She took the surgeon aside.
“What can he eat, doctor? Some good strong chicken broth? . . . There’s one thing you ought to forbid, and that’s his pipe. He’ll be asking for it before the day’s out, as sure as I’m alive. And you should keep him off beer too . . .”
The wallpaper was a marvelous red-and-green affair. Blood red and the crudest of greens, in stripes that fairly hummed in the sunshine.
And horrid little hotel furniture of varnished pitch pine. Nothing that stood squarely on all four legs at once. An immense room with two beds. A mantelpiece two centuries old, in front of which stood a cheap radiator.
“What I’d like to know is what possessed you to do such a thing. Suppose you’d fallen under the train! . . . By the way, I think I’ll make you a crème au citron. I take it they’ll raise no objection to my using the kitchen.”
The semiconscious reveries were becoming rarer now. Even with the sun shining through his closed eyelids, Maigret’s ideas were fairly logical. Nevertheless he still went on with his puppet show, playing with the characters his imagination had elaborated.
“The first victim . . . the woman from the Moulin-Neuf Farm . . . Married? Any children?
“She had married a farmer’s son and lived with the family. She didn’t get on any too well with her mother-in-law, who accused her of thinking too much about her looks and wearing silk underclothes—even for milking the cows . . .”
It was something to go on, and Maigret went patiently to work, painting her portrait in his mind as lovingly as any artist could manipulate his brushes. He saw an attractive, buxom, well-washed young woman introducing newfangled ideas into the farmer’s household, consulting catalogues that would be sent her from Paris.
She was returning home from the town . . . Maigret could see the road perfectly. It must be, like all the roads round Bergerac, overshadowed by a row of plane trees on either hand . . . And the white, dusty, chalky surface—vibrant even in the weakest sunlight . . .
And then the girl on her bicycle.
“Sixteen. Old enough to have a boyfriend. There was no mention of one, however. Once a year she used to have a fortnight’s holiday in Paris, staying with an aunt . . .”
The bed was sweaty. The surgeon came twice a day. After lunch, Leduc would arrive in his Ford, and make several clumsy attempts to park it under Maigret’s window before getting it properly lined up.
On the third morning, he turned up wearing a straw hat, just like the police inspector.
The public prosecutor called, and taking Madame Maigret for a servant, he handed her his hat and stick, and was then profuse in his apologies. In any case, he had come to apologize.
“You see, your not having any papers on you . . . I’m sure you’ll forgive the mistake.”
“Yes, my pocketbook seems to have disappeared . . . But do sit down . . .”
Even so, the man still looked aggressive. He simply couldn’t help it: it had become a habit. Added to the scowl on his face, he had a little bulbous nose and a bristling mustache.
“It’s a most lamentable affair. To think that in a place like this! . . . Now, if it had been in Paris, where hooligans and madmen can be met with every day . . . But here! . . .”
Sacrebleu! Here was another man with bushy eyebrows! Like the doctor. Like the peasant. They were gray too. And whether he had seen them or not, Maigret couldn’t help attributing thick gray eyebrows to the man in the train.
The head of his stick was of carved ivory.
“Well! Anyhow . . . I hope you’ll soon be on your feet again and that you won’t bear us a grudge.”
He had only come out of politeness and was already longing to go.
“You’ve an excellent doctor, at all events. A pupil of Martel’s . . . As for the rest, it’s a pity . . .”
“What rest?”
“Oh! Never mind. No need for you to worry . . . I’ll look in again one of these days, and in the meantime they’ll let me know how you’re getting on.”
As soon as he had gone, Maigret started to lap up his crème au citron, which was a perfect masterpiece. But the smell of truffles that rose from the kitchen was rather mortifying.
“You never saw such a thing,” said his wife. “They serve up truffles by the dishful here, just like fried potatoes. You’d think they were two a penny. Even in the fifteen-franc dinner.”
Then it was Leduc’s turn.
“Sit down . . . Like some of my crème au citron? . . . No? . . . Well, tell me what you know of the private life of my doctor. I haven’t even heard his name.”
“Dr. Rivaud. I don’t know much about him really—that is, apart from gossip. He lives with a wife and a sister-in-law. And they say the sister-in-law is just as much his wife as the real one . . . But of course . . .”
“And the prosecutor?”
“Monsieur Duhourceau. You’ve heard something already?”
“Go on.”
“His sister’s the widow of a sea captain, and she’s in an asylum. Though some say she’s not mad at all, but that he had her shut up so as to get hold of her money.”
Maigret was sitting up in bed, gazing out through the window with half-closed eyes. To Leduc’s surprise he beamed with satisfaction.
“And what else?”
“Nothing. In these little towns, you know . . .”
“But don’t forget, my dear Leduc, that this little town is different from any other. It’s a little town with a madman.”
It was quite funny to see Leduc. He seemed really rather upset.
“Yes, a madman. A madman at large. A madman who’s only mad by fits and starts, while the rest of the time he’s walking about and talking to people, just like anybody else.”
“How does Madame Maigret like it here?”
“She’s been turning the kitchen upside down. She and the chef exchange recipes. When I come to think of it, perhaps it’s the chef who’s mad.”
There’s something slightly intoxicating about a narrow escape from death. And then to lie in bed and be cosseted . . . Especially in an atmosphere of unreality . . .
To lie in bed and let your brain work of itself, just for the fun of it, studying a strange place and strange people through a sunlit window . . .
“I suppose there’s a public library in the town?”
“Of course.”
“Well, if you want to do me a great favor, you’ll go and pick me out the best books on mental diseases, perversions, maniacs, and all the rest of it. And bring me the telephone directory—they’re always most instructive books. And ask downstairs whether their telephone has a long cord so that I can have it brought up to my room.”
Maigret was drowsy. He could feel the somnolence welling up from the depths of his being and spreading gradually to every limb.
“It’s Saturday tomorrow. I assume you’ll be having lunch here.”
“Of course, and I have to buy a goat!”
Leduc picked up his straw hat. When he shut the door behind him, Maigret’s eyes were closed and his breathing came regularly through his half-open mouth.
Downstairs, in the passage, the retired inspector ran into Dr. Rivaud. Drawing the latter aside, he hesitated and shuffled and then stammered.
“You’re quite sure, I suppose, that this wound . . . that it couldn’t have affected my friend’s intelligence? . . . I mean his . . . I hardly know how to put it . . . but perhaps you understand . . .”
The gesture with which the doctor answered might have meant anything.
“He’s an intelligent man as a rule?” he asked.
“Very intelligent, even if he doesn’t always look it.”
“Ah!”
And with that the surgeon turned thoughtfully and went upstairs.
3
THE SECOND-CLASS TICKET
Maigret had left Paris on the previous Tuesday, late in the afternoon. Wounded early on the Wednesday morning, he had spent that day in the hospital of Bergerac. As soon as his wife had arrived, he
had been moved to the big first-floor room of the Hôtel d’ Angleterre.
On Monday his wife suddenly said to him:
“Why didn’t you use your free traveling-pass?”
It was four in the afternoon. Madame Maigret, whose hands were never idle, was tidying up the room for the third time that day.
The place du Marché was humming with life. The outside blinds were partially lowered, giving a mellow light inside the room.
Maigret, who was smoking one of his first pipes, looked at his wife with some astonishment. It seemed to him that she avoided his eye as she waited for his answer. He even thought she was slightly flushed with embarrassment.
It was certainly an unexpected question. Every inspector attached to a flying squad had a railway pass that enabled him to travel free first-class anywhere in France. And of course Maigret had used his last Tuesday.
“Come here and sit down.”
He saw she hesitated, but he insisted.
“Now, tell me all about it.”
She became still more embarrassed under his quizzical look.
“I oughtn’t to have put the question like that . . . But I can’t help thinking you’re a bit strange at times.”
“You too?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, everybody else does! And they can’t bring themselves to believe wholeheartedly in my story of the man in the train . . . And now . . .”
“Listen! It’s like this—there’s a mat in the passage, outside our door, and when I moved it just now I found this.”
Although she was living in a hotel, she wore an apron—she said it made her feel more at home. She now felt in its pocket and drew out a railway ticket. It was a second-class ticket from Paris to Bergerac, and was dated the previous Tuesday.
“Next to the mat . . .” Maigret repeated. “Take a pencil and a piece of paper.”
She obeyed, licked the point of the pencil and sat waiting.
“Now, who’s been to see me here? . . . First of all, the proprietor of the hotel. He came up around nine in the morning to check on how I was doing. Then the doctor, just before ten . . . Make a list of them . . . The prosecutor came at midday. Then the local inspector arrived when he left . . .”
“There’s Leduc,” said Madame Maigret reluctantly.
“Quite right! Put him down. Is that all? . . . Of course there are the hotel staff. And, for that matter, anybody staying in the hotel might have dropped it as they went along the passage.”
“But there’s no reason for them to be in the passage.”
“Why not?”
“Because it only leads to this room. If they came as far as our door it would be to look through the keyhole.”
“Ring up the stationmaster, will you?”
Maigret had seen practically nothing of the town, and he had not been anywhere near the station. But he had studied the plan in the Guide Michelin, and with its help he had formed a mental picture of Bergerac that was accurate in all essentials.
He knew that the place du Marché that he surveyed through his window was at the very heart of the town. The large building on the right was for the most part out of sight, but he knew it nonetheless as the Palais de Justice. Under the heading Hôtel d’ Angleterre, the guide said:
First class. Rooms from 25 francs. With bathrooms. Meals from 15 to 18 francs. Specialties: truffles, foie gras, boned and rolled chicken, Dordogne salmon.
The Dordogne flowed past behind the hotel, out of sight. Maigret could not only follow its course on the plan, but could study its scenery in a series of picture postcards. Another showed him the outside of the station. As for the Hôtel de France on the other side of the place du Marché, he knew it to be the rival of his own. And he pictured the streets converging on the main roads, just like the one he had recently been staggering along.
“I’ve got the stationmaster on the phone.”
“Ask him if any passengers alighted from the Paris train early Wednesday morning.”
“He says no.”
“That’s all.”
It was impossible to come to any other conclusion than that the ticket found in the passage had been used by the man who had jumped from the train.
“Do you know what I’d like you to do? . . . Go and have a look at Monsieur Duhourceau’s house—you know, the public prosecutor’s. And then you might go and see Dr. Rivaud’s.
“What for?”
“Nothing in particular. Just to tell me what you see.”
He took advantage of being alone to exceed the number of pipes he was allowed. The day was closing in, the place du Marché rose-colored with evening light. The commercial travelers, having finished their rounds, drove up one after another, parking their cars in front of the hotel. From downstairs came the clack of billiard balls. Others would no doubt be drinking their aperitifs in the bright room downstairs, with the proprietor popping in now and again in his chef’s hat to make sure everything was all right.
Why had the fellow risked his neck, or at any rate a broken limb, jumping out of the train? And why had he fired at Maigret?
One thing was certain: the man knew the line. He had opened the door just before the brakes went on. If he couldn’t face the station it would be for fear of being recognized. So he was known in Bergerac . . .
Not that that proved him a murderer . . . Maigret recalled his restlessness as he tossed about in the upper couchette, his deep sighs, and the time he tried so desperately to keep still.
“Duhourceau must be home by now. He’ll be in his study perhaps, reading the Paris papers. Or he may have brought some work to finish off at home . . . The surgeon will be doing his evening rounds, followed by a sister . . . The police inspector . . .”
He was in no hurry. As a rule, at the beginning of a case, he was all on edge with impatience, but as soon as he had something to go on, as soon as he had decided on his line of action, he was as cool and calm as could be.
But this time it was the opposite, perhaps because of his current state.
He’d have to stay in bed for a fortnight anyhow—wasn’t that what the doctor had said? So there was no use being in a hurry. He had plenty of time. Long days with nothing else to do but to make mental pictures of Bergerac and its surroundings and get all the characters into their proper places.
“I should ring for someone to come and turn the light on.”
But he was too lazy and didn’t bother. By the time Madame Maigret returned, it was quite dark. The window was wide open and a cold breeze blew in. The street lamps made a garland of light round the marketplace below.
“Do you want to catch pneumonia?” said Madame Maigret, making straight for the window. “If so, you’re going the right way about it. Why didn’t you ring and ask them to shut it?”
“Well?”
“Well what? I’ve seen a couple of houses, but I don’t know what good that’s going to do us.”
“Come on! Tell me what they’re like.”
“Monsieur Duhourceau lives over on the other side of the Palais de Justice, in a square as big as the place du Marché. A massive three-story house. The first floor has a stone balcony. The room behind it was lit up: I suppose it would be his study. Downstairs there was a manservant closing the shutters.”
“Does it look a bright place?”
“Bright? What do you mean? . . . A big house like any other. A somber place, if anything, though the crimson velvet curtains must have cost two thousand francs a window. Soft, silky stuff, but very heavy, falling in big folds . . .”
Maigret chuckled. It was exactly what he wanted. With a few touches he corrected the picture he had already formed in his mind.
“And the servant?”
“The manservant? Yes?”
“Was he wearing a striped waistcoat?”
“He was.”
Maigret could have clapped. He could see the place perfectly. A solid, dignified house, richly curtained, a carved stone balcony. Indoors, old furniture and a manse
rvant with a striped waistcoat. The prosecutor himself in a morning coat and gray trousers, patent-leather boots, close-cropped white hair . . .
“That’s right, isn’t it? He does wear patent-leather boots?”
“Yes. Button boots. I noticed them when he called.”
Patent-leather boots! Like the man in the train! But weren’t his lace-up boots?
“And now the doctor’s house.”
“It’s almost on the edge of the town. A villa like those you see by the seaside.”
“English cottage style?”
“That kind of thing. A low roof, lawns, flower beds, gravel paths. A pretty garage. The shutters are painted green, and there’s a wrought-iron lantern hanging over the front door . . . The shutters were still open, and I could see his wife in the drawing room with some needlework.”
“And her sister?”
“She drove up with the doctor as I was coming away. She’s very young, very pretty, very well dressed. Nothing provincial about her. I’d bet anything her clothes come from Paris . . .”
Interesting. But what had all this to do with a madman who attacked women at night in lonely places, first strangling them, then sticking a needle through their hearts?
Maigret made no attempt to answer that question. He was simply fixing all the characters in place.
“Did you meet anybody?”
“Nobody I knew. The people here don’t seem to go out much in the evenings.”
“Is there a cinema?”
“I caught sight of one in a side street. They were showing a film I saw in Paris three years ago.”
Ten o’clock in the morning. Leduc drove up and parked his car below. A moment or two later he knocked at Maigret’s door. The latter was smacking his lips over a bowl of beef tea that his wife had made herself.
“How are you getting on?”
“Sit down. No. Not on that chair—you’d block the view.”
Since leaving the Police Judiciaire, Leduc had grown stouter. He had also changed in manner, being gentler and more timid than he used to be.
“What’s your cook giving you for lunch today?”
The Madman of Bergerac Page 3