The fishermen, who would have liked to speak to him, still didn’t dare. The Arche had two rooms: the room where the bar was, and a smaller one with tables covered with red check tablecloths. These were laid. Two tables away Charlot was busy sampling sea urchins.
Once again he raised a hand in salute as he looked at Maigret. Then he added, idly:
“How goes?”
They had spent several hours, perhaps an entire night, alone together in Maigret’s office, five or six years before. The chief inspector had forgotten his real name. Everyone knew him as Charlot.
He did a little bit of everything, procuring girls for licensed brothels in the Midi, smuggling cocaine and certain other goods; he dabbled in racing too, and at election time became one of the most active electioneering agents on the coast.
He was meticulous in his personal appearance, with measured gestures, an imperturbable calm, an ironical little twinkle in his eye.
“Do you like Mediterranean cooking, Mr. Pyke?”
“I don’t know it.”
“Do you want to try it?”
“With pleasure.”
And Paul, the proprietor, suggested:
“Some small birds, to start with? I’ve a few cooked on the spit, brought in this morning.”
They were robins, Paul unfortunately announced as he served the Englishman, who could not help gazing tenderly at his plate.
“As you see, inspector, I’ve been a good boy.”
From where he sat Charlot, without stopping eating, was addressing them in an undertone.
“I’ve waited for you without being impatient. I haven’t even asked the inspector’s permission to leave.”
A lengthy silence.
“I’m at your service, whenever you like. Paul will tell you that I didn’t leave the Arche that evening.”
“Are you in such a hurry?”
“What about?”
“To clear yourself.”
“I’m just clearing the ground a little, that’s all. I’m doing my best to stop you swimming too far out to sea. Because you soon will be swimming. I swim well, but I come from these parts.”
“Did you know Marcellin?”
“I’ve had a drink with him hundreds of times, if that’s what you mean. Is it true you’ve brought someone from Scotland Yard with you?”
He examined Mr. Pyke cynically, like some strange object.
“This is no case for him. It’s not a case for you either, if you’ll forgive my saying what I think. You know I’ve always kept clean. We’ve already had things out between us. There’s no hard feelings on either side. What’s the fat little sergeant in your office called again? Lucas! How’s he getting on, Lucas? Paul! Jojo!…Hey!…”
As there was no reply, he went toward the kitchen and came back after a few minutes with a plate smelling of garlic mayonnaise.
“I’m not stopping you talking?”
“Not at all.”
“If I am, you can just ask me politely to shut my trap. I’m just thirty-four years old. To be exact, it was my birthday yesterday, which means I’m just beginning to feel my age. In my time I’ve had several chats with your colleagues, either in Paris, or Marseilles, or elsewhere. They haven’t always been very polite to me. We haven’t always got on together, but there’s one thing everyone will tell you: Charlot’s never got his hands dirty.”
It was true, if one took that to mean he had never killed anyone. He must have had a round dozen convictions to his credit, but for relatively harmless offenses.
“Do you know why I come here regularly? I like the place, obviously, and Paul’s a good chap. But there’s another reason. Look in the corner, on the left. The fruit machine. It’s mine, and I’ve got around fifty of them from Marseilles to Saint-Raphael. They aren’t exactly legal. From time to time, some of your gentlemen turn nasty and remove one or two of them.”
Poor Mr. Pyke, who had eaten his little birds to the bitter end, in spite of the softness of his heart! Now he was sniffing the garlic mayonnaise with ill-concealed apprehension.
“You’re wondering why I am talking so much, aren’t you?”
“I haven’t wondered anything yet.”
“It’s not a habit of mine. But I’ll tell you anyway. Here, I mean on the island, there are two characters who are bound to get blamed for the whole affair. They’re Émile and me. We’ve both seen trouble. People are very decent with us, more so as we are openhanded with drinks. They wink at one another. They whisper:
“‘They’re regular crooks!’
“Or sometimes:
“‘Take a look at him. He’s quite a lad!’
“Just the same, the moment there’s any dirty work it’s us they go for.
“I realized that, and that’s why I took it easy. I’ve some pals waiting for me on the coast and I haven’t even tried to telephone them. Your little inspector with the dainty manner has been keeping his eye on me and for the last two days has been itching to put me inside. Well! I’ll tell you straight, to save you making a blunder: it’d be a big mistake.
“That’s all. After which, I’m at your service.”
Maigret waited for Charlot to go out, a toothpick at his lips, to ask quietly of his Scotland Yard colleague:
“Does it ever happen over there, that you make friends among your clients?”
“Not in quite the same way.”
“How do you mean?”
“We haven’t a lot of people like that. Certain things don’t happen in quite the same way. Do you follow me?”
Why did Maigret think of Mrs. Wilcox and her young secretary? Indeed certain things did not happen in quite the same way.
“For example, I had dealings, you might call them cordial, for a long time with a notorious jewel thief. We have a lot of jewel thieves. It’s something of a national speciality of ours. They are nearly always educated men who come from the best schools, and belong to the smartest clubs. We have the same difficulty as you do with people like this man, or the one called Monsieur Émile: it is to catch them in the act. For four years I kept on the track of the thief I was telling you about. He knew it. We often had a whisky at the bar together.
“We played a number of games of chess together, too.”
“And did you get him?”
“Never. In the end we came to a gentleman’s agreement. You know the expression? I got rather in his way, so much so, in fact, that last year he wasn’t able to try anything on, and he was genuinely hard up. On my side, I wasted a lot of time on his account. I advised him to go and exercise his talents elsewhere. Is that how you say it?”
“Did he go and steal jewels in New York?”
“I rather think he’s in Paris,” Mr. Pyke corrected him calmly, selecting a toothpick in his turn.
A second bottle of the island’s wine, which Jojo had brought without being asked, was more than half-empty. The patron came over to suggest:
“A little marc? After the garlic mayonnaise, it’s essential.”
It was balmy, almost cool in the room, while a heavy sun, humming with flies, beat down on the square.
Charlot, probably for the sake of his digestion, had just begun a game of pétanque with a fisherman, and there were half a dozen others to watch them play.
“Will you be doing your interrogations at the town hall?” inquired little Lechat, who didn’t seem at all sleepy.
Maigret all but answered:
“What interrogations?”
But he mustn’t forget Mr. Pyke, who was swallowing his marc almost without distaste.
“At the town hall, yes…”
He would have preferred to go and take a siesta.
3
Monsieur Félicien Jamet, the mayor (of course people just called him Félicien), came along with his key to open the town-hall door for them. Twice before, seeing him cross the square, Maigret had asked himself what it was about his appearance that was abnormal, and he suddenly realized: perhaps because he also sold lamps, kerosene, galvanized
wire and nails, Félicien, instead of wearing a grocer’s yellowish apron, had taken to the ironmonger’s gray smock. He wore it very long, almost down to his ankles. Was he wearing trousers underneath? Or did he leave them off, on account of the heat? The fact remained that if the trousers were there, they were too short to project below the smock, so that the mayor looked as if he were in a nightshirt. More precisely—and the species of skull cap he sported added to the impression—he had something medieval about him, and one had the impression of having seen him before somewhere in a stained-glass window.
“I presume you won’t be needing me, gentlemen?”
Standing in the doorway of the dusty room, Maigret and Mr. Pyke looked at one another in some surprise, then looked at Lechat, and finally at Félicien. For on the table, the one used for council meetings and elections, was laid a pine coffin which seemed to have lost something of its brand-newness.
In the most natural way in the world, Monsieur Jamet said to them:
“If you’d like to give me a hand, we can shove it into its corner.”
“What is this coffin?” Maigret asked, in surprise.
“It’s the municipal coffin. We are obliged by law to provide burial for destitutes and we’ve only got one carpenter on the island; he’s very old and works slowly. In summer, with the heat, the bodies can’t be kept waiting.”
He spoke of it as of the most banal thing in the world, and Maigret studied the Scotland Yard man out of the corner of his eye.
“Have you many destitute people?”
“We’ve got one, old Benoît.”
“So that the coffin is destined for Benoît?”
“Theoretically. However, last Wednesday it was used to take Marcellin’s body to Hyères. Don’t worry. It’s been disinfected.”
There were only some very comfortable folding chairs in the room.
“May I leave you now, gentlemen?”
“Just a moment. Who is Benoît?”
“You must have seen him, or you soon will: he wears his hair down to his shoulders, with a shaggy beard. Look: through that window, you can see him having his siesta on a bench, near the boules players.”
“Is he terribly old?”
“Nobody knows. Nor does he. According to him he’s getting on for a hundred, but he must be boasting. He hasn’t any papers. His real name isn’t known. He landed on the island a very long time ago, when Morin-Barbu, who keeps the café on the corner, was still a young man.”
“Where did he come from?”
“That’s not known either. From Italy, for certain. Most of them came from Italy. You can usually tell from their way of speaking whether they come from Genoa or the Naples area, but Benoît has a language of his own; he’s not easy to understand.”
“Is he simple?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Is he a bit mad?”
“He’s as sly as a monkey. Today he looks like a patriarch. In a few days when the summer trippers begin to arrive, he’ll shave his beard and head. He does it every year at the same time. And he starts fishing mordu.”
Everything had to be learnt.
“Mordu?”
“Mordus are worms with very hard heads which you find in the sand, on the seashore. Fishermen use them in preference to other bait because they stay on the hook. They fetch a high price. All summer Benoît fishes mordu up to his thighs in the water. He used to be a builder, in his young days. It was he that built a good number of the houses on the island. There’s nothing else you want, is there, gentlemen?”
Maigret hurriedly opened the window to let the close, musty smell out of the room: it could not have been aired except for July 14, at the same time as they brought out the flags and the chairs.
The chief inspector didn’t know exactly what he was doing there. He had no desire to proceed with the interrogations. Why had he said yes when Inspector Lechat had suggested it to him? Through cowardice, on account of Mr. Pyke? Isn’t it usual, when one starts a case, to question people? Isn’t that the way they do it in England? Would he be taken seriously if he wandered about the island like a man who has nothing else to do?
However, it was the island which interested him at the moment, and not such and such a person in particular. What the mayor had just been saying, for example, set in motion a whole train of thought, so far still nebulous. These men in their little boats who came and went along the coasts, as though quite at home, as though along a boulevard! This did not fit into the picture one had of the sea. It seemed that here the sea had something intimate about it. A few miles from Toulon one met people from Genoa or Naples, perfectly naturally, people in boats, who fished on the way over. Rather like Marcellin. They stopped, and if it suited them, they stayed, perhaps even wrote home for their wife or fiancée to come out?
“Would you like me to bring them in one by one, chief? Who do you want to start with?”
It was all the same to him.
“I see young de Greef crossing the square with his girlfriend. Shall I go and get him?”
He was being rushed, and he didn’t dare protest. He had the consolation of noting that his colleague was as sluggish as he was.
“These witnesses you are going to interview,” he asked, “are they summoned officially?”
“Not at all. They come because they are willing to. They have the right to reply or not. Most of the time they prefer to reply, but they could always demand the presence of a lawyer.”
It must have been spread around that the chief inspector was at the town hall, for groups of people, as in the morning, were forming on the square. Some way away, beneath the eucalyptus trees, Lechat was in animated conversation with a couple, who finally followed him. A mimosa was growing just beside the door and its sweet scent mingled strangely with the musty smell which pervaded the room.
“I suppose, with you, all this is more formal?”
“Not always. Often, in the country or in small towns, the coroner’s inquest is held in the back room of an inn.”
De Greef seemed all the more fair because his skin was as bronzed as a Tahiti native’s. All he wore in the way of clothes was a pair of light-colored shorts and espadrilles, while his companion had a sunsuit tight around her body.
“You wish to speak to me?” he asked, suspiciously.
And Lechat, reassuringly:
“Come in! Chief Inspector Maigret has to question everyone. It’s just routine.”
The Dutchman spoke French with hardly any accent. He had a net bag in his hand. The two of them were probably going shopping, at the Cooperative, when the inspector had interrupted them.
“Have you been living long aboard your boat?”
“Three years. Why?”
“No reason. You’re a painter, they tell me? Do you sell your pictures?”
“When the occasion presents itself.”
“Does it often do so?”
“It’s rather rare. I sold a canvas to Mrs. Wilcox last week.”
“Do you know her well?”
“I met her here.”
Lechat came over to speak to Maigret in a low voice. He wanted to know if he should go and fetch Monsieur Émile, and the chief inspector nodded his assent.
“What sort of a person is she?”
“Mrs. Wilcox? She’s fantastic.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. I might have met her in Montparnasse, for she passes through Paris every winter. We found we had friends in common.”
“Have you often been to Montparnasse?”
“I lived in Paris for a year.”
“With your boat?”
“We tied up at the Pont Marie.”
“Are you rich?”
“I haven’t a bean.”
“Tell me: exactly how old is your girlfriend?”
“Eighteen and a half.”
The latter, her hair falling over her face, her sunsuit molded to her figure, looked like a young savage as she watched Maigret and Mr. Pyke with a blazing
eye.
“You aren’t married?”
“No.”
“Do her parents object?”
“They know she’s been living with me.”
“For how long?”
“Two and a half years.”
“In other words, she was only just sixteen when she became your mistress?”
The word didn’t shock either of them.
“Have her parents ever tried to get her back?”
“They’ve tried several times. She came back.”
“So they’ve given up?”
“They prefer not to think about it anymore.”
“What did you live on in Paris?”
“Selling a picture or a drawing now and then. I had friends.”
“They lent you money?”
“Sometimes. Other times I was a porter at the vegetable market. Or else I distributed prospectuses.”
“Did you already have an urge to come to Porquerolles?”
“I didn’t even know of the existence of this island.”
“Where were you planning to go?”
“Anywhere, provided there was sun.”
“And you expect to go where?”
“Further on.”
“Italy?”
“Or somewhere else.”
“Did you know Marcellin?”
“He helped to recaulk my boat when it leaked.”
“Were you at the Arche de Noé the night he died?”
“We are there almost every night.”
“What were you doing?”
“We were playing chess, Anna and I.”
“May I inquire, Monsieur de Greef, what is your father’s profession?”
“He’s a magistrate at Groningen.”
“You don’t know why Marcellin was killed?”
“I’m not curious.”
“Did he speak to you about me?”
“If he did, I didn’t hear.”
“Do you possess a revolver?”
“What for?”
“You have nothing to say to me?”
“Nothing at all.”
“And you, mademoiselle?”
“Nothing, thank you.”
He called them back just as they were about to leave.
“One more question. Just now, have you got any money?”
“I told you, I’ve sold a picture to Mrs. Wilcox.”
My Friend Maigret Page 4