The Shadow Puppet
Page 12
‘You can’t blame her. She’s never been like everyone else, has she?’ he moaned.
He was awaiting the inspector’s confirmation.
‘Poor Martin—’
Martin was crying! He seized his wife’s hand and was rubbing his face against it. She pushed him away. She had a superior, contemptuous smile.
‘No more than five francs at a time. I’ve suffered enough, I have, of—’
‘I’m going to call Sainte-Anne’s’ said Maigret.
‘Do you think? Does she … does she need to be locked up?’
Force of habit? Martin was panic-stricken at the idea of leaving his home, that atmosphere of resentment and daily quarrels, that sordid life, that wife who, one last time, was trying to think but who, disconsolate and defeated, lay back with a great sigh, stammering, ‘Bring me the key—’
A few moments later, Maigret crossed the teeming street like a stranger. He had a throbbing headache, something that occurred rarely, and he went into a pharmacy to buy a pill.
He couldn’t see anything around him. The sounds of the city blended with others, with voices in particular, which continued to resonate in his head.
One image in particular haunted him: Madame Martin getting up, picking her husband’s clothes up from the floor and looking for the money. And Martin watching her from the bed.
The woman’s questioning gaze!
‘I threw it into the Seine.’
It was at that moment that something had snapped. Or rather there had always been something not right in her brain! It was already so when she lived in the confectioner’s at Meaux.
Only it wasn’t noticeable. She was an almost-pretty girl. No one worried about her too-thin lips.
And Couchet had married her!
‘What would become of me if something happened to you?’
Maigret had to wait to cross the Boulevard Beaumarchais. For no reason, Nine came into his mind.
‘She’ll get nothing, not a sou,’ he murmured. ‘The family will have the will revoked. And it is Madame Couchet, née Dormoy—’
The colonel must have begun the formalities. It was natural. Madame Couchet would get everything. All those millions—’
She was a distinguished woman, who would maintain her station.
Maigret slowly climbed the stairs and pushed open the door of the apartment in Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.
‘Guess what happened?’
Madame Maigret was setting four places on the white tablecloth. Maigret noticed a small jug of plum brandy on the sideboard.
‘Your sister!’
It wasn’t difficult to guess, because each time she came from Alsace, she brought fruit brandy and a smoked ham.
‘She’s gone to buy some things with André.’
The husband. A good fellow who managed a brickworks.
‘You look tired. I hope you’re not going out again today at least?’
Maigret did not go out. At nine p.m., he was playing Pope Joan with his sister and brother-in-law. The dining room was fragrant with the smell of plum brandy.
And Madame Maigret kept giggling because she’d never understood cards and she made every silly mistake imaginable.
‘Are you sure you haven’t got a nine?’
‘No, I’ve got one—’
‘So why don’t you put it down?’
For Maigret, all that had the soothing effect of a hot bath. His headache was gone.
He no longer thought about Madame Martin, who had been taken by ambulance to Sainte-Anne’s, while her husband sobbed alone in the empty stairwell.
1. The Little Cross-Eyed Girl
A timid knock at the door; the sound of something being set down on the floor; a furtive voice:
‘It’s half-past five! The first bell has just rung for mass …’
Maigret propped himself on his elbows, and as he looked in amazement at the skylight that pierced the sloping roof the voice continued:
‘Are you taking communion?’
Detective Chief Inspector Maigret was standing up now, barefoot on the freezing floor. He walked towards the door, held shut with a piece of string rolled around two nails. There was the sound of scurrying footsteps, and when he looked into the corridor he caught a glimpse of a woman in a camisole and a white skirt.
Then he picked up the jug of hot water that Marie Tatin had left him, closed his door and looked around for a mirror to shave in.
The candle only had a few minutes left to live. Outside the skylight it was still pitch dark, a cold night in early winter. A few dead leaves still clung to the branches of the poplars in the main square.
Because of the double slope of the ceiling, Maigret could only stand upright in the middle of the attic room. He was cold. All night a draught whose origin he had not been able to identify had left him with a chill on the back of his neck.
But precisely that quality of cold unsettled him, plunging him into a mood that he thought was forgotten.
The first bell for mass … Chimes over the sleeping village … When he was a little boy, Maigret hadn’t got up so early. He used to wait for the second chime, at a quarter to six, because in those days he didn’t need to shave. Had he only washed his face?
No one brought any hot water in those days. Sometimes the water was frozen in the jug. A little while later his shoes would echo on the metalled road.
Now, as he got dressed, he heard Marie Tatin coming and going in the front of the inn, shaking the grate of the stove, clattering the dishes, turning the coffee mill.
He put on his jacket and his coat. Before going out he took from his briefcase a piece of paper with an official label attached:
Municipal police of Moulins.
Issued for any eventuality to the Police Judiciaire, Paris.
Then a squared sheet. Assiduous handwriting:
I wish to inform you that a crime will be committed at the church of Saint-Fiacre during first mass on All Souls’ Day.
The piece of paper had been hanging around the offices of the Quai des Orfèvres for several days. Maigret had noticed it by chance and been taken aback.
‘Saint-Fiacre, near Matignon?’
‘Probably, because it reached us via Moulins.’
And Maigret had put the paper in his pocket. Saint-Fiacre! Matignon! Moulins! Words more familiar to him than any others.
Saint-Fiacre was the place of his birth, where his father had been estate manager of the chateau for thirty years! The last time he had gone there had been, in fact, after the death of his father, who had been buried in the little cemetery, behind the church.
A crime will be committed … during the first mass …
Maigret had arrived the previous day. He had put up at the only inn, the one that belonged to Marie Tatin.
She hadn’t recognized him, but he had recognized her, from her eyes. The little cross-eyed girl, as she had been called back then. A skinny little girl who had become an even thinner old maid with an even worse squint, moving endlessly around in the front room, in the kitchen, in the farmyard where she raised rabbits and chickens.
The inspector went down the stairs. At the bottom, the inn was lit by paraffin lights. The table was laid in a corner. Some coarse grey bread. A smell of chicory coffee, boiling milk.
‘You’re wrong not to take communion on a day like today! Especially when you take the trouble to go to the first mass … Heavens! There’s the second peal!’
The bells rang out faintly. There was a sound of footsteps in the road. Marie Tatin fled to her kitchen to put on her black dress, her lace gloves, the little hat which refused to sit straight on her bun.
‘I’ll let you finish eating. Will you lock the door behind you?’
‘No need! I’m ready.’
How confused she was to find herself walking along the road with a man. A man who had come from Paris! She took tiny steps, leaning forwards in the cold morning. Dead leaves somersaulted on the ground. Their dry rustle suggested frost in the night.
And Maigret savoured the sensations of his youth again: the cold, stinging eyes, frozen fingertips, an aftertaste of coffee. Then, stepping inside the church, a blast of heat, soft light; the smell of candles and incense …
‘Please excuse me. I’ve got my prie-dieu,’ said his companion.
And Maigret recognized the black chair with the red velvet arm-rest, the one that had belonged to old Tatin, the cross-eyed girl’s mother.
The rope that the bell-ringer had pulled a few moments before still quivered at the end of the church. The sacristan had just finished lighting the candles.
How many were they, in this ghostly gathering of bleary-eyed people? Fifteen at most. There were only three men: the sexton, the bell-ringer and Maigret.
… a crime will be committed …
In Moulins, the police had assumed it was a bad joke and hadn’t been concerned about it. In Paris, they’d been amazed when the inspector followed it up.
He heard a noise coming from the door to the right of the altar and could guess, second by second, what was going on: the sacristy, the tardy altar boy, the priest silently putting on his chasuble, placing his hands together in prayer, heading towards the nave, followed by the little boy tottering in his robe.
The little boy had red hair. He rang the bell. The murmur of liturgical prayers began.
… during first mass …
Maigret had looked at all the shadows, one by one. Five old women, three with their own reserved prie-dieu. A fat farmer’s wife. Some younger village girls and a child …
The noise of a car, outside. The creak of a door. Small, light steps and a woman in mourning dress walking all the way across the church.
In the chancel there was a row reserved for the people from the chateau: hard pews of polished old wood. And it was there that the woman sat down, without a sound, followed by the eyes of the village women.
‘Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine …’
Maigret could still have given the response. He smiled at the thought that he had once preferred requiem masses to the others, because the prayers are shorter. He could remember masses lasting only sixteen minutes!
But already his eyes were fixed on the occupant of the gothic pew. He could barely see her profile. He didn’t at first recognize the countess of Saint-Fiacre.
‘Dies irae, dies illa …’
But it was, it was her! The last time he had seen her she had been twenty-five or twenty-six. She was a tall, thin, melancholic woman, only ever seen from a distance in the grounds of the chateau.
And now she must have been at least sixty. She prayed ardently. Her face was emaciated, her hands too long, too refined, clutching a rosary.
Maigret had stayed in the back row of straw chairs, the ones that cost five centimes at mass mass but are free at low mass.
… a crime will be committed …
He stood up with the others for the first reading from the Gospel. Details crowded in from all directions, and memories flooded over him. He suddenly found himself thinking:
‘On All Souls’ Day, the same priest celebrates three masses …’
Back in his day, he had had lunch at the priest’s house, between the second and the third. A boiled egg and goat’s cheese!
The Moulins police were right after all. There could be no crime! The sacristan had taken his seat at the end of the pew, four seats away from the countess. The bell-ringer had walked flat-footedly away, like a theatre director who doesn’t care to watch his play.
The only men left were Maigret and the priest, a young man with the passionate gaze of a mystic. He was in no hurry, unlike the old priest that the inspector had known. He didn’t leave out half the verses.
The stained-glass windows paled. Day was breaking outside. A cow lowed in a farm.
And soon everyone bowed their heads for the Elevation of the Host. The altar boy’s shrill bell rang out.
Maigret was the only one not to take communion. All the women stepped towards the communion rail, hands clasped, faces closed. The hosts had a pale, almost unreal gleam as the priest held them momentarily in his hand.
The service continued. The countess held her face in her hands.
‘Pater Noster … Et ne nos inducas in tentationem …’
The old lady parted her fingers, revealing her tormented face, and opened her missal.
Four minutes to go! The prayers. The last reading. And that would be it. And there would have been no crime!
Because the warning said: the first mass …
The proof that it was over was the sexton rising to his feet and stepping inside the sacristy.
The Countess of Saint-Fiacre had put her head in her hands again. She didn’t move. Most of the other old women were as motionless as she was.
‘Ite missa est’ … ‘The mass has been said.’
It was only then that Maigret realized how anxious he had been. It had only now caught up with him. He gave an involuntary sigh. He couldn’t wait for the end of the last reading and was looking forward to breathing the fresh outside air, see people moving about, talking about this and that.
The old women woke up all at the same time. Feet moved on the cold blue tiles of the church. First one village girl headed for the exit, then another. The sacristan appeared with a snuffer, and a thread of blue smoke replaced the candle-flames.
Day had broken. A grey light entered the nave along with the cold air.
There were still three people. Two. A chair moved. Then the only one left was the countess, and Maigret’s nerves tightened with impatience.
The sacristan, who had finished his task, looked at Madame de Saint-Fiacre. A look of hesitation flickered across his face. At the same time the inspector stepped forward.
They were both quite close to her, startled by her stillness, trying to see the face hidden by the clasped hands.
Worried, Maigret touched her shoulder. And the body tilted, as if nothing had been holding it upright, then rolled to the ground and lay there inert.
The Countess of Saint-Fiacre was dead.
They had carried the body to the sacristy and laid it on three chairs set side by side. The sacristan had run to fetch the village doctor.
And Maigret forgot how uncanny its presence was. He took a few minutes to understand the suspicious question in the priest’s ardent gaze.
‘Who are you?’ he asked at last. ‘What brings …’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, Police Judiciaire.’
He looked the priest in the face. He was a man of thirty-five, with features that were regular but so serious that they suggested the unshakeable faith of monks from another age.
He was deeply troubled. His voice less firm, he murmured, ‘You don’t mean that …?’
They had not yet dared to undress the countess. They had put a mirror to her lips, to no avail. They had listened to her heart, which had stopped beating.
‘I see no wounds,’ was all Maigret said in reply.
And he looked around him at this setting, not a detail of which had changed in thirty years. The cruets were in the same place and the chasuble ready for the next mass, and the altar boy’s cassock and surplice.
The gloomy daylight, entering through an ogive window, diluted the rays from an oil lamp.
It was hot and cold at once. The priest was clearly gripped by terrible thoughts.
‘But you’re not trying to say that … ’
What a drama! At first Maigret didn’t understand. But memories from his childhood rose up like bubbles.
A church where a crime has been committed has to be reconsecrated by the bishop …
How could there have been a crime? There had been no gunshot! No one had gone near the countess. Throughout the whole of the mass, Maigret hadn’t taken his eyes off her
.
And no blood had been spilled, there was no apparent wound!
‘The second mass is at seven o’clock, isn’t it?’
It was a relief to hear the heavy tread of the doctor, a red-faced chap who was struck by the atmosphere and who looked at the inspector and the priest in turn.
‘Dead?’ he asked.
But he had no hesitation in undoing her bodice, while the priest averted his eyes. Heavy footsteps in the church. Then the peal rung by the bell-ringer. The first chime of the seven o’clock mass.
‘All I see is an embolism that would have … I wasn’t the countess’s regular doctor; she preferred to be treated by a colleague in Moulins. But I was called to the chateau two or three times. Her heart was in very poor shape.’
The sacristy was very cramped. There was hardly enough room for the three men and the body. Two altar boys arrived, because there was mass at seven.
‘Her car must be outside,’ said Maigret.’We’ll have to have her taken home.’
And he still felt the priest’s anxious eyes on him. Had he guessed something? Either way, while the sacristan, with the help of the driver, guided the body towards the car, he approached the inspector.
‘Are you sure that … I still have two masses to say. It’s All Souls’ Day. My congregation is …’
Since the countess had died of an embolism, couldn’t Maigret find it in himself to reassure the priest?
‘You heard what the doctor said …’
‘And yet you’ve come here today, to this very mass …’
Maigret tried to stay calm.
‘A coincidence, Father … My father is buried in your cemetery.’
And he hurried towards the car, an old-model coupé. The chauffeur was turning the crank. The doctor didn’t know what to do. There were a few people in the square who had no idea what was happening.
‘Come with us …’
But the corpse took up all the room inside the car. Maigret and the doctor crammed themselves in beside the driver’s seat.
‘You look surprised by what I said,’ murmured the doctor, who hadn’t yet regained all his confidence. ‘If you knew the situation you might understand … The countess …’
He fell silent, glancing at the black-liveried chauffeur, who was absently driving his car. They crossed the sloping square, bounded on one side by the church built on the incline, on the other by the Notre-Dame pond, which was a poisonous grey that morning.