It was as if Maigret had opened the scoring, because Ducrau was nonplussed.
‘She is dull, dim and vulgar,’ he sighed. ‘Just like her mother, who I’ve settled in one of the small houses nearby. That one has spent her whole life crying! Ah! See that? The stone-crusher, it’s another one of mine. It’s the most powerful in the port of Paris. But seriously, what line of inquiry are you following?’
‘All of them.’
They were still walking, surrounded by the noises of the river and the activity on its banks. The morning air smelled of water and tar. From time to time they had to make a detour around a crane or wait for a gap between two lorries.
‘You’ve been on board the Golden Fleece, I assume?’
Ducrau had hesitated for much longer before asking this question than over any of the others and immediately pretended to be engrossed in the movement of a convoy of barges. Actually, the question was unnecessary, because he had watched Maigret go aboard from his window.
‘She’s a very strange mother.’
The effect was dramatic. Ducrau came to a sudden stop. With his short legs and bloated neck, he looked like a bull about to charge.
‘Who the devil told you that?’
‘I didn’t need anybody to tell me.’
‘So?’ he said, to say something. He scowled, clasping his hands behind his back.
‘So nothing.’
‘What did she tell you?’
‘That you went there to see her.’
‘Is that all?’
‘That she wouldn’t open the door. Didn’t you tell me that old Gassin was your very good friend? Yet it looks to me …’
But Ducrau growled impatiently:
‘Stupid idiot! If I hadn’t grabbed you, you’d have been knocked over by that barrel …!’
He turned to a member of the crew who had been rolling barrels and boomed:
‘Can’t you be more careful, you idiot?’
So saying, he emptied his pipe by knocking the bowl on the heel of his shoe.
‘I bet you’ve got it into your head that the child is mine! Go on, admit it! Just because I have a reputation for chasing skirts! Well, inspector, this time you’ve got it wrong.’
He spoke the words softly, for a marked change had come over him. He seemed less hard, less sure of himself. He had lost the bombast of the rich man who is showing inferiors around his domain.
‘Do you have kids?’ he asked with that side glance which Maigret was beginning to recognize.
‘I only ever had a little girl. She died.’
‘Well I have! Now look, I’m not going to ask you to promise not to tell anyone, but if you are unwise enough to say a single word, I’ll smash your face in! For a start, I’ve got the two you know about. The girl is as pathetic as her mother. Then there’s the boy. I’m not sure about him yet, but I can’t see him amounting to much. Have you met him? No? Quiet, shy, affectionate, and always ill. So much for them. But, second, I have another daughter. You mentioned Gassin just now. He’s a good man, though that didn’t stop me from sleeping with his amazing wife. He doesn’t know. If he did, he’d go berserk, because when he goes to Paris he never comes back without taking flowers to the cemetery.
‘And it’s been sixteen years!’
By now they had crossed the Pont de la Tournelle and were just walking on to the Ile Saint-Louis, that haven of provincial peace. As they passed, a boatman in a sailor’s cap emerged from a café and ran after Ducrau. Maigret stepped to one side while they exchanged a few words and as he waited his retina continued to display an image of an Aline who was more unreal than ever.
Only a little while earlier he had been picturing the Golden Fleece gliding along gleaming canals, the blonde girl at the helm, the old man driving his horses on the towpath and, on deck, lying in a hammock or stretched out on the sun-warmed, resinous cargo of logs, a much too bookish convalescent.
‘That’s fine for a week on Sunday,’ came Ducrau’s voice from behind him.
And for Maigret’s benefit, he added:
‘A little party he’s organizing at Nogent for one of my men who’s been working on the same barge for thirty years.’
He was hot. They had been walking for more than an hour. Shopkeepers were raising their blinds and typists who were late were scurrying along the pavement.
Ducrau stopped speaking. Perhaps he was waiting for Maigret to pick up the conversation where they had left it, but the inspector seemed lost in thought.
‘I’m sorry for dragging you all this way. Do you know the Henri IV, the tobacconist’s in the middle of the Pont-Neuf? It’s not far from the Police Judiciaire. But I bet you never knew it’s also a café? Five or six of us, sometimes more, meet up there every day. It’s a kind of club or guild for shippers.’
‘Has Aline always been mad?’
‘She’s not mad. Either you weren’t seeing straight or else you know nothing about such things. Her trouble is more a kind of late development. Yes, that’s how the doctor explained it, very clearly. She’s nineteen, and you can say she’s got a mental age of a girl of ten. But she can still make up for lost time. They said there was some hope it would happen after she … had the baby.’
He had spoken the words in a whisper, shamefacedly.
‘Does she know you are her father?’
He gave a start, his face suddenly crimson.
‘Whatever happens, you must never say that to her! In the first place, she wouldn’t believe you. And secondly, Gassin must never, and I mean absolutely never, suspect!’
At this time of day, if he was up and about as early as he was the day before, the old boatman would no doubt be drunk in one or other of the two bars.
‘And you believe he doesn’t suspect anything?’
‘Positive.’
‘And does anyone else …?’
‘Nobody has ever known, except me.’
‘Is this the reason why the Golden Fleece spends longer loading or unloading than the other boats?’
The answer was so obvious that Ducrau shrugged his shoulders and then, with a different tone in his voice and with a different expression on his face, he said:
‘Cigar? Let’s not discuss this any more, if you don’t mind.’
‘But what if it’s the key to what happened?’
‘That is not true!’
He was categorical, almost threatening.
‘Come inside with me. I’ll only be two minutes.’
They were now at the Henri IV. The drinkers leaning on the bar were ordinary boatmen. But there was a second room divided off by a partition wall. There, Ducrau shook hands with one or two customers. He did not introduce Maigret to them.
‘Is it true that somebody accepted Charleroi coal at a rate of fifty-two francs?’
‘A Belgian. He operates with three motorized boats.’
‘Waiter! Half a bottle of white wine! You drink white wine?’
Maigret nodded and smoked his pipe as he watched the comings and goings on the Pont-Neuf, with only half an ear on the conversation being carried on. It was some time before he was aware of an unusual hum in the air and even longer before he realized that it was a barge hooter. It did not sound two or three times, as is usual when a boat passes a bridge, but emitted a single, continuous sound so protracted that passers-by stopped, as surprised as the inspector.
The landlord of the Henri IV was the first to look up. Two boatmen followed him to the door, where Maigret had taken up a position.
A barge powered by a diesel engine was coming downstream. It slowed when it saw the arches of the Pont-Neuf and went into reverse to check its way. The hooter was still sounding and, while the wife took the helm, her husband jumped into the dinghy and rowed smartly towards the bank.
‘It’s François!’ said one of the boatmen.
They all walked down on to the quayside and were standing above the stone wall when the wherry touched land. The woman at the helm was having difficulty keeping the long boat on a straight course.
‘In the café’
‘Got to tell him, break it gently – don’t ask me how – but don’t come out with it too sudden, it’s his son …’
‘Well?’
‘He’s been found dead … It’s all a big mess back there. Seems he …’
A gruesome movement of his hand across his throat. He didn’t need to say more.
Besides, a tug coming upstream was hooting because the barge had now strayed into its lane, and the boatman wasted no time in pushing his wherry out again.
A few people who had stopped on the bridge were already moving off, but down on the quayside three men stood staring at each other, not knowing what to do. Their unease increased when they saw Ducrau at the door of the Henri IV, from which he was trying to see what was going on.
‘Is it for me?’
He was so accustomed to it always being for him! Was he not one of the five or six men who ruled the world of water?
Maigret preferred to leave it to the men, who wavered, nudging each other with their elbows until one of them, out of desperation, stammered:
‘Boss, you got to go back straight away. It’s …’
Ducrau looked at Maigret, with a frown on his face.
‘It’s what?’
‘Trouble at home …’
‘Well, what sort of trouble?’
He was getting angry now. It seemed as if he suspected them all of something.
‘It’s Jean …’
‘Spit it out, man!’
‘He’s dead!’
This was happening in the doorway of a café in the middle of the Pont-Neuf, in bright sunshine, with glasses of golden wine still standing on the bar and the landlord with his sleeves rolled up and the multicoloured display of cigarette packets.
Ducrau looked around him with eyes so blank that it was as if he had not understood. His chest heaved, but all that came out was a faint sneer.
‘It’s not true!’ he said, and his eyes began to brim.
‘That was François, he’d come down from the port, he stopped to say …’
Though short, he was enormous, so broad, so solid that no one would have dared offer him their sympathy. Yet he turned to look at Maigret with eyes full of distress, then snorted and barked at the men he had been talking to:
‘I’ll do it for forty-eight!’
But even as he spoke the words, thus allowing Maigret to see his hard-boiled toughness, his face wore an expression of helpless, childish pride. With a wave of his arm, he flagged down a red taxi. He did not stop to ask the inspector to get in with him, for he assumed that such a thing was too natural to need saying. As natural as not speaking!
‘The lock at Charenton!’
They drove back along the Seine, where only an hour before he had described the life of the river boat by boat, mooring-ring by mooring-ring. He still looked out at it now but without seeing it, and they were already approaching the gates of the port at Bercy when he burst out:
‘The stupid little fool!’
The last word was choked off. There was a sob in his throat, and he kept it there, not letting it out until he reached his front door.
The port beneath the lock looked different. People had recognized the boss through the windows of the taxi.
The lock-keeper stopped cranking the sluices so that he could remove his cap. On the quayside, workmen stood still, as if life had been suspended. A foreman was waiting for him by the door.
‘Were you the one who stopped the crusher?’
‘I thought …’
Ducrau was first to start up the stairs. Maigret followed. He heard footsteps and voices coming from much higher up. A door on the first floor opened, and Jeanne Ducrau flung herself into her husband’s arms. She was limp. He straightened her up, looked round for something to support her, deposited her like a parcel in the care of a fat neighbour who was snivelling.
He continued up the stairs. Oddly enough, he turned round to check if Maigret was still with him. Between the third and fourth floors, they met a police inspector coming down, who took off his hat and began:
‘Monsieur Ducrau, may I say …’
‘Dammit!’
He swept him aside and continued up the stairs.
‘Detective Chief Inspector, I …’
‘Later,’ growled Maigret.
‘He left a note which …’
‘Give it to me!’
He grabbed it literally on the wing and pushed it into his pocket. Only one thing really counted: the man climbing the stairs, his breath laboured, who stopped outside a door with a brass knob, which was opened at once to admit him.
It was an attic room. The light entered from above, and fine dust particles danced in a shaft of sunlight. There was a table with books on it, a chair covered with the same red plush as the one downstairs.
The doctor was seated at the table signing the preliminary report and was too late to prevent Ducrau from snatching back the sheet that covered the body of his son.
He did not say anything, not one word. He seemed more surprised than anything else, as if he had been confronted by some inexplicable sight. And utterly inexplicable it was, a strange ruination: a tall, slim young man whose pallid white chest was visible though a gap in the jacket of his pyjamas, which were blue with thin stripes. Around his neck was a wide blue circle. His features were horribly convulsed.
Ducrau took a step forwards, perhaps to kiss the dead boy, but he did not do so. He seemed frightened. He looked away, at the ceiling, then at a spot by the door.
‘From the attic window,’ the doctor said quietly.
He had hanged himself, at first light, and it was his parents’ maid, bringing him his breakfast as she always did, who had found him.
At the same moment, Ducrau, showing surprising presence of mind, turned to Maigret and barked:
‘The letter!’
So he had seen and heard everything during those terrible moments as he climbed the stairs!
The inspector took the letter from his pocket, and his companion grabbed it from his hands and read it at a glance then lowered his arms wearily.
‘How stupid can anyone be!’
That was all. And it was truly what he thought. It sprang from the depths of his soul, more tragic than any number of rolling phrases.
‘Read it, then!’
He turned his anger on Maigret, who had not been quick enough to pick up the note which had fallen on to the floor.
I was the one who attacked my father and I have taken the law into my own hands. I say sorry to everyone. Mother must not be sad.
Jean
For the second time, Ducrau was overcome by a fit of laughter which left him gasping.
‘Can you imagine?’
He had not protested when the doctor had put the sheet back over the body and was not sure whether he should stay there, go downstairs, stand or walk about.
‘It’s not true!’ he said once again.
Eventually, he laid a large hand on Maigret’s shoulder, a heavy, weary hand.
‘I’m thirsty!’
His cheeks were almost purple, his forehead glistened with sweat, and his hair was stuck to his temples. And the undeniable smell of ether, which had been used on a woman who had fainted, filled that attic room.
5.
It was shortly before nine o’clock the following morning when Maigret arrived at the Police Judiciaire to be told by the office boy that there had already been a phone call for him.
‘They gave no name but said they’d call back.’
On top of the pile of mail was a duty report.
The assistant lock-keeper at Charenton was found dead this morning, hanging by the neck from the upper sluice gate.
Maigret did not even have time to be shocked, for the phone was already ringing. He picked up the receiver irritably and was very surprised when he recognized the voice at the other end of the line, which spoke simply, with deference and even a hint of un
expected diffidence.
‘Hello? Is that you, inspector? It’s Ducrau. Would you be so good as to come to see me here? I’d come to you, but it wouldn’t be the same … Are you still there? … I’m not at Charenton. I’m at the office, 33 Quai des Célestins … You’re coming? … I’m most obliged.’
Every morning for the last ten days, the same sun had shone with the tart aftertaste of gooseberries. There was a stronger smell of springtime in the air along the Seine than elsewhere, and when Maigret reached Quai des Célestins he cast an envious glance at a student and several elderly gentlemen who were rummaging through the dusty boxes of the booksellers.
Number 33 was a building on three floors, already old. Fixed to the door were several brass plates. The interior had the typical feel of those small town-houses which have been converted into offices. There were notices on the doors: Cashier, Office and so on. Directly in front of the inspector was a staircase which led up to the first floor, and it was at the top of it that Ducrau appeared as Maigret was looking round for someone to ask.
‘Would you come this way?’
He took his visitor into a drawing room which had become an office. It had retained its moulded ceiling, the large mirrors and gilt decoration, but it all had an old-fashioned look and clashed with the plain deal furniture.
‘Did you read the brass plates?’ asked Ducrau, motioning Maigret to a chair. ‘Downstairs is the Marne Quarry Company. Here it’s towing, and upstairs handles river and canal transportation. That’s what the name Ducrau is all about!’
But he said it without pride, as if this information was no longer of importance. He was sitting with his back to the light and Maigret noticed that he was wearing a black armband on one sleeve of his heavy blue jacket. He had not shaved, with the result that his cheeks looked flabbier.
He sat for a moment without speaking, fiddling with his pipe, which had gone out. It was at this point that Maigret realized that there were in fact two distinct Ducraus, one who boasted, even to himself, talked loudly and puffed his chest out in an endless theatrical display, and another who would suddenly forget to watch himself and was a quite shy, awkward man.
But he obviously found it difficult to be that Ducrau! He had a pressing need to stay a notch above ordinary reality. Already his eyes had that spark in them which heralded a new burst of play-acting.
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