‘I really thought I was done for,’ she sighed, smiling weakly. ‘He was squeezing so hard …’
One cheek was black with dirt and there was mud in her tangled hair. Maigret wasn’t much more presentable.
‘What were you doing in the well?’ he asked.
She looked at him sharply. Her smile vanished. In a single moment, she seemed to have recovered all her sang-froid.
‘Answer me.’
‘I … I was taken there by force …’
‘By Michonnet?’
‘That’s not true!’ screamed the man.
‘It is true. He tried to strangle me … I think he’s insane.’
‘She’s lying! She’s the one who’s insane! Or rather, she’s …’
‘She’s what?’
‘I don’t know! She’s … She’s a viper whose head should be crushed on a stone!’
Meanwhile, dawn had broken. Birds were twittering in all the trees.
‘Why did you take your revolver?’ Maigret asked Else.
‘Because I was afraid of a trap …’
‘What trap? Hold on a minute! One thing at a time. You just said that you were attacked and put into the well.’
‘She’s lying!’ repeated Michonnet, gulping convulsively.
‘Then show me,’ Maigret went on, ‘where this attack took place.’
Looking around her, Else pointed over to the front steps.
‘It was there? And you didn’t scream?’
‘I couldn’t …’
‘And this scrawny little fellow managed to carry you all the way over to the well, lugging fifty-five kilos?’
‘Yes, it’s true.’
‘She’s lying!’
‘Make him be quiet!’ she said wearily. ‘Don’t you see he’s crazy? And has been for a while, too.’
They had to restrain Michonnet, who was about to go after her again.
They formed a small group in the kitchen garden: Maigret, Lucas, two inspectors, all looking at the insurance agent with the swollen face and Else, who even while talking had been trying to clean herself up.
For some strange reason, this entire episode had not risen to the level of tragedy, or even drama. It was more like buffoonery.
The feeble morning light might well have had something to do with it. And perhaps everyone’s fatigue, even their hunger.
Things got worse when they saw a simple soul walking hesitantly down the road, a woman who peered through the bars of the front gate, finally opened it and caught sight of Michonnet.
‘Émile!’ she exclaimed.
It was Madame Michonnet, more bewildered than distressed, who now pulled a hankie from her pocket and burst out crying.
‘It’s that woman again!’
She looked like someone’s good old mother, battered by events and falling back on the soothing bitterness of tears.
Maigret noticed with amusement how Else’s face seemed to come into tight focus as she looked at everyone around her in turn. A pretty face, delicate, gone suddenly sharp-featured and tense.
‘What were you planning on doing in the well?’ he asked cheerfully, as if he were saying, ‘Enough of this! Admit it, there’s no point in pretending any more.’
She understood. Gave him an ironic smile.
‘I think we’re done for,’ she conceded. ‘Only, I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, I’m cold and I’d really like to clean myself up a bit. And then we’ll see …’
She wasn’t playing a part. On the contrary, she was admirably to the point.
All alone in the middle of the group, she was relaxed, watching the pitiful Michonnet and his weeping wife with an amused air, and when she turned to Maigret her eyes said, ‘Poor things! Us, we’re two of a kind, aren’t we! We’ll talk later. You’ve won … but admit it: I put on quite a show!’
No fear, no embarrassment, either. No theatrics at all.
It was the real Else at last – and she was enjoying this moment of truth.
‘Come along with me,’ said Maigret. ‘Lucas, you take care of the other one … As for his wife, she can go home or stay here, either way.’
‘Come in! You’re not disturbing me …’
It was the same room, up there, with the black divan, the insistent perfume, the hiding place behind the watercolour. It was the same woman.
‘Carl is well guarded, at least?’ she asked, jerking her chin towards his room. ‘Because he’d be even harder to control than Michonnet! … You may smoke your pipe.’
She poured some water into the basin, calmly pulled off her dress as if that were the most natural thing in the world, and stood there in her slip, without any fuss or provocation.
Maigret recalled his first visit to the Three Widows house, when Else had been as enigmatic and distant as a cinema vamp, and he remembered the disturbing, enervating atmosphere with which she could surround herself.
Had she played her part well, the alluring, wilful young thing who talked about her parents’ castle, the nannies and governesses, her father’s strict principles?
Well, that was yesterday! One gesture was more eloquent than any words: the way she’d stripped off her dress and was now looking at herself in the mirror before washing her face.
The classic tart, earthy, vulgar and sly.
‘Admit that you fell for it!’
‘Not for long!’
She wiped her face with a corner of the Turkish towel.
‘Sure! … Just yesterday, when you were here and I flashed you a peek at one breast, your mouth was dry and your forehead sweaty, like the nice fat old fellow you are. That won’t work with you now, of course. Even though I haven’t lost any of my looks …’
She threw out her chest and happily admired her lithe and barely clad figure.
‘Between us, what tipped you off? I made a mistake?’
‘Several.’
‘Such as?’
‘Talking a mite too much about the castle and the grounds … When you really live in a castle, you usually call it the house, for example.’
She had pulled aside the curtain of a wardrobe and was studying her dresses.
‘You’ll be taking me to Paris, naturally! And there will be photographers there … What do you think of this green dress?’
She held it up to herself to judge the effect.
‘No: black is still my best colour … Will you give me a light?’
She laughed, for, in spite of everything, Maigret was slightly affected by the subtle eroticism she managed to instil in the atmosphere, especially when she went over for him to light her cigarette.
‘Well! Time to get dressed … The whole thing’s a scream, don’t you think?’
Her accent made even common slang sound strangely appealing …
‘How long have you been Carl Andersen’s mistress?’
‘I am not his mistress. I am his wife.’
She ran a mascara wand along her eyelashes, freshened the pink in her cheeks.
‘Were you married in Denmark?’
‘You see, you still don’t know a thing! And don’t count on me to talk, I’m no snitch … Anyway, you won’t hold me for long. How soon after I’m arrested do I get booked?’
‘Right away.’
‘Too bad for you! Because they’ll find out that my real name is Bertha Krull and that for just over three years now the Copenhagen police have had a warrant out for my arrest. The Danish government will ask for extradition … There! I’m ready. Now, if you’ll allow me, I’d like a bite to eat … Don’t you think it smells musty in here?’
She went over to open the window, then came back to the door. Maigret left the bedroom first. She then slammed the door shut, slid the bolt, and he could hear her running to the window.
Had Maigret been ten kilos lighter,
she would probably have got away. The bolt had only just gone home when, without losing a second, he hurled himself full tilt against the door.
And it gave way at once, falling flat with its lock and hinges ripped off.
Else was sitting astride the window-sill. She hesitated …
‘Too late!’ he said.
She turned around, breathing a touch heavily, her forehead slightly damp.
‘I don’t know why I bothered to dress myself up!’ she remarked sarcastically, pointing out a tear in her dress.
‘Will you promise me you won’t try again to escape?’
‘No!’
‘In that case, I warn you that I will shoot at the slightest false move.’
And he kept his revolver in his hand from then on.
‘Do you think he’ll make it?’ she asked as they passed Carl’s door. ‘He’s got two bullets in him, hasn’t he?’
He looked at her and although at that moment he would have been hard put to read her mind, he thought he detected in her face and voice a mixture of pity and resentment.
‘It’s his fault too!’ she decided, as if to set her conscience at rest. ‘I only hope there’s still something to eat in the house …’
Maigret followed her into the kitchen, where she searched the cupboards and finally unearthed a tin of rock lobster.
‘Won’t you open it for me? … Don’t worry, I promise I won’t take advantage and make a run for it.’
There was a strangely companionable feeling between the two of them that Maigret rather enjoyed. There was even something intimate in their relationship, and the faintest undercurrent of possibilities.
She was having fun with this big, placid man who had bested her but whom she knew she was impressing with her dash and daring. As for him, he was savouring this most unusual familiarity perhaps a little too much.
‘Here you are … Eat quickly.’
‘We’re leaving already?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Just between us … Exactly what have you found out?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Are you carting off Michonnet as well, that idiot? Still, he’s the one who scared me the most … Back in the well I really thought I’d had it. His eyes were bulging out of his head … He was squeezing my throat with everything he had.’
‘Were you his mistress?’
She shrugged, the kind of girl for whom such details have almost no importance.
‘And Monsieur Oscar?’ he added.
‘What about him?’
‘Another lover?’
‘You’ll have to find all that out by yourself. Me, I know exactly what’s waiting for me. I’ve got five years to do in Denmark: accessory to armed robbery and resisting arrest. That’s when I caught this bullet.’
And she pointed to her right breast.
‘As for the rest, this lot here will cope on their own!’
‘Where did you meet Isaac Goldberg?’
‘I’ve got nothing to say.’
‘You’ll have to talk at some point …’
‘And just how do you think you can make me?’
She was answering while eating some rock lobster without any bread, because there was none left in the kitchen. They could hear a policeman walking up and down in the drawing room while he kept an eye on Michonnet, slumped in an armchair.
Two cars pulled up at the same time outside the front gate, which was opened to allow them to come up the drive and around to the front steps.
In the first car sat an inspector, two gendarmes, Monsieur Oscar and his wife.
The other car was the taxi from Paris, in which an inspector was guarding a third person.
The three prisoners were wearing handcuffs, but they kept up a good front, except for the garage owner’s wife, whose eyes were red.
Maigret took Else into the drawing room, where Michonnet tried yet again to rush towards her.
The prisoners were brought inside. Monsieur Oscar behaved almost as casually as an ordinary visitor, but he did wince when he saw Else and Michonnet. The other man, who might have been an Italian, decided to brazen it out.
‘Great! A family reunion! Are we having a wedding, or reading a will?’
‘Luckily, we brought them in without any trouble,’ the officer explained to Maigret. ‘On the way through Étampes, we picked up two gendarmes who had been informed of the situation and seen the car go past without being able to stop it. Fifty kilometres from Orléans the fugitives had a flat tyre, halted in the middle of the road and trained their revolvers on us … The garage owner was the first one to think better of it – otherwise we’d have had quite a gun battle.
‘We started towards them; the Italian did fire at us twice with his Browning, but missed.’
‘Well, now,’ observed Monsieur Oscar. ‘In my house, I served you a drink, so allow me to point out that it’s rather parched around here …’
Maigret had had the mechanic fetched from the garage and seemed to be counting heads.
‘All of you go and line up against the wall!’ he ordered. ‘At the other end, Michonnet … No use trying to get near Else.’
The little man glared at him and went to stand at the end of the line, with his drooping moustache and his eye still swelling from all those punches.
Next came the mechanic, whose wrists were still bound by the electric wire. Then the garage owner’s wife, thin and woebegone, and the garage owner himself, who was much annoyed at being unable to put his hands into the pockets of his baggy trousers. Finally, Else and the Italian, who must have been the ladies’ man of the gang and had a naked woman tattooed on the back of one hand.
Maigret looked them over slowly, one by one, with a satisfied little smile, then filled his spare pipe, strode over to the front steps to open the French windows and called out, ‘Take their surnames, given names, occupations and addresses, Lucas … Let me know when you’re done.’
The six of them stood all lined up. Pointing to Else, Lucas asked, ‘Should I cuff her as well?’
‘Why not?’
At which Else responded hotly, ‘That’s really rotten of you, inspector!’
The grounds were brimming with sunshine. Thousands of birds were singing. On the horizon, the weathercock of a little village church steeple was glistening as if it were solid gold.
10. Looking for a Head
When Maigret returned to the drawing room, where the wide-open French windows were welcoming the spring air, Lucas was wrapping up his interrogation in an atmosphere not unlike that of a barrack room.
The prisoners were still lined up against a wall, albeit in a less orderly fashion. And at least three of them were acting distinctly unimpressed by their police captors: the garage owner, his mechanic Jojo and the Italian Guido Ferrari.
Monsieur Oscar was dictating to Lucas.
‘Occupation: garage proprietor and mechanic. Add on former professional boxer, licensed in 1920. Middleweight champion of Paris in 1922 …’
Some officers brought in two new recruits: garage employees who’d just shown up as usual for work. They were placed in the lineup with the others. One of them, who had the mug of a gorilla, simply drawled, ‘That’s it? We’re busted?’
They were all talking at once, like children when their teacher is out of the room. They nudged one another with their elbows and cracked jokes.
Only Michonnet still presented a sorry sight, hunched over and glowering at the floor.
As for Else, she watched Maigret almost as if he were her accomplice. Hadn’t they understood each other remarkably well? Whenever Monsieur Oscar made a bad pun, she smiled discreetly at the inspector.
As far as she was concerned, she was a cut above all this.
‘Let’s have some silence, now!’ thundered Maigre
t.
But at that same moment, a small sedan drew up at the front steps. The driver was well dressed and carried a leather instrument case under his arm with an air of importance. He came briskly up the steps only to stare in astonishment at the row of suspects that suddenly confronted him.
‘The patient?’
‘Would you take care of this, Lucas?’
It was an eminent surgeon from Paris, called in to attend to Carl Andersen. He went off with a worried look while the sergeant led the way.
‘D’ja catch the look on that doc’s kisser?’
Only Else had frowned, and her eyes had gone a little less blue …
‘I called for silence!’ said Maigret clearly. ‘Save the wisecracks for later. What you seem to be forgetting is that at least one of you looks likely to pay for this with his head.’
And he looked slowly up and down the line. His speech had produced the desired effect.
The sun was the same; there was spring in the air. The birds kept on chirping in the trees and the shade from the foliage still trembled on the gravel path.
In the drawing room, though, one felt that mouths had gone drier, that cheekiness was draining away …
Still, Michonnet was the only one who moaned, and so unwittingly that he was himself the most surprised of all and turned his head aside, embarrassed.
‘I can see you’ve understood!’ continued Maigret, beginning to pace the room with his hands behind his back. ‘We’ll try to save time. If we’re unsuccessful here, we’ll keep going at Quai des Orfèvres … You must know the place, right? Good! … First crime: Isaac Goldberg is shot at point-blank range. Who brought Goldberg to the Three Widows Crossroads?’
They were silent, all looking at one another with no love lost, while over their heads the surgeon could be heard moving around.
‘I’m waiting! I repeat: we’ll continue this at police headquarters – and there, you’ll be grilled one by one … Goldberg was in Antwerp. There was about two million in diamonds to unload … Who got the ball rolling?’
‘I did!’ said Else. ‘I’d met Goldberg in Copenhagen. I knew stolen jewels were his specialty. When I read about the burglary in London and the papers said the diamonds had to be in Antwerp, I assumed Goldberg was in on it. I talked to Oscar about it …’
The Night at the Crossroads Page 10