The Saint-Fiacre Affair

by Georges Simenon; Translated by Shaun Whiteside

  He consulted his watch.

  ‘Ten past eleven … I have been talking so much that I didn’t hear the bells of your church, Father …’

  And, as the butler nudged the revolver slightly as he put the whisky bottles down on the table, the count intervened.

  ‘Careful, Albert! … It must be an equal distance from each of them …’

  He waited for the door to close again.

  ‘And there we are!’ he concluded. ‘That leaves only me! I won’t be telling you anything you don’t know if I say that I have never done anything good! Except perhaps while my father was alive … But since I was only seventeen when he died …

  ‘I’m broke! Everyone knows that! The little weekly newspapers mention it in barely concealed terms …

  ‘Dud cheques … I scrounge money from my mother as often as I possibly can … I invented that illness in Berlin to get hold of a few thousand francs …

  ‘Bear in mind that that is the same as the missal trick, although on a smaller scale …

  ‘And yet, what happens? The money that is my due is spent by little bastards like Métayer … I’m sorry, old man … We’re still doing transcendental psychology …

  ‘Soon there will be nothing left … I call my mother, when a dud cheque could mean jail for me … She refuses to pay … There are witnesses to back that one up …

  ‘So, if it goes on, in a few weeks there will be nothing left of my inheritance …

  ‘Two hypotheses, as for Émile Gautier. The first …’

  Never in his career had Maigret felt so uneasy. And it was probably the first time that he had a very clear sense that he was not a match for the situation. Events were out of his control. Sometimes he thought he was starting to understand, and a moment later a phrase from Saint-Fiacre called everything into question again!

  And there was still that insistent foot pressing against his own.

  ‘Why don’t we talk about something else!’ the intoxicated lawyer exclaimed.

  ‘Gentlemen …’ the priest began.

  ‘Excuse me! You owe me your time until midnight at least! I was saying that the first hypothesis …

  ‘Oh, marvellous! You’ve made me lose my thread …’

  And as if to find it again, he poured himself a full glass of whisky.

  ‘I know that my mother is very sensitive. I slip the piece of paper into her missal, to frighten her and, in the process, move her to pity, planning to come back the next day to ask her for the necessary funds, and hope to find her more accommodating …

  ‘But then you have the second hypothesis! Why wouldn’t I want to kill too?

  ‘Not all the money of the Saint-Fiacre family has been used up. There’s a bit left. And, in my situation, a bit of money, however little, could be my salvation!

  ‘I am vaguely aware that Métayer is mentioned in the will. But a murderer cannot inherit …

  ‘Wouldn’t he be suspected of the crime? He who spends part of his time in a printing works in Moulins! He who, living in the chateau, could slip the piece of paper in the missal as and when he wanted to?

  ‘Did I not arrive in Moulins in the afternoon? And didn’t I wait down there, with my mistress, to see the result of this manoeuvre? …’

  He got to his feet, with his glass in his hand.

  ‘Your health, gentlemen … You are gloomy … I am sorry to see that … My mother’s whole life was gloomy during those last years … Isn’t that so, Father? … It’s only right that her last night should be accompanied by a little gaiety …’

  He looked the inspector in the eye:

  ‘Your health, Monsieur Maigret!’

  Who was he making fun of? Of him? Of everyone?

  Maigret felt he was in the presence of an irresistible force. Some individuals, at a given point in their lives, experience a moment of plenitude, a moment in which they are somehow elevated above the rest of humanity and themselves.

  Sometimes, like a gambler in Monte Carlo, who one evening keeps winning, whatever he does. It is true of the opposition MP, unknown until that moment, whose speech shakes and topples the government, and who is more surprised than anyone, because all he wanted was a few lines in the parliamentary gazette.

  Maurice de Saint-Fiacre was experiencing his moment. He was filled with a strength that he hadn’t suspected himself of having, and the others could only lower their heads.

  But wasn’t it drunkenness that was sweeping him along like that?

  ‘Let’s return to the start of our discussion, gentlemen, since it isn’t yet midnight … I said that my mother’s murderer was among us … I have proved that it could be me or one of you, except perhaps the inspector and the doctor!

  ‘I’m still not sure …

  ‘And I prophesied his death …

  ‘Will you let me continue with my hypothetical game? He knows that the law can do nothing about him. But he also knows that there are several of us, or rather that there will be several people left, six at least, who know his crime …

  ‘There again, we are confronted with several solutions …

  ‘The first is the most Romantic, the most in tune with Walter Scott …

  ‘But I have to introduce a new parenthesis … What characterizes this crime? … It’s the fact that there are at least five individuals who gravitated around the countess … Five individuals who stood to gain from her death and who might, each in his own way, have thought of how to bring it about …

  ‘Only one of them dared to do it … Only one committed the crime! …

  ‘And yet I wouldn’t be surprised if he took advantage of this evening to avenge himself on the others … He is lost! … Why not blow up the lot of us? …’

  And Maurice de Saint-Fiacre, with a disarming smile, looked at each of them in turn.

  ‘Is it exciting enough? The old dining room in the old chateau, the candles, the table covered with bottles … Then, at midnight, death … You will note that the scandal will be suppressed at the same time … Tomorrow people will come running, and won’t understand a thing … They will put it down to accident, or an anarchist attack …’

  The lawyer fidgeted in his chair and glanced anxiously around, towards the gloom that had fallen less than a metre from the table.

  ‘If I might remind you that I am a doctor,’ murmured Bouchardon, ‘I would advise each of you to have a good strong cup of black coffee …’

  ‘And I,’ the priest said slowly, ‘would remind you that there is a dead person in the house …’

  Saint-Fiacre hesitated for a second. A foot brushed Maigret’s ankle, and he quickly bent down, too late once again.

  ‘I asked you to wait until midnight … I have examined only the first hypothesis … There is a second … The murderer, crazed and cornered, fires a bullet into his head … But I don’t believe he’ll do it …’

  ‘I request that we move to the smoking room!’ the lawyer squealed, getting to his feet and clinging to the back of his chair to keep from falling.

  ‘And last of all there is a third hypothesis … Someone who cares about the honour of the family comes to the murderer’s assistance … Wait … The question is more complex … Shouldn’t scandal be avoided? … Shouldn’t the guilty man be helped to kill himself? …

  ‘The revolver is there, gentlemen, an equal distance from all our hands … It is ten to midnight … I say again that at midnight the murderer will die …’

  And this time his voice was so firm that everyone remained silent. No one breathed.

  ‘The victim is up there, with a servant sitting vigil … The murderer is here, surrounded by seven people …’

  Saint-Fiacre drained his glass in one go. And the anonymous foot was still brushing Maigret’s.

  ‘Six minutes to midnight … Is that enough, Walter Scott? … Tremble, murderer …’

  He was drunk! And he was still drinking!

  ‘At least five people to steal from an old woman deprived of her husband, of affection … Only one w
ho dared … It will be bomb or revolver, gentlemen … The bomb, which will blow all of us up, or the revolver, which will hit only the guilty man … Four minutes to midnight …’

  And, brusquely:

  ‘Don’t forget that no one knows! …’

  He grabbed the bottle of whisky and served everyone, starting with Maigret’s glass and finishing with Émile Gautier’s.

  He didn’t fill his own. Hadn’t he drunk enough? A candle went out. The others would follow.

  ‘I said midnight … Three minutes to midnight …’

  He was affecting the airs of an auctioneer.

  ‘Three minutes to midnight … two minutes … The murderer is about to die … You can begin a prayer, Father … And you, doctor, do you at least have your medical bag? … Two minutes … One and a half …’

  And still that insistent foot against Maigret’s. He didn’t dare to bend down, for fear of missing another spectacle.

  ‘I’m off!’ shouted the lawyer, rising to his feet.

  All eyes turned towards him. He was standing up. He gripped the back of his chair. He hesitated to take the three dangerous steps that would lead him to the door. He hiccupped.

  And at that moment there was a great bang. Everyone was motionless for a second, maybe two.

  A second candle went out, and at the same time Maurice de Saint-Fiacre toppled over, his shoulders struck the back of the gothic chair, he tilted to the left, lurched back to the right, but then fell back inertly, his head resting on the priest’s arm.

  10. The Wake

  What followed was mayhem. Things were happening all over the place, and afterwards each of them could only have related a small part of the events that they had witnessed in person.

  The dining room was now lit by only five candles. Huge areas were still in darkness, and agitated people came and went as if from the wings of a stage.

  The gun had been fired by one of Maigret’s neighbours: Émile Gautier. And as soon as the shot had gone off, he held out both wrists to the inspector in a slightly theatrical gesture.

  Maigret was on his feet. Gautier stood up. So did his father, and all three formed a group on one side of the table, while another group gathered around the victim.

  The Count of Saint-Fiacre’s forehead still rested against the priest’s arm. The doctor, leaning forwards, looked grimly around.

  ‘Dead? …’ asked the podgy lawyer.

  No reply. The scene on that side of the table was sluggish, as if being played out by bad actors.

  Only Jean Métayer belonged to neither one group nor the other. He had stayed beside his chair, anxious, shivering, not knowing where to look.

  In the minutes leading up to his action, Émile Gautier had plainly prepared his demeanour, because as soon as he had set the gun back down on the table he literally made a declaration, looking Maigret in the eyes.

  ‘He was the one who said it was going to happen, wasn’t he? … The murderer had to die … And, because he was too much of a coward to take the law into his own hands …’

  His self-confidence was extraordinary.

  ‘I did what I saw as my duty …’

  Could the others hear him from the other side of the table? There were footsteps in the corridor. It was the servants. The doctor went to the door to stop them from coming in. Maigret didn’t hear what he said to get rid of them.

  ‘I saw Saint-Fiacre prowling around the chateau on the night of the crime … That was how I worked out …’

  The whole scene was badly directed. And Gautier was hamming it up to the rafters when he announced:

  ‘The judges will decide whether …’

  The doctor spoke.

  ‘Are you sure it was Saint-Fiacre who killed his mother?’

  ‘Absolutely certain! Would I have acted as I did if …’

  ‘So you saw him prowling around the chateau the night before the crime?’

  ‘I saw him as I see you now. He had left his car on the edge of the village …’

  ‘You have no other proof?’

  ‘I do, in fact! This afternoon, the altar boy came to see me at the bank, with his mother … It was his mother who made him speak … Shortly after the crime, the count asked the child to give him the missal and promised him a sum of money …’

  Maigret was running out of patience and felt as if he had been left out of the play.

  And yes, it was a play! Why else was the doctor smirking into his beard? And why was the priest gently pushing Saint-Fiacre’s head away?

  A play, moreover, that was being performed simultaneously as farce and drama.

  For the Count of Saint-Fiacre rose to his feet like a man who had just been enjoying a snooze. His face was hard, with an ironic but threatening wrinkle in the corners of his lips.

  ‘Come over here and say that again! …’ he said.

  And an unearthly cry rang out, as Émile Gautier screamed in fear and gripped Maigret’s arm for protection. But the inspector stepped back, leaving the field open to the two men.

  There was someone who didn’t understand: Jean Métayer. And he was almost as frightened as the bank clerk. To top it all, one of the candlesticks was knocked over, and the tablecloth caught fire, spreading a smell of burning.

  It was the lawyer who doused the incipient flames with the contents of a bottle of wine.

  ‘Come here!’

  It was an order! And the tone was such that disobedience was clearly out of the question.

  Maigret had picked up the revolver. A glance was enough to show him that it was loaded with blanks.

  He guessed the rest. Maurice de Saint-Fiacre letting his head rest on the priest’s arm … A few whispered words to make his death seem believable for a moment …

  Now he wasn’t the same man. He looked bigger, more solid. He didn’t take his eyes off young Gautier, and it was the estate manager who suddenly ran towards a window, opened it and shouted to his son:

  ‘Over here …’

  It was a good idea. Emotions were so heightened, and there was such confusion, that Gautier had a chance to get away at that moment.

  Did the little lawyer do it on purpose? Probably not! Or else his drunkenness filled him with a kind of heroism. As the fleeing man made for the window, he stuck out his leg, and Gautier fell head first.

  He didn’t get to his feet unaided. A hand had grabbed him by the neck, lifted him up and set him on his feet, and he yelled again as he realized that it was Saint-Fiacre who was forcing him to stand upright.

  ‘Don’t move! … Someone shut the window …’

  Saint-Fiacre started with a punch in the face of the young bank clerk, which turned purple. He did it quite coldly.

  ‘Speak, now! Tell me …’

  No one intervened. It didn’t even occur to anyone, since they all felt that only one man had the right to raise his voice.

  Only the boy’s father murmured in Maigret’s ear: ‘Are you going to let him get away with that?’

  He certainly was! Maurice de Saint-Fiacre was master of the situation, and he was up to the task.

  ‘You saw me on the night in question, it’s true!’

  Then, to the others:

  ‘You know where? … On the lawn … I was about to go in … He was coming out … I wanted to pick up some family jewels to sell them on … We found ourselves face to face, in the night … He was shivering … And this scoundrel told me he was coming from … Can you guess? From my mother’s bedroom, that’s right! …’

  Then in a low voice, casually:

  ‘I abandoned my plan. I went back to Moulins.’

  Jean Métayer’s eyes widened. The lawyer stroked his chin to maintain his composure and peered at his glass, which he didn’t dare to pick up.

  ‘It wasn’t proof enough … Because there were two of them in the house, and Gautier might have been telling the truth … As I told you a moment ago, he was the first to take advantage of an old woman’s confusion … Métayer only turned up later … Had Métayer, fe
eling that his position was under threat, not tried to take revenge? … I wanted to know … They were both suspicious of each other … It was almost as if they were challenging me …

  ‘Isn’t that right, Gautier? … The gentleman with the dud cheques who prowls around the chateau at night and wouldn’t dare accuse anyone for fear of being arrested himself …’

  And, in another voice: ‘You will excuse me, Father, and you too, doctor, for making you witness such a foul spectacle … But we’ve said it already: true justice, the justice of the courts, has no business here … Isn’t that so, Monsieur Maigret? … Did you at least work out that I was the one kicking you a few moments ago? …’

  He paced back and forth, leaving the light for the shadow and then the shadow for the light. He gave the impression of a man containing himself, who can remain calm only at the cost of a terrible effort.

  Sometimes he came so close to Gautier that he could have touched him.

  ‘How tempting it was to pick up the revolver and fire! Yes! I had said it myself: the guilty man would die at midnight! And you became the defender of the honour of the Saint-Fiacre family.’

  This time his fist struck the young man so hard, right in the middle of the face, that blood spurted from his nose.

  Émile Gautier had the eyes of a dying animal. He staggered under the blow and was on the point of bursting into tears of pain, of fear, of confusion.

  The lawyer tried to intervene, but Saint-Fiacre pushed him away.

  ‘I beg your pardon, monsieur!’

  And his formality marked the distance that lay between them. Maurice de Saint-Fiacre was firmly in charge.

  ‘You will forgive me, gentlemen, but I have only one small formality to carry out.’

  He opened the door wide and turned towards Gautier.

  ‘Come with me! …’

  The young man’s feet were riveted to the ground. The corridor was unlit. He didn’t want to be alone there with his adversary.

  It didn’t take long. Saint-Fiacre walked over to him and hit him again, sending Gautier tumbling into the hall.

  ‘Up you go!’

  And he pointed to the stairs leading to the first floor.