‘You know the whole story, don’t you?’
She did not deny it. She looked elsewhere. Her way of admitting it.
‘Come on …’
It was now a little before noon. Maigret decided to turn right towards the luminous, noisy bustle of Place des Ternes, and she followed, tottering along on heels which were too high.
‘But I’m not going to tell you anything,’ she breathed after they had gone a few steps.
‘I know …’
He knew a great deal now. He did not yet know who had killed old Lapie. He did not know the name of the man who shot at the saxophone player the night before, but it would all come to him in its own good time.
Above all, he knew that Félicie … How could he put it? In the train, for example, the few passengers who had seen her enfolded in theatrical mourning had thought she was ridiculous; in the hospital, that much too curvaceous nurse had not been able to conceal her amusement; the owner of the dance-hall at Poissy had called her the Parakeet … others called her the Princess, Lapie had come up with the label Cockatoo, and for some time now even Maigret’s back had been put up by her childish antics …
Even now people turned and stared at the odd couple they formed, and when Maigret opened the door of a small neighbourhood restaurant, which was still empty at this time of day, he caught the waiter winking at the proprietress, who was sitting at the till.
The truth is that Maigret had located the simple human heartbeat that lies beneath the most wildly flamboyant exteriors.
‘We’re going to have a nice lunch together now, all right?’
She felt obliged to repeat:
‘But I’m still not going to tell you anything.’
‘I’ve got the message. You won’t tell me anything. Now, what do you want to eat?’
The inside of the restaurant is old-fashioned and friendly. The walls are creamy-white, and there are large, patchily clouded mirrors, nickel-plated holders into which the waiter tucks the cloth he uses for wiping his tables, a varnished and grained rack of pigeon-holes, where the regulars keep their serviettes. The dish of the day is written on a board: mutton stew with spring vegetables. On the menu extra charges are marked next to nearly all the dishes.
Maigret has ordered. Félicie has arranged her veil so that it falls behind her, and the weight of it pulls her hair back.
‘Were you very unhappy at Fécamp?’
He knows what he is doing. He waits for the quiver of her lips, the defiant expression she is able instinctively to put on her face.
‘Why should I have been unhappy?’
True. Why? He knows Fécamp, the small, pinched-looking houses crouching in a line under the east cliffs, the narrow alleyways running with sewage, the children playing in a stomach-turning stench of fish …
‘How many brothers and sisters do you have?’
‘Seven.’
The father a drunk. A mother who washes clothes all day long. He pictures her, a little girl who is too tall, legs like matchsticks, no shoes. She is put to work as a servant at Arsène’s, a small restaurant on the docks, and she sleeps in an attic. She is dismissed for stealing a few sous from the till and she does housework on odd days for Ernest Lapie, the Lapie who is a ship’s carpenter …
She is now eating daintily, almost to the point of holding her little finger in the air, and Maigret does not feel like laughing at her.
‘I could have married the son of a ship-owner …’
‘Of course, Félicie. But you didn’t fancy him, did you?’
‘I don’t like men with red hair. Not to mention the fact that his father had designs on me. Men are such pigs …’
It’s odd. When you see her a certain way, you forget that she’s twenty-four, you just see that restless face, like a little girl’s, and you wonder how anyone could ever have taken her seriously.
‘Tell me, Félicie … Did your … I mean, was Pegleg jealous?’
He is pleased with himself. He has anticipated that sharp thrust of the chin, the look which is both surprised and uncertain, the flash of anger in those eyes.
‘There was never anything between us.’
‘Yes, I know. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be jealous, does it? I’d bet that he forbade you to go dancing at Poissy on Sundays, and you were forced to sneak out …’
She does not answer him. No doubt, she is wondering how he has managed to find out about the old man’s weird jealousy. He would wait for her every Sunday evening, even coming as far as the top of the slope to watch out for her, and made terrible scenes.
‘You let him think you had boyfriends …’
‘What’s stopping me have boyfriends?’
‘Nothing! But you told him about them! He called you all sorts of names. I wonder if it ever happened that he hit you?’
‘I wouldn’t have let him lay a finger on me!’
She’s lying! Maigret pictures both of them so clearly! They were as isolated in that new house, in the middle of the new village of Jeanneville, as castaways on a desert island. There is nothing to connect them to anything. They rub each other up the wrong way from morning to night, they watch each other, argue and need each other: the pair of them form a world of their own.
Pegleg only emerges from that world at set times, when he goes off to play cards in the Anneau d’Or. But Félicie seeks out more rollicking forms of escape.
She would have to be locked up and a guard posted under her windows to stop her running off and going down to the dance hall at Poissy, where she puts on airs like a princess in disguise. As soon as she has a free moment, she scoots off to see Léontine and launches into a frenzy of confidences with her.
The explanation is not so hard to find! The office clerks who crowd into the restaurant and begin eating their lunch as they read their newspapers stare bewilderedly at the exotic creature who has invaded their habitat. There isn’t a single one of them who doesn’t steal a glance at Félicie from time to time, not one who is not ready to smile or wink at the waiter.
Yet she’s only a woman. A child-woman. This is what Maigret has understood and this is why, from now on, he talks to her with affectionate gentleness and indulgence.
Around her he reconstructs life as it was lived at Cape Horn. If old Lapie were still alive, Maigret is sure that he would shock him to the core by telling him point-blank: ‘You’re jealous of your maid.’
Jealous? Him? He wasn’t even in love with the girl, he had never been in love with anyone in his life! But jealous, oh yes, because she was part of his world, a world so narrow that if the smallest part of it went missing …
Did he ever sell the surplus vegetables he grew? Did he sell the fruit from his orchard? Did he ever give them away? No! They were his property. Félicie was also his property. He never allowed just anybody into his house! Only he drank the wine in his store.
‘What sort of welcome did he give his nephew?’
‘He’d meet him in Paris. When his sister died, he almost took him in at Cape Horn, but Jacques decided he didn’t want to. He has his pride.’
‘And once, when Lapie went to Paris to collect his quarterly pension, he met his nephew, who was in a pitiful state, wasn’t he?’
‘What do you mean “pitiful”?’
‘Pétillon used to work in Les Halles, unloading vegetables.’
‘There’s no shame in that!’
‘Of course not. No shame at all. On the contrary … So he brought him back. He gave him his own bedroom because …’
She is furious.
; ‘It wasn’t how you think …’
‘But that didn’t stop him keeping a very close eye on the pair of you. What did he find out?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Did you sleep with Pétillon?’
She bends her head over her plate without saying either yes or no.
‘The fact remains that life became impossible, and Jacques Pétillon left.’
‘He didn’t get on with his uncle.’
‘That’s what I meant.’
Maigret is pleased. He will cherish a special memory of this simple lunch in the quiet, unremarkable setting of a neighbourhood restaurant. A slanting bar of sunlight on the tablecloth and the jug of red wine. The intimacy between him and Félicie has acquired a softer, almost cordial edge. He is fully aware that if he told her as much, she would deny it and revert to her disdainful posturing, but she is as content to be there as he is, happy to break out of her loneliness, which she always fills instinctively with chaotic thoughts.
‘It will work out all right, you’ll see …’
She is almost prepared to believe him. But then her suspicions regain control. She is constantly afraid of falling into God only knows what traps. There are times – unfortunately of short duration – when she seems to be on the verge of turning into a young woman just like any other. It wouldn’t take much for her face to relax completely, for her to look straight at Maigret so that her eyes do not express thoughts which she is not thinking. Tears start to well up, and her features are softened by her weariness …
She is about to say something, and a fatherly Maigret is only too glad to encourage her …
But alas! At that same instant, there is a hint of a reservation that sits behind that obstinate forehead and again takes her over, and it is in her acid voice that she declares:
‘If you think for one moment that I can’t see what you’re up to …’
She feels alone, left all alone to carry the full weight of events on her shoulders. She is the centre of the world. And if proof be needed, a detective chief inspector of the Police Judiciaire, a man like Maigret, is now picking on her, just her!
She does not suspect that even then he is pursuing a considerable number of lines of inquiry. Inspectors are working Place Pigalle and the surrounding streets. At Quai des Orfèvres, men are busy questioning a number of individuals who in the early hours were roused out of their beds in furnished rooms in dubious hotels. In many towns, members of the Vice Squad are busy tracking down a girl named Adèle who some time in the past worked for three months in a Rouen brasserie.
And all that, the plodding routine of police work, will inevitably produce results.
But here, in this small restaurant where the regulars greet each other with guarded nods – though they might eat their lunch at the same table, they have never been formally introduced! – the inspector is looking for something very different: to get to the heart of the affair, not to achieve a mechanical reconstruction of events.
‘Do you like strawberries?’
There are strawberries on the sideboard, on cotton-wool, in punnets, the first of the season.
‘Waiter … Give us …’
She is greedy, and strawberries are fun. Or more accurately, she has a taste for rare things. It does not matter that Jacques Pétillon is in no state to eat grapes and oranges or drink champagne. It’s the gesture that counts, the sight of those opulent purplish globules and the bottle with the gold-covered neck … She would eat strawberries even if she didn’t like them.
‘What’s the matter, Félicie?’
‘Nothing.’
She has just turned pale, and this time she is not play-acting. She has had a shock. The strawberry she has in her mouth has got stuck, and it looks very much as if she is about to get up and rush outside. She coughs and buries her face in her handkerchief as people do when something has gone down the wrong way.
‘What’s the …?’
As he turns round, Maigret catches sight of a small man who, though the weather is warm, removes a thick overcoat and scarf, hangs them on a peg and takes a rolled-up serviette from one of the pigeon-holes, the one numbered 13.
He is middle-aged, greying, unremarkable, one of those colourless individuals who are frequently encountered in cities: solitary, fastidious, pernickety, widowers or confirmed bachelors, whose lives are just a maze of small habits. The waiter serves him without asking what he wants, sets a half-started bottle of mineral water down before him. As he opens his newspaper, the man stares at Félicie and frowns, rummages through his memories and begins to think …
‘Had enough?’
‘I’m not hungry any more. Let’s go.’
She has already put her serviette down on the table. Her hand is shaking.
‘Calm down, girl.’
‘Me? I am calm. Why shouldn’t I be?’
From where he is sitting, Maigret can observe number 13 in the mirror on the wall in front of him and he is still following the effort to remember on the man’s face … He’s got it … No, that’s not it … Try again! … He tries again … He is about to … Now he’s there! … His eyes widen … He is astonished … He looks as if he is thinking: ‘Good grief! Now there’s a coincidence!’
But he does not get up and come over to say hello to her. He does not give her any indication that they are known to each other. Where did he meet her? What kind of relationship was it? He gives Maigret a thorough looking over from head to foot, calls the waiter and whispers something to him; the waiter looks as if he’s saying he doesn’t know, that this is the first time the couple …
Meanwhile Félicie, sick with panic, suddenly gets to her feet and lurches in the direction of the washroom. Has her gullet become so restricted that she is about to regurgitate the strawberries which she has just eaten so daintily and with such enjoyment?
In her absence, Maigret and the stranger look at each other more openly. Perhaps customer 13 is thinking of coming over to exchange a few words with Félicie’s companion?
The door with frosted glass panes which leads to the cloakroom also leads to the kitchen. The waiter comes and goes. He has red hair! Just like the ship-owner’s son who wanted to marry Félicie when she lived at Fécamp. How can he not smile? She takes her cue from whatever catches her eye: she sees a red-haired waiter, she is asked if she had been very unhappy, her brain works with the speed of light and lo! the waiter is transformed into the son of a ship-owner who …
She is away a long time, too long for Maigret’s liking. The waiter has also been gone for some time. Customer 13 is thinking, thinking like a man who is about to reach a decision.
Eventually she emerges. She is almost smiling. As she returns, she pulls the veil back down over her face. She does not sit down again.
‘Coming?’
‘I ordered coffee. You like coffee, don’t you?’
‘Not now. It would only make me jumpy.’
He pretends to go along with this, calls the waiter and looks him straight in the face as he settles the bill. The man’s cheeks become slightly flushed. It’s so obvious! She has given him a message to give to customer 13. Perhaps she scribbled a few words on a scrap of paper with an instruction not to give it to the person it is intended for until after she has left.
As they leave, the inspector’s eye falls accidentally on the heavy overcoat on its peg with its pockets wide open.
‘We’re going back to Jeanneville now, aren’t we?’
She takes his arm with a gesture that might well seem spontaneous.
‘I’m so tired! It’s been a
strain.’
She grows impatient when he just stands there, not moving, on the edge of the pavement, like a man who is undecided.
‘What are you thinking? Why aren’t you coming? There’s a train in half an hour.’
She is horribly afraid. Her hand trembles on Maigret’s arm, and he is seized with an odd impulse to reassure her. Then he shrugs his shoulders.
‘Of course … Taxi! … Get in! … Saint-Lazare station, suburban lines.’
What a weight of anguish he has taken off her shoulders! In the open-topped taxi, where the sun nuzzles them gently, she feels a need to talk and talk.
‘You said you’d stay with me. You did say that, didn’t you? Aren’t you afraid of how it might look? Are you married? … How silly of me. You’re wearing a ring.’
An anxious moment at the station. He just buys one ticket. Is he just going to see her to her compartment and then stay behind in Paris? But she has forgotten he has a pass, and he settles heavily on the seat and gives her a look tinged with self-reproach.
He will be able to catch up with grey-haired customer 13 whenever he likes, since the man is a regular at the restaurant. The train shudders, and Félicie believes she is out of danger now. At Poissy, they walk past the café-dansant, where the proprietor, standing at the door of the wooden building, recognizes Maigret and gives him a wink.
The inspector cannot pass up an opportunity to tease Félicie.
‘Just a minute, I think I’ll ask him if Pegleg ever showed up here and watched you dancing …’
She pulls him away.
‘No need to bother. He did come, several times.’
‘You see? He was jealous after all.’
They climb the slope. Now they’re outside Mélanie Chochoi’s shop, and Maigret continues playing the same game.
‘What if I go in and ask her how many times she saw you roaming round of an evening with Jacques Pétillon?’
Félicie Page 8