She looked at Maigret as if to say that she was doing her best.
‘Yes … Yes … It doesn’t matter if it’s not interesting. With him, you never know. Sometimes, an unimportant detail … Yes … What year? … So that was about twenty years ago … She inherited money from an aunt, and he left … Oh, not right away … He lived with her for another year … Did they have children? … A daughter? … Who to? … Rousselet, of the pharmaceutical company? … Does she live in Paris?’
She repeated for her husband:
‘They had a daughter who married the son of the Rousselet family, the pharmaceutical people, and they live in Paris …’
And, turning back to the telephone:
‘I understand … Listen. See if you can find out any more … Yes … Thank you … Kiss your husband and children for me. Call me back any time. I’m not going out.’
The sound of kisses. Once again, she addressed Maigret.
‘I was sure I knew the name. Did you get all that? Apparently it really is that Keller, François, who was a doctor and married the daughter of a magistrate who died just before the wedding.’
‘What about the mother?’ he asked.
She looked at him sharply, wondering if he was being ironic.
‘I don’t know, Florence didn’t tell me … About twenty years ago, Madame Keller inherited money from an aunt of hers, and now she’s very rich … The doctor was an eccentric. Did you hear what I said on the phone? A savage, my sister called him. They left their house and moved into a mansion near the cathedral. He spent another year with her, then suddenly disappeared. Florence is going to phone her friends, especially the older ones, to see if she can get any more information. She’s promised to call me back. Is this of interest?’
‘Everything’s of interest,’ he sighed, getting up from his armchair and going to the rack to change pipes.
‘Do you think you’ll have to go to Mulhouse?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Would you take me?’
They both smiled. The window was open. They were bathed in sunlight, and their minds turned towards holidays.
‘See you this evening. I’ll make a note of everything she tells me. Even if you’re going to laugh at the two of us.’
3.
Young Lapointe had to go all over Paris in search of the red Peugeot 403s. Janvier wasn’t in his place in the inspectors’ office either because he had been called to the clinic, where he was pacing the corridors, waiting for his wife to give birth to their fourth child.
‘Are you doing anything urgent, Lucas?’
‘It can wait, chief.’
‘Come into my office for a moment.’
It was in order to send him to the Hôtel-Dieu to find Doc’s effects. He hadn’t thought of it in the morning.
‘They’ll probably send you from office to office and bring up all kinds of bureaucratic objections. You’d better take along a letter that impresses them, with as many seals as possible.’
‘Who shall I get it signed by?’
‘Sign it yourself. With them, it’s the seals that count. I’d also like to have this François Keller’s fingerprints … Actually, it’d be easier to get me the hospital’s director on the phone.’
From the window-sill, a sparrow was watching the two of them move about in what must to its eyes be a nest of men. Very politely, Maigret announced Sergeant Lucas’ visit, and everything went very well.
‘You don’t need a letter,’ he announced, hanging up. ‘They’ll take you straight to the director, and he’ll show you around himself.’
Once he was alone, he leafed through the Paris telephone directory.
‘Rousselet … Rousselet … Amédée … Arthur … Aline …’
There were lots of Rousselets, but there, in bolder letters, were the words René Rousselet Laboratories.
The labs were in the fourteenth arrondissement, near Porte d’Orléans. The private address of this particular Rousselet was just below it: Boulevard Suchet, in the sixteenth.
It was 2.30. The weather was just as radiant as before, after a gust of wind that had raised the dust from the pavements and made a storm look briefly possible.
‘Hello? I’d like to speak to Madame Rousselet, please.’
‘Who shall I say is calling?’ a deep, very pleasant woman’s voice asked.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, Police Judiciaire.’
There was a silence, then:
‘Can you tell me what it’s about?’
‘It’s personal.’
‘I’m Madame Rousselet.’
‘You were born in Mulhouse, and your maiden name is Keller, is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d like to have a conversation with you as soon as possible. May I come to see you at home?’
‘Do you have bad news to tell me?’
‘I just need some information.’
‘When would you like to come?’
‘As soon as I can get to you.’
He heard her say to someone, presumably a child:
‘Let me speak, Jeannot.’
She sounded surprised, intrigued, anxious.
‘I’ll be waiting, inspector. Our apartment is on the third floor.’
That morning, he had loved the atmosphere of the riverbank, which had aroused so many memories, in particular so many strolls with Madame Maigret, when they would walk along the Seine from one end of Paris to the other. Now he was just as appreciative of the quiet avenues, the trees, the opulent houses of the affluent neighbourhood where he was taken in a little police car driven by Inspector Torrence.
‘Shall I go up with you, chief?’
‘I think it’s best if you don’t.’
The building had a wrought-iron door lined with glass, the entrance hall was of white marble, and the spacious lift rose in silence, without any jolting or squeaking. He barely had time to press the doorbell when the door opened, and a manservant in a white jacket took his hat.
‘This way, please.’
There was a red ball in the hall, a doll on the carpet. He glimpsed a nurse pushing a little girl in white towards the far end of a corridor. Another door opened, revealing a boudoir just off the main drawing room.
‘Come in, inspector.’
Maigret had calculated that she must be about thirty-five. She didn’t look it. She had brown hair and was dressed in a light tailored suit. Her eyes, as gentle and mellow as her voice, were already questioning him as the manservant closed the door.
‘Please sit down. Ever since you phoned me, I’ve been wondering …’
Instead of getting to the point, he asked automatically:
‘Do you have several children?’
‘Four. The oldest one’s eleven, the others are nine, seven and three.’
This was almost certainly the first time a police officer had been in her apartment, and she kept her eyes fixed on him.
‘The first thing I wondered was whether something had happened to my husband.’
‘Is he in Paris?’
‘Not right now. He’s attending a conference in Brussels, and I phoned him immediately.’
‘How well do you remember your father, Madame Rousselet?’
She seemed to relax very slightly. There were flowers everywhere, and the trees of the Bois de Boulogne could be seen through the tall windows.
‘Quite well. Although …’
She seemed reluctant to continue.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Oh, a long time ago. I was thirteen.’
‘Were you still living in Mulhouse?’
‘Yes. I didn’t come to Paris until after I married.’
‘Did you meet your husband in Mulhouse?’
‘No, in La Baule, where my mother and I went every year.’
There came the sound of children’s voices, cries, something sliding in the corridors.
‘Excuse me for a moment.’
She closed the door be
hind her and spoke in a low but firm voice.
‘Please forgive me. They aren’t at school today, and I promised I’d take them out.’
‘Would you recognize your father?’
‘I suppose so … Yes.’
He took out Doc’s identity card. The photograph, according to the card’s date of issue, was about five years old. It was one of those photos taken by an automatic camera, the kind found in department stores, railway stations and even at the Préfecture.
François Keller hadn’t shaved for the occasion and had made no effort to clean himself up. His cheeks were overrun with two or three centimetres of beard, which he probably cut with scissors every now and again. His temples were starting to go bald, and his gaze was neutral, indifferent.
‘Is this him?’
Holding the card in a hand that shook a little, she leaned forwards to get a better look. She must have been short-sighted.
‘It isn’t the way I remember him, but I’m pretty sure it’s him.’
She leaned even more.
‘Perhaps with a magnifying glass … Wait, I’ll go and get one.’
Placing the identity card on a pedestal table, she left the room and came back a few minutes later with a magnifying glass.
‘He had a scar, a small but deep one, above his left eye … There it is. You can’t see it very well in this picture, but I think it’s there … Look for yourself.’
He, too, looked through the magnifying glass.
‘The reason I remember it is that it’s because of me that he hurt himself. We were out for a walk in the country, one Sunday. It was very hot. All along the edge of a cornfield there was a mass of poppies. I wanted to go and pick some. The field was surrounded by barbed wire. I was about eight. My father moved the barbed wire to let me through. He was holding the bottom wire down with his foot and leaning forwards … It’s funny how well I remember the scene, even though I’ve forgotten so many other things … His foot must have slipped, and the barbed wire suddenly sprang back and hit him in the face. My mother was afraid it had caught his eye. He was bleeding a lot. We walked to a farm to find water and something to make a bandage. He was left with a scar.’
As she spoke, she continued to look anxiously at Maigret, as if delaying the moment when he would tell her the precise reason for his visit.
‘Has something happened to him?’
‘He was injured last night, in the head again as it happens, but the doctors don’t think his life is in any danger.’
‘Did it happen in Paris?’
‘Yes. On the banks of the Seine. Whoever attacked him then threw him in the river.’
He hadn’t taken his eyes off her, watching out for her reactions, and she made no attempt to evade this examination.
‘Do you know how your father has been living?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When he left us …’
‘You were thirteen, you said. Do you remember his leaving?’
‘No. One morning, I didn’t see him in the house, and when I said I was surprised, my mother told me he’d gone on a long journey.’
‘When did you find out where he was?’
‘A few months later, my mother told me he was in Africa, in the middle of nowhere, treating the natives.’
‘Was it true?’
‘I suppose it was. In fact, later, people who’d met him there told us about him. He was living in Gabon, in a place hundreds of kilometres from Libreville.’
‘Did he stay there long?’
‘Several years at least. Some people in Mulhouse considered him a kind of saint. Others …’
He was waiting. She hesitated.
‘Others called him a hothead, said he was half mad.’
‘What about your mother?’
‘I think mother had already resigned herself once and for all.’
‘How old is she now?’
‘Fifty-four. No, fifty-five … I know now that he’d left her a letter, which she’s never shown me, telling her he would probably never come back and that he was prepared to make things easy for her if she wanted a divorce.’
‘Did she get a divorce?’
‘No. Mother’s a devout Catholic.’
‘Does your husband know about all this?’
‘Of course. We didn’t hide anything from him.’
‘Did you know your father was back in Paris?’
She blinked rapidly and almost lied, Maigret was sure of it.
‘Yes and no. I’ve never seen him myself. Mother and I were never completely sure. But someone from Mulhouse told her about a sandwich man he’d seen on Boulevard Saint-Michel who looked very much like my father. This person is an old friend of Mother’s. Apparently, when he said the name François, the man jumped but then pretended he hadn’t recognized him.’
‘Didn’t it occur to you or your mother to go to the police?’
‘What would be the point? He chose his life. I don’t suppose he was cut out to live with us.’
‘Didn’t you ever wonder about him?’
‘I talked about him several times with my husband.’
‘And with your mother?’
‘I asked her questions, obviously, before and after I married.’
‘What’s her point of view?’
‘It’s hard to sum it up, really. She feels sorry for him. So do I. Although I sometimes wonder if he isn’t happier this way.’
In a lower voice, with some embarrassment, she added:
‘There are people who can’t adapt to the kind of life we lead. And then, Mother …’
Nervously, she stood up, walked over to the window and looked outside for a moment before turning to face him again.
‘I don’t have anything bad to say about her. She has her way of looking at things. I suppose we all do. The word “domineering” is too strong, but all the same she likes things to be the way she wants them.’
‘After your father left, did you get on well with her?’
‘Well enough. All the same, I was pleased to get married and …’
‘And escape her domination?’
‘That’s partly it.’ She smiled. ‘It’s not very original. There are lots of young girls who are in the same boat. My mother likes going out, receiving visitors, meeting important people. In Mulhouse, it was in her house that everyone who mattered in town gathered.’
‘Even when your father was there?’
‘The last two years, yes.’
‘Why the last two?
He remembered Madame Maigret’s long telephone conversation with her sister and felt a little upset that he was going to learn more here than his wife was likely to.
‘Because mother inherited money from her aunt. Before, we lived quite poorly, in a modest house. We didn’t even live in a nice neighbourhood, and my father’s patients were mainly workers. Nobody had been expecting that inheritance. We moved house. Mother bought a mansion near the cathedral and she was quite pleased that there was a carved coat of arms above the front door.’
‘Did you know your father’s family?’
‘No. I’d only ever seen his brother a few times before he was killed in the war, in Syria, unless I’m mistaken, not in France anyway.’
‘What about his father and mother?’
Once again, there came the sound of children’s voices, but she took no notice.
‘His mother died of cancer when my father was about fifteen. His father had a carpentry business. According to Mother, he had a dozen people working for him. One fine morning, when my father was still at university, he was found hanging in the workshop, and it emerged that he was about to go bankrupt.’
‘But your father still managed to finish his studies?’
‘By working in a pharmacy.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Very gentle … I know that’s not much of an answer to your question, but it’s the main impression I’ve kept of him. Very gentle and a little s
ad …’
‘Did he and your mother quarrel?’
‘I never heard him raise his voice. Admittedly, when he wasn’t in his surgery, he spent most of his time visiting his patients. I remember my mother telling him off for not taking any care of his appearance, always wearing the same suit that hadn’t been ironed, sometimes going for three days without shaving. I used to tell him that he tickled me with his beard when he kissed me.’
‘I don’t suppose you know anything about your father’s relations with his colleagues?’
‘What I know, I know through Mother. Only, with her, it’s hard to tell what’s true from what’s more or less true. Not that she lies. She arranges the truth to make it the way she’d like it to be. Seeing that she’d married my father, he had to be someone extraordinary. Your father’s the best doctor in the city, she would tell me, probably one of the best in the whole of France. Unfortunately …’
She was smiling again.
‘You can guess the rest. He couldn’t adapt. He refused to be like everyone else. She implied that the reason my grandfather hanged himself wasn’t because of his impending bankruptcy but because he suffered from depression. He had a daughter who spent some time in an asylum.’
‘What became of her?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think my mother knows either. In any case, she left Mulhouse.’
‘Does your mother still live there?’
‘She’s been in Paris for a long time now.’
‘Could you let me have her address?’
Maigret and the Tramp Page 4