The Carter of ’La Providence’

by Georges Simenon

  He runs to the Admiral Hotel. The café is nearly empty. Leaning on the till is a waitress. At a marble table, two men, their chairs tilted back, their legs stretched out, are finishing their cigars.

  ‘Quick! A crime … I don’t know …’

  The customs guard looks down. The yellow dog has followed him in and is lying at the waitress’s feet.

  There is hesitation, a vague feeling of fright in the air.

  ‘Your friend, the man who just left here …’

  Some seconds later, the three of them are leaning over the body, still sprawled at the kerb. A few steps away is the town hall, with the police station. The customs guard, needing to do something, dashes over and then, breathless, runs to a doctor’s doorbell.

  Unable to shake off the sight, he keeps repeating, ‘He staggered backwards like a drunk, and he went three or four steps, like this …’

  Five men, then six, seven. Windows opening everywhere. Whispering …

  On his knees in the mud, the doctor declares: ‘A bullet fired point-blank into the belly. He must be operated on right away. Someone phone the hospital!’

  Everyone recognizes the wounded man. It is Monsieur Mostaguen, Concarneau’s biggest wine dealer, a good fellow, without an enemy in the world.

  The two uniformed policemen – one of them has come out without his cap – don’t know where to begin the investigation.

  Someone is talking: Monsieur Le Pommeret, whose manner and voice show him to be someone important. ‘He and I were playing cards at the Admiral café, with Servières and Dr Michoux. The doctor left first, half an hour ago. And then Mostaguen … He’s afraid of his wife; he left on the stroke of eleven …’

  A tragicomedy: everyone is listening to Monsieur Le Pommeret; they have forgotten about the wounded man. Suddenly he opens his eyes, tries to get up, and, in a voice so surprised, so gentle, so feeble that the waitress bursts into nervous laughter, he whispers, ‘What happened?’

  But a spasm of pain racks him. His lips twist. The muscles of his face tighten as the doctor prepares his syringe for a shot.

  The yellow dog circles among the many legs. Puzzled, someone asks, ‘You know this animal?’

  ‘I’ve never seen him before.’

  ‘Probably off some boat.’

  In the charged atmosphere, the dog is troubling. Perhaps it is his colour, a dirty yellow. He’s tall and lanky, very thin, and his huge head calls to mind both a mastiff and a bulldog.

  Five or six metres away, the policemen are questioning the customs guard, who is the only witness.

  They look at the doorstep. It is the entrance to a large private house, whose shutters are closed. To the right of the door, a solicitor’s sign announces the sale of the building at auction on 18 November: Reserve price: 80,000 francs.

  A policeman fiddles for a long while without managing to force the lock. Finally, the owner of the garage next door cracks it with a screwdriver.

  The ambulance arrives. Monsieur Mostaguen is lifted on to a stretcher. The onlookers are left with nothing to do but contemplate the empty house.

  It has stood empty for a year now. A heavy smell of gunpowder and tobacco hangs in the hallway. A torch beam picks out cigarette ashes and muddy tracks on the flagstone floor, indicating that someone had been waiting and watching for a good while behind the door.

  A man wearing only a coat over his pyjamas says to his wife, ‘Come on! There’s nothing more to see. We’ll find out the rest from the paper tomorrow. Monsieur Servières is here …’

  Servières, a plump little man in a raincoat, had been with Monsieur Le Pommeret at the Admiral. He is an editor at the Brest Beacon, and, in addition, writes a humorous piece every Sunday.

  He is taking notes, giving suggestions – not to say orders – to the two policemen.

  The doors along the hallway are locked. The one at the rear, which opens on to the garden, is swinging open. The garden is surrounded by a wall no higher than a metre and a half. Beyond the wall is an alley that runs into Quai de l’Aiguillon.

  ‘The murderer went out that way!’ proclaims Jean Servières.

  It was on the following day that Maigret established this rough account of the event. For the past month he had been assigned to Rennes to reorganize its mobile unit. There he had received an agitated phone call from the mayor of Concarneau.

  And he had come to the town with Leroy, an inspector with whom he had not worked before.

  The storm never let up. Heavy clouds dropped icy rain over the town. No boats left port, and there was talk of a steamer in distress out past the Glénan Islands.

  Of course, Maigret installed himself at the Admiral Hotel, the best in town. It was five in the afternoon and just dark when he stepped into the café, a long, gloomy room with marble tables and sawdust scattered on the dingy floor. The room was made drearier still by the green windowpanes.

  Several tables were occupied. But a quick survey was enough to tell him which was the one with the regulars, the established customers, whose conversation everyone else tried to overhear.

  Someone rose from that table – a baby-faced man with round eyes and a smile on his lips.

  ‘Inspector Maigret? My good friend the mayor told me you were coming … I’ve heard a lot about you. Let me introduce myself: Jean Servières … Well, now – you’re from Paris, I believe? So am I! I was manager of the Red Cow in Montmartre for some time; I’ve worked for the Petit Parisien, for Excelsior, for the Dispatch … I was a close friend of one of your chiefs – Bertrand, a fine fellow. He retired to the country last year, down in Nièvre. And I’ve done the same thing: I’ve retired, so to speak, from public life … I help out at the Brest Beacon now, to keep busy …’ He jumped around, waving his arms.

  ‘Come, now, let me present our group – the finest band of merry men in Concarneau. This is Le Pommeret: unrepentant skirt-chaser, a man of independent means and vice-consul for Denmark.’

  The man who rose and offered his hand was turned out like a country gentleman: checked riding-breeches, custom-made gaiters without a trace of mud, white piqué stock at his throat. He had a fine silver moustache, smoothly slicked hair, a fair complexion and florid cheeks.

  ‘Delighted, inspector.’

  Jean Servières went on: ‘Dr Michoux, the son of the former deputy. A doctor on paper only, incidentally, since he’s never practised. You’ll see, he’ll eventually sell you some land; he owns the best building plots in Concarneau, and maybe in all of Brittany.’

  A cold hand. A narrow, knifelike face, with a nose bent sideways. Reddish hair already thinning, though the doctor was no more than thirty-five.

  ‘What will you drink?’

  Meanwhile, Leroy had gone off to learn what he could at the town hall and the police station.

  The atmosphere in the café had about it something grey, or grim – impossible to say exactly what. Visible through an open door was a dining room, where waitresses in Breton dress were laying the tables for dinner.

  Maigret’s gaze fell on a yellow dog lying beneath the till. Raising his eyes, he saw a black skirt, a white apron, a face with no particular grace, yet so appealing that throughout the conversation that followed he hardly stopped watching it.

  Whenever he turned away, moreover, the waitress, in turn, fixed her agitated gaze on him.

  ‘If it weren’t for the fact that it nearly killed our poor Mostaguen – the best fellow in the world, except that he’s scared silly of his wife – I’d swear this was just some tasteless joke,’ Servières said.

  Le Pommeret called in an easy tone: ‘Emma!’

  And the waitress came forwards. ‘Well? What will you have?’ There were empty beer mugs on the table.

  ‘Time for an aperitif,’ said the journalist. ‘Otherwise known as Pernod hour. Pernods all round, Emma. That all right, inspector?’

  Dr Michoux was
deeply absorbed in studying his cufflink.

  ‘Who could have known that Mostaguen would step into that doorway to light his cigar?’ continued Servières’ resonant voice. ‘No one, right? Le Pommeret and I live on the other side of town; we don’t go past that vacant house. At that time of night, there’d be no one but the three of us out in the streets … Mostaguen isn’t the type to have enemies. He’s what you call a good-natured fellow – his sole ambition is to get the Légion d’Honneur some day …’

  ‘Did the operation go well?’

  ‘He’ll pull through … A funny thing is that his wife made a scene at the hospital. She’s convinced it has to do with some woman! Can you imagine? The poor man would never dare even lay a hand on his secretary!’

  ‘Give me a double,’ Le Pommeret told the waitress as she poured the mock absinthe. ‘And bring some ice, Emma.’

  Some customers left, since it was now dinnertime. A gust of wind blew in through the open door and set the tablecloths in the dining room flapping.

  ‘You’ll read the article I’ve written on this business – I think I’ve covered all the hypotheses. Only one makes sense: that we’re dealing with a madman. We know everyone in town, and we can’t for the life of us work out who might have lost his mind … We’re here every night. Sometimes the mayor comes by to play a game with us. Or else Mostaguen. Or sometimes, for bridge, we go and fetch the clockmaker who lives a few doors away.’

  ‘And the dog?’

  The journalist shrugged. ‘No one knows where it came from. At first we thought it belonged to the coaster that arrived yesterday – the Sainte-Marie. But apparently not. They do have a dog on board, but it’s a Newfoundland, and I defy anyone to say what breed this hideous hound is.’

  As he spoke, he picked up a pitcher of water and poured some into Maigret’s glass.

  ‘Has the waitress been here long?’ the inspector asked quietly.

  ‘Oh, for years.’

  ‘She didn’t go out last night?’

  ‘She didn’t budge … She waited for us to leave before she went up to bed. Le Pommeret and I, we were going over old times, memories of the good old days when we were handsome enough to get ourselves women without paying for them. Isn’t that right, Le Pommeret? … He’s not saying a thing! Once you get to know him better, you’ll see that when it comes to women he can go on all night … You know what we call the house he lives in, across from the fish market? The House of Depravity!’

  ‘To your health, inspector,’ said the man in question, not without embarrassment.

  Maigret noticed just then that Dr Michoux, who had barely opened his mouth, was leaning forwards to examine his glass against the light. His brow was furrowed. His face, by nature colourless, wore a look of enormous anxiety.

  ‘Just a minute!’ he exclaimed suddenly.

  He put the glass to his nostrils, then dipped a finger in and touched it to the tip of his tongue.

  Servières burst into loud laughter. ‘He’s letting the Mostaguen business get to him!’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Maigret.

  ‘I think we’d better not drink this … Emma, go and ask the pharmacist to come over right away. Even if he’s at dinner …’

  That created a chill. The room looked emptier, more dismal. Le Pommeret tugged nervously at his moustache. Even the journalist squirmed in his seat. ‘What’s bothering you?’

  The doctor was still staring gloomily at his glass. He rose and went to get the Pernod bottle from the shelf. He twisted it in the light, and Maigret made out two or three small white granules floating in the liquid.

  The waitress returned, followed by the pharmacist, whose mouth was full.

  ‘Here, Kervidon, analyse the contents of this bottle and the glasses right away.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘This minute!’

  ‘What shall I test for? What do you have in mind?’

  Maigret had never seen the pale shadow of fear spread so swiftly. In seconds, all the warmth had drained from the customers’ expressions, and the rosy blotches on Le Pommeret’s cheeks looked artificial.

  The waitress leaned an elbow on the till and licked a pencil before setting down some figures in a black oilcloth-covered account book.

  ‘You’re crazy!’ Servières exclaimed with some effort.

  It rang false. The pharmacist held the bottle in one hand, a glass in the other.

  ‘Strychnine,’ whispered the doctor.

  He shoved the pharmacist out of the door and came back to the table, his head low, a yellow pallor to his complexion.

  ‘What makes you think—’ Maigret began.

  ‘I don’t know – just a hunch … I saw a grain of white powder in my glass, and the smell seemed odd to me.’

  ‘The power of suggestion!’ declared the journalist. ‘If I described this in my article tomorrow, it would close every bistro in Finistère.’

  ‘You always drink Pernod?’

  ‘Every evening before dinner. Emma’s so used to it that she brings the bottle as soon as she sees our beer mugs are empty. We have our little habits. Evenings, it’s calvados.’

  Maigret went over to the liqueur shelf, reached for a bottle of calvados.

  ‘Not that one. The flask with the broad bottom.’

  He picked it up, turned it in the light, saw a few specks of white powder. But he said nothing. It was unnecessary. The others had understood.

  Leroy entered and announced off handedly, ‘Well, the police haven’t seen anything suspicious – no drifters reported in the vicinity. They don’t understand it.’

  The silence in the room suddenly registered, the dense throat-grabbing anguish. Tobacco smoke coiled around the electric lights. The green felt of the billiard table spread like a trimmed lawn. There were a few cigar butts on the floor in the sawdust, along with gobs of spittle.

  ‘Seven, carry one …’ Emma counted, wetting the tip of her pencil. Then, raising her head, she called into the wings, ‘Coming, madame!’

  Maigret tamped his pipe. Dr Michoux stared stubbornly at the floor, and his nose looked more crooked than ever. Le Pommeret’s shoes gleamed as if they had never been used for walking. Servières shrugged his shoulders from time to time as he mumbled to himself.

  All eyes turned towards the pharmacist when he came back with the bottle and the empty glass.

  He had run and was breathless. At the door, he gave a kick, trying to drive something away, muttering, ‘Filthy mutt!’

  He was no sooner inside the café than he asked: ‘It’s a joke, isn’t it? Nobody drank any?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s strychnine, yes! Someone must have put it into the bottle less than half an hour ago.’ He looked with horror at the full glasses, at the five silent men.

  ‘What’s all this about? It’s outrageous! I have every right to know! Last night, a man was shot right near my house, and today …’

  Maigret took the bottle from his hand. Emma came back from the dining room, looking impassive, and from over the till turned towards them her long face with its sunken eyes and thin lips. Her Breton lace cap was slipping as usual to the left on her unkempt hair, which it did no matter how often she pushed it back in place.

  Le Pommeret strode back and forth, his eyes on the gleam of his shoes. Servières, unmoving, stared at the glasses, then suddenly, his voice choked by a sob of terror, cried, ‘Good God!’

  The doctor hunched his shoulders.

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  First published in French as Le Charretier de la Providence by Fayard 1931

  This translation first published 2014

  Copyright 1931 by Georges Simenon Limited

  Translation © David Coward, 2014

  GEORGES SIMENON ®

  MAIGRET ®

  Cover photograph (detail) © Harry Gruyaert /Magnum Photos

  Front cover design by Alceu Chiesorin Nunes

  All rights reserved

  The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted

  ISBN: 978-0-698-15094-2 (eBook)

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