Tiburce. But as for him, he may eat and he has a right to have lessons, but he can’t buy a chocolate bar or a whistle or marbles … At recreation time he’s left alone in a corner. Perhaps the poor students paid to supervise the boys take pity on him, they’re almost as wretched as he is.
‘Well, he gets out of there. He sells books in a bookshop. He hopelessly goes around with his interminable name, his close-fitting jacket, his liver trouble. He has nothing to pawn … but he does have that name, and one fine day someone comes along and offers to buy it from him. Without the name, he’s still in a miserable state, but with the name of Gallet he can at least attain a higher level: mediocrity. When he is hungry and thirsty, he can eat and drink. But his new family treat him like a mangy dog. He has a wife and a son. His wife and his son blame him for being unable to rise in society, earn money, become a departmental councillor like his brother-in-law. The name he sold for 30,000 francs is suddenly worth a million! The only thing he had possessed, and the one that had brought him most of his wretchedness and humiliation! The name he had got rid of.
‘And the man who had really been Gallet, a jolly fellow, good company, gives him alms now and then … extraordinary, just as you said. He never succeeded in anything. He spent his life worrying himself sick. No one ever held out a hand to him. His son rebelled and left home as soon as he could to spread his own wings, leaving the old man in his mediocrity. Only his wife was resigned to her situation. I don’t say she h
elped him. I don’t say she comforted him. She was resigned to her situation, because she realized there was nothing to be done about it. A poor old man on a strict diet.
‘And then he leaves her 300,000 francs! More than she ever had when she was married to him. Three hundred thousand francs, enough to make her sisters come running, to win her the smiles of the departmental councillor. He’s been dragging himself around for five years, suffering attack after attack of his liver disease. The legitimists don’t make him much more than begging would. In these parts he gets his hands on a 1,000-franc note now and then. But there’s a Monsieur Jacob, who takes most of what he picks up in that way.
‘Extraordinary, yes, Gallet-Saint-Hilaire. Because if he has to cut down on even his small expenses, he keeps up with payments on his life insurance, he spends 20,000 francs a year on it. He senses in advance that a time will come when he finally gives up the ghost, unless his heart is kind enough to stop of its own accord. A poor old man, all alone, coming and going, not at home anywhere unless perhaps when he’s out fishing and doesn’t see another human being.
‘He’s born inappropriately, into a family on its uppers that, moreover, has been stupid enough to spend the few thousand francs it has painfully managed to save on his education. He has sold his name inappropriately. And he has worked inappropriately for the cause of legitimism at the moment when legitimism was on its last legs. He married inappropriately – his own son is cut from the same cloth as his sisters- and brothers-in-law. People die every day when they don’t want to, when they are happy and well. And he, inappropriately, doesn’t die! Life insurance isn’t paid if someone has committed suicide. He plays about with watches and springs … he knows that the moment when he can’t go any further is not far away. And at last, Monsieur Jacob demands 20,000 francs!
‘He hasn’t got 20,000 francs, and no one will give them to him. He has his spring in his pocket. To put his mind at rest, he knocks on the door of the man who gained a million in his place. He has no hope – and yet he goes back again. But he has already asked for the room looking out on the courtyard, because he is not absolutely sure of his mechanism, and he prefers the simpler option of the well. All his life he has been a grotesque and unlucky figure. And now the room looking out on the courtyard is not available. That means he must climb a wall. And two of the bullets fail to go off. Just as you said: His right cheek was red … blood was flowing. But he still stood there staring the same way, as if he was expecting something. Hasn’t he spent his life expecting something? A little luck? Not even that. One of those little everyday pleasures to be found in the street that people don’t notice … He had to wait for his two last bullets, and they failed to go off. He had to finish the job for himself.’
The Late Monsieur Gallet Page 13