‘Inspector!’
It was Ducrau, who was already almost up with him. He must have abandoned his mourning family and cut short the condolences to catch him up.
‘What are your lot up to with Gassin?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was watching you back there when your inspector was talking to you. Is he going to be arrested?’
‘He has been.’
‘Why?’
Maigret wondered for a moment whether he should say anything or not.
‘He bought himself a revolver this morning.’
Ducrau said nothing, but his eyes became very small and hard.
‘I assume he did so with you in mind?’ Maigret went on.
‘It’s quite likely,’ muttered Ducrau thrusting one hand in his pocket from which he produced a Browning.
He gave a defiant laugh.
‘Are you going to arrest me?’
‘Hardly worth the bother. We’d have to let you go in next to no time.’
‘How about Gassin?’
‘Gassin as well.’
They were standing in a patch of sunlight on the kerb, in a narrow street where housewives were doing their shopping. It was there, as he thought about having two men each with a revolver on the loose in Paris, that the crazy idea came to Maigret that he must look as if he was playing God the Father.
‘Gassin won’t kill me,’ said Ducrau.
‘Why not?’
‘Because!’
And changing tack:
‘Will you have lunch with me tomorrow, out in the country? At Samois?’
‘I’ll see. Thanks anyway.’
He let him walk away, with his revolver and his detachable collar, which was too tight and was hurting him. Maigret felt tired. He remembered that he had promised to phone his wife and let her know if he was coming down on Sunday to spend the day with her. But first he went into the police station. At least it was cool inside! The station head had gone to lunch, and his office clerk greeted Maigret enthusiastically.
‘Your man is in the cell on the left. I’ve got the contents of his pockets here.’
They were laid out on a sheet of newspaper: first the revolver, which was a cheap affair, with a cylinder; then a meerschaum pipe, a red rubber tobacco pouch and a handkerchief edged with blue; and finally a limp, rusty-brown wallet which Maigret juggled in his hand for a moment before opening it.
There was hardly anything in it. In one compartment were the Golden Fleece’s registration documents, and the clearance certificate with the signatures of the lock-keepers. In addition there was a small amount of money and two photographs, one of a woman and the other of a man.
The photo of the woman was at least twenty years old. The picture, badly printed, had faded but it was still possible to make out the features of a young, slim woman with a tentative smile not unlike Aline’s.
It was Gassin’s wife and, given her delicate health and natural languor, she must have seemed refined, ladylike to the rugged denizens of the canal – including Ducrau, who had slept with her! Did it happen on board the boat when Gassin was out drinking in a bar or in some shabby hotel room?
The other photograph was of Jean Ducrau, whom they had just buried. It was a casual snap. The young man was wearing white trousers and standing on the deck of the barge. On the back, he had written: To my sweet Aline who might perhaps read these words one day, Jean.
He was dead too! Hanged!
‘Here you go,’ said Maigret.
‘Did you find anything?’
‘Just dead people,’ he murmured as he opened a cell door.
‘Well now, Gassin.’
The old man was sitting on a bench. He stood up, and Maigret scowled when he saw his gaping shoes, his collar undone and his tie gone. He called the clerk:
‘Who was responsible for this?’
‘It’s routine …’
‘Lace his shoes and knot his tie for him.’
For the boatman was in such a pitiful state that the whole process felt like an insult or plain malice.
‘Sit down, Gassin. Here are your possessions, except for the revolver, of course. Is the drinking binge over? Is your head clear?’
He sat down opposite him, elbows on knees, while the old man, bending down, was threading his shoe-laces.
‘Let’s be clear. I’ve never bothered you. I’ve let you come and go as you pleased and drink like a hole in sand. Oh stop fiddling with that now! You can get dressed later. Are you listening?’
Gassin looked up, and Maigret realized that if he’d kept his head down earlier it was probably to hide an odd sort of smile.
‘Why do you want to kill Ducrau?’
The smile had already vanished. Instead, there was the deeply lined face of a boatman which, now that it was turned towards Maigret, wore an expression of total composure.
‘I’ve not killed anybody yet.’
Wasn’t this the first time he’d spoken? He said the words calmly, in a muted growl which was probably his natural voice.
‘I know. But do you intend to kill anybody?’
‘I might kill somebody.’
‘Ducrau?’
‘Maybe him, maybe someone else.’
He wasn’t drunk, that much was obvious. But he had been drinking. Either that or there was something left over from previous libations. On those other days, he exaggerated his exasperated reactions. Now he was too calm.
‘Why did you buy a gun?’
‘What are you doing in Charenton?’
‘I don’t see the connection.’
‘But there is one!’
And as Maigret fell momentarily silent, disconcerted by this bewilderingly reductive turn of the conversation, he added:
‘Except that it really has nothing to do with you.’
He picked up the second lace, bent over and once more began feeding it through the eyeholes of his shoe. Maigret had to listen very hard so as not to miss a word of what he was saying because words tended to get lost in his beard. Perhaps he didn’t care whether he was heard or not. Perhaps it was one last rambling of a drunk.
‘Ten years ago, at Châlons, the master of the Cormorant moored his boat just by a grand house where a doctor lived. His name was Louis – not the doctor, the boatman. He was over the moon, he could hardly wait: his wife, who was thirty, was at last expecting.’
At intervals the walls shook as a tram went past, and the bell of a shop nearby was just audible as the door kept constantly opening and closing.
‘A baby! They’d been hoping for one for eight years. To have one, Louis would have spent every penny he’d saved. So he goes and talks to the doctor, a short dark man with glasses. I used to know him. Louis explains that he’s afraid the birth will happen out in the sticks, in some village or other, and that he’d rather stay at Châlons for as long as it took.’
Gassin sat up, blowing hard, the result of remaining bent over.
‘A week goes by. The doctor calls every evening. Eventually, one day at about five in the afternoon, the contractions start coming. Louis can’t sit still. He goes out on deck, on to the quay. He hangs on the doctor’s doorbell. He wills him to come. The doctor assures him that all is well, very well, that everything is going without a hitch and that all he needs do is to send for him at the last moment.’
Gassin was speaking as if he were reciting a litany.
‘You don’t know that part of the town? I can see the house as clearly as if I was there, a large, brand-new detached house, with big windows which were all lit up that evening, for the doctor was giving a party. He was prinked and perfumed, and his moustaches freshly curled. Twice he comes in a great hurry, his breath smelling the first time of burgundy and then of spirits.
‘“Good! Excellent!” he kept saying. “I’ll be back shortly …”
‘Louis ran across the quay. There were sounds of a gramophone playing. On the curtains there were shadows of people dancing.
‘His wife was screamin
g, and Louis, like one demented, was weeping dry tears. What was happening terrified him. An old woman whose boat was moored a little way away was convinced that the child was presenting badly.
‘At midnight, Louis goes and rings the doctor’s doorbell. He is told the doctor will come soon.
‘At half past midnight, he rings again. The corridor is full of music.
‘And Louis’ wife is screaming so loudly that passers-by stop for a moment on the quay and then go hurrying on their way.
‘Finally the guests leave. The little doctor appears, not entirely drunk, but not exactly clear-headed. He removes his jacket and rolls up his sleeves.
‘“Might need forceps …”
‘There’s not much room to move. They keep getting in each other’s way. And then the doctor starts talking about crushing the child’s head.
‘“But you can’t do that!” cries Louis.
‘“Do you want me to save the mother?”
‘The doctor is almost asleep. He’s almost out on his feet. He’s floundering. An hour later, he straightens up. Louis sees that his wife has stopped screaming, is no longer moving …’
Gassin stared Maigret straight in the eye and finished:
‘Louis killed him.’
‘Killed the doctor?’
‘Coolly, no fuss, put a bullet in his head, then he fired another into his gut, then he opened his own mouth as if he intended eating the barrel, and there was a third shot. They sold the barge at auction three months later.’
Why was Gassin smiling? Maigret preferred him dead drunk and venomous, as he had been on previous days.
‘What are you going to do with me now,’ he asked, without curiosity.
‘Will you promise not to do anything stupid?’
‘What do you mean by stupid?’
‘Ducrau has always been your friend, hasn’t he?’
‘We come from the same village. We’ve shipped together.’
‘He’s … very fond of you.’
Maigret stumbled over the words.
‘Maybe.’
‘Tell me, Gassin, who have you got it in for? I’m talking man to man now.’
‘And you?’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘I’m asking who you’ve got it in for. You’re looking for something. Well? Have you found it?’
It was unexpected. Where Maigret had seen only an old soak, there was a man who might drink himself silly in his little corner but had in fact been carrying out an investigation of his own. So that was what Gassin meant!
‘I haven’t come up with anything definite yet.’
‘Nor me.’
But he was on the point of doing so! That was the meaning of the heavy, cold look in his eye.
Maigret had been right to give him back his laces and tie. This whole business no longer had any connection with this scruffy cell nor even with the police. They were two men sitting opposite each other.
‘You had nothing to do with the attack on Ducrau, did you?’
‘Absolutely nothing,’ came the sardonic reply.
‘Nor did you have anything to do with the suicide of Jean Ducrau?’
Gassin did not answer but shook his head slowly.
‘You weren’t related to Bébert and you weren’t a friend of his. You had no reason to hang him.’
The boatman stood up with a sigh, and Maigret was shocked to see him so small, so old.
‘Tell me what you know, Gassin. Your Châlons friend left nothing behind him. But you have a daughter.’
He regretted the words for he was given a look of such desperate questing that he felt he had no choice but to lie, and lie well, whatever the consequences.
‘Your daughter will get better.’
‘Maybe she will and maybe she won’t.’
It was as if it didn’t matter to him either way. Dammit, that wasn’t the issue, and Maigret knew it. They had reached the point where he wished he hadn’t come. But Gassin asked nothing. He remained silent and watched, that was all, and it was painful.
‘You’ve been happy on the barge until now …’
‘Do you know why I always do the same run? Because it’s the one we did after I got married.’
His face looked leathery, and the skin was criss-crossed with fine black lines.
‘Answer me, Gassin: do you know who attacked Ducrau?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Do you have any idea why his son said he did it?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Do you know why the lock-keeper was hanged?’
‘No.’
He was telling the truth, that much was beyond doubt.
‘Will I be sent to prison?’
‘I can’t keep you under arrest much longer for carrying a prohibited firearm. All I ask is that you should stay calm and patient and wait until my investigations are complete.’
The small, light-coloured eyes had turned aggressive again.
‘I’m not the doctor from Châlons,’ added Maigret.
Gassin smiled as the inspector got to his feet, exhausted by this encounter which was supposed to be an interrogation.
‘I’m going to let you go now.’
It was the only thing he could do. Outside, it was still the same implausible spring weather – not a drop of rain, never a shower and a cloudless sky. The ground under the chestnut trees in the small square was hard and white. All day, council watering carts kept sprinkling the tarmac, which was now as soft as at the height of summer.
On the Seine, the Marne and even on the canal itself small boats, some painted, others newly varnished, rowed by men with their shirt-sleeves rolled up, threaded their way through the barges.
There were pavement cafés everywhere, and to stroll past one of them was to walk through a smell of cold beer. Many boatmen had not yet rejoined their boats; they were rolling from one bar to another, in their starched collars, their faces growing redder and redder.
An hour later, Maigret learned in the bar on the quay that Gassin hadn’t gone back to his barge but that he’d taken a room at Catherine’s, above the dance hall.
8.
It was a Sunday, one of those Sundays which do not exist outside childhood memories, everything spruce and newly minted, from the periwinkle-blue sky to the water which reflected elongated images of the houses. Even the taxis were redder or greener than on other days, and the empty, echoing streets playfully bounced the smallest sounds back and forth.
Maigret ordered the driver to stop just before he got to the Charenton lock, and Lucas, whom he’d detailed to keep an eye on Gassin, emerged from the bar and came over to meet him.
‘He hasn’t moved. He spent last night drinking with the woman who runs the dance hall, but he hasn’t left the place. Maybe he’s still asleep.’
The decks of the barges were as deserted as the streets. There was just one small boy sitting on a rudder, who was putting on his Sunday socks. Lucas, nodding towards the Golden Fleece, went on:
‘Yesterday, the crazy girl got worked up. She popped out of the hatch five or six times and once she ran as far as the bar on the corner. Some boatmen saw her and went off to find the old man, but he wouldn’t go home. After the funeral and the rest of it, it created an awkward atmosphere. Until midnight you could see people on the boats all the time, and they were all looking in this direction. I should also mention that the dance hall has opened again for business. You can hear the music as far away as the lock. The men from the boats were still all dressed up. Anyway, the girl must have gone to sleep in the end, but this morning it wasn’t properly light before she was wandering around the place, not wearing shoes, like a cat worrying about her kittens. On the way she woke up the neighbours on three or four barges: two hours ago you’d have seen men and women in nightshirts peering out of all the hatches. But despite it all, no one told her where the old man was. I think it was for the best. One woman brought her back to the Golden Fleece, and they’re both there now, cooking up breakfast for themselves. Loo
k, you can see the smoke coming from the stove-pipe.’
Smoke was rising straight into the air from most of the boats, where people were getting dressed amid a warm aroma of coffee.
‘Keep watching him,’ said Maigret.
Instead of getting back into his taxi, he walked into the dance hall. The door was open. The woman was sprinkling water on the floor before sweeping it.
‘Is he upstairs?’ asked the inspector.
‘I think he’s just got up. I can hear footsteps.
Maigret climbed several stairs and listened. Someone was indeed moving about. Then a door opened, and Gassin stuck out his face covered with shaving soap, shrugged his shoulders and went back inside.
Ducrau’s house in the country, at Samois, was separated from the Seine by the towpath. It was a substantial building consisting of three wings and a central courtyard.
When the taxi stopped, Ducrau was waiting by the gate. He was wearing navy blue as usual, and there was a new cap on his head.
‘You needn’t keep the cab,’ he told Maigret. ‘My car will take you back.’
He waited while Maigret paid the driver. He applied surprisingly meticulous attention to locking the gate himself. He then put the key in his pocket and called to his chauffeur, who was at the far end of the courtyard cleaning a grey car with a hose.
‘Edgar! Don’t let anybody in and if you see anyone prowling round the house, come and tell me.’
After which he looked solemnly at Maigret and asked:
‘Where is he?’
‘Getting dressed.’
‘What about Aline? What sort of state is she in?’
‘She went out looking for him. But now she’s on the barge, and a neighbour is with her.’
‘Fancy a bite to eat? We won’t be having lunch before one.’
‘No thanks.’
‘Maybe a glass of something?’
‘Not just now.’
Ducrau stayed in the courtyard, looking at the buildings and pointed to a window with the end of his walking stick.
‘The old girl isn’t dressed yet. As for the young couple, you can hear them bickering.’
Indeed raised voices could be heard through the open windows of a room on the first floor.
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