She hesitated, so he added:
‘Did he try?’
‘Once, a long time ago …’
‘A year, two years, three years after you got married?’
‘A year, roughly, when Armand and I had started sleeping in separate rooms.’
‘Did you reject Léonard’s advances?’
‘Yes.’
The silence that followed was graver, more oppressive than the ones before. The atmosphere had changed imperceptibly. You felt that every word counted now, that they were approaching a devastating truth no one had talked about so far.
‘Who used the sheets with your initial on them?’
She answered too quickly. Radel didn’t have time to warn her of the trap.
‘I did, of course.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘I don’t think so. Perhaps my husband, occasionally.’
‘Not your brother-in-law?’
She didn’t say anything, so he repeated:
‘Not your brother-in-law?’
‘Not normally.’
‘Did the house have enough other sheets to go round?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Did you tell Jacques Sainval you were scared?’
She was starting to buckle under the strain, not knowing where to look, her hands clasped so tight that the knuckles were turning white.
‘He wanted me to leave Quai de la Gare immediately …’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I was waiting for the divorce papers to be finished. It was only going to be two or three days …’
‘In other words, if your brother-in-law hadn’t died, you would have left the house today or tomorrow?’
She sighed.
‘Did it occur to you last week that they might try to stop you leaving?’
She turned to her lawyer.
‘Give me a cigarette …’
Angelot insisted:
‘Stop you leaving, whatever it took?’
‘I don’t know any more. You’re confusing me.’
She lit her cigarette, put the lighter back in her handbag.
‘Didn’t Sainval advise you to be on your guard, especially after he realized your brother-in-law was following you?’
Her head snapped up.
‘How do you know that?’
‘When did he follow you?’
‘The day before yesterday.’
‘Not before?’
‘I’m not sure. Last Thursday, I thought I saw him on Quai de Bourbon …’
‘Were you in Sainval’s friend’s apartment?’
She turned and gave Maigret a reproachful look, as if she knew all these revelations were his doing.
‘Had Léonard taken your car?’
‘I let him …’
‘And you saw him go past from the window?’
‘He was driving slowly, looking at the front of the building …’
‘Was that when Sainval gave you an automatic?’
‘Your honour …’
Radel waved his hand and got to his feet.
‘At this juncture, I’d like to ask your permission to confer briefly with my client.’
The magistrate’s and Maigret’s eyes met. Maigret blinked.
‘As long as it is brief. You can use this room.’
He motioned to his secretary. The three men went out into the corridor, where Maigret wasted no time in lighting his pipe. He and the magistrate walked up and down amid the bustle, while the secretary sat down on the bench by the door.
‘Do you still think, Monsieur Maigret, that you can’t achieve the same results quietly, without raised voices, without a whole performance in an examining magistrate’s office, as you can at Quai des Orfèvres?’
What was the point of telling him that he’d only recited the questions he’d prepared?
‘If events transpired as I am starting to think they did, Radel will advise her to talk … It’s in her interest … He should have made her from the start … Unless she didn’t tell him the truth … Imagine if she hadn’t answered my questions, or been capable of lying. Where would we be now?’
Maigret touched his arm, because he had just spotted a hesitant silhouette some distance away in the vast corridor.
It was Armand Lachaume, clearly lost in the labyrinth of the Palais de Justice. He was looking at the name-plates on the doors.
‘Did you see him? We’d better go back in before …’
Lachaume hadn’t seen them yet. After knocking at his own door, the magistrate went back into his office with Maigret and the secretary.
‘I’m sorry. Unforeseen circumstances compel me to …’
Paulette Lachaume was on her feet as they walked in. She sat back down, paler but calmer than before, as though relieved. Radel seemed to be gearing up to make a speech for the defence. As he was opening his mouth, the telephone rang. The magistrate picked up, listened, then pushed the telephone towards Maigret.
‘It’s for you.’
‘Maigret here, yes … Two people saw the car? … Good! … The description fits? … Thank you. No … See you later …’
He hung up and announced in a neutral tone of voice:
‘Léonard Lachaume was outside the Palais-Royal restaurant the day before yesterday.’
Maître Radel shrugged, as if this was all old news now. If the questioning had gone differently, though, it would still have been valuable information.
‘My client, your honour, is ready to tell the whole truth, and, as you’ll see, it reflects more damningly on others than herself. You will also understand, and I would like this to go on record, that if she has been silent until now, it has not been out of a desire to shirk her responsibilities, but out of pity for a family she has been part of for several years …
‘A jury will have to deliver its verdict one day. The Lachaumes aren’t on trial here, but, for a few days at least, she, who knew them better than us, has been able to find mitigating circumstances for them.’
He sat down with a satisfied air, and straightened his tie.
Paulette Lachaume, not knowing where to begin, murmured at first:
‘I’ve been scared for the past week, since the letter was intercepted, and especially since I saw Léonard at Quai de Bourbon …’
At Quai des Orfèvres, Maigret would have spared her a difficult confession. He would have told the story and she would have only had to agree or, where necessary, put him straight.
‘Go on, madame.’
She wasn’t used to speaking in front of a shorthand typist who was taking down everything she said. It unnerved her. She struggled to find the right words. Several times Maigret had to exercise all his self-control not to intervene. He had forgotten to put out his pipe, which he carried on smoking in his corner without realizing.
‘It was Léonard who frightened me the most, because he was the one keeping the firm going at all costs. Once, a long time ago, when I was in two minds about giving him a larger amount than usual, he launched into a speech comparing big companies with old aristocratic families …
‘ “We have no right,” he said, a hard look in his eye, “to let a firm like ours go under. I would do anything to prevent that happening …”
‘That came back to me recently … I almost left the house the minute I remembered it, without saying anything, and moved into a hotel until the divorce was granted …’
‘What stopped you?’
‘I don’t know. I wanted to see it through, for everything to be above board … It’s hard to explain … You’d have had to have lived in that house for years to understand … Armand is a weak person, an invalid, who’s only a shadow of his brother … And then there’s Jean-Paul, I’d become fond of him … At first, I hoped to have children … They hoped so too, always on the look-out for signs of pregnancy … They were devastated I wasn’t a mother …
‘I wonder if that isn’t why Léonard …’
She changed the subject.
‘It’s tr
ue that Jacques gave me a gun … I didn’t want to take it … I was afraid they’d find it … I put it on my bedside table at night and kept it in my bag during the day …’
‘Where is it now?’
‘I don’t know what they did with it. It was so chaotic, so unbelievable afterwards …’
‘Tell us about before.’
‘I got back around midnight … Maybe eleven thirty … I didn’t notice the time … I’d decided that whatever happened I was only going to stay one more night after that … I jumped when I saw Léonard’s door opening … He watched me go into my room without a word, without saying goodnight. That unnerved me … When I went to the bathroom in my nightclothes, I saw a light under his door … I was even more scared … Maybe it was a presentiment … I almost didn’t go to bed, just sat in an armchair and waited in the dark for dawn to break …’
‘Didn’t you take your sleeping pill?’
‘No. I didn’t dare … In the end I lay down with the gun within reach, determined not to fall asleep. I kept my eyes open, listening to the sounds in the house …’
‘Did you hear him coming?’
‘It went on for over an hour … I think I dropped off for a moment … Then I heard the floorboards creaking in the corridor … I sat up in my bed …’
‘Wasn’t your door locked?’
‘It doesn’t have a key, most of the doors in the house don’t, and the lock hasn’t worked for ages … I sensed someone was turning the knob and then I carefully got up and flattened myself against the wall, a metre from the bed.’
‘Was there a light on in the corridor?’
‘No. Someone came in. I couldn’t see anything. I was afraid to shoot too quickly, sure that, if I missed …’
She couldn’t stay sitting down. Getting to her feet, she carried on, looking at Maigret now rather than the magistrate
‘Someone’s breathing came closer. A body almost brushed against mine. I’m sure that an arm went up to strike that part of the bed where my head should have been. Then, without realizing what I was doing, I pulled the trigger …’
Maigret had just frowned. Suddenly unconcerned about pecking order, he said:
‘May I, your honour?’
Without waiting for an answer, he went on:
‘Who turned on the light?’
‘It wasn’t me … At least, I don’t remember doing it … I rushed out into the corridor, not knowing where I was going … I probably would have run out into the street, in my nightdress …’
‘Who did you bump into?’
‘My husband … I think he turned the light on …’
‘Was he fully dressed?’
She looked at him, wide-eyed, then concentrated, as if trying to remember an exact image. After a moment, she muttered:
‘Yes … I hadn’t noticed that …’
‘What happened?’
‘I must have screamed … At least I remember opening my mouth to … Then I fainted … The real nightmare only started later … My father-in-law had come downstairs … Catherine too … You could hear her voice more than anyone’s … I heard her in the distance, making Jean-Paul go back up to his room. I saw Armand come out of my room with a big spanner …’
‘The adjustable spanner which Léonard had tried to hit you with.’
‘I suppose so … They told me to be quiet, to stop moaning …’
‘Who’s they?’
‘My father-in-law … That witch Catherine … Her most of all! It was her who washed the floor and helped Armand move the body … It was also her who noticed that there was blood on my sheet, because Léonard had fallen on to the unmade bed …’
‘Did they seem surprised by what had happened?’ It was the examining magistrate’s turn to ask.
‘I wouldn’t use that word … Appalled, but not surprised … I was the one they seemed to be angry with …’
The magistrate went on:
‘Was that when they saw to the ladder and the windowpane?’
‘No.’
Maigret resumed.
‘Don’t forget that around ten in the evening somebody, most probably Léonard, was seen breaking the glass on the wall … At more or less the same time, he must have prepared the ladder, the marks on the window-sill, the window coated with soap …’
‘I suppose so …’ she sighed.
‘You see, gentlemen, that my client …’ Radel began.
‘Wait a moment!’ the magistrate interrupted in a curt, stern voice.
‘Who asked you to keep quiet and make it seem like a burglary?’
‘No one in particular.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’
Of course he didn’t! He had been stuffed full of theories and it was up to the truth to submit to them, to fit into one category or other.
Paulette replied, unconcerned about antagonizing the magistrate:
‘You obviously weren’t there that night! I didn’t know what was real or not any more … I remember, for instance, although I’m not sure it really happened, Catherine’s voice screaming, “The windows!” Because they had turned on all the lights at first. The windows don’t have shutters, only curtains that don’t close all the way … She made them turn out all the lights … She also found a torch, in the kitchen, I suppose. Then she came back with a bucket …
‘ “You’d be better off going to bed, Monsieur Armand … You too, Monsieur Félix.”
‘Both stayed. Later sometime I asked for a drink and they wouldn’t let me have one, saying that my breath mustn’t smell like a wino’s in the morning …’
‘What happened in the morning? Was Jean-Paul told?’
‘No! They told him his uncle had had a fit … When he said he’d heard a gunshot, everyone told him it was the sound of a train or a car in the street that he’d heard in his sleep …
‘Once he’d left for school, we did a kind of rehearsal …’
She looked at her lawyer. Was she going to add that she had telephoned him to ask for advice? Did he motion to her to keep quiet?
Maigret had stopped listening for a moment, straining instead to hear a faint scraping against the door.
Suddenly, as Paulette Lachaume was about to continue her account, a gunshot rang out, followed by hurried steps, a hum of voices.
In a split second the five people in the magistrate’s office all froze like waxworks.
There was a knock at the door. Maigret was the first slowly to get to his feet. Before he opened it, he whispered to Paulette:
‘I think your husband is dead.’
Armand was lying on the dusty floor. He had shot himself in the mouth and a 6.35 automatic could be seen a few centimetres from his clenched hand.
Maigret looked at the young woman who hadn’t moved, the lawyer who was a little pale, the magistrate who hadn’t arranged his features in an appropriate expression yet.
‘I suppose you don’t need me any more?’ he merely said, then walked away down the corridor, towards the little door leading to the Police Judiciaire.
Perhaps if everything had taken place there, it would have turned out differently.
Proper procedures had been observed with Paulette Lachaume’s confession.
Proper procedures had been observed with her husband’s death.
Maybe it was better for both of them that way?
Only three old people were left in the house on Quai de la Gare, and the only descendant of the Lachaume family, est. 1817, was a boarder at school.
When Maigret walked into his office, Lucas burst out of the inspectors’ room, a question on the tip of his tongue. But Maigret had already picked up the telephone and was asking for Véronique’s number in Rue François Premier.
While trying to come to terms with what had happened, she had every right to be kept informed.
1. Madame Pardon’s Rice Pudding
The maid had just placed the rice pudding in the middle of the round table, and Maigret had to make an effort to look both surpri
sed and delighted as a blushing Madame Pardon cast him a mischievous glance.
It was their umpteenth rice pudding in the four years that the Maigrets had got into the habit of dining at the Pardons’ and that the latter had in turn been dining with them a fortnight later at Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, where it was Madame Maigret’s turn to lay on a spread.
In the fifth or sixth month of this arrangement, Madame Pardon had served a rice pudding. Maigret had had second and third helpings, saying that the dish reminded him of his childhood and that he hadn’t tasted better in the last forty years, which was true.
Since then, every dinner at the Pardons’ new apartment in Boulevard Voltaire had been finished off by a helping of the same creamy dessert, which seemed to chime in with the cosy, relaxed, slightly dull nature of these occasions.
Neither Maigret nor his wife had family in Paris and they had little experience of regular weekly get-togethers with sisters or sisters-in-law, so the dinners with the Pardons reminded them of visits to see aunts and uncles when they were little.
This evening, the Pardons’ daughter, Alice, whom they had known since she was at school and who had now been married for a year, had joined them along with her husband. She was seven months pregnant and had the ‘mask’, particularly the red blotches on her nose and under her eyes, and her young husband was paying special attention to what she ate.
Maigret was about to comment once again on how delicious his hostess’s rice pudding was when the telephone rang for the third time since they had sat down to eat. They were used to it by now. It had become a sort of joke at the start of the meal to wonder whether the doctor would make it through to dessert without being called by one of his patients.
The telephone sat on a console table surmounted by a mirror. Pardon, with his napkin still in his hand, picked up the receiver.
‘Hello! Doctor Pardon here.’
They were watching him in silence and suddenly heard a piercing voice that caused the phone to vibrate. Apart from the doctor, none of them could make out what was being said. It was a just a stream of noise, as when you play a record at too fast a speed.
Maigret, however, gave a frown, because he saw his friend’s expression turn serious and a worried look pass over his face.
‘Yes … I’m listening, Madame Kruger … Yes …’
Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses Page 13