And, after all, it would be pretty stupid, wouldn’t it? To die all alone on that dusty road in the middle of the night! Not even knowing where he was! And with his luggage continuing the journey without him.
Was the man there behind the bushes? Never mind! Let him shoot! Maigret plodded on, leaning forward, his head swimming. He came to a milestone, but most of it was in shadow. All he could read by the moonlight was 3 km. 5.
What would it be at three and a half kilometers? What town? Or perhaps a village? A cow mooed ahead. The sky was a little paler. So that was where the day would soon be dawning. He must be walking eastwards.
His traveling companion did not seem to be there. Or, if he was, he must have abandoned the idea of finishing Maigret off. The latter thought he could hold out for a few minutes more. Determined to make the best of them, he walked on, marching in time like a soldier, counting his steps to prevent himself thinking.
That cow must belong to a farm, and farmers were early risers. So there was a chance of finding somebody about.
His shirt was all wet. The blood was trickling right down to his waist, under his belt . . .
Was that a light between the trees? Or was he becoming delirious? . . .
“If I lose a liter of blood . . .” he thought.
Yes, it was a light. Only, he had to cross a ploughed field to reach it. It was heavy going. He could hardly make it. He bumped into an abandoned tractor . . .
“Hallo! . . . Anyone there? . . . Quickly! . . .”
In that “quickly” was a despairing note. He was leaning against the tractor now . . . Slipping . . . Sitting on the ground . . . He heard a door open, saw another light—a lantern . . . Someone holding it up . . .
“Quickly! . . .”
A man was approaching. Would he be able to stop the blood? Perhaps he wouldn’t think of it. Maigret’s hand was losing its grip. His arm fell limply by his side.
“One, two . . . one, two . . .”
With each pulse the blood oozed from the wound.
Confused images with blanks of unconsciousness between them. Tortuous images with the oppressive quality of a nightmare.
A rhythm . . . the steps of a horse . . . straw under his head . . . trees going by . . .
That at any rate was understandable. He was lying on straw in some kind of a cart. It was broad daylight, and they were going slowly along a road bordered by plane trees.
Maigret lay still, with his eyes open. Within his field of vision was a man who strolled along waving a whip.
Nightmares again . . . He had not had a good look at the man in the train. All he had seen was his outline, the patent-leather boots and the thick grey socks.
So what made him think this peasant was the man from the train? The face he saw was lined and weather-beaten. A long grey mustache. Thick eyebrows. Pale blue eyes that looked straight ahead without so much as a glance at him.
Where were they? . . . Where were they going? . . .
Moving a hand, the inspector was conscious of something strange pressing on his chest. Of course! Bandages . . . Then one idea ran into another and all was confusion again. A ray of sunshine struck his face, making him blink.
Presently there were houses. Houses with white fronts. A wide street bathed in bright light . . . Steps behind the cart. People following . . . And voices . . . But the words were only a jumble . . . The bumping of the cart over the cobbles hurt . . .
The bumping had stopped. He was floating in the air, rocked on something soft, then gliding along with unaccustomed smoothness.
They were wheeling him on a stretcher. In front was a man in a white coat. Gates were shut. Noise of a crowd fading away . . . Someone came running.
“Take him straight into the theater.”
Maigret didn’t move his head. He didn’t think. He just lay looking at whatever passed before his eyes.
They were out of doors again now, going through a garden. A number of small buildings, very clean, built of white brick. People in grey, all dressed alike, sitting on seats. Some had bandaged heads or arms in slings . . . Nurses going to and fro.
He was thinking now, or trying to, groping for a word that kept on eluding him. There it was—hospital!
Where was that peasant who was so like the man in the train? . . . Ow! . . . They were carrying him upstairs . . . It hurt . . .
When Maigret woke next, it was to see a man washing his hands, at the same time looking gravely at him.
It gave him quite a shock. This man had a little goatee and thick eyebrows. Did he look like the peasant? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But he certainly looked like the man in the train.
Maigret opened his mouth, but no words came. The man with the goatee gave orders quietly:
“Put him in Number 3 . . . Better keep him isolated on account of the police.”
What? On account of the police? What was the fellow talking about?
He was wheeled away by people dressed in white. Back through the garden. The sun—he had never seen such a sun before. Bright, jubilant, blazing into every corner.
They put him to bed. The walls were white. It was almost as hot there as in the train . . . Somewhere a voice saying:
“It’s the inspector who wants to know . . .”
The inspector? That must mean him . . . But he hadn’t asked anything . . . How absurd it all was! Particularly this business of the peasant, who looked like the doctor, who looked like the man in the train . . .
Had the man in the train a beard or a mustache? Or neither? Were his eyebrows thick?
“Force his mouth open . . . Right! . . . That’ll do.”
It was the doctor pouring something down his throat . . . Of course! To finish him off. To poison him! . . .
Toward evening, when Maigret came to his senses again, the nurse who was watching by his bedside went to the door. Outside, five men were waiting in the corridor. They were: the public prosecutor of Bergerac, the examining magistrate and his clerk, an inspector, and a police pathologist.
“You can come in now, but the doctor says he’s not to be tired. By the look in his eyes, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he’s mad.”
The five men nodded and exchanged glances.
2
FIVE DISAPPOINTED MEN
It was like a badly acted melodrama. The nurse, after a final glance at Maigret, smiled at the five men as she withdrew. A smile which meant:
“I’ll leave him to you.”
And the five men took possession of the room. They all smiled too, each in his own peculiar way. But all the smiles were equally menacing—so much so that they looked put on for a special purpose. You might have thought they had plotted together to play some practical joke.
“After you, monsieur le procureur . . .”
The prosecutor was a very short man with crew-cut hair and a fierce gaze that had no doubt been studiously adopted to fit his profession, and an air of cold disdain that was no less carefully assumed.
He passed the bed with the merest glance at Maigret, then posted himself with his back to the wall not far from the window, where he stood rigidly, hat in hand.
The examining magistrate followed. This time the glance at Maigret was accompanied by an unmistakable sneer. Then the clerk . . . They were now three in line abreast, backs to the wall. Finally, the police pathologist joined them to make a fourth. It was almost as though they had been lined up for an inspection.
That left only the police inspector with the bulging eyes, who appeared to be cast for the role of savior of the righteous.
With a glance at the others he approached the bed and slowly lowered a hand on Maigret’s unbandaged shoulder.
“Caught you this time! What?”
It ought to have been extremely funny, but Maigret didn’t even smile. On the contrary, he frowned anxiously.
For he was anxious, anxious about himself. The line between dream and reality was already vague enough, and was becoming vaguer by the minute.
Now he found himsel
f the subject of some farcical investigation. The police inspector was obviously thinking himself very smart.
“I must say . . . I’m not sorry to have a look at that mug of yours at last!”
And those four men against the wall, who simply stared and said nothing . . .
Maigret was surprised to hear himself heave a deep sigh. He drew his right hand from under the bedclothes.
“Who were you after last night? A woman? Or a young girl?”
At that, Maigret was overwhelmed—overwhelmed by the thought of all the talking that would have to be done to put matters straight. It was awful to think of. He was exhausted. His whole body was aching.
“Better . . .” he began with a limp movement of his hand.
They didn’t seem to understand, and in a faint voice he repeated:
“Better . . . tomorrow . . .”
He shut his eyes, and in a second all was confusion, until the four men against the wall were all rolled into one person . . . a peasant who was like the doctor . . . who was like the peasant . . . who was like the man in the train . . .
The next morning he was sitting up in bed, or rather propped up by a couple of extra pillows. From that position he watched the nurse as she pottered about in the sunshine, tidying up the room.
She was a fine-looking girl, big and strong, strikingly fair. The glances she kept on throwing at Maigret were at the same time both challenging and nervous.
“Tell me! It was five men that came to see me yesterday, wasn’t it?”
She answered haughtily:
“You know perfectly well.”
“All right . . . Well, tell me what they wanted.”
“I’ve orders not to speak to you. And I’d better warn you that I’ll repeat anything you say.”
Strangely, Maigret was deriving a subtle pleasure from the situation, much as one tries to hang on to certain dreams in the morning before waking up completely.
The sun was as bright as in picture books of fairy tales. From somewhere outside came the sound of passing cavalry, and suddenly a triumphant blare of trumpets.
At the same moment the nurse passed close to the bed, and Maigret, wishing to attract her attention, plucked at her dress.
She spun round, uttered a piercing shriek, and fled.
It was not till midday that the mists began to lift. The surgeon was busy dressing the wound when the police inspector arrived in a brand-new straw hat and a royal blue tie.
“You haven’t had the curiosity to look in my pocketbook?” asked Maigret gently.
“You know very well you haven’t got one.”
He must have lost it rolling down the railway embankment.
“I see. Everything is clear. Telephone to the Police Judiciaire . . . They’ll tell you I’m Divisional Inspector Maigret. Or it might be quicker still to ring up my former colleague, Leduc, who’s living at Villefranche . . . But first of all, for the love of God, tell me where I am.”
The other was not so easily convinced. There were supercilious smiles, and now and again he nudged the doctor.
The last suspicions were only broken down when Leduc drove up in his old Ford. Then at last, to many people’s disappointment, it had to be admitted that Maigret was really Maigret and not after all the “Madman of Bergerac.”
Leduc had the ruddy complexion of a man who leads an easygoing life in the open air. Since leaving the Police Judiciaire he had adopted a meerschaum pipe, whose cherry stem could be seen projecting from his pocket.
“Here’s the story in a nutshell. I’m not from Bergerac, but I drive into the market here every Saturday, and I take the opportunity to have a good meal at the Hôtel d’ Angleterre . . . Well, it must have been about a month ago that they found a woman’s body on the main road out of town. Strangled. But that wasn’t all. Having killed her that way, the sadist stuck a long needle right through her heart.”
“Who was she?”
“Leontine Moreau. She lived at a farm called Moulin-Neuf. She wasn’t robbed.”
“Was she . . . ?”
“No, she wasn’t tampered with, though she was a good-looking woman of thirty . . . The crime took place at nightfall as she was returning from her sister-in-law’s . . . That’s the first . . .”
“There were two?”
“Two and a half . . . The second was a girl of sixteen, the stationmaster’s daughter, who had been out for a ride on her bicycle. She was found in the same state.”
“At night?”
“She wasn’t found till next morning, but she had been killed the evening before . . . Then lastly there was one of the maids of the Hôtel d’ Angleterre, who had been to see her brother, a road mender, who was working five or six kilometers out of town. She was on foot. And suddenly someone seized her from behind and threw her down . . . But she’s a strapping girl, and she managed to leave a bite in the man’s wrist. He swore and made off. She only saw his back as he ran into the bushes.”
“Is that all?”
“It’s all so far. But the people here are convinced there’s a maniac roaming about in the woods. They refuse to believe it could be one of themselves. When the news got around that you’d been found shot, everybody thought you were the murderer and that you’d been after someone again, but had received a wound.”
Leduc spoke gravely. He didn’t seem to see the comic side of it at all.
“And what’s more,” he went on, “they won’t get the idea out of their heads in a moment.”
“Who’s in charge of the case?”
“The local people.”
“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go to sleep now.”
He was very weak and had an inexhaustible capacity for dozing. He didn’t really want to sleep, but to doze, to lie in semiconsciousness with his eyes shut. Most of all, he liked to have his head turned toward the window, with the sun shining through his eyelids.
His fancy had now three new characters to play with, to put through their paces like a child drilling his multicolored tin soldiers.
A woman aged thirty from the Moulin-Neuf Farm . . . The stationmaster’s daughter . . . The chambermaid of the hotel.
He could remember the wood. Tall dark trees with a white strip of road. And he could imagine the victim lying in the dust while the murderer thrust the long needle through her heart.
It was a weird image. All the more so for being evoked in this spotless private ward, from which the peaceful sounds of the street were clearly audible. He listened to a man, right under his window, who was a full ten minutes trying to get his car started. The surgeon arrived in a smooth, powerful car, which he drove himself. But it was eight o’clock before Maigret saw him.
“Is it serious?”
“It will take some little time to heal. We’ll have to keep you in bed for a fortnight.”
“Could I be moved to a hotel?”
“Aren’t you comfortable here? . . . Of course, if you had someone to nurse you . . .”
“Look here, doctor! Between ourselves, what do you think of this Madman of Bergerac?”
The doctor stood lost in thought so long that Maigret asked again:
“Do you think, like the others, that there’s some sort of wild man living in the woods?”
“No.”
Of course he didn’t. Maigret, in his musings, had recalled several similar cases. Some of them he’d handled himself.
“A man who, in ordinary life, would behave just like you or me—isn’t that more likely?”
“Probably,” answered the doctor.
“So, as likely as not, he lives in Bergerac, and may easily be a respectable professional man?”
The surgeon looked at him queerly, hesitating. He seemed to have something on his mind.
“Have you any idea?” went on Maigret, watching him closely.
“I’ve had a great many, one after the other. I pounce on them, and then reject them indignantly . . . But only to come back to them later. If you clear your mind of all prejudices, practical
ly anyone may be suspected of mental derangement.”
Maigret laughed.
“So we’d better have the whole town put under observation, from the mayor or even the public prosecutor downward. And of course we’d have to include the whole staff of the hospital.”
But the surgeon did not smile.
“Just a moment—keep still!” he said as he probed the wound with some delicate instrument. “It’s a more terrible business than you think.”
“What’s the population of Bergerac?”
“Sixteen thousand . . . But to my mind everything points to its being someone of the upper classes . . . Even . . .”
“Exactly! The needle . . .” said Maigret, screwing up his face as the doctor hurt him.
“What do you mean?”
“Planted through the middle of the heart, without a blow being struck, twice in a row—do you think that would imply some knowledge of anatomy?”
The doctor did not answer, and nothing more was said while he replaced the bandages. His face looked careworn. At last he straightened himself with a sigh.
“You say you’d rather be in a hotel?”
“Yes. My wife could come and see to me.”
“Are you going to interest yourself in these murders?”
“And how!”
Rain would have spoiled everything. But for over a fortnight not a drop fell.
And there was Maigret installed in the best bedroom on the first floor of the Hôtel d’ Angleterre. His bed had been shifted over toward one of the windows, and from where he lay he could look down on the place du Marché and watch the sun as it alternately lit up and threw into shadow each row of houses in turn.
Madame Maigret accepted the situation as she accepted everything, without either astonishment or fuss. Within an hour of her arrival the room had become definitely hers. She had brought her own things, added the personal touch.
Two days before, she had been quietly asserting herself in much the same way by her sister’s bedside in Alsace.
“A grand girl! If you only could have seen her! Nearly five kilos.”
The Madman of Bergerac Page 2