He was very interested in the office, so stuffy in the morning in artificial light, and he kept returning to it with a secret pleasure, because it was one of the most agreeable rooms he had ever seen.
The room had a high ceiling and was lit by French windows that opened on to a flight of three steps, beyond which one discovered, not without surprise, a well-kept lawn, a huge lime tree standing in a world of stone.
‘Who has access to this garden?’ he had asked, looking up at the windows of other apartments.
The answer came from Mazeron:
‘My uncle.’
‘No other tenants?’
‘No. The building belonged to him. He was born here. His father, who still had a considerable fortune, occupied the ground floor and the floor above. When he died, my uncle, who had already lost his mother, kept this little flat and the garden.’
This simple detail was significant. Was it not rare, in Paris, for a seventy-seven-year-old man to go on living in the house of his birth?
‘And when he was an ambassador abroad?’
‘He closed the apartment and came back for his holidays. Contrary to what one might imagine, the building brought him hardly any income. Most of the tenants have been here for so long that they pay derisory rents, and some years, with repairs and taxes, my uncle was out of pocket.’
There were not many rooms. The office stood in for the drawing room. Beside it there was a dining room, opposite the kitchen and a bedroom and a bathroom that looked out on to the street.
‘Where do you sleep?’ Maigret had asked Jaquette.
She had asked him to repeat the question, and he had started thinking that this must be an odd habit of hers.
‘Behind the kitchen.’
There, he had found a kind of box room with an iron bed, a wardrobe and a basin with running water. A large ebony crucifix was fixed above a stoup decorated with a sprig of box-tree leaves.
‘Was the Count of Saint-Hilaire religious?’
‘He never missed Sunday mass, even when he was in Russia.’
The most striking thing was a subtle harmony, a refinement that Maigret would have had difficulty defining. The furniture was in different styles, and no one had taken the trouble to try to make it match. Even so, each room had its own beauty, each one had acquired the same patina, the same personality.
The walls of the office were entirely covered with bound books, while others, with white or yellow covers, were lined up on the shelves in the corridor.
‘Was the window closed when you found the body?’
‘You were the one who opened it. I haven’t even touched the curtains.’
‘And the bedroom window?’
‘It was closed as well. The count felt the cold.’
‘Who had the key to the apartment?’
‘He and I both had one, no one else.’
Janvier had questioned the concierge. The little door cut into the monumental coach-gate was left open until midnight. The concierge never went to bed before that time; however, he sometimes sat in his bedroom behind the lodge, from where he couldn’t necessarily see the people going in and out.
The previous day he hadn’t noticed anything unusual. The house was calm, he kept insistently repeating. He had been there for thirty years, and the police had never had cause to set foot in the building.
It was too soon to reconstruct what had happened the previous evening. They would have to wait for the report from the pathologist, then the one from Moers and his men.
One thing seemed obvious: Saint-Hilaire hadn’t gone to bed. He was wearing dark-grey trousers with fine stripes, a slightly starched white shirt, a polka-dotted bow tie and, as usual when he stayed at home, he had put on his black velvet dressing gown.
‘Did he sometimes stay up late?’
‘It depends what you mean by “late”.’
‘What time did he go to bed?’
‘I almost always went to bed before him.’
It was exasperating. The most banal questions were met with a wall of suspicion; the old maidservant seldom gave a direct response.
‘You didn’t hear him leaving his office?’
‘Go to my bedroom and you will notice that you can’t hear anything but the noise of the lift on the other side of the wall.’
‘How did he spend his evenings?’
‘Reading. Writing. Correcting the proofs of his book.’
‘Did he go to bed at around midnight, for example?’
‘Perhaps shortly before, or shortly afterwards, depending on the day.’
‘And then did he sometimes call you, needing your services?’
‘To do what?’
‘He might have wanted a herbal tea before going to bed, or …’
‘He never drank herbal tea. And besides, he had his drinks cabinet …’
‘What did he drink?’
‘Wine with meals, claret. A glass of cognac in the evening …’
They had found the empty glass on the desk, and the specialists from Criminal Records had taken it away to check it for fingerprints.
If the old man had had a visitor, he didn’t seem to have offered them anything to drink, because they couldn’t find another glass in the office.
‘Did the count own a firearm?’
‘Hunting rifles. They’re stored in the cupboard at the end of the corridor.’
‘Did he hunt?’
‘Sometimes, when he was invited to a chateau.’
‘Did he have a pistol or a revolver?’
She had dug her heels in again, and when she did this her pupils shrank like a cat’s, her face became frozen and blank.
‘Did you hear my question?’
‘What did you ask me?’
Maigret repeated his words.
‘I think he had a revolver.’
‘With a cylinder?’
‘What do you mean by “cylinder”?’
He had tried to explain. No. It wasn’t a gun with a cylinder. It was a flat gun, bluish, with a short barrel.
‘Where did he keep this automatic?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen it for ages. The last time, it was in the chest of drawers.’
‘In his bedroom?’
She had gone and shown him the drawer in question, which contained only handkerchiefs, sock suspenders and braces in different colours. The other drawers were full of carefully folded linen, shirts, underpants, handkerchiefs and, right at the bottom, the items that went with dinner jackets and tails.
‘When did you last see the automatic?’
‘Years ago.’
‘Approximately how many?’
‘I don’t know. Time passes so quickly …’
‘And you never saw it anywhere except in the chest of drawers?’
‘No. Perhaps he put it in a drawer in his office. I never opened those drawers, and in any case they were always locked.’
‘You didn’t know why?’
‘Why do people lock items of furniture?’
‘He wasn’t suspicious of you?’
‘I’m sure he wasn’t.’
‘Of whom, then?’
‘Don’t you lock any of your furniture?’
There was a key, in fact, a very ornate bronze key, which opened the drawers of the Empire desk. The contents hadn’t revealed anything, except that Saint-Hilaire, like everyone else, accumulated tiny useless objects, such as old empty wallets, two or three cigar-holders in gold-ringed amber which no one had used for a long time, a cigar-cutter, some drawing pins, some paper-clips, pencils and propelling pencils in all colours.
Another drawer had contained the writing paper marked with a crown, envelopes, visiting cards and carefully rolled-up bits of thread, glue, a penknife with a broken blade.
The copper-latticed doors of one bookcase were lined with green fabric. Inside, there were no books, but on all the shelves there were bundles of letters carefully tied with thread, each bundle bearing a dated label.
‘Is this what you were referring
to just now?’ Maigret had asked Alain Mazeron.
The nephew had nodded his head.
‘Do you know who these letters are from?’
He had nodded again.
‘Was it your uncle who told you about them?’
‘I can’t remember if he told me, but everyone knows about them.’
‘What do you mean by “everyone”?’
‘In the world of diplomacy, in elevated circles.’
‘Have you read any of these letters?’
‘Never.’
‘You may leave us and go and make lunch,’ Maigret said to Jaquette.
‘You think I’m going to eat on a day like this!’
‘Leave us anyway. I’m sure you’ll find something to do.’
She was obviously horrified at the idea of leaving him alone with the nephew. Several times he had caught the almost hate-filled glances that she darted at him on the sly.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘I know it’s not my business, but …’
‘What?’
‘A person’s letters are sacred …’
‘Even if they might help us find a murderer?’
‘They won’t help you do anything at all.’
‘I’ll probably need you shortly. In the meantime …’
He had looked at the door, and Jaquette had left reluctantly. Wouldn’t she have been indignant if she had been able to see Maigret taking the place of the Count of Saint-Hilaire at the desk on which Janvier was lining up the piles of letters?
‘Take a seat,’ he had said to Mazeron. ‘Do you know who this correspondence is from?’
‘Yes. I’m sure you’ll see that all of these letters are signed Isi.’
‘Who is Isi?’
‘Isabelle of V—. Princess of V—. My uncle always called her Isi.’
‘Was she his mistress?’
Why did Maigret think the man had the face of a sexton, as if sextons had to have a particular physique? Mazeron too, like Jaquette, had let a certain amount of time pass before answering the questions.
‘Apparently they weren’t lovers.’
Maigret had untied the thread of a bundle of yellowing letters dating from 1914, a few days after the declaration of war.
‘How old is the princess today?’
‘Let me just work it out … She is five or six years younger than my uncle … So, seventy-one or seventy-two …’
‘Did she come here often?’
‘I’ve never seen her here. I don’t think she ever set foot here, or if she did it was before.’
‘Before what?’
‘Before she married the Prince of V—.’
‘Listen, Monsieur Mazeron. I would like you to tell me this story as clearly as possible …’
‘Isabelle was the daughter of the Duke of S—.’
It was strange, hearing in real life names he had learned in French history.
‘And so?’
‘My uncle was twenty-six, in about 1910, when he met her. More precisely, he had known her as a little girl, in the duke’s chateau, where he sometimes spent the summer holidays. Then for a long time he didn’t see her, and when they met up once again they fell in love with each other.’
‘Had your uncle already lost his father?’
‘Two years previously.’
‘Did he inherit a large fortune?’
‘Only this house and some land in the Sologne.’
‘Why didn’t they get married?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps because my uncle was starting out in the diplomatic corps, and he was sent to Poland as a second or third secretary at the embassy.’
‘Were they engaged?’
‘No.’
Maigret felt it was slightly indecent leafing through the letters scattered in front of him. Contrary to his expectations, they were not love letters. In quite a lively style, the girl who had written them related the minor events of her own life and the life of Paris.
She did not address her correspondent by the familiar tu, calling him her ‘great friend’, and signed her letters: ‘your faithful Isi’.
‘Then what happened?’
‘Before the war – I mean the First War – in 1912, if I’m not mistaken, Isabelle married the Prince of V—.’
‘Did she love him?’
‘If we believe what they say, no. They even claim that she frankly admitted as much to him. All I know about it is what I heard my father and mother saying about it when I was a child.’
‘Your mother was the sister of the Count of Saint-Hilaire?’
‘Yes.’
‘She didn’t marry into her milieu?’
‘She married my father, who was a painter and who enjoyed a certain success at the time. He is rather forgotten now, but you will still find one of his paintings at the Palais de Luxembourg. Later, to make a living, he became a picture restorer.’
During that part of the morning, Maigret had had a sense of pulling out each bit of the truth almost by force. He couldn’t get a clear image of it. These people struck him as unreal, as if they had sprung from the pages of a turn-of-the-century novel.
‘If I understand correctly, Armand de Saint-Hilaire didn’t marry Isabelle because his fortune was too small?’
‘I suppose so, yes. That’s what I was frequently told, and what seems most likely to me.’
‘So she married the Prince of V—, whom she didn’t love, as you say, and to whom she had honestly confessed as much.’
‘It was an arrangement between two great families, between two great names.’
Hadn’t the Saint-Fiacres done similar things in the old days, and, when they wanted to find a wife for her son, hadn’t the old countess turned to her bishop?
‘Did the couple have children?’
‘Just one, after several years of marriage.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Prince Philippe must be forty-five now. He married a girl called de Marchangy and lives almost the whole year in his chateau at Genestoux, near Caen, where he has a stud and some farms. He has five or six children.’
‘For about fifty years, judging by this correspondence, Isabelle and your uncle went on writing to each other. Almost every day they wrote each other letters several pages long. Was the husband aware of this?’
‘They say so.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Only by sight.’
‘What sort of man is he?’
‘A gentleman and a collector.’
‘A collector of what?’
‘Of medals, of snuffboxes …’
‘He moved in society circles?’
‘He had people to dinner every week, in his townhouse on Rue de Varenne and, in the autumn, at his chateau at Saint-Sauveur-en-Bourbonnais.’
Maigret had raised an eyebrow. On the one hand he felt that it was probably true, but at the same time the characters struck him as unreal.
‘Rue de Varenne,’ he objected, ‘is five minutes’ walk from here.’
‘And yet I would be willing to swear that for fifty years my uncle and the princess never met.’
‘Even though they wrote to each other every day?’
‘You have the letters right in front of you.’
‘And the husband knew about it?’
‘Isabelle would never have agreed to writing in secret.’
Maigret had almost felt like losing his temper, as if he were being made fun of. And yet the letters were right in front of him, in fact, and full of revealing phrases.
… this morning, at eleven o’clock, I received a visit from Abbé Gauge, and we talked a lot about you. It’s a comfort to me to know that the bonds connecting us are those that men cannot sunder …
‘Is the princess very Catholic?’
‘She had a chapel blessed in the house on Rue de Varenne.’
‘And her husband?’
‘He’s Catholic too.’
‘Did he have mistresses?’
‘That’s what
they claim.’
Another letter, from a more recent bundle:
… I will be grateful all my life to Hubert for understanding …
‘I assume Hubert is the Prince of V—?’
‘Yes. He used to belong to the Cadre Noir de Saumur, the corps of riding instructors. He still rode in the Bois de Boulogne every morning, until he had a bad fall last week.’
‘What age was he?’
‘Eighty.’
This affair involved only old people, who had relationships that did not seem human.
‘Are you sure of everything you are telling me, Monsieur Mazeron?’
‘If you doubt me, ask anyone.’
Anyone in a milieu of which Maigret had only a vague and certainly imprecise idea!
‘Let’s keep going!’ he had sighed wearily. ‘That prince is the one who has recently died, as you told me just now?’
‘On Sunday morning, yes. It was in the papers. He died of his injuries after falling from his horse, and the funeral will be happening right now at Sainte-Clotilde.’
‘He had no relationship with your uncle?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘And what if they met in society?’
‘I suppose they avoided frequenting the same salons and the same circles.’
‘Did they hate each other?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Did your uncle ever talk to you about the prince?’
‘No. He never mentioned him.’
‘And about Isabelle?’
‘He told me a long time ago that I was his sole heir, and that it was a shame that I didn’t bear his name. He was also saddened by the fact that I had no sons, only two daughters. If I had had a son, he added, he would have requested a ruling allowing him to bear the name of Saint-Hilaire.’
‘So you are your uncle’s sole heir.’
‘Yes. I haven’t finished my story. Indirectly, without mentioning any names, he talked to me that time about the princess. What he said was:
‘ “I still hope to marry one day, God alone knows when, and it will be too late for us to have children …” ’
‘If I understand correctly, the situation is this. In about 1912, your uncle met a girl whom he loved and who loved him, but they didn’t get married because the Count of Saint-Hilaire barely had a fortune.’
‘That’s exactly right.’
‘Two years later, while your uncle is in Poland or in an embassy somewhere else, young Isabelle has a marriage of convenience and becomes the Princess of V—. She has a son, so it isn’t a mere formality. The couple behaved, at the time at least, as husband and wife.’
Maigret and the Old People Page 3