The dead woman, wearing a white nightdress, lay on her four-poster bed in a peaceful and dignified pose, with her hands folded over a crucifix.
Everything was already in place: lit candles, holy water and a sprig of olive-wood in a cup.
Bouchardon looked at Maigret as he came in and seemed to be saying: ‘Well! What do you think? Isn’t this a good piece of work?’
The priest prayed, soundlessly moving his lips. He remained alone with the dead woman while the other two left.
In the square in front of the church the groups had thinned out. Through the curtains of the houses, families could be seen sitting down at the table for lunch.
For a few seconds, the sun tried to pierce the clouds, but then a moment later the sky turned dreary again, and the rustling of the trees grew louder.
Sitting in the corner by the window, Jean Métayer was eating mechanically as he gazed out on the empty road. Maigret was sitting at the far end of the dining room of the inn. Between them was a family from a nearby village that had arrived in a van, bringing groceries from home, and Marie Tatin was serving them drinks.
Poor Marie Tatin was in a state. She no longer had any idea what was going on. Usually she only let out an attic room from time to time, to a workman who had come to do some repairs at the chateau or one of the farms.
And here she had not only Maigret, but another lodger too: the countess’s secretary.
She didn’t dare to ask any questions. All morning she had heard her customers saying terrible things. She had heard them talking, among other things, about the police!
‘I’m worried that the chicken may be overcooked …’ she said as she served Maigret.
And her tone was the one in which she might have said, for example: ‘I’m afraid of everything! I don’t know what’s going on. Holy Virgin, protect me!’
The inspector looked at her affectionately. She had always looked as fearful and sickly as she did now.
‘Marie, do you remember …’
Her eyes widened. She was already making a defensive movement.
‘… the thing that happened with the frogs?’
‘But … who …’
‘Your mother had sent you to pick mushrooms in the field behind the Notre-Dame pond … Three boys were playing there … They took advantage of a moment when you were thinking about something else to swap the mushrooms in your basket for frogs … And all the way home you were worried because the things were croaking …’
She had been studying him attentively for a few moments, and at last she stammered: ‘Maigret?’
‘Look! Monsieur Jean has finished his chicken and is ready for his next course.’
And all of a sudden Marie Tatin seemed completely transformed: she was more troubled than before, but also, increasingly, more trusting.
How odd life was! Years and years without the slightest incident, with nothing to break the monotony of the days. And then, all of a sudden, incomprehensible events, dramas, things you don’t even read in the newspapers!
As she served Jean Métayer and the villagers, she sometimes gave Maigret a look of complicity. When he had finished, she asked shyly:
‘Will you take a little glass of brandy, sir?’
‘You used to call me by my first name, Marie!’
She laughed. No, she didn’t dare!
‘But you haven’t had lunch yourself!’
‘No, I have! I always eat in the kitchen, without stopping. A mouthful now … A mouthful later …’
A motorbike passed along the road. They could just make out a more elegant young man than most of the inhabitants of Saint-Fiacre.
‘Who was that?’
‘Didn’t you see him this morning? Émile Gautier, the estate manager’s son.’
‘Where’s he going?’
‘Probably Moulins! He’s practically a city-dweller. He works in a bank.’
People could be seen coming out of their houses, walking along the road or heading towards the cemetery.
Strangely, Maigret was sleepy. He felt exhausted, as if he had been over-exerting himself. And it wasn’t because he had got up at half past five in the morning, or because he had caught a cold.
It was the atmosphere that was oppressing him. He felt personally affected by events, and filled with disgust.
Yes, disgust! That was the word! He had never imagined that he would find his village in this state. Even his father’s grave, the stone quite blackened, where he had been told he couldn’t smoke!
Opposite him, Jean Métayer emanated self-confidence. He knew he was being watched. As he ate, he forced himself to remain calm and even affected a vaguely contemptuous smile.
‘A little glass?’ Marie Tatin suggested to him as well.
‘No, thank you! I never drink alcohol …’
He was polite. He liked to display good manners on all occasions. At the inn he ate with the same precious gestures as he would have done at the chateau.
Once his meal was finished, he asked: ‘Do you have a telephone?’
‘No, but there’s one opposite, in the kiosk …’
He crossed the road and went into the grocery shop run by the sacristan, where the kiosk was situated. He must have been asking for a long-distance call, because he was seen waiting in the shop for a long time, smoking cigarette after cigarette.
When he came back, the villagers had left the inn. Marie Tatin washed the glasses in anticipation of Vespers, which would bring in new customers.
‘Who were you calling? Remember that I can find out by going to the telephone …’
‘My father, in Bourges.’
His voice was brusque, aggressive.
‘I asked him to send me a lawyer straight away.’
He was like one of those yappy little dogs who show their teeth even before you go to touch them.
‘Are you so sure that they’re going to bother you?’
‘I will ask you not to speak to me before my lawyer arrives. Believe me, I’m sorry there’s only one inn around here.’
Did he hear the words that the inspector muttered as he left?
‘Idiot! … Stupid little idiot …’
And Marie Tatin, although she didn’t know why, was afraid to be left on her own with him.
The whole day would be marked by chaos, by indecision, probably because no one felt qualified to take control of events.
Maigret, wrapped up in his heavy overcoat, was wandering about the village. He was seen now in the church square, now around the chateau, whose windows were lighting up one by one.
For night was falling quickly. The church was illuminated and echoed with the sound of organ music. The bell-ringer closed the cemetery gate.
And groups of people, barely visible in the darkness, had gathered to ask each other whether they should visit the bedside of the deceased. Two men set off first, and were received by the butler, who didn’t know what was supposed to happen either. No tray had been prepared for visiting cards. They tried to find Maurice de Saint-Fiacre to ask his advice, and the Russian girl replied that he had gone for a walk.
She was lying down, fully clothed, smoking cigarettes with a cardboard filter.
Then the maid ushered the people in with a shrug of indifference.
That was the signal. There were hurried confabs at the end of Vespers.
‘No, they are! Old Martin and young Bonnet have been already!’
Everyone went, in procession. The chateau was dimly lit. The villagers walked along the corridor, and silhouettes stood out at each window in turn. They held their children by the hand, shaking them to stop them making any noise.
The stairs. The first-floor corridor. And at last the bedroom, which the people entered for the first time.
The only person there was the countess’s maid, who witnessed the invasion with horror. People crossed themselves with a spring of boxwood dipped in holy water. The more audacious of them murmured beneath their breath: ‘She looks as if she’s sleeping!’
‘She didn’t suffer …’
Then footsteps rang out on the uneven parquet floor. The stairs creaked. People were heard saying:
‘Shh! … Hold on tightly to the banister …’
The cook, in her kitchen in the basement, saw only the legs of the people passing.
Maurice de Saint-Fiacre came back just as the house was being invaded. He looked wide-eyed at the villagers. The visitors wondered whether they were supposed to talk to him or not. But he just nodded to them and went into Marie Vassiliev’s room, where they heard English being spoken.
Maigret was in the church. The sacristan, snuffer in hand, was walking from candle to candle. The priest was taking off his sacerdotal garments in the sacristy.
On each side, the confessionals with their little green curtains designed to shield the penitents from view. Maigret remembered when his face didn’t come up high enough to be hidden by the curtain.
Behind him the bell-ringer, who hadn’t seen him, was closing the main door and drawing the bolts.
Then all of a sudden the inspector crossed the nave and stepped into the sacristy, where the priest was startled to see him appear.
‘I’m sorry, Father! Before I do anything else I’d like to ask you a question …’
In front of him, the priest’s regular features were serious, but it seemed to Maigret that his eyes blazed with fever.
‘This morning, a disturbing event took place. The countess’s missal, which was on her prie-dieu, suddenly disappeared and was found hidden under the altar boy’s surplice, in this very room …’
Silence. The sound of the sacristan’s footsteps on the church carpet. The louder footsteps of the bell-ringer leaving by a side door.
‘Only four people could have … I must ask you to excuse me … The altar boy, the sacristan, the bell-ringer and …’
‘Me!’
His voice was calm. The priest’s face was lit only on one side by the flickering flame of a candle. From a censer, a thin thread of white smoke rose in spirals towards the ceiling.
‘Was it …?’
‘I was the one who took the missal and put it here, while waiting for …’
The box of communion wafers, the cruets, the two-note bell were in their place, as they had been when little Maigret was an altar boy.
‘Did you know what the missal contained?’
‘No.’
‘In that case …’
‘I must ask you not to question me further, Monsieur Maigret. It’s the secret of the confessional …’
An involuntary association of ideas. The inspector remembered the catechism, in the dining room at the presbytery. And the edifying image that had formed in his mind when the old priest had told the story of a medieval priest who had had his tongue ripped out rather than betray the secret of the confessional.
He found it preserved intact on his retina, after thirty-five years.
‘You know the murderer …’ he murmured none the less.
‘God knows him … Excuse me … I have to attend to a sick person …’
They left via the presbytery garden. A little fence separated it from the road, where people leaving the chateau stayed in groups a short distance away to talk about what had happened.
‘Do you think, Father, that it might not be your place …’
But they bumped into the doctor, who was muttering into his beard:
‘Listen, Father! Do you not think that this is starting to turn into a fairground? … Perhaps someone should go down there and restore some order, if only to calm the villagers down! … Oh! You’re here, inspector! … Well, you’re making a fine mess of things … As we speak, half the village is accusing the young count of … Especially since that woman got here! … The estate manager is going to see the farmers to get together the forty thousand francs which, it seems, are necessary for …’
‘Dammit!’
Maigret walked away. He was too upset. And wasn’t he being accused of being the cause of the chaos? What blunder had he committed? What had he done? He would have given anything to see events play out in a dignified atmosphere!
He strode towards the inn, which was half full. He heard only the scrap of a sentence:
‘Apparently if they can’t be found he will go to prison …’
Marie Tatin was the very image of distress. She was pacing back and forth, alert, trotting like an old woman even though she wasn’t more than forty.
‘Is the lemonade for you? … Who ordered two beers? …’
In his corner, Jean Métayer was writing, sometimes raising his head to listen in on the conversations.
Maigret walked over to him and couldn’t read his scribbles, but saw that the lines were clearly divided, with only a few crossings-out, each one preceded by a number:
1 …
2 …
3 …
The secretary was preparing his defence as he waited for his lawyer!
A woman a few metres away said, ‘There weren’t even any clean sheets, and they had to go to the estate manager’s wife to ask for them …’
Pale, with drawn features but a determined expression, Jean Métayer wrote:
4 …
5. The Second Day
Maigret slept the sleep, at once troubled and sensual, that one only ever has in a cold country room that smells of stables, winter apples and hay. Draughts circulated all around him. And his sheets were frozen, except in the exact spot, the soft, intimate hollow that he had warmed with his body. Consequently, rolled up in a ball, he avoided making the slightest movement.
Several times he had heard the dry cough of Jean Métayer in the neighbouring attic room. Then came the furtive footsteps of Marie Tatin getting up.
He stayed in bed for another few minutes. When he had lit the candle, he couldn’t face washing with the icy water from the jug and, deferring the task till later, went downstairs in his slippers, without putting on a detachable collar.
Down below, Marie Tatin was pouring paraffin on a fire that wouldn’t light. Her hair was rolled up in hairpins, and she blushed as she saw the inspector appear.
‘It isn’t yet seven o’clock … The coffee isn’t ready …’
Maigret had one slight worry. In his half-sleep, half an hour before, he had thought he heard a car passing. And yet Saint-Fiacre isn’t on the main road, and there was hardly any traffic apart from the bus that passed through once a day.
‘Has the bus left, Marie?’
‘Never before half past eight! And more often nine o’clock …’
‘Is that the bell ringing for mass already?’
‘Yes! In winter, it’s at seven o’clock, six in the summer … If you want to warm yourself up, sir …’
She showed him the fire, which was blazing at last.
‘Can’t you bring yourself to call me by my first name?’
Maigret was cross with himself as he caught a flirtatious smile on the poor spinster’s face.
‘The coffee will be ready in five minutes …’
It wouldn’t be light before eight o’clock. The cold was even keener than on the previous day. Maigret, coat collar turned up and hat down over his eyes, walked slowly towards the patch of light emanating from the church.
It wasn’t a feast day any more. There were only three women in the nave. And there was something slapdash, something furtive about the mass. The priest walked too quickly from one corner of the altar to the other. He turned round too quickly, arms outspread, to murmur, swallowing syllables: ‘Dominus vobiscum!’
The altar boy, who was struggling to follow him, said ‘Amen’ out of time, and hurried to ring his bell.
Was the panic going to begin again? The murmur of the liturgical prayers could be heard, and sometimes the sound of the priest taking a breath between two words.
‘Ite missa est …’
Had this mass lasted twelve minutes? The three women got to their feet. The priest recited the last passage fr
om the Gospel. A car stopped in front of the church, and a moment later hesitant footsteps were heard in the square.
Maigret had stayed at the end of the nave, standing right next to the door. So when it opened, the new arrival was literally face to face with him.
It was Maurice de Saint-Fiacre. He was so surprised that he nearly beat a retreat, murmuring, ‘Sorry … I …’
But he stepped forwards and made an effort to regain his composure.
‘Is mass over?’
He was clearly in a state of nerves. There were circles under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept that night. And when he opened the door he had brought the cold in with him.
‘Have you come from Moulins?’
The two men whispered to one another as the priest recited the prayer after the Gospel, and the women closed their mass-books and picked up their umbrellas and handbags.
‘How did you know? … Yes … I …’
‘Shall we go outside?’
The priest and the altar boy had gone into the sacristy, and the sacristan was snuffing the two candles which were all that had been required for the low mass.
Outside, the horizon was slightly brighter. The white of the nearby houses stood out against the gloom. The yellow car was there, between the trees in the square.
Saint-Fiacre’s unease was obvious. He looked at Maigret with some astonishment, perhaps surprised to see him unshaven, and without a detachable collar under his coat.
‘You got up early! …’ murmured the inspector.
‘The first train, an express, leaves Moulins at three minutes past seven …’
‘I don’t understand! You didn’t take the train because …’
‘You’re forgetting Marie Vassiliev …’
It was perfectly simple! And natural! The presence of Maurice’s mistress could only be an embarrassment at the chateau. So he drove her to Moulins by car, put her on the Paris train, came back and, in passing, entered the illuminated church.
And yet Maigret wasn’t satisfied. He tried to follow the anxious glances of the count, who seemed to be waiting for something, or to fear something.
‘She doesn’t seem easy!’ the inspector said meaningfully.
‘She’s known better days. And she’s very touchy … The idea that I might want to hide our relationship …’
The Saint-Fiacre Affair Page 5