Maigret and the Old Lady

by Georges Simenon

  ‘You see, this crime is the crime of a woman, and of a solitary old woman at that. It’s one of those carefully planned crimes, lovingly cooked up over many hours, with the constant addition of little flourishes.

  ‘How could anyone think it was you when it seemed that you were the intended victim?

  ‘Suspicion would inevitably fall on your daughter, or on the others.

  ‘All you needed to do was announce that you’d found the potion bitter, that you’d said so to your servant. But I am certain you were careful not to.’

  ‘She’d have drunk it anyway!’

  She wasn’t defeated, as one might have expected. She sat there, tense, without missing a word that was being said, probably planning her riposte.

  ‘You were convinced that the investigation would be carried out by the local police, who wouldn’t find anything suspicious. You only began to be afraid when you found out that Charles Besson had arranged for me to be sent from Paris.’

  ‘You are modest, Monsieur Maigret.’

  ‘I don’t know if I am modest, but you made a mistake in coming running to Quai des Orfèvres so as to take the credit for contacting me.’

  ‘And how, tell me, did I know that Charles had thought of you?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s a detail that will be clarified later.’

  ‘There are a lot of details to be clarified, because you have no proof of what you are claiming with such assurance.’

  Maigret ignored the challenge.

  ‘The same goes for the jewels. Here are my keys. They are on the table in front of you. Go upstairs and look.’

  He stopped pacing, looked her in the eyes, intrigued by this new problem, and appeared to be talking to himself:

  ‘Maybe you took advantage of your trip to Paris to deposit them somewhere? No! You wouldn’t have hidden them so far away. You haven’t deposited them in a bank, which would have left a trail.’

  She gave a mocking smile.

  ‘Seek!’

  ‘And I’ll find.’

  ‘If you don’t find them, none of what you are saying holds water.’

  ‘We’ll come back to that when it’s time.’

  He bitterly regretted having smashed the bottle of Calvados in a gesture of anger, because he would gladly have had a sip.

  ‘It’s no coincidence that when I dropped by earlier to say good night to you I talked to you about the relationship between young Rose and Théo Besson, and about their meeting on Wednesday. I knew that you would react and that you’d try to see Théo out of fear that I would question him and that he’d talk, perhaps to shut him up once and for all. I wondered how you’d go about meeting him without being seen. I hadn’t thought of the telephone. Or to be more precise, I hadn’t thought about old Mademoiselle Seuret, who lives a stone’s throw away and whom you were in the habit of visiting.’

  He turned to Théo.

  ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her for several years.’

  ‘Is she an invalid?’

  ‘She was already half deaf and blind back then.’

  ‘In that case we have every chance of finding the jewellery at her house.’

  ‘You are making the whole thing up,’ she said furiously. ‘You talk and talk, telling yourself that eventually you’ll hit the nail on the head. And you think you’re being clever!’

  ‘You telephoned Théo from her house, and you probably called several different numbers, because it was in a bar that you finally found him. You told him you wanted to speak to him, and he understood. But you had no intention of speaking to him.

  ‘You see, your two crimes are not only the crimes of a loner, but the crimes of an old lady.

  ‘You are very clever, Valentine!’

  She gloated, flattered by the compliment despite everything.

  ‘Théo had to be silenced and, at the same time, you had to avoid arousing my suspicions. There was a way, which would probably have worked, but which you were loath to choose: and that was to offer to share with him.

  ‘You are too greedy for that. The idea of losing some of your famous jewellery, which you didn’t even need to live on and which has never been of any use to you, seemed so appalling that you preferred to kill a second time.

  ‘You asked Théo to come and see you at midnight without telling anyone.

  ‘That’s what she asked you to do, isn’t it, Monsieur Besson?’

  ‘You will appreciate that it is difficult for me to answer that question. A gentleman—’

  ‘Scoundrel! Does a gentleman involve a maid in his family affairs and incite her to commit a theft for his own ends? Does a gentleman send someone to be killed in his place?

  ‘As a matter of fact, Monsieur Besson, after Valentine’s telephone call you were both triumphant and afraid. Triumphant, because you’d won the game, because her call showed that she was ready to compromise. Afraid, because you knew her, because you realized that she wasn’t exactly happy about buying your silence.

  ‘You sensed a trap. This midnight meeting here sounded ominous.

  ‘You went back to your hotel to think. It was a stroke of luck that poor Henri, who’d been drinking, telephoned you.

  ‘I’d just had a conversation with him that had riled him. He began drinking and he wanted to see you, I don’t know why exactly; perhaps he didn’t know himself.

  ‘So you sent him ahead as a scout, telling him to be here on the dot of midnight.

  ‘So that he’d be the one to get caught in Valentine’s trap.

  ‘I take my hat off to you, madame. Rose’s murder was admirably planned, but this one is devilishly clever.

  ‘Right down to the trick with the light switch that you played on me this evening, which gave you the excuse to shoot in the heat of the moment without turning on the outside light.

  ‘Except that it’s Henri who’s dead. The brother and the sister in the same week!

  ‘Do you know what I’d do if I wasn’t a member of the police?

  ‘I’d leave you here under the guard of the inspector while I went to Yport to tell this story to a certain Trochu and his wife.

  ‘I’d tell them how, why and for what sordid gain they had lost two children in the prime of life in the space of a few days.

  ‘I’d bring them here, along with your victims’ brother and sisters as well as their neighbours and friends.’

  He saw Théo, who had turned ashen, grip the arm of his chair convulsively. As for Valentine, she leaped up, alarmed:

  ‘You have no right to do that! What are you waiting for to take us to Le Havre? You have to arrest us, or arrest me in any case.’

  ‘Do you confess?’

  ‘I don’t confess, but you’re accusing me, and you don’t have the right to leave me here.’

  Maybe someone had already told the Trochus and they would come running.

  ‘This is a civilized country, and everyone is entitled to a trial.’

  She was straining her ears for sounds from outside and nearly threw herself against Maigret as if seeking protection when she heard the sound of a car followed by footsteps in the garden.

  She was clearly on the verge of hysterics. Her face had lost its prettiness and there was panic in her eyes; her nails dug into Maigret’s wrists.

  ‘You have no right! You have no right …’

  It wasn’t the Trochus, who knew nothing yet, but the police van that had been sent from Le Havre, as well as a carful of police officers and experts.

  For half an hour they took over the house. Henri’s body was carried out on a stretcher while, just to be sure, an expert took photographs of the scene, including the window that the bullet had shattered.

  ‘You may go and get dressed.’

  ‘What about me?’ asked a deflated Théo Besson, who didn’t know what to do with himself.

  ‘You, I think, need to examine your own conscience.’

  Another car stopped outside on the road and Charles Besson burst into the house.


  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I was expecting you earlier,’ snapped Maigret.

  As if not understanding what Maigret was hinting at, the politician apologized:

  ‘I had a puncture on the way.’

  ‘What made you come?’

  ‘When you mentioned the ring to me over the telephone earlier.’

  ‘I know. You recognized it from the description.’

  ‘I realized that it was Théo who was right.’

  ‘Because you knew that Théo suspected your stepmother of having held on to the jewellery. Had he told you?’

  The two brothers glared at each other.

  ‘He didn’t say so to me, but I knew it from his behaviour when the estate was divided up.’

  ‘You came running to claim your share? Have you even forgotten that it’s your mother-in-law’s funeral tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Why are you being so harsh with me? I don’t know anything. Who’s just been driven off in the police van?’

  ‘Tell me first of all why you’ve come here.’

  ‘I don’t know. When you mentioned the ring, I knew things would turn nasty, that Théo would try something and that Valentine wouldn’t let him walk all over her.’

  ‘Well, it’s true, something did happen, but your older brother made sure to send someone else to get killed in his place.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Henri Trochu.’

  ‘Do the parents know?’

  ‘Not yet, and I wonder whether I shouldn’t give you the task of going to inform them. After all, you’re their elected representative.’

  ‘I probably won’t be any more after this scandal. What about young Rose? Who …?’

  ‘Haven’t you guessed?’

  ‘When you asked me about the emerald, I thought—’

  ‘Of your stepmother! It’s her. You can explain that to your voters.’

  ‘But I haven’t done anything!’

  For a while, Castaing, who was no longer taking notes, had been staring at Maigret, flabbergasted, while listening out for noises from the floor above.

  ‘Are you ready?’ shouted Maigret up the stairs.

  And when Valentine failed to reply straight away, he read the fear on Castaing’s face.

  ‘Don’t be afraid. Women like that don’t kill themselves. She’ll fight to the end, tooth and claw, and will find a way of hiring the best lawyers. And she knows they no longer send old women to the guillotine.’

  Valentine came down, as much the grande dame as when he had seen her for the first time, with her impeccable hair and big blue eyes, her black dress without a crease and a huge diamond brooch: one of the ‘replicas’, of course.

  ‘Are you going to handcuff me?’

  ‘I’m beginning to think that you’d like that, because it would be more theatrical and would make you look like a victim. Take her away, Castaing.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming with us to Le Havre?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you going back to Paris?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning, after I’ve collected the jewellery.’

  ‘Will you send the report?’

  ‘You’ll write it yourself. You know as much as I do.’

  Castaing had lost track of what was going on.

  ‘What about him?’

  He pointed at Théo, who had just lit a cigarette and was avoiding going anywhere near his brother.

  ‘He hasn’t committed any crime as far as the law is concerned. He’s too much of a coward. You’ll always be able to find him when you need him.’

  ‘Am I allowed to leave Étretat?’ asked Théo with relief.

  ‘Whenever you like.’

  ‘Can someone drive me back to the hotel so I can pick up my car and my things?’

  Like Valentine he was scared stiff of the Trochus. Maigret signalled to one of the police officers from Le Havre.

  ‘Go with the gentleman. And by way of a farewell I give you permission to give him a kick up the backside.’

  As she left La Bicoque, Valentine turned to Maigret and snarled:

  ‘You think you’re clever, but you haven’t had the last word.’

  When he looked at his watch, it was half past three in the morning, and the foghorn was still wailing in the darkness. There was only one police officer from Le Havre left, who was finishing putting seals on the doors, and Charles Besson, who didn’t know where to put his big body.

  ‘I’m wondering why you were so rude to me earlier, when I haven’t done anything.’

  It was true, and Maigret was almost sorry.

  ‘I swear to you that I never for one moment thought that Valentine—’

  ‘Would you come with me?’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘To Yport.’

  ‘Do you insist?’

  ‘It would save me having to look for a taxi, which can’t be easy at this hour.’

  He almost regretted it because Charles, on edge, drove erratically. He stopped the car as far as he could from the little house, which was just a dark shape in the fog.

  ‘Do I have to wait for you?’

  ‘Please.’

  Besson, hidden from view in the darkness of the car, heard the knocks at the door and Maigret’s voice saying:

  ‘It’s me, Maigret.’

  Charles saw a lamp light up and the door open, and bit off the end of a cigar.

  Half an hour went by, during which more than once he was tempted to drive off. Then the door opened again. Three people made their way slowly towards the car. Maigret opened the door and spoke softly:

  ‘You will drive them to Le Havre, and you can drop me at Étretat on the way.’

  From time to time the mother, wearing her veil from the funeral, stifled a sob in her handkerchief.

  Meanwhile the father didn’t say a word. Maigret too was silent.

  When he got out of the car, in Étretat, in front of his hotel, he turned towards those sitting inside, opened his mouth, was at a loss for words and slowly raised his hat.

  He did not get undressed, did not go to bed. At seven o’clock in the morning he called a taxi to take him to the old Seuret sister’s house, and the same taxi dropped him at the station, in time for the eight o’clock train. In addition to his suitcases, he was carrying a little morocco leather bag whose cover was the same clear blue as Valentine’s eyes.

  1. The Young Woman in Square d’Anvers

  The chicken was on the stove, along with a fine red carrot, a big onion and a bunch of parsley, the ends sticking out of the pan. Madame Maigret leaned down and checked that the gas, which was on a very low flame, wasn’t likely to go out. Then she closed the windows, except for the one in the bedroom, asked herself if she’d forgotten anything, glanced at herself in the mirror and, satisfied, left the apartment, locked the door behind her and put the key in her bag.

  It was just after ten on a March morning. The air was crisp, with a sparkling sun over Paris. She could have walked to Place de la République and caught a bus to Boulevard Barbès, which would have got her to Place d’Anvers in plenty of time for her eleven o’clock appointment.

  But because of the young woman, she walked down the steps into the Richard-Lenoir Métro station, which was very close to home, and made the whole journey underground, looking out with half an eye, whenever they pulled into a station, at the familiar posters on the cream-coloured walls.

  Maigret had teased her about it, but not too much, because, for the past three weeks, he’d had a lot on his mind.

  ‘Are you sure there isn’t a good dentist closer to home?’

  Madame Maigret had never before had to have her teeth seen to. It was Madame Roblin, the lady with the dog who lived on the fourth floor of their apartment building, who had told her so much about Dr Floresco that she had decided to go and see him.

  ‘He has fingers like a pianist. You don’t even feel him working on your mouth. And if you tell him I sent you, he’ll only charge you half price.’

 
He was a Romanian, who had his surgery on the third floor of a building at the corner of Rue Turgot and Avenue Trudaine, just facing Square d’Anvers, the park in Place d’Anvers. Was this Madame Maigret’s seventh or eighth visit? The appointment was always for eleven o’clock. It had become a routine.

  The first day, because of her obsessive fear of keeping people waiting, she’d arrived a good fifteen minutes ahead of time and had twiddled her thumbs in a room overheated by a gas stove. On her second visit, she’d also had to wait. Both times, she hadn’t been admitted to the surgery until a quarter past eleven.

  When it came to her third appointment, because the sun was shining and the park opposite was alive with birdsong, she had decided to go and sit on a bench and wait until it was time for her to see the dentist. That was how she had made the acquaintance of the woman with the little boy.

  By now, it had become so much a habit that she deliberately left home early and took the Métro in order to have more time.

  It was pleasant to look at the grass and the buds already half open on the branches of the few trees, which stood out against the wall of the secondary school. Sitting there on the bench in the sun, you could see the bustle of Boulevard Rochechouart, the green and white buses looking like big animals, the taxis weaving in and out.

  The woman was there, just as on the other mornings, in her blue tailored suit and that little white hat that looked so fetching on her and was so springlike. She shifted on the bench to make room for Madame Maigret, who had brought a bar of chocolate and now held it out to the child.

  ‘Say thank you, Charles.’

  He was two years old, and what was most striking about him were his big dark eyes, with huge lashes that made him look like a girl. At first, Madame Maigret had wondered if he was talking, if the syllables he uttered actually belonged to a language. Then she had realized, without daring to ask their nationality, that he and the woman were foreigners.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ Madame Maigret said, ‘March is still the loveliest month in Paris, in spite of the showers. Some prefer May or June, but everything’s so fresh in March.’