My Friend Maigret

by Georges Simenon

  “That’s enough, Polyte!”

  One could feel that he wouldn’t let himself be trifled with, that he was ready to spring, with all his muscles tensed.

  Paul finally interposed.

  “Calm down, Polyte. Come into the kitchen for a moment. I want a word with you.”

  The captain let himself be led off, protesting for the sake of appearances.

  Lechat, who still hadn’t understood, had however asked, dreamily:

  “Was it you, chief?”

  Maigret had not replied. He had assumed as benign an air as possible when the Scotland Yard inspector had looked him in the eye.

  Paul had made his apologies in the correct way. Polyte was put out of the back door and seen no more. Today he would act like a hero.

  The fact remained that Philippe hadn’t defended himself, that his face, for one moment, had sweated with fear, a physical fear which seizes the pit of the stomach and is not to be overcome.

  After that he had drunk to excess, with a cloudy look on his face, and Mrs. Wilcox had finally taken him off.

  Nothing else had happened. Charlot and his dancing girl had gone up to bed rather early, and when Maigret had in turn gone up, they were still not asleep. Ginette and Monsieur Émile had chatted in undertones. No one had offered drinks all round, perhaps on account of the incident.

  “Come in, Lechat,” the chief inspector called out through the door.

  The inspector was already fully dressed.

  “Has Mr. Pyke gone for a swim?”

  “He’s downstairs, busy eating his bacon and eggs. I went down to see the Cormorant off.”

  “Nothing to report?”

  “Nothing. It seems that on Sundays lots of people come over from Hyères and Toulon, people who rush for the beaches and strew them with sardine tins and empty bottles. We’ll be able to see them landing in an hour.”

  The information from Ostend contained nothing unexpected. Monsieur Bebelmans, Anna’s father, was an important figure, who had been mayor of the town for a long time and had once stood for Parliament. Since his daughter’s departure, he had forbidden her name to be mentioned in his presence. His wife was dead, and Anna hadn’t been told of it.

  “It seems that everyone who has come off the rails for one reason or another has landed up here,” Maigret observed as he put on his coat.

  “It’s the climate that’s responsible!” riposted the inspector, who was not troubled by such questions. “I went to see another revolver this morning.”

  He carried out his job conscientiously. He had taken pains to find out all the revolver owners. He went to see them one after the other, examined their weapons, without too much hope, simply because that was part of the routine.

  “What are we doing today?”

  Maigret, making for the door, avoided replying, and they found Mr. Pyke in front of the red check tablecloth.

  “I presume you are a Protestant?” he said to him. “In which case you wouldn’t go to High Mass?”

  “I am a Protestant and I went to Low Mass.”

  Perhaps he would have done just the same if there had only been a synagogue, so as to attend a service, whatever it was, because it was Sunday.

  “I don’t know whether you’ll want to come with me. This morning I have to pay a call on a lady you aren’t anxious to meet.”

  “You’re going aboard the yacht?”

  Maigret nodded, and Mr. Pyke pushed his plate away, rose, and picked up the straw hat he had bought the day before at the mayor’s shop, for he was already sunburnt enough to make his face almost as red as the major’s.

  “Are you coming with me?”

  “You may need a translator.”

  “Shall I come too?” asked Lechat.

  “I’d like you to, yes. Can you row?”

  “I was born at the seaside.”

  They walked as far as the harbor, once again. It was the inspector who asked a fisherman permission to use a boat without a motor, and the three men took their places in it. They could see de Greef and Anna breakfasting on the deck of their little boat.

  The sea, too, as though in honor of the Sabbath, had put on a shot-satin appearance, and at every stroke of the oar pearls sparkled in the sun. The Cormorant was on the other side of the water, at Giens Point, waiting for the passengers to alight from the bus. One could see the bottom of the sea, the violet urchins in the hollow of the rocks and an occasional brightly colored sea wolf which would flee like an arrow. The bells were ringing to announce High Mass, and all the houses must have smelled of the scent the women put on their best dresses, in addition to the morning coffee.

  The North Star seemed much bigger, much higher from alongside, and as nobody was stirring, Lechat called out, raising his head:

  “Hello there, on board!”

  After a fairly long pause, a sailor leaned over the rail, one cheek covered with frothy soap, an open razor in his hand.

  “Can we see your mistress?”

  “Couldn’t you come back in an hour or so?”

  Mr. Pyke was visibly uncomfortable. Maigret hesitated a moment, thinking of the “grandmother.”

  “We’ll wait on deck if necessary,” he said to the seaman. “Up you go, Lechat.”

  They climbed the ladder, one behind the other. There were round copper portholes in the cabin, and Maigret saw a woman’s face pressed against one for an instant, and then disappear into the semidarkness.

  A moment later the hatch opened, and Philippe’s head appeared, his hair uncombed, his eyes still puffy with sleep.

  “What do you want?” he asked, sullenly.

  “A word with Mrs. Wilcox.”

  “She’s not up yet.”

  “That’s not true. I’ve just seen her.”

  Philippe was wearing silk pajamas, with blue stripes. There were a few steps to go down in order to enter the cabin, and Maigret, heavy and obstinate, was not waiting to be invited.

  “May we come in?”

  It was a strange mixture of luxury and disorder, of the refined and the sordid. The deck was meticulously scrubbed and all the brasswork gleamed, the ropes were carefully coiled, the captain’s bridge, with its compass and nautical instruments, was as clean as a Dutch kitchen.

  Going down the steps, the visitors immediately found themselves in a cabin with mahogany paneling, a table fixed to the floor, two benches with red leather upholstery, but with bottles and glasses lying about on the table, and there were slices of bread, a half-eaten tin of sardines, playing cards; a nauseating smell hung in the air, a mixture of alcohol and beds.

  The door of the next cabin, which served as a bedroom, must have been shut in a hurry, and in her flight, Mrs. Wilcox had left a satin slipper upon the floor.

  “Please excuse the intrusion,” Maigret said politely to Philippe. “You were probably in the middle of breakfast?”

  He was looking, without irony, at the half-empty bottles of English beer, a piece of bread which had been bitten into, a scrap of butter in some paper.

  “Is this an official search?” questioned the young man, running his fingers through his hair.

  “It’s whatever you want it to be. Just now, as far as I am concerned, it’s a straightforward visit.”

  “At this hour?”

  “Mrs. Wilcox is in the habit of rising late.”

  The sound of water could be heard on the other side of the door. Philippe would have liked to go away and put on something decent, but that would have meant revealing the too intimate disorder of the second cabin. He had no dressing gown at hand. His pajamas were crumpled. Mechanically he swallowed a mouthful of beer. Lechat had remained on the deck, following the chief inspector’s instructions, and must then have been busy with the two sailors.

  The latter were not English, as one might have supposed, but came from Nice, probably of Italian origin, to judge by their accents.

  “You can sit down, Mr. Pyke,” said Maigret, since Philippe omitted to invite them.

  Maigret’
s grandmother always used to go to the first Mass, at six o’clock in the morning, and when everyone else got up they found her in a black silk dress, with a white bonnet on her head, a fire blazing in the hearth, and breakfast served on a starched tablecloth.

  Old women had been to the first Mass here, and others would now be making their way diagonally across the square, heading for the open door of the church, with its smell of incense.

  As for Mrs. Wilcox, she had already had a drink of beer and in the morning more of the white roots must have been visible in her dyed hair. She went to and fro on the other side of the partition, without being able to be of any assistance to her secretary.

  The latter, his cheek slightly swollen where the evening before Polyte had struck him with his fist, looked like a sulky schoolboy in his striped pajamas. For just as there is in every class a fat boy who resembles an India-rubber ball, there is invariably the pupil who spends his free time silently preening himself in his corner while his school-mates say:

  “He’s a drip!”

  On the walls were hung engravings, but the chief inspector was unable to pronounce on their quality. Some of them were fairly erotic, but without exceeding the limits of good taste.

  They looked, Mr. Pyke and himself, rather as though they were in a waiting room, and the Englishman was holding his straw hat between his knees.

  Maigret finally lit his pipe.

  “How old is your mother, Monsieur de Moricourt?”

  “Why do you ask me that?”

  “No reason. Judging by your age she must be in her fifties?”

  “Forty-five. She had me very young. She married at sixteen.”

  “Mrs. Wilcox is older than her, isn’t she?”

  Mr. Pyke lowered his head. Anyone might have thought the chief inspector was doing it deliberately to make everyone feel more uncomfortable. Lechat was more at ease, outside, seated on the rail, chatting with one of the two sailors who was cleaning his nails in the sun.

  In the end there was a noise from the door, which opened and Mrs. Wilcox appeared, shutting it again hastily behind her so as not to let the chaos be seen.

  She had found time to dress, and make up, but her features, under the thick cosmetics, remained puffed, her eyes anxious.

  She must have been pitiable in the morning when she tried to clear her hangover with a bottle of strong beer.

  “Grandmother…” thought Maigret, in spite of himself.

  He rose, greeted her, introduced his companion.

  “Perhaps you know Mr. Pyke? He’s a fellow countryman of yours, who works at Scotland Yard. He’s not here on business. Excuse my disturbing you at such an early hour, Mrs. Wilcox.”

  She remained, in spite of everything, a lady, and a glance was enough to give Philippe to understand that his attire was indecent.

  “Will you excuse me while I go and dress?” he murmured with a nasty look at the chief inspector.

  “Perhaps you will feel more at your ease.”

  “Sit down, gentlemen. Is there anything I can offer you?”

  She saw the pipe that Maigret was allowing to go out.

  “Do go on smoking. Besides, I’m going to light a cigarette myself.”

  She forced a smile.

  “You must forgive the mess here, but a yacht isn’t a house and space is limited.”

  What was Mr. Pyke thinking at that particular moment? That his French colleague was a brute, or a boor?

  Very possibly. Maigret was anyhow not exactly proud of the job he had to do.

  “I believe you know Jef de Greef, Mrs. Wilcox?”

  “He’s a clever young man, and Anna’s sweet. They’ve been on board several times.”

  “He’s said to be a talented painter.”

  “I believe he is. I’ve had occasion to buy a canvas from him and I would have been happy to show it to you, only I’ve sent it off to my villa in Fiesole.”

  “You’ve got a villa in Italy?”

  “Oh, it’s quite a modest little villa. But it’s magnificently situated, on a hill, and from the windows you have a view over the whole of Florence. Do you know Florence, inspector?”

  “I haven’t that pleasure.”

  “I live there for part of the year. I send everything there that I happen to buy during the course of my wanderings.”

  She thought she had found firm ground.

  “You really don’t want anything to drink?”

  She was thirsty herself, and eyed the bottle she hadn’t had time to finish earlier on, not daring to drink alone.

  “Won’t you really try some of this beer, which I have sent straight from England?”

  He said yes, to please her. She went over to a cupboard which had been turned into an icebox to look for some bottles. Most of the walls of the cabin were actually cupboards, just as the benches concealed chests.

  “You’ve bought a lot of things on your travels, I gather?”

  She laughed.

  “Who told you that? I buy for the pleasure of buying, it is true. In Istanbul, for example, I always allow myself to be tempted by the salesmen at the bazaar. I come back on board with absolute horrors. At the time, they seem beautiful. Then, when I get back to the villa and find those things…”

  “Did you meet de Greef in Paris?”

  “No. Here only, not so long ago.”

  “And your secretary?”

  “He’s been with me for two years now. He’s a very cultured boy. We got to know each other at Cannes.”

  “Was he working?”

  “He was reporting for a Paris newspaper.”

  Moricourt must have had his ear glued to the partition.

  “You speak French perfectly, Mrs. Wilcox.”

  “I was partly educated in Paris. My governess was French.”

  “Did Marcellin often come on board?”

  “Certainly. I think almost everyone on the island has been on board.”

  “Do you remember the night he died?”

  “I think so.”

  He looked at her hands, which were not trembling.

  “He talked a lot about me, that evening.”

  “That’s what I was told. I didn’t know who you were. I asked Philippe.”

  “And did Monsieur de Moricourt know?”

  “It appears that you’re well known.”

  “When you left the Arche de Noé…”

  “Go on.”

  “Had Marcellin gone already?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. What I do know is that we went down to the harbor hugging the houses, the mistral was so strong, I was even afraid we shouldn’t manage to get back on board.”

  “Did you set off straightaway in the boat, Monsieur de Moricourt and yourself?”

  “Straightaway. What else could we have done? That reminds me that Marcellin came with us as far as the dinghy.”

  “You didn’t meet anyone?”

  “There can’t have been anybody out at that hour.”

  “Had de Greef and Anna returned to their boat?”

  “Possibly. I can’t remember. Wait…”

  Then Maigret was astounded to hear the precise voice of Mr. Pyke, who, for the first time, was allowing himself to intervene in his investigation. The Yard man said deliberately, yet without appearing to attach too much importance to it:

  “At home, Mrs. Wilcox, we should be obliged to remind you that anything you say may be used in evidence against you.”

  She looked at him, dumbfounded, then looked at Maigret, and there was a sort of panic in her eyes.

  “Is this an interrogation?” she asked. “But…tell me, chief inspector…I presume you don’t suspect us, Philippe and me, of having killed this man?”

  Maigret was silent for a moment, examining his pipe with deliberation.

  “I suspect nobody a priori, Mrs. Wilcox. However, this is certainly an interrogation and you have the right not to reply.”

  “Why shouldn’t I reply? We came back straightaway. Even though we shipped water in th
e dinghy and had to cling to the ladder to climb on board.”

  “Philippe didn’t go out again?”

  There was a hesitation in her eyes. The presence of her fellow countryman made her feel uncomfortable.

  “We went straight to bed and he couldn’t have left the boat without my hearing.”

  Philippe chose this moment to make his appearance, in white flannels, his hair smoothed down, a freshly lit cigarette at his lips. He wanted to appear bold. He addressed himself directly to Maigret.

  “You have some questions to put to me, inspector?”

  The latter pretended not to notice him.

  “Do you often buy paintings, madame?”

  “Fairly often. It’s one of my hobbies. Without having exactly what you might call a picture gallery, I have some pretty good ones.”

  “At Fiesole?”

  “At Fiesole, yes.”

  “Italian masters?”

  “I don’t rise to that. I’m more modest and content myself with fairly modern works.”

  “Cézannes or Renoirs, for example?”

  “I’ve a charming little Renoir.”

  “Degas, Manet, Monet?”

  “A Degas drawing, a dancer.”

  “Van Gogh?”

  Maigret was not looking at her, but stared straight at Philippe, who appeared to swallow hard and whose gaze became completely rigid.

  “I’ve just bought a van Gogh.”

  “How long ago?”

  “A few days. What day did we go to Hyères to send it off, Philippe?”

  “I don’t remember exactly,” the latter replied in a colorless voice.

  Maigret prompted them.

  “Wasn’t it the day before or two days before Marcellin’s death?”

  “Two days before,” she said. “I remember it now.”

  “Did you find the picture here?”

  She didn’t stop to think, and a moment later she bit her lip.

  “It was Philippe,” she said, “who through a friend…”

  She understood, by the silence of the three men, looked at them in turn, then cried:

  “What is it, Philippe?”

  She had risen with a start, was advancing toward the chief inspector.

  “You don’t mean?…Explain to me! Speak! Why don’t you say something? Philippe? What’s…?”

  The latter still didn’t stir.