Madame Ducrau, who had not sat down again, remained standing close to the wall, half hidden by the curtain. Decharme had one elbow on the mantelpiece while his wife was sitting by herself at the table. There were sounds of someone moving about the house, and eventually this annoyed Ducrau. He opened the door, and they all saw the maid packing her bag in the hallway.
‘I’m not having this! Go if you want! You can go or fall down dead, you can do anything you like, but for God’s sake, will you stop this racket?’
‘Monsieur, I wanted to say …’
‘There’s no “monsieur” here! You want money? Here, I don’t know how much is there. Now, goodbye – and may you get run over by a tram!’
It made him smile. He felt the better for it. He waited until Mélie had gone, banging her case against the door as she went, and then shut and bolted it himself before going back to the others. And in all that time Gassin had not moved.
‘That’s got rid of one! What were we saying? Oh yes, we were talking about your kid. If you’d been there, wouldn’t you have reacted exactly as I did?’
The old man’s eyes were watering, and his pipe had gone out. Maigret examined him closely, and at that very moment the thought struck him:
‘If in the next two minutes I haven’t got the answer, something terrible is going to happen and it’ll be on my head!’
For everything that was happening now seemed unreal. There was something else, some other story being played out underneath … One man was talking for talking’s sake, and the other man wasn’t listening. It was the latter Maigret was observing but he could detect nothing at all in those eyes. Surely Gassin could not be that inert at a moment like this? He wasn’t even drunk! Ducrau was so sure of this that the sweat was pouring off him.
‘I wouldn’t have strangled him just for that. But there was my son who died because of him, so …’
He stopped in front of Berthe.
‘What are you looking at me like that for? Still thinking about the cake you’ll not be getting a piece of? Hear that, Gassin? When I die, I’ll have the last laugh because I won’t be leaving them a penny!’
Maigret had suddenly started walking slowly and apparently aimlessly, moving round the room in all directions.
‘… Because I’ll tell you something important: your wife, my wife, none of all that counts for anything! I’ll tell you something that does count: the two of us in the days when …’
Gassin was holding his glass in his left hand. His right hand was still in his jacket pocket. He didn’t have a gun, that was certain, because Lucas was not a man who made mistakes.
On one side of the old man, two metres away, was Madame Ducrau, and on his other side was Berthe.
Ducrau had paused halfway through a sentence when he saw Maigret stop behind the boatman. What happened next was so fast that nobody understood what was going on. Maigret leaned forwards and wrapped his powerful arms around Gassin’s chest and arms. There was a brief scuffle. A poor old man struggling vainly to break free! Berthe screamed with fear, and her husband took two steps forwards just as Maigret’s hand reached into one of the old man’s pockets and took something from it.
Then it was over! Gassin, free to move, started breathing again. Ducrau waited to see Maigret open his hand. The inspector, his forehead bathed in cold sweat, took a moment to recover and then said:
‘You are in no danger now.’
He was standing behind Gassin who could not see him. When Ducrau approached, Maigret said nothing but merely opened his right hand to reveal a small stick of dynamite like the kind used in quarries. As he did so, he said:
‘Carry on.’
Ducrau, hooking his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, went on, in a loud, rough voice:
‘I was saying …’
He smiled. He laughed. He had to sit down.
‘It’s all so stupid!’
Indeed it was stupid for a man like him to feel this way after the event, so much so that his legs buckled under him. Meanwhile, Maigret, standing with his elbows on the mantelpiece next to Decharme, waited for an unpleasant dizzy spell to pass.
11.
The susurration of rain heard through the open window evoked the gentle sound of plants being watered. The smell of damp earth floated into the dining room on every movement of the air.
From a distance, for Lucas, for example, the spectacle of so many people frozen in the brightness of the room as if they were figures in an old master, must have been alarming.
Ducrau was the first to recover.
‘Well now,’ he sighed. ‘There you have it!’
The words meant nothing, but they were a release. They stirred things. They broke the general stagnation. He looked around him with the astonishment of a man who had been expecting that something must have changed.
But nothing had changed. They were all in their places, motionless and grim. To the point where Ducrau’s footsteps, as he walked to the door, sounded like thunder.
‘Mélie, the silly bitch, has gone,’ he growled when he came back.
He turned to his wife:
‘Jeanne, you’d better go and make the coffee.’
She left the room. The kitchen couldn’t have been far because almost at once came the sound of the grinder, and Berthe got up and started to clear the table.
‘So there you have it!’ repeated Ducrau, directing the remark mainly at Maigret.
The way he looked round the room now gave a meaning to the words.
‘The show’s over. We’re all friends again. The coffee is being ground. There’s a rattle of cups and saucers.’
He was limp now, drained and despondent. Like a man who does not know what to do next, he picked up the dynamite from the mantelpiece where Maigret had left it and looked at the maker’s name. He turned to Gassin.
‘It’s from one of my sites, isn’t it? Maybe the quarry at Venteuil?’
The old man nodded a yes. Ducrau looked thoughtfully at the dynamite and explained:
‘We always used to keep some on board, remember? We used to explode the stuff in places where there were lots of fish.’
He put it back where it had been. He did not want to sit but he didn’t want to remain on his feet either. Perhaps he wanted to talk but he had no clear idea of what to say.
‘Gassin, do you understand what I’m saying?’ he sighed eventually, approaching to within a metre of the boatman.
Gassin looked at him beadily with his small, dead eyes.
‘Or rather, you don’t understand, but it’s no odds to me. Look at them!’
He gestured towards his wife and daughter, who, like black ants, were pouring coffee. The door had stayed open, and the hiss of the gas stove was audible. It was a large house, grand even, but it seemed as if the family had cut it down to their size.
‘It’s always been the same! I’ve been dragging them around by the arm for years and years. Then just for a break I go to the office and I take it out on the morons! Then … No thanks. No sugar.’
It was the first time he had spoken to his daughter without giving her the rough side of his tongue, and she looked up at him in surprise. Her eyes were puffy, and her cheeks mottled with red.
‘You’re a good-looking girl, really! You know, Gassin, all women get like that from time to time. That’s God’s truth! Stay calm. We’re all friends here. I’m very fond of you. Everybody should be able once and for all to …’
Perhaps out of habit, Madame Ducrau had picked up her knitting and, seated in a corner, was plying her long steel needles, Decharme was stirring his cup with a spoon …
‘Do you know the thing that’s bothered me most in life? The fact that I slept with your wife! First, it was a stupid thing to do. I don’t even know why I did it. And then, things were never the same with you afterwards. From my window I used to watch you on the boat, and her, and the kid … The truth is that your wife herself never knew whose she was. Maybe she was mine, maybe she was yours …’
Berthe gave a heavy sigh. He gave her a baleful look. It was none of her business! He was not worried about either her or his wife!
‘Do you understand, old friend? Oh, say something!’
He walked round and round Gassin, not daring to look at him directly and leaving lengthy pauses between sentences.
‘But all in all, of us two, you were the happy one!’
Despite the chill of night, he felt hot.
‘Shall I give you the dynamite back? I don’t care if I get blown up. But somebody’s got to stay with the kid, on the barge …’
His eye fell on Decharme, who was smoking a cigarette, and all the contempt a man can feel darkened his eyes as he spat:
‘Do you find this interesting?’
And then, since his son-in-law could find nothing to say:
‘You can stay! You are no more in my way than that coffee-pot – and that’s laying aside the fact that you are incapable of malice of any sort!’
He had grabbed a chair by the back and finally dared set it down in front of Gassin, sit on it and pat him on the knee.
‘Well now! Don’t you think we’re all just about at the same point? Tell me, inspector, what do you think I’ll get for Bébert?’
They were discussing the topic in the much same way that, after dinner, as a family, they might have been discussing their forthcoming holidays, all against a rhythmic accompaniment of clicking knitting needles.
‘You might get away with two years. Maybe a jury would make it a suspended sentence.’
His wife raised her head but did not go so far as to look straight at him.
‘And when it’s over, Gassin, I’ll get myself some old tin tub, the smallest tug I can find, like Eagle I …’
And, his throat suddenly tightening, he added:
‘Talk to me, for God’s sake! Haven’t you got it yet? Nothing matters any more!’
‘What do you want me to say?’
The old man did not know either. He was in a daze. There is nothing more disconcerting than a situation left hanging. He was so bewildered that he suddenly reverted to his old self-effacing ways and remained seated, like a poverty-stricken visitor, not daring to move.
Ducrau shook him by the shoulders.
‘You see! Maybe we can still do things together! Tomorrow you’ll go off on the Golden Fleece. Then, one fine day, just when you’re least expecting it, you’ll hear someone shouting your name from a tug. It’ll be me, in dungarees! The other men won’t understand what’s going on. People will say I’ve lost money, gone bust. Not so! The truth is that I’m tired of dragging this lot around with me …’
He could not resist glancing defiantly at Maigret.
‘You know, I can still deny everything, and it’s more than likely that you won’t be able to produce evidence that will stand up! It’s only what I thought of doing. Oh, if you only knew what I’ve thought of doing! When I was at home, convalescing, with the police busying around, I swore to myself that I’d take advantage of it and make life hard for all concerned.’
Without intending to, he turned for a moment towards his daughter and son-in-law.
‘It was such an opportunity!’
He ran his hand over his face.
‘Gassin!’ he cried, changing tack, his eyes sparkling with malevolence.
And when the old man looked up at him, he went on:
‘Is that everything? Or do you still have it in for me? You know, if you want my wife in place of …’
He felt like crying but he couldn’t. But equally he wanted to embrace his friend. He crossed to the window and closed it, drawing the curtains like any decent, law-abiding citizen.
‘Listen, everybody. It’s now eleven o’clock. I suggest we all sleep here and tomorrow we’ll all leave together …’
The proposal was directed mainly at Maigret, as was what followed.
‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. I have no intention of running off – the very opposite! Anyway, there’s a police inspector on the premises! Jeanne, make us all a glass of grog before we go to bed …’
She obeyed like some skivvy, abandoning her knitting needles. Ducrau walked to the courtyard door and called into the damp night air:
‘Officer! Come inside. Your boss is asking for you.’
Lucas was wet, bewildered and worried.
‘You can start by having a nightcap with us.’
And so, at the end of the evening, they were all sitting around the table, each holding a steaming glass. When Ducrau held out his to clink with Gassin, the old man did not react and drank noisily.
‘Are there enough sheets on the beds?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Berthe.
‘Go and see to it, then.’
A little later, he confided to Maigret:
‘I’m so tired I could drop, yet in spite of everything I’m feeling better!’
The women trotted from room to room, making beds, finding night-clothes for everyone. Maigret, who had put the stick of dynamite in his pocket, turned to Ducrau:
‘Give me your revolver,’ he said, ‘and your word that there isn’t another one in the house.’
‘There isn’t.’
But the atmosphere was no longer tense. It was more like the mood in a bereaved house after the burial and the general feeling was one of lassitude.
Again, Ducrau approached Maigret, this time to tell him, with a gesture which included the entire household:
‘See! Even on a night like this, they can still manage to do something sordid!’
His cheeks were redder than usual. He was probably feverish. He went upstairs first, to show the way. Unexceptional bedrooms furnished like rooms in a hotel led off both sides of a corridor. Ducrau indicated the first room.
‘This is mine. Believe it or not, I’ve never been able to sleep without my wife.’
His wife had heard. She was looking in a cupboard for a pair of slippers for Maigret. Her husband gave her a pat, saying:
‘Never mind, old girl! Come along! I think I’ll be able to find a small corner for you on that old tin tub …’
The breaking day found Maigret propped on his elbows looking out of his window, fully dressed, with a blanket draped over his shoulders, for it had been a wet night. The gravel of the courtyard was still damp, and even though it had stopped raining, large, bloated drops of water were still falling from the cornice and the trees.
The Seine was grey. A tug towing four barges was waiting at the lock. In the far distance, in the middle of a loop of the river, another convoy of boats could be seen advancing between two lines of dark trees.
The surface of the water grew lighter. Maigret shrugged off the blanket and straightened his clothes. Nothing had happened. He had heard nothing. Just to be on the safe side, he opened the door and found Lucas standing in the corridor outside.
‘You can come in.’
Lucas, pale with fatigue, took a drink from the water jug, stood in front of the window and stretched.
‘Nothing!’ he said. ‘No one stirred. The young couple were last to go to sleep. They were still talking in whispers at one in the morning.’
They saw the chauffeur, who did not live in, arrive on his bicycle.
‘I’d give anything for a cup of steaming-hot coffee,’ sighed Lucas.
‘Go and make some!’
It was as though his wish had been anticipated. There was a shuffling sound from the corridor. Madame Ducrau, in a dressing gown with an Indian scarf around her head, was padding quietly along the corridor.
‘Up already?’ she said in surprise. ‘I’ll go down this minute and make the breakfast.’
The tension had not affected her in any lasting way. She looked the same as she must always have looked, glum and pinched.
‘Better stay in the corridor.’
Maigret washed his face in cold water to wake himself up and soon, turning round, he saw that the river had changed colour and that the tug and the barges had passed through the lock. There was a
pink glow in the sky, and birds were singing. An engine throbbed. It was the car, which the chauffeur was driving out of the garage. But it was not yet fully day. The cold of night remained in their bones, and the sun had not brought life to the landscape.
‘Chief, here he is …’
It was Ducrau, who emerged from his room and entered Maigret’s, braces hanging down, hair uncombed and his shirt open over his hairy chest.
‘Need anything? Want me to lend you a razor?’
He too looked out at the Seine, but through different eyes. He said:
‘Ah! They’ve made a start with the sand.’
Downstairs, there was again the sound of the coffee-grinder.
‘Tell me, for going to prison, what am I allowed to take with me?’
He was not joking. He was simply asking.
‘If you like, we could leave immediately after breakfast. We could drop Gassin off on his boat, and that might give me a chance to get a glimpse of Aline …’
Not fully dressed, he looked enormous, like a bear, especially with his trousers concertinaed around his legs.
‘There‘s one other thing I must ask you. You know what I said last night about my money? I can technically do it, and it would drive my daughter and her husband wild. But, given the circumstances …’
It was all over! He was fully awake with, as happens after a serious bout of drinking, a bitter taste in his mouth and a clear head.
‘Either way, you’ll make your competitors’ day for them …’ said Maigret.
That sufficed. The solid look of the boss, the chief, returned to Ducrau’s eyes.
‘Can you advise me about a good lawyer?’
The tug was blowing its hooter to signal it was approaching the next lock and, by the same token, specified the number of barges it was towing. They did not hear Madame Ducrau coming in her felt slippers.
‘The coffee’s ready,’ she said meekly.
‘You don’t mind if I come down just as I am? It’s an old habit. Let’s go and rouse Gassin.’
His was the room next door. Ducrau knocked on the door.
‘Gassin! … Hello! … Gassin?’
He was already filled with foreboding. His hand reached for the knob of the door. He turned it, took one step inside and turned to Maigret
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