‘The vegetable garden is at the back, as are the original stables. The house on the left belongs to a big publisher, and some English people live in the one on the right.’
There were country houses and villas in the area round about, between the Seine and the forest of Fontainebleau. Maigret made out the dull thud of balls coming from a nearby tennis court. The gardens were contiguous. An old lady in white was sitting in a rocking-chair by the side of a lawn.
‘Sure you won’t have a drink?’
Ducrau seemed disconcerted, as if he was asking himself what on earth he was going to do with his visitor. He hadn’t shaved. His eyelids drooped wearily.
‘Well, this is where we spend Sundays.’
The tone of voice was the same as if he had sighed:
‘Do you have any idea of how awful life can be?’
Around the two men all was calm, with contrasts of light and shade, white walls, climbing roses and a shingle of gravel underfoot. The Seine flowed gently by, its surface furrowed by small boats. People on horses rode past on the towpath.
Ducrau made his way to the vegetable garden, filling his pipe as he walked, pointed out a peacock which was floundering through a bed of lettuce and growled:
‘My daughter’s idea. She thinks it adds a touch of class. She wanted swans too, but there’s no lake!’
He was giving so little thought to what he was saying that suddenly, looking Maigret straight in the eye, he said very distinctly:
‘I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind?’
It wasn’t a question he was asking lightly. He’d had it ready for some time, probably since the evening before, and it was all he had been thinking about. He attached such importance to it that it hung over him like a brooding cloud.
Maigret was smoking and watched the smoke rising in the clear air.
‘I’m leaving the force on Wednesday.’
‘I know.’
They understood each other perfectly, though neither wanted to let it be known. Ducrau had not shut and locked the gate casually, and there was nothing casual now about the way he walked round the deserted vegetable garden.
‘Isn’t this enough for you?’ asked Maigret so quietly and with such unconcern that anyone would have wondered if in fact he’d spoken at all.
Ducrau halted and spent ages staring at a melon cloche. When he looked up again, his expression was quite different. Before, he hadn’t been wearing a mask: he’d been a man who was worried, hesitant, anxious.
But that was all changed. His features had hardened. An unpleasant smile lurked around his mouth. He did not look at his visitor but all around him, at the sky, at the windows of the large white house.
‘He’ll see me, won’t he?’
And his roaming eyes finally hit Maigret full in the face. It was the gaze of a man forcing himself to look on the bright side but, as his confidence ebbs, tries to look threatening.
‘Let’s talk about something else. What if we had that drink after all? Know what surprises me? The fact that your inquiries have not included Decharme and my mistress, and …’
‘I thought you wanted to change the subject?’
But a genial Ducrau laid a hand on Maigret’s shoulder and carried on:
‘Hold on! Let’s play this straight. You start by telling me who you think is guilty.’
‘Guilty of what?
They were both smiling. From a distance, it would have appeared that they must be talking about something quite insignificant.
‘Of everything.’
‘What if there are different persons who are guilty of different things?’
Ducrau frowned: he did not like the answer. He opened a door, the door to the kitchen, where his wife, still in her dressing gown, was giving instructions to a maid. She was very put out to have been caught with her hair undone and, holding on to her chignon with one hand, stammered her excuses while her husband growled:
‘That’ll do! The inspector doesn’t give a damn about that! Mélie, I want you to go down to the cellar and bring us up a bottle of … what shall it be? … champagne? No? In that case we’ll make do with the aperitifs in the drawing room.’
He slammed the door behind them and when they reached the drawing room he rummaged among bottles which cluttered a window-sill.
‘Pernod? Gentian? Did you see? And her daughter is even worse! If she wasn’t in mourning, she’d come down later in a pink or green silk dress, with her very best smile and sugary manners.’
He filled two glasses and pushed a chair towards the inspector.
‘It doesn’t bother me if the neighbours look down on us, especially when, as we shall soon be doing, we eat outside, on the terrace!’
His glance wandered slowly from one object to another. The drawing room was expensively done out, and there was an enormous grand piano.
‘Good health! When I was buying my first tug, I had of course to pay for it by instalments. I had twelve drafts, which the bank was willing to accept provided I could find a guarantor. I asked my father-in-law to back me. Know what? He refused, saying he didn’t have the right to reduce his family to beggary! And now I’m the one responsible for keeping the old woman.’
It seemed that his bitterness was so deeply rooted in him that it made him ill even to talk about it. He looked round for something else to talk about. He reached for a box of cigars.
‘Want one? If you’d prefer to stick to the pipe, feel free.’
As he spoke, he crumpled up the embroidered napkin which lay on the table.
‘That’s how they spend their time! And then there’s the officer who solves those prize chess problems you find on the back pages of newspapers!’
He was thinking about something else, and Maigret, who was beginning to get to know him, just smiled now when Ducrau’s eyes were at variance with what he said.
What about those eyes? They were constantly on Maigret. They never stopped trying to size him up. They kept wondering all the time if their first impression was right and especially what his weak spot might be.
‘What did you do about your mistress?’
‘I told her to make herself scarce and I don’t even know where she went. On the other hand, she turned up for the funeral tastefully rigged out in full mourning with her face made up like some ageing tart!’
His frustration was obvious. Everything rubbed him up the wrong way. It was as if he’d got to the point where he even hated inanimate objects like the napkin which he was still torturing with his fingers.
‘In the Maxim, she was delightful, full of fun. She embodied something, you know, something different from my wife and women like her! I set her up in her own apartment and what happened? She ran to fat, took to washing her own clothes and cooked like a concierge …’
Maigret had long since understood how Ducrau’s tragicomic situation had poisoned his existence. He had started with nothing. He now earned money hand over fist, he did deals with powerful men of business and had glimpses of their way of life. Meanwhile his family had held him back. At Samois, Madame Ducrau was still doing the same things and behaving in the same way as when she used to do the washing in the stern of the tug and his daughter was a caricature of a lower middle-class, shopkeeper’s wife.
Ducrau felt it like a personal affront and he was absolutely convinced that the neighbours didn’t take him seriously despite the huge white mansion, the chauffeur and the gardener.
He would watch them on their lawns and on their terraces and envy them. He was filled with rage and, by way of protest, spat on the floor, kept his hands in his pockets and swore loudly.
There were footsteps on the stairs. He sighed and said with a wink:
‘Here come the others!’
It was his daughter and son-in-law, in black, formally dressed and well turned out. They advanced with their heads bowed, exuding the pained self-effacement of those who have been visited by grievous misfortune.
‘Delighted to meet you, inspector. Father has ofte
n spoken of you and …’
‘That’s enough of that! Have something to drink instead!’
His irritation grew stronger in their presence. From the window, he kept his eyes on the gate, which stood out against the Seine behind it.
‘You must excuse us, inspector.’
The son-in-law was blond, formal in manner and resigned.
‘A small glass of port?’ he asked his wife.
‘What did you have, inspector?’
At the window, Ducrau drummed his fingers with impatience. Maybe he was searching for something wounding to say? But at all events, he turned suddenly and growled:
‘The inspector was asking me for information about you. And since he knows that you have debts, he pointed out to me that my death would have solved your problem. And Jean’s death would have doubled your expectations.’
‘Oh, Father!’ cried his daughter, dabbing her eyes with a black-edged handkerchief.
‘“Oh, Father!”’ he mimicked. ‘Well? Am I the one with debts? Is it me who wants to go off and live in the Midi?’
The couple were used to it, and Decharme was very well practised: he merely smiled a faint, sad smile, a smile which was hardly there, as if he thought that such comments were a joke or the effect of a passing mood of ill-humour. He had dainty hands, pale and long, which he played with as he fiddled with his platinum wedding-ring.
‘Did I mention that they’re expecting a child?’
Berthe Decharme hid her face in her hands. It was embarrassing. Ducrau knew it, but he was doing it on purpose. The chauffeur walked across the courtyard and was heading towards the steps leading up to the front door. Ducrau opened the window and called to him:
‘What is it?’
‘You told me, sir, to …’
‘Yes, yes! Out with it!’
Disconcerted, the chauffeur pointed to the nondescript figure of a man sitting on the grass outside the gate who was at that moment taking a hunk of bread out of his pocket.
‘Cretin!’
He shut the window. Outside, the maid, who had put on a white apron, was laying the table on the terrace, which was shaded by a red umbrella.
‘I don’t suppose you even know what we’ll be eating?’
His daughter took advantage of the moment to leave the room while Decharme pretended to leaf through a pile of piano scores.
‘Do you play?’ asked Maigret.
It was Ducrau who answered him:
‘Him? Not a note! No one in this house can play! The piano is just for show, like the rest of the stuff!’
And though it was rather cold in the room, his forehead was covered in sweat.
The neighbours on the left were still playing tennis and a liveried servant was bringing out refreshments when the Ducraus were having lunch on their terrace. The umbrella was not keeping off enough of the sun, and damp semi-circles were showing under the arms of Berthe’s black silk dress. Ducrau was so tense that it was draining to see. Everything he said, everything he did was excruciating.
When the fish was brought to the table, he asked to see the dish. He sniffed it, poked it with the end of his forefinger and barked:
‘Take it away!’
‘But Émile!’
‘Take it away!’ he repeated.
When his wife returned from the kitchen, her eyes were red. He, on the other hand, turned to Maigret and said doggedly:
‘So you’re retiring on Wednesday. Is that Wednesday morning or Wednesday evening?’
‘Wednesday midnight.’
He turned to his son-in-law, going on the attack:
‘Know how much I offered him to work for me? A hundred and fifty thousand. If he holds out for two hundred, he’ll get it!’
He was still keeping an eye on the comings and goings outside the gate. He was afraid. And Maigret, the only one there who knew, was even more uncomfortable than the others, for the spectacle of this man fighting off panic was tragic but also rather ridiculous and contemptible.
Over coffee, Ducrau came up with something else.
‘Now this,’ he said, waving one hand at the group sitting round the table, ‘is what is called a family. First, there’s a man who carries the full weight on his shoulders, who always has and will go on bearing the burden until the day he dies. Then there’s the rest, with their hooks in him, hangers-on, all of them.’
‘You’re not going to start again,’ said his daughter, rising.
‘You’re right. Why don’t you go for a little walk. This could be your last peaceful Sunday.’
She gave a start. Her husband, who was wiping his mouth with his serviette, looked up. Madame Ducrau, on the other hand, had not perhaps heard.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing! I don’t mean anything! Just you carry on making your preparations for your trip to the Midi.’
The son-in-law, who clearly had no sense of timing, remarked quietly:
‘Berthe and I have been thinking. The Midi is rather far away. If we could find something on the banks of the Loire …’
‘Very good! All you have to do is ask the inspector to winkle out a house near his and he’ll do it like a shot, just for the pleasure of having the pair of you as neighbours!’
‘Do you live by the Loire?’ asked Decharme eagerly.
‘He’s going to live there. Perhaps.’
Slowly, Maigret turned towards him and he wasn’t smiling now. He had just been kicked in the chest by a sensation which made his lips tremble. For days he had been floundering in a state of sickening uncertainty and now everything had become clear by the magic of one small word:
‘Perhaps!’
Ducrau returned his look with the same gravity, the same awareness of the significance of the moment.
‘Where is your property?’
But the son-in-law’s voice was just a buzzing noise to which neither of them paid the slightest attention. Louder was the breathing of Ducrau, whose nostrils flared, and the light of battle lit his gleaming face.
They had circled round each other for long enough. They had got each other’s measure but hadn’t struck a blow.
Maigret was also breathing more easily. He filled his pipe, and there was sensual pleasure in the way his fingers burrowed into his tobacco pouch.
‘Personally, I wouldn’t mind the area around Cosnes or Gien …’
Balls were hit back and forth on the red clay court by girls in fluttering tennis whites. A small motor-boat made inroads into the current of the Seine, purring like a contented tomcat.
Madame Ducrau rang a bell to summon the maid, but none of it mattered now to the two men who had finally made contact.
‘Why don’t you go to your wife, who is probably in her room crying her eyes out?’
‘You think so? Personally, I reckon it’s her condition that makes her on edge.’
‘That’s it, go, you moron!’ laughed Ducrau as his son-in-law left the room, still apologizing. ‘And what do you think you’re doing, waggling your little bell?’
‘Rosalie forgot to bring the liqueurs.’
‘Don’t bother. When we want liqueurs we’ll serve ourselves, isn’t that right, Maigret?’
He hadn’t said ‘inspector’. He had said Maigret. Ducrau wiped his lips with his serviette and stuck out his chest as he surveyed the countryside. He was filling his lungs and he too was purring contentedly.
‘What do you make of it?’
‘Make of what?’
‘Everything! All this! The weather’s good! Look, even the lock-keeper is eating outside with his family! When I was on horse-drawn boats, right at the beginning, I used to have a bite of something with Gassin on the canal embankment. Since horses are supposed to be rested for a couple of hours, we used to snooze flat out on the grass with grasshoppers jumping over our heads.’
It was as if each of his pupils had divided into two. There was one look which was hazy and lingered blithely over the landscape. Then there, right in the centre, sharp, focused, grim,
was another kind of look, which was quite independent of the first.
‘Fancy a short walk to help lunch go down?’
He made for the gate and opened it. But before going out on to the towpath, he reached his hand into his back pocket, took out his Browning with a flourish and checked the magazine.
It was theatrical, puerile, but still it was impressive. Maigret did not blench and made no sign that he had noticed anything. Voices floated down from the room upstairs, one of them raised in anger.
‘What did I tell you? They’re arguing.’
With his revolver back in his pocket, he walked alongside Maigret, at a leisurely pace, chest out, like a Sunday stroller. When they reached the lock he stopped briefly to look at the water spurting through the numerous leaks in the gate and at the family sitting around a table by their front door.
‘What’s the date?’
‘Thirteenth of April.’
He gave Maigret a suspicious look.
‘The thirteenth? Right!’
And they resumed their walk.
9.
It was that time of day when the colours are deeper but less vibrant, for things retreat into themselves as they wait for the approaching dusk. The eye could now stare directly into the red sun, which hung over the wooded hills. The reflections in the water were more generous, gorgeous, yet were tinged with something cold and dead.
Just above the lock, strollers were watching a young man trying to start the engine of a motor-boat. They heard it turn over once or twice, suck in air and splutter, and then the exasperated growl of the crank-handle was repeated.
It was Ducrau, hands behind his back, who stopped all of a sudden as he surveyed a row of buildings which lined the riverbank at this spot. Maigret had not noticed anything unusual.
‘Look, inspector.’
The buildings were restaurants and rather expensive houses, and there was a long line of cars parked at the kerb. But between two restaurants there was a narrow bar which doubtless served meals for the cars’ chauffeurs and outside which, it being Sunday, three or four tables had been set up to constitute a terrace.
Maigret stared, trying to see what he was supposed to be looking at. The passers-by cast enormously long, spindly shadows. Already a few boaters and many light dresses were in evidence. Eventually, Maigret’s eye was caught by a familiar figure, that of Lucas, who was sitting on the small terrace with a glass of beer before him. Lucas had also seen Maigret and smiled at him from across the road. He seemed perfectly happy to be there, on a fine Sunday, under the red and yellow striped awning which gave him shade, where he sat next to a laurel in a container.
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