‘Good afternoon, Monsieur 6 … Our dear patient is expecting you …’
He could hardly scowl at Sister Aurélie, and he began to smile despite himself.
‘Just a moment, I’ll announce you … I’ll announce you …’
And the other one, Sister Marie des Anges, came to meet him at the top of the stairs. He couldn’t talk to her in the corridor with all the doors open.
‘Good afternoon, Monsieur 6 … Our dear patient …’
It was like a conjuring trick in which he played the conjuror’s ball. He hadn’t had a chance to open his mouth when he found himself in his wife’s room where the horrid Mademoiselle Rinquet was staring at him with her beady little eyes.
‘What’s the matter with you, Maigret?’
‘Me? Nothing …’
‘You’re not in a good mood …’
‘Yes I am …’
‘It’s time for me to get out of here, isn’t it? Admit that you’re bored …’
‘How are you?’
‘Better … Doctor Bertrand thinks he’ll be able to remove my staples on Monday … This morning, I was allowed a little chicken …’
He couldn’t even whisper to her. How would that look? The vixen in the other bed was all ears.
‘By the way, you forgot to leave me a little money …’
‘What for?’
‘A young patient came by earlier collecting contributions …’
A glance over at Mademoiselle Rinquet, as if he was meant to understand what was only half said. But understand what? Was she collecting money for the elderly spinster?
‘What do you mean?’
‘For the wreath …’
And for a moment, he wondered naively what the wreath had to do with the patient who was still alive. It was stupid. But he wasn’t spending all his time, day in and day out, in this atmosphere of whispered secrets and meaningful looks.
‘Number 15 …’
‘Oh! Yes …’
Madame Maigret’s exquisite tact! Because her neighbour was seriously ill, because she had cancer – and so was going to die – she thoughtfully lowered her voice to talk about the wreath!
‘She’s going to come back … Give her twenty francs … Almost everyone gave twenty francs … The funeral’s tomorrow …’
‘I know …’
‘What did you have for lunch?’
Every day, he had to give her a detailed account of everything he had eaten.
‘You haven’t been served any more mussels, I hope?’
Sister Marie des Anges came in.
‘May I?’
It was to introduce the young patient who was collecting money for the wreath. Maigret held out his twenty francs, together with a pencil.
‘Do you want to write my wife’s name, Sister?’
Sister Marie des Anges took the pencil without hesitation. Then there was a short pause. She looked up at Maigret’s face and her cheeks turned a little pinker.
She wrote the surname, while he scrutinized the letters she traced on the sheet of paper. She didn’t take the trouble to disguise her handwriting. Besides, her eyes had already confessed.
Visibly shaken, she withdrew, saying thank you and leading the young patient by the hand.
‘Here, we really are like a family,’ Madame Maigret was saying affectionately. ‘You can’t imagine the closeness that develops between people who are sick.’
He didn’t want to contradict her, even though he was thinking of Mademoiselle Rinquet.
‘I think they’ll allow me home in eight or ten days … The day after tomorrow, they’ll let me sit in an armchair for an hour.’
It wasn’t very kind towards Madame Maigret, but the half-hour seemed even longer than on the other days.
‘Wouldn’t you like to move to a different room?’
She was horrified. How could he be so tactless as to say something like that in front of Mademoiselle Rinquet?
‘Why would you want me to move?’
‘I don’t know … There must be a single room free now …’
Madame Maigret’s alarm became more personal and she stammered, unable to believe her ears:
‘Number 15? … Don’t even think of it, Maigret!’
A room in which a girl had just died! He didn’t press her. Mademoiselle Rinquet must take him for a monster. But he had merely seen it as a way of getting to speak to Sister Marie des Anges on her own.
Too bad! He’d find another way. In the corridor, as she was showing him out, he said to her:
‘May I speak to you for a moment in the parlour?’
She knew what it was about and she was just as alarmed as Madame Maigret had been.
‘The rules don’t permit …’
‘You mean the rules don’t permit me to have a conversation with you?’
‘Except in the presence of the mother superior, to whom you must make a request …’
‘And where can I find the mother superior?’
He had inadvertently raised his voice. He was on the point of growing angry.
‘Shhh …’
Sister Aldegonde poked her head around a half-open door and watched them from a distance.
‘Can I at least talk to you here?’
‘Shhh …’
‘Can you write to me?’
‘The rules don’t—’
‘And I presume the rules don’t permit you to go into town?’
That was too much. He was verging on blasphemy.
‘Listen, Sister—’
‘I beg you, Monsieur 6—’
‘You know what I want to—’
‘Shhh … For goodness’ sake!’
And she joined her hands, advancing and forcing him to retreat. She said out loud, no doubt for the benefit of Sister Aldegonde, who was still listening:
‘I assure you that your dear patient is lacking for nothing and that she’s in excellent spirits …’
It was pointless insisting. He was already on the stairs, on Sister Aurélie’s territory now. All that remained was for him to go downstairs and leave.
‘Good afternoon, Monsieur 6,’ said a mellow voice behind the window. ‘Will you be telephoning tomorrow?’
He felt like a great oafish boy surrounded by a gaggle of little girls who were making fun of him. Little girls of all ages, including Mademoiselle Rinquet, whom he had taken a dislike to, heaven knows why! Including Madame Maigret, who was becoming rather too much part of the place.
What point would there have been, since he couldn’t talk to anyone, in writing a note to alert him?
For a good ten minutes, he railed inwardly against Sister Marie des Anges.
A hypocrite too. That tone of voice in which she’d said, to pull the wool over Sister Aldegonde’s eyes:
‘I assure you that your dear patient is lacking for nothing and that …’
And the other one, number 15, no doubt she had been a ‘dear patient’ too?
He walked in the shade, then in the sun, going from one street to the next and, gradually, he calmed down and saw the funny side.
Poor Sister Marie des Anges! In short, she had done what she could. She had even shown daring and initiative. What would have been an ordinary gesture anywhere else was true heroism in that place.
It wasn’t her fault that Maigret had got there too late, or that the Godreau girl had died too soon.
Right now, what could he do? Go back to the hospital, ask to see the mother superior, and say: ‘I need to speak to Sister Marie des Anges’?
On what grounds? What business was it of his? Here, he wasn’t Maig
ret from the Police Judiciaire, but plain Monsieur 6.
Talk to Doctor Bellamy? To tell him what, for goodness’ sake? Besides, hadn’t the doctor himself insisted on having an autopsy performed on his sister-in-law?
The previous day, Chief Inspector Mansuy had told him that Lili Godreau had not regained consciousness and that she had been in a coma from the time of the accident until her death.
A nice glass of white wine was what he needed. In a real bar full of rowdy men. With real sunshine coming through the windows and not that nauseating, subdued hospital light.
As for the note, he tore it into shreds. Then he headed for the Brasserie du Remblai. Would Doctor Bellamy come for his game of cards? That was his business. When there’s a death in the house, the women begin by declaring in a pitiful voice:
‘No … Don’t press me … I couldn’t eat a thing … I’d rather die …’
Then, a little later, they are at the table asking for dessert, if they aren’t exchanging recipes with their sisters-in-law.
As for Doctor Bellamy, he carried on playing bridge. He was there, just like any other day. Several times he looked at Maigret and his gaze was very sharp, very penetrating.
His eyes seemed to be saying: ‘I know you’re curious about me, that you are trying to understand me … I am not bothered in the least …’
No, that was not entirely true. He was bothered and, as time went by, Maigret could see that he was.
There was something else between him and the doctor, a very subtle bond, but a bond all the same.
When Maigret went somewhere and was recognized, he was used to seeing people stare at him with curiosity, because of his reputation. Some felt compelled to ask him questions, which were generally rather stupid, or flattering.
‘So tell me, inspector, what is your method?’
The cleverest ones, or the most pretentious, would declare:
‘It seems to me that you are of the Bergsonian school, you follow your hunches …’
Some, like Lourceau and a few of the persons present, were content to see what a chief inspector from the Police Judiciaire looked like.
‘As someone who’s met so many murderers …’
While others were very proud to shake hands with a man whose picture regularly appeared in the newspapers.
This did not apply to Bellamy. The doctor considered Maigret as an equal, in a way. He seemed to acknowledge that they were in the same league though not quite on the same level.
His curiosity was mixed with respect, and was almost a homage.
‘Half past four, doctor,’ said one of his partners.
‘So it is … I hadn’t forgotten …’
He seemed impervious to irony. He was probably aware of his reputation as a besotted husband and felt no shame. He made his way calmly over to the telephone booth. Maigret could see his sharp profile through the glass sides and felt a growing urge to talk to him.
How? It was almost as delicate as with the nuns. Wait until the doctor left, follow him to the door and say:
‘May I walk a little way with you?’
Childish. Childish too, with a man like that, to request a medical consultation.
Maigret was part of the little group while remaining an outsider. People were used to seeing him sitting at his usual table. Occasionally, one of the bridge players would show him his hand. Or someone would ask him:
‘You’re not too bored here in Les Sables d’Olonne?’
But he still remained an onlooker. A bit like a day boy among the boarders at a school.
‘Is your wife feeling better?’
As a matter of fact, had Doctor Bellamy ever spoken to him directly? He tried in vain to remember.
He was tired of this holiday which was throwing him off-balance, making him ridiculously shy. Even Mansuy, because this was his fiefdom, because later on he would be going back to his police station, had more composure than him.
Because a girl was dead, because a nun who was the picture of piety had slipped a note into his pocket, he was hanging around Doctor Bellamy the way a schoolboy hangs around the rich kid in the class.
‘Waiter, another white wine.’
He didn’t want to look at the doctor any more. His staring was becoming too obvious. The doctor must be able to tell what was going on in his mind, understand his reticence, and he was perhaps even laughing at it.
The doctor had finished his game. He rose and went to fetch his hat from the coat stand.
‘Goodbye, gentlemen …’
He didn’t say ‘See you tomorrow’, since the next day was the day of the funeral.
He was about to leave. He was walking past Maigret. No, he had paused for a moment.
‘Were you about to leave, monsieur?’
He hadn’t said ‘inspector’, but ‘monsieur’, perhaps with a hint of affectation.
‘I was planning to, yes …’
‘If you’re going in the same direction as I am …’
It was strange. He was cordial, but his cordiality was cold, aloof.
For the first time in a long while, for the first time in his life perhaps, Maigret had the feeling that he wasn’t the one calling the tune, but that he was being manipulated by the other person at will.
All the same, he followed. Chief Inspector Mansuy had witnessed the scene with a certain surprise.
Still calm, controlled, without irony, Bellamy held the door open for him. The beach spread out in front of them, with its thousands of children and mothers, and the pastel swimming hats of the bathers against the blue of the sea.
‘You probably know where I live?’
‘Your house was pointed out to me and I admired it.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to see the interior?’
It was so direct, so unexpected, that Maigret was temporarily at a loss for words. Lighting a cigarette with a gold lighter – a gesture that showed off his beautiful, carefully manicured hands – the doctor said in a detached tone:
‘I believe you are keen to get to know me?’
‘I have heard a lot about you.’
‘People have been talking about me a great deal in the last two days.’
Silence did not make him uncomfortable. He felt no need to talk for the sake of keeping the conversation going. His gait was sprightly. A few people greeted him, and he returned their greeting, doffing his hat in the same way to a market woman in a traditional lace headdress as for a dowager in an open-topped car driven by a liveried chauffeur.
‘You would have come sooner or later, wouldn’t you?’
That could mean a lot of things. Perhaps simply that eventually Maigret would have managed to get himself invited to the doctor’s house.
‘I hate wasting time, just as I hate ambiguous situations. Do you think that I killed my sister-in-law?’
This time, Maigret had to make a huge effort to keep pace with this man who, there in the sunshine, among the idle crowd of holidaymakers, was asking him such a brutal question.
He did not smile, did not protest. It took him only a few seconds to formulate his reply, which he gave in the same calm tone as that in which the question had been asked.
‘Two nights ago,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know yet that she was dead, or that she was your sister-in-law, but I had already begun to take an interest in her.’
3.
Had Maigret hoped to catch him off-guard? If he had, he was to be disappointed. First of all, Doctor Bellamy appeared not to have heard his words, which had been drowned out by the growing noise from the beach and the sea. He had the time to take a few steps before the echo of Maigret’s statement, rath
er than his actual voice, reached him.
Then his expression betrayed a faint surprise. He gave his companion a little wink, as if trying to find a reason for this ambiguity. Meanwhile, faced with a partner who was a match for him, Maigret was so alert, so receptive, that he felt able to capture Doctor Bellamy’s slightest nuance of thought, and he sensed a slight disappointment, a silent admonition.
A few seconds later, it was already over, Bellamy gave the matter no further thought and the two of them continued along the promenade, in step with one another. Both men automatically gazed at the elegant curve of the beach which had something feminine, almost sensual, about it. It was the hour when the sea began to grow paler, shimmering slightly, before the flaming sunset.
‘You were born in the countryside, weren’t you?’ asked Bellamy.
Their thoughts, like their footsteps, were in tune again, as if, like long-term lovers, they no longer needed to speak in lengthy sentences, but only a sort of linguistic shorthand.
‘I was born in the countryside, yes.’
‘I was born in an ancient house that my family owns a few kilometres from here, in the marshes.’
He hadn’t said chateau, but Maigret knew that the Bellamy family owned a chateau in the region.
‘Which province are you from?’
Others would have said ‘department’, and Maigret appreciated the use of the word province, which he liked.
‘The Bourbonnais.’
This was not idle curiosity. There was nothing mundane about Bellamy’s questions.
‘Your parents were farmers?’
‘My father was an estate manager in charge of around twenty smallholdings.’
Doctor Bellamy was asking him exactly the questions he would have asked, but he did not take offence, quite the opposite. They continued walking in silence. In silence too, they crossed the road, just beyond the casino. Doctor Bellamy automatically reached into his pocket for his key. He paused for a moment on the threshold, groped around and pushed open the white-painted door.
Maigret entered, showing no discomfiture or surprise. He stepped on to the thick carpet in the hall and immediately felt surrounded by comfort and well-being.
Maigret's Holiday Page 4