I particularly appreciated the fact that I was now in plain clothes the day I heard a voice calling out to me as I walked along Boulevard Saint-Michel.
A tall young man in a white coat was running after me.
‘Jubert!’ I cried.
‘Maigret!’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘What about you? . . . Listen. I daren’t stay outside now. Come and see me at seven o’clock in front of the pharmacy.’
Jubert, Félix Jubert, had been one of my classmates at the school of medicine in Nantes. I knew that he had given up his studies at the same time as me, but I think for other reasons. Without being a dunce, he was quite slow, and I remember that it was said of him:
‘He studies until the cows come home, but he’s forgotten it all the next day.’
He was very tall and thin, with a large nose, coarse features and red hair. Ever since I had known him his face had always been covered, not with those little acne spots that are the despair of young men, but with big red or purple spots to which he was constantly applying ointments and medicinal powders.
That same evening, I went and waited for him outside the pharmacy where he had been working for several weeks. He had no family in Paris. He was living around the Cherche-Midi, with people who took in two or three lodgers.
‘What about you, what are you doing?’
‘I’ve joined the police.’
I can still see his purple eyes, as clear as a young girl’s, trying to hide his incredulity. His voice sounded quite strange as he repeated, ‘The police?’
He looked at my suit, then, despite himself, at the policeman on duty at the corner of the boulevard, as if to establish a comparison.
‘I’m secretary to a chief inspector.’
‘Oh, right! I understand!’
Whether out of human respect, or because of my inability to explain myself and his inability to understand, I did not admit to him that just three weeks earlier, I had still been wearing a uniform and my ambition had been to join the Sûreté.
In his eyes, in the eyes of many people, secretary was a perfectly honourable position. I was neat and tidy, I worked in an office, surrounded by books, with a pen in my hand.
‘Do you have many friends in Paris?’
Apart from Inspector Jacquemain, I knew virtually nobody, because I was still a newcomer at the station, and people were wary of opening up to me.
‘No girl either? What do you do with all your free time?’
Firstly, I did not have much. Secondly, I was studying, because, in order to reach my goal more quickly, I had decided to take the exams that had just been introduced.
We had dinner together that evening. As we were having dessert, he said to me, with a promising air:
‘I’ll have to introduce you.’
‘Who to?’
‘To some nice people. Friends. You’ll see.’
He did not say anything more that first day. I no longer know why, but we did not see each other again for several weeks. We might not have seen each other again at all. I had not given him my address and I did not have his. It did not even occur to me to go and wait for him outside his pharmacy.
It was chance that brought us together again, at the door of the Théâtre-Français, where we were both queueing.
‘It’s stupid!’ he said. ‘I thought I’d lost you. I don’t even know which station you’re working in. I told my friends about you.’
He had a way of talking about those friends which might have made one think that it was some kind of special clan, even a mysterious sect.
‘Do you at least have a tailcoat?’
‘I have one.’
There was no point in adding that it was my father’s – somewhat old-fashioned in style, since he had worn it at his wedding – and that I had had it altered to my size.
‘I’ll take you on Friday. Make sure you’re free without fail on Friday evening at eight o’clock. Can you dance?’
‘No.’
‘It doesn’t matter. But it wouldn’t be a bad idea if you took a few lessons. I know a good course that’s not too expensive. I went there myself.’
This time, he made a note of my address and even of the little restaurant where I was in the habit of having dinner when I was not on duty, and on Friday evening he was in my room, sitting on my bed, as I got dressed.
‘I’d better explain so you don’t make any blunders. You and I will be the only ones there who don’t work as engineers for the Highways Department. A distant cousin of mine, whom I met again by chance, introduced me. Monsieur and Madame Léonard are charming people, and their niece is the most delightful girl.’
I immediately grasped that he was in love with her and that it was to show me the object of his ardour that he was dragging me there.
‘Don’t worry, there are others,’ he promised. ‘Some really nice ones.’
As it was raining and it was very important not to arrive spattered with mud, we took a carriage, the first carriage I had taken in Paris for other than professional reasons. I can still see our white shirt fronts as we passed the gas lamps. And I still see Félix Jubert stopping the carriage outside a florist’s shop to buy something to adorn our buttonholes.
‘Old Monsieur Léonard,’ he explained, ‘Anselme his name is, has been retired for about ten years. Before that, he was one of the most highly placed officials in the Highways Department, and his successors sometimes still consult him. His niece’s father also works for the Highways Department. So do pretty much the whole family.’
From the way he talked about the Highways Department, it was obvious that for Jubert it was some kind of lost paradise, and that he would have given anything not to have wasted precious years studying medicine and to be able to work there too.
‘You’ll see!’
And I did. We came to an old but comfortable and even opulent-looking building on Boulevard Beaumarchais, not far from Place de la Bastille. All the windows on the first floor were lit, and from Jubert’s look as we got out of the carriage it was clear to me that it was there that the announced festivities were going to take place.
I did not feel very comfortable. I regretted having let myself be dragged along. My wing collar bothered me. I had the impression that my cravat was constantly getting knocked sideways, and that one of the tails of my coat had a tendency to rise up like a rooster’s crest.
The staircase was dimly lit, the steps covered with a crimson carpet that struck me as sumptuous. And the windows on the landing were of stained glass, which for a long time I considered the last word in refinement.
Jubert had spread a thicker than usual layer of ointment on his pimply face, and for some reason that gave him a purple tinge. He pulled reverently on a large soft tassel that hung in front of a door. From inside, we could hear a murmur of conversation, with that touch of sharpness in the voices and the laughter that indicates the animation of a social gathering.
A maid in a white apron opened the door, and Jubert held out his coat, happy to utter, as one familiar with the place, ‘Good evening, Clémence.’
‘Good evening, Monsieur Félix.’
The drawing room was quite large and not very well lit, with a profusion of dark hangings, and in the next room, visible through a wide picture window, the furniture had been pushed back against the walls in order to leave the parquet floor free for dancing.
Jubert led me protectively to an old lady with white hair sitting beside the fireplace.
‘May I introduce my friend Maigret, whom I’ve had the honour to mention to you, and who has been dying to pay his respects to you personally.’
He had probably repeated this sentence to himself all the way there, and he made sure that I bowed correctly, that I was not too awkward, and that I was indeed doing him proud.
The old lady was delightful – short, with fine features and a lively face – but I was thrown when she said to me with a smile:
‘Why aren’t you in the Highways Depar
tment? I’m sure Anselme will be sorry.’
Her name was Géraldine. Her husband Anselme was sitting in another armchair, so motionless that he seemed to have been carried there to be displayed like a wax figure. He was very old. I learned later that he was well over eighty and that Géraldine had also reached the age of eighty.
Someone was playing the piano softly: a large young man who seemed to be bursting from his tailcoat. A young girl dressed in pale blue was turning the pages for him. She had her back to me. When I was introduced to her, I did not dare look her in the face, so disconcerted was I at being there, so uncertain as to what to say or where to put myself.
The dancing had not started yet. On a pedestal table there was a tray of petits fours, and some time later, as Jubert had abandoned me to my fate, I approached it, I still do not know why – not out of greed, certainly, because I was not hungry and I have never liked petits fours – probably to put up a front.
I took one mechanically. Then another. Someone said, ‘Shh!’
And a second girl, this one in pink, with a slight squint, started singing, standing by the piano, on which she supported herself with one hand while waving a fan with the other.
I was still eating. I did not even realize it, any more than I realized that the old lady was watching me in astonishment, or that others, noticing what I was doing, found it hard to take their eyes off me.
One of the young men made a remark under his breath to his cousin and we again heard, ‘Shhh!’
You could count the young girls by the bright splashes of colour amid the black tailcoats. There were four of them. Jubert was apparently trying to attract my attention without success, unhappy to see me grab the petits fours one by one and conscientiously eat them. He confessed to me later that he had felt sorry for me, being convinced that I had not had dinner.
Others must have thought the same. The song was over. Everyone clapped, and the girl in pink acknowledged the applause. It was then that I noticed that I was the one everybody was looking at, standing as I was beside the pedestal table with my mouth full, a little cake in my hand.
I was on the verge of leaving without an apology, of beating a retreat, literally fleeing that apartment in which a world that was totally alien to me had its being.
At that moment, in the dim light, I noticed a face, the face of the girl in blue, and, on that face, a gentle, reassuring, almost familiar expression. It was as if she had understood and was encouraging me.
The maid came in with refreshments, and after having eaten so much so inopportunely, I did not dare take a glass when it was offered to me.
‘Louise, you should pass the petits fours.’
That was how I discovered that the girl in blue was named Louise and that she was the niece of Monsieur and Madame Léonard.
She served everyone before approaching me and, pointing to some cakes with little pieces of crystallized fruit on them, said with a conspiratorial air, ‘They’ve left the best. Taste these.’
All I could find to say in reply was, ‘Do you think so?’
They were the first words Madame Maigret and I ever exchanged.
• • •
In a while, when she reads what I am writing, I know perfectly well that she will shrug her shoulders and say, ‘What’s the point of talking about that?’
Deep down, she is delighted with the image Simenon has given of her, the image of a nice old ‘granny’, always cooking, always polishing, always pampering her big baby of a husband. I suspect it was actually because of that image that she was the first to establish a real friendship with him, to the point of considering him part of the family and defending him even when I had no intention of attacking him.
The fact is, like all portraits, it is far from accurate. When I met her, on that famous evening, she was a somewhat plump, fresh-faced girl with a gleam in her eyes that was not to be seen in those of her friends.
What would have happened if I had not eaten those cakes? It is quite possible she would not have noticed me among the dozen young men who were there and who all, apart from my friend Jubert, worked for the Highways Department.
Those words ‘Highways Department’ have retained an almost comical meaning for us, and someone has just to say them to make us smile. If we hear them somewhere, even now, we cannot help giving each other knowing looks.
The correct thing now would be to present the whole family tree of the Schoellers, the Kurts and the Léonards, which confused me for a long time, and which constitutes my wife’s side of the family.
If you go to Alsace, anywhere from Strasbourg to Mulhouse, you will probably hear of them. It was, I believe, a Kurt from Scharrachbergheim who, under Napoleon, was the first to establish the almost dynastic tradition of working on roads and bridges. Apparently he was famous in his time, and allied himself with the Schoellers, who worked for the same department.
The Léonards later also joined the family, and since then, from father to son, from brother to brother-in-law or cousin, everyone, or almost everyone, has belonged to the same profession, to the point that when a Kurt became one of the biggest brewers in Colmar it was considered a comedown.
I had only a slight inkling of all this that evening, thanks to the few indications that Jubert had given me.
And when we left, in the pouring rain, neglecting this time to take a carriage, which in any case we would have had some difficulty finding in that neighbourhood, I myself almost felt some regret that I had chosen the wrong career.
‘What do you think of her?’
‘Who?’
‘Louise! I don’t blame you. All the same, the situation was embarrassing. You saw how tactfully she put you at your ease, without seeming to? She’s a remarkable girl. Alice Perret is more brilliant, but . . .’
I had no idea who Alice Perret was. The only person I had met the whole evening was the girl in blue, who had come and chatted to me between dances.
‘Alice is the one who sang. I think she’s soon going to become engaged to the young man who accompanied her, Louis, whose parents are very rich.’
We did not part until very late that night. Every time there was another shower, we entered some bistro that was still open to take shelter and have coffee. Félix would not let me go, but talked endlessly about Louise, trying to force me to admit that she was the ideal girl.
‘I know I don’t stand much of a chance. It’s because her parents would like to find her a husband who’s in the Highways Department that they’ve sent her to stay with her uncle Léonard. You understand, there’s no one available in Colmar or in Mulhouse, or else they’re already part of the family. She’s been here for two months. She’s supposed to be spending the whole winter in Paris.’
‘Does she know that?’
‘What?
‘That they’re trying to find her a husband in the Highways Department.’
‘Of course. But she doesn’t care. She has a mind of her own, much more than you may think. You haven’t had time to appreciate her. Next Friday, you should try talking to her a bit more. If you could dance, it’d be a lot easier. Why don’t you take two or three lessons between now and then?’
I did not take any dance lessons. Fortunately. Because Louise, contrary to what good old Jubert thought, hated nothing more than whirling around the room on the arm of a dance partner.
It was two weeks later that a little incident took place to which, at the time, I attached great importance – and which may actually have been important, but in a different way.
The young engineers who came to the Léonards formed a separate gang, and affected among themselves a special language that meant nothing outside the members of their brotherhood.
Did I hate them? It is likely that I did. And I did not like the way they insisted on calling me inspector. It had become a game, and I was weary of it.
‘Hey, inspector!’ they would call from one end of the drawing room to the other.
On this particular occasion, as Jubert and Louise were
chatting in a corner, near a pot plant – I can still see it – a young man in glasses approached them and confided something to them in a low voice, throwing an amused glance in my direction.
A few moments later, I asked Jubert, ‘What did he say?’
To which, embarrassed, he replied evasively, ‘Nothing.’
‘Something nasty?’
‘I’ll tell you outside.’
The young man with the glasses did the same thing in other groups, and everyone seemed to be amusing themselves greatly at my expense.
Everyone except Louise, who, that evening, refused several dances, which she spent talking to me.
Once outside, I questioned Jubert.
‘What did he say?’
‘First of all, answer me frankly. What did you do before becoming the inspector’s secretary?’
‘Well . . . I was in the police . . .’
‘In uniform?’
So that was it! The fellow in the glasses must have recognized me from having seen me in my policeman’s uniform.
Just imagine, a policeman among these gentlemen from the Highways Department!
‘What did Louise say?’ I asked, with a catch in my throat.
‘She was very decent. She’s always very decent. You won’t believe me, but you’ll see . . .’
Poor old Jubert!
‘She told him the uniform must have suited you better than it would have suited him.’
All the same, I did not go to Boulevard Beaumarchais the following Friday. I avoided meeting Jubert. It was he who came to relaunch things with me two weeks later.
‘You know, we were worried about you last Friday.’
‘Who?’
‘Madame Léonard. She asked me if you were ill.’
‘I was very busy.’
I was sure that, if Madame Léonard had spoken about me, it was because her niece . . .
Anyway, I do not see much point in going into all these details. I am already going to find it hard enough to make sure that what I have just written does not end up in the waste-paper basket.
For nearly three months, Jubert played his role without suspecting a thing, and without our trying in any way to deceive him. It was he who would come to fetch me from my hotel and tie my cravat on the pretext that I did not know how to dress. It was he who would say to me, when he saw me alone in a corner of the drawing room:
Maigret's Memoirs Page 6