‘Even so, I’m going back out to the sticks …’
Pétillon had just had enough time to tell him one thing: he wasn’t sleeping with Félicie. He looked totally bewildered when Maigret talked about her, as if it had never even crossed his mind to think …
It is now 8.30 a.m. Maigret phones his wife.
‘That you? … No, nothing special … I don’t know when I’ll be home …’
She’s used to it. He stuffs the reports into his pockets. Among them is one from Rouen giving the pedigree of all the girls who work at the Tivoli. Pétillon did not go upstairs with any of them. When he went in, he hid himself away in a corner. Two of the girls sat down next to him on the crimson plush wall seat.
‘Isn’t there a girl here called Adèle?’ he’d asked.
‘You’re behind the times, kid. Adèle hasn’t been around here for ages. You mean a small, dark-haired girl with boobs like pears, is that her?’
He doesn’t know. All he knows is that he’s looking for a girl called Adèle, who was working in this brasserie the previous year. She’s been gone for months. No one knows where she is. If he was going to have to go looking for all the Adèles in all the brothels in France …
One inspector has been despatched to make a thorough search of the saxophone player’s room in Rue Lepic. Janvier, who hasn’t had much of a chance to rest for long, will spend the day in and around Place Pigalle.
While that is happening, Maigret has taken the train at Saint-Lazare station, gets out at Poissy and starts walking up the slope to Jeanneville.
It seems that after the previous day’s storm the fields have become even greener, the sky a more delicate blue. Soon he comes in sight of the pink houses. He waves at Madame Chochoi, who stares back blankly through her window as he passes by.
He goes straight to find Félicie. Why does he feel so pleased by the prospect? Why does he unconsciously quicken his step? He smiles at the thought of seeing Lucas’s glum face after an overnight stake-out of Cape Horn. He sees him from a distance, sitting by the side of the road, an unlit pipe between his teeth. He must be feeling sleepy. He must be feeling hungry.
‘Had a hard time, Lucas? Anything happened?’
‘Nothing, sir. But I could fancy a cup of coffee and bed. The coffee first …’
His eyes are puffy with lack of sleep, his overcoat is worn, his shoes and the bottoms of his trousers are covered with reddish mud.
‘Take yourself off to the Anneau d’Or. There’s been a development.’
‘What?’
‘The musician’s taken a hit …’
It might seem that the inspector is callous, but Sergeant Lucas is not taken in, and moments later he is walking away, shaking his head.
Best foot forwards! Maigret looks all round him with the satisfaction of one who finds himself back in familiar surroundings, then strides towards the front door of the house. But no. He decides instead to walk round the building and go in through the garden. He pushes the side-gate … The kitchen door is open.
He stands rooted for a moment, stunned by surprise, and then wonders whether he’s not about to start laughing. Hearing his footsteps, Félicie has come to the door, where she stands very straight, confronting him with a stern expression on her face.
What on earth is the matter with her now? What is it that makes her look so different? It’s not because she has been crying that her eyes look so puffy and her face covered with red blotches.
As he walks towards her, she says in a voice which is more acid than ever:
‘Well? Are you satisfied now?’
‘What’s happened? Did you fall down the stairs?’
‘What’s the point of standing a policeman outside the house night and day! I assume your guard-dog was asleep on the job?’
‘Slow down, Félicie, say it more clearly … You’re not trying to make me believe …’
‘That the murderer came and that he attacked me? Yes, I am! Isn’t that what you wanted?’
Maigret was intending to talk to her about Pétillon and last night’s shooting, but decides that first he’d rather hear more about what has been going on at Cape Horn.
‘Come and sit yourself down. Here, in the garden, that’s it! Don’t look so sorry for yourself! … Now, stay calm, don’t look so fierce, just tell me nicely what happened. When I left you yesterday evening, you were overwrought. What have you been up to?’
‘Nothing,’ she said disdainfully.
‘Very well, I assume that first you ate … then you locked up and went upstairs to your room … All right so far? Are you quite sure you locked the doors?’
‘I always lock the door before I go to bed.’
‘So you got into bed … What time was it?’
‘I waited downstairs until the storm had passed.’
It was of course true that he had been callous enough to leave her alone despite her fear of thunder and lightning!
‘Did you drink anything?’
‘Just coffee …’
‘To help you to sleep, no doubt … What next?’
‘I read.’
‘For a long time?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe until midnight. I turned the light off. I was sure something terrible was going to happen … I did warn you.’
‘Now tell me what that something terrible was.’
‘You’re making fun of me … But I don’t care … You think you’re so clever, don’t you! … Well, at some point, I heard a sort of scraping noise coming from Monsieur Lapie’s room …’
Of course. Maigret does not believe a word of what she is telling him and as he listens and observes her, he wonders what she’s up to with this new fabrication. Lying comes to her as naturally as breathing. The local police chief at Fécamp had phoned with some information as requested.
Maigret knows now that Félicie’s insinuations about the nature of her connection with Jules Lapie were pure invention. Actually she has a father and mother. Her mother takes in washing, and her father is an old drunk who roams around the docks, lending a hand here, helping out there, especially when it means being stood small shots of strong, rotgut brandy. Questioning local men and the most gossipy of the neighbours yielded nothing: old Lapie had never had any close relations with the laundress. When he needed someone to keep house for him, his brother, the ship’s carpenter, pointed him in the direction of Félicie, who used to come sometimes to his place to help with the housework.
‘Right, so you heard a sort of scraping sound … Naturally you threw open the window immediately to call the policeman who was standing guard outside.’
He has spoken with heavy irony, but she shakes her head.
‘Why not?’
‘Because!’
‘Because, I can only suppose, you didn’t want the man you assumed to be in the room across the landing to be arrested?’
‘Perhaps!’
‘Go on …’
‘I got out of bed, without making a noise …’
‘And without putting the light on either, I expect. Because if you’d switched it on, Sergeant Lucas would have seen it. The shutters don’t close properly … So, you’re out of bed … You’re not afraid, though an ordinary storm scares you to death … What happened then? Did you leave your bedroom?’
‘Not straight away. I put my ear against the door and listened. There was someone on the other side of the landing. I heard a chair being moved. Then what sounded like a stifled curse. I knew then that the man couldn’t find what he was looking for and that he was
getting ready to leave …’
‘Was your bedroom door locked?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you opened it so you could rush out, unarmed, and confront a man who was probably the murderer of Jules Lapie?’
‘Yes.’
She glares in defiance. He gives a little whistle of admiration.
‘So you were quite sure he wouldn’t harm you? Obviously you had no way of knowing that at exactly that time young Pétillon was far from here, in Paris …’
She cannot help exclaiming:
‘What do you know about that?’
‘Let’s see … What time was it?’
‘I looked at the time after. It was half past three in the morning. How do you know that Jacques …’
‘Ah! You call him by his Christian name?’
‘Oh, why don’t you just leave me alone! If you don’t believe me, why don’t you just go!’
‘Fair enough, I won’t interrupt again … So, you came out of your room, full of spirit, armed only with courage …’
‘And got punched in the face!’
‘The man ran away?’
‘Went out through the door into the garden. That’s the way he came in.’
Actually, Maigret would love to tell her, despite the bruises to her face:
‘Know something? I don’t believe a word of it.’
On the other hand, if it could be shown that she’d caused her injuries herself, would it have made a difference? Why?
But at this juncture, his eye is caught by something, and he stares intently at the still-damp earth of a flower bed. She notices and, looking in the same direction, sees the footprints and through a thin smile says:
‘Perhaps it was my feet that made those marks?’
He stands up.
‘Come …’
He goes into the house. He has no difficulty seeing the muddy trail on the polished treads of the staircase. He opens the door of the old man’s bedroom.
‘You came in here?’
‘Yes. But I didn’t touch anything.’
‘What about this chair? Was it just here last night?’
‘No. It was by the window.’
At present, it is in front of the huge walnut wardrobe, and on its woven straw seat distinct traces of mud are visible.
So Félicie wasn’t lying after all. A man really did break into Cape Horn during the night, and it could not have been Pétillon, who, at that moment, poor devil, was lying on an operating table in Beaujon Hospital.
If Maigret needed further proof, he finds it when he in turn stands on the chair and looks on the top of the wardrobe, where fingers have disturbed the thick layer of dust and where someone has used a tool to prise up a strip of wood.
He’ll have to call in experts from Criminal Records to photograph everything and take fingerprints, if there are any.
More serious now, with a worried expression on his face, Maigret mutters, seemingly to himself:
‘And you didn’t call for help! You knew there was a police officer outside the window and you did nothing. You even took great care not to switch any lights on.’
‘I switched the light on in the kitchen when I was bathing my face in cold water.’
‘But wasn’t that because the kitchen light can’t be seen from the road? In other words, you did not want to raise the alarm. Despite being punched, you wanted to give your attacker time to get away. This morning, you got up as if nothing had happened and you still didn’t call the sergeant.’
‘I knew you’d come.’
Oddly enough – it’s childish and he hates himself for it – he feels somewhat flattered that she waited for him to come instead of turning to Lucas. He is even secretly grateful for that ‘I knew you’d come’!
He leaves the room, locking the door behind him. It is also clear that this unusual burglar didn’t look anywhere other than on the top of the wardrobe. He did not open drawers or search in dark corners. So he must have known …
In the kitchen, Félicie glances at her reflection in the mirror.
‘You said just now that you were with Jacques last night …’
He takes a good, long look at her. She is shaken, of that there is no question. She waits, visibly distressed. Then, in a lighter tone, he says:
‘You told me yesterday that he wasn’t your lover, that he was just a boy …’
She does not respond.
‘He had an accident last night. Someone took a shot at him in the middle of a street …’
She exclaims:
‘Is he dead? Tell me! Is Jacques dead?’
He is tempted. Does she ever think twice about lying? Aren’t the police entitled to use any means available to track down criminals? He is sorely tempted to say yes. Who knows how she would react? Who knows if …
But he can’t bring himself to do it. He sees her there, far too distressed, and instead he looks away and mutters:
‘No, you can set your mind at rest. He’s not dead. Just wounded.’
She sobs. Holding her head in both hands, wild-eyed, she cries desperately:
‘Jacques! Jacques! My own Jacques!’
Then an explosion of fury. She turns to the placid man who avoids her eye:
‘And you were there, weren’t you? And you let it happen! I hate you, do you hear, I hate you! It’s your fault, it’s all your fault that …’
She collapses on to a chair and continues crying, bent double, with her head on the kitchen table next to the coffee-grinder.
From time to time the same words are repeated:
‘… Jacques! … My own Jacques! …’
Is it because he has a hard heart that Maigret, standing in the doorway, not knowing where to look, steps out into the deserted garden, hesitates, stares at his shadow on the ground and eventually opens the door to the wine store, goes in and draws himself a glass of rosé?
5. Customer 13
That morning, Maigret was possessed of a rich fund of patience. But there were limits … He had not been able to prevent Félicie putting on her full mourning outfit, with that absurd pancake hat and the crepe veil which she wore as though it were some ancient drapery. And what had she plastered over her face? Was it to hide the bruises? It made you wonder, given that she had such a distinct sense of the occasion. Whatever the reason, she was whey-faced, as palely made up as a clown with cold cream and flour. In the train taking them to Paris, she sat completely still, priestess-like, her eyes painfully distant, giving out the impression that she wanted all around her to think:
‘Poor thing! How she must be suffering! And what self-control! She is the very image of grief, the living embodiment of the mater dolorosa.’
Not once does Maigret smile. When, in Rue Saint-Honoré, she was about to go into a shop selling early-season fruit and vegetables, he muttered quietly in her ear:
‘Félicie, I don’t think he’s in a fit state to eat anything!’
Didn’t he understand? Of course he understood, and when she persisted he let her get on with it. She wanted to buy the finest Spanish grapes, oranges, a bottle of champagne. She insisted on loading herself up with flowers, an immense bouquet of white lilacs, and she carried it all herself, without losing a shred of her tragic, aloof manner.
Maigret resigned himself and followed her like a kindly, indulgent father. He was relieved to learn that it was not visiting time at Beaujon Hospital because, looking the way she did, she would have caused a sensation. He did, however, persuade the duty doctor to allow her to look into the room where Jacques
Pétillon was isolated. It was at the end of a long corridor with painted walls, full of stale smells, with open doors through which they saw beds, cheerless faces and whiteness, far too much whiteness which in those surroundings became the colour of sickness.
They were made to wait for some time. Félicie remained standing with her cargo throughout. A nurse came eventually, and he gave a start.
‘Give me all that. It will come in useful for some child … Sh! Mind, no talking. Don’t make a noise …’
She opened the door no more than a crack, allowed Félicie only a quick glance into the cubicle shrouded in semi-darkness, where Pétillon lay stretched out like a corpse.
When the door closed, Félicie felt obliged to say:
‘You will save him, won’t you? Please, please. Do everything you can to save him …’
‘But mademoiselle …’
‘Don’t think of the expense … Here …’
Maigret did not laugh, he did not even smile when he saw her open her bag and take out a thousand-franc note folded up small and give it to the nurse.
‘If it’s a matter of money, no matter how much …’
From that point on, Maigret stopped making fun of her, and yet she had never been as ridiculous. There was more. As they walked back along the corridor with Félicie’s black veil billowing opulently, a child stepped into her path. She leaned down, intending to hug the sick toddler and sighed:
‘Poor darling!’
Are we not more aware of the sufferings of others when we are suffering ourselves? A few feet away stood a young, platinum-haired nurse outrageously squeezed into a uniform which showed every curve. The nurse looked up, almost burst out laughing and called one of her colleagues who was in one of the side wards so that she could see the spectacle too.
‘You, mademoiselle, are a birdbrain!’ snapped Maigret.
And he continued to escort Félicie as solemnly as if he had been one of the family. She had heard the put-down and was grateful. On the pavement outside, in the sunshine that filled the street, she seemed to be less tense. She found being with him very natural, and he used the moment to murmur:
Félicie Page 7