The Flemish House

by Georges Simenon

  ‘She has never enjoyed very good health … This scandal has taken its toll on her nerves, and I’m sure it’s because of her agitation that she fell down the stairs … She’s ashamed for her brother, for her family … She has told me several times that after that the order won’t allow her in … For hours at a time she remains prostrate, staring at the ceiling, without taking the slightest nourishment … Then, for no apparent reason, another fit will break out … We’re giving her injections to try to restore her …’

  They had reached the ground floor.

  ‘Can I ask you what you think of this business, inspector?’

  ‘You can, but I would be embarrassed to give you an answer … In all conscience, I must tell you that I don’t know anything … Not until tomorrow …’

  ‘You think that tomorrow …?’

  ‘All I can do, Reverend Mother, is thank you and apologize for this visit … Perhaps I might take the liberty of phoning you to ask you for news?’

  At last he was outside. He was breathing fresh air, saturated with rain. He found his taxi waiting beside the pavement.

  ‘To Givet!’

  He stuffed his pipe to the brim and almost lay down at the back of the car. At a turn in the road, near Dinant, he spotted a signpost:

  Rochefort Caves …

  He had no time to read the number of kilometres. He only looked into the darkness of a side road. And he imagined a fine Sunday, a train full of tourists, two couples: Joseph Peeters and Germaine Piedboeuf … And Anna and Gérard …

  It must have been hot … On the way back, the travellers probably had their arms full of wild flowers …

  Anna on the bench, wounded, emotional, upset, perhaps watching the expression of the man who had just changed her whole being …?

  And Gérard, very cheerful, playful, cracking jokes, unable to understand that a serious, almost defining event had taken place that afternoon …

  Had he tried to see her again? Had the affair continued?

  ‘No!’ Maigret replied to himself. ‘Anna understood! She had no illusions about her companion! The very next day, she must have avoided him …’

  And he imagined her keeping her secret, perhaps fearing for months the consequences of that embrace, and nurturing for men, for all men, a wild hatred.

  ‘Do you want me to drive you to your hotel?’

  Already at Givet, the Belgian border and its guard in khaki, the French border, the barges, the Flemish house, the muddy quay.

  Maigret was surprised to find something heavy in his pocket. He plunged his hand in, and found the hammer, which he had stopped thinking about.

  Inspector Machère, who had heard the car stopping, was in the doorway of the café and watched Maigret paying the driver.

  ‘Did they let you in?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘I’m amazed! Because if you want to know what I think, I’ll tell you I was sure she wasn’t there …’

  ‘Where would she have been?’

  ‘I don’t know … I don’t understand any more … Particularly since the hammer … Do you know who came to see me?’

  ‘The bargeman?’

  And Maigret, who had come into the café, ordered a beer and sat down in the corner near the window.

  ‘Almost! In the end, it’s more or less the same thing … It was Gérard Piedboeuf who came … I had driven around all the stations … I hadn’t found anything …’

  ‘And did he reveal your man’s hiding place?’

  ‘He told me, at any rate, that he’d been seen taking the 4.15 train at Givet station … That’s the train that goes to Brussels …’

  ‘Who saw him?’

  ‘A friend of Gérard … He suggested bringing him to me …’

  ‘Shall I lay two places?’ asked the landlord.

  ‘Yes … No … It doesn’t matter …’

  Maigret greedily drank his beer.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s enough? If he really was seen at the station, it means he isn’t dead … And especially that he’s on the run … If he is on the run …’

  ‘Obviously!’

  ‘You think the same thing as I do!’

  ‘I don’t think anything at all, Machère! I’m hot! I’m freezing! I think I’ve caught a bad cold … Right now, I’m dithering over whether I’m going to go to bed without eating … Another beer, please! … In fact, no! A hot toddy … With lots of rum …’

  ‘Did she really have a sprain?’

  Maigret didn’t reply. He was gloomy. One might almost have said that he was worried.

  ‘I suppose the examining magistrate must have given you a blank arrest warrant?’

  ‘Yes … But he advised me to be very prudent, because of the mentality in small towns. I’d rather phone him before doing anything definitive.’

  ‘And what are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ve already sent a telegram to the criminal investigations department in Brussels, to arrest the sailor when he gets off the train. I’ll have to ask you to give me back the hammer.’

  To the great surprise of the few customers, Maigret took the object out of his pocket and put it on the marble tabletop.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘You’ll also have to hand it in, because you’re the one who found it.’

  ‘Not at all! Not at all! As far as everyone’s concerned, you’re the one who found it.’

  Machère’s eyes shone with joy.

  ‘Thank you. It’s valuable for my promotion.’

  ‘I’ve laid two places near the stove!’ the landlord announced.

  ‘Thank you! I’m going to bed! I’m not hungry …’

  And Maigret went up to his room, after shaking his colleague’s hand.

  Perhaps he had caught a cold by walking around for two days wearing damp clothes, because he hadn’t brought his spare suit.

  He lay down like a man exhausted. For a good half-hour he struggled against the vague images that passed across his retina in a wearying cadence.

  However, on Sunday morning he was the first one up. In the café, he found only the waiter who was lighting the percolator, filling the upper part with ground coffee.

  The town was still asleep. Dawn was just succeeding night, and the street lamps were still lit.

  On the river, on the other hand, they were calling from one barge to another, they were throwing cables, and a tug moved to the head of the line.

  A new train of boats set off towards Belgium and Holland.

  It wasn’t raining. But the fog left droplets of water on his shoulders.

  The bells of a church were ringing, somewhere. A light at a window in the Flemish house. Then the door opening up. Madame Peeters closing it carefully again and leaving on hasty feet, clutching a missal wrapped in cloth.

  Maigret spent the whole morning outside, just occasionally going into a café to have a glass of alcohol and warm himself up. People who knew said it was going to freeze, and that it would be a disaster for the regions flooded when the river broke its banks.

  At half past seven, Madame Peeters, back from mass, drew back the shutters of the shop and, in the kitchen, lit her fire.

  It was not until about nine o’clock that Joseph appeared in the doorway for a moment, without a false collar, not yet washed or shaved, his hair dishevelled.

  At ten o’clock, he set off for mass with Anna, who was wearing a new beige woollen coat.

  At the Café des Mariniers, they didn’t yet know whether a tug whose arrival they were expecting would agree to leave the same day with a train of boats, so the bargemen were there all day, occasionally popping outside to look at the swollen river.

  It was nearly midday when Gérard Piedboeuf came out of his house, in his Sunday suit, wearing yellow shoes, a light-coloured felt hat and gloves. He passed very close by Maigret. His first thought was not to talk to him, not even to greet him.

  But he couldn’t resist his desire to show off, or reveal the depths o
f his thoughts.

  ‘I bother you, don’t I? How you must hate me!’

  He had circles under his eyes. Since his angry outburst in the Café de la Mairie, he had been living in a state of anxiety.

  Maigret shrugged and turned his back on him. And he saw the midwife putting the child in a pram and pushing it towards the centre of town.

  There was no sign of Machère. It was only shortly before one o’clock that Maigret met him, at the Café de la Mairie, in fact. Gérard was at another table, with his two companions and his friend from the other evening.

  As for Machère, he was surrounded by three men whom the inspector thought he had seen before.

  ‘The deputy mayor … The chief inspector of police … His secretary …’ said Machère by way of introduction.

  They were all in their Sunday suits and drinking pastis. Judging by the saucers on the table, they had had three drinks each. Machère seemed unusually confident.

  ‘I was telling these gentlemen that the investigation is nearly over … Now it depends mostly on the Belgian police … I’m surprised I haven’t yet had a telegram from Brussels telling me that the bargeman has been arrested …’

  ‘They don’t deliver telegrams on Sundays after eleven o’clock in the morning!’ said the deputy mayor. ‘Unless you go to the post office in person … What can we get you, Detective Chief Inspector? Did you know that people have been talking about you a lot around here?’

  ‘I’m delighted!’

  ‘I mean they’ve been saying bad things. They see your attitude as …’

  ‘A beer, please! Make it a cold one!’

  ‘You drink beer at this time of day?’

  Marguerite was passing along the street, and you could tell by her bearing that she was the elegant young woman of the town and that she knew all eyes were on her.

  ‘What’s annoying is that these sex crimes … Heavens! There haven’t been any in Givet for ten years … Last time, it was a Polish workman who …’

  ‘You’ll forgive me, gentlemen …’

  And Maigret hurried outside and in the main street he met Anna Peeters and her brother, who were walking with their heads held high, as if to defy suspicion.

  ‘I would like to come and see you this afternoon, as I said I would yesterday …’

  ‘At about what time?’

  ‘Half past three … Does that suit?’

  And he came back all alone, looking grumpy, to his hotel, where he ate at an isolated table.

  ‘Get me Paris on the phone.’

  ‘It doesn’t work after eleven o’clock on Sundays.’

  ‘Too bad!’

  As he had his lunch, he read a little local newspaper, and a headline amused him:

  The Mystery of Givet Deepens

  For him, there was no mystery.

  ‘Bring me some beans!’ he called to the waiter.

  9. Around a Wicker Armchair

  Of all the little Sunday family rituals, the one that struck Maigret the most was their carrying old Peeters’ wicker armchair from the kitchen to the drawing room.

  In the week, the place of the armchair, and consequently of the old man, was beside the stove. Even if they were receiving people in the dining room, old Peeters didn’t appear.

  But there was a Sunday place, near the window overlooking the courtyard. The meerschaum pipe with its long cherry-wood stem was on the window-sill, near a jar of tobacco.

  In a smaller armchair, a leather one, in front of the coal-nut fire, Dr Van de Weert sat with his chubby legs crossed.

  As he read the report from the Belgian legal doctor, he constantly nodded, with approval, with amazement, making tiny gestures to himself.

  At last he held out the report to Maigret. Marguerite, who was between them, tried to take it.

  ‘No! Not you …’ Van de Weert broke in.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be more interested in this!’ Maigret said, passing the pages to Joseph Peeters.

  They were all around the table: Joseph and Marguerite, Anna and her mother, who got up every now and again to check on the coffee.

  In the Belgian way, the doctor was drinking Burgundy and smoking a cigar, whose lit end he constantly waved about under his chin.

  On the kitchen table, Maigret had seen half a dozen tarts.

  ‘A good report, obviously … For example, it doesn’t say whether … whether …’

  He looked at his daughter with embarrassment.

  ‘You understand what I mean … it doesn’t say whether …’

  ‘Whether there was a rape!’ Maigret said abruptly.

  And he nearly burst out laughing at the sight of the scandalized face of the doctor, who didn’t imagine that such words could be uttered.

  ‘It would have been interesting to know, because in similar cases … For example, in 1911 …’

  He went on talking, telling, with respectable euphemisms, the story of some affair or other. But Maigret wasn’t listening. He was watching Joseph Peeters read the document.

  Now in the bluntest terms it gave a minute description of the corpse of Germaine Piedboeuf when it was pulled from the Meuse.

  Joseph was pale. He had pinched nostrils, something he had in common with his sister Maria.

  It looked as if he was about to stop reading and give the papers to Maigret. But it didn’t happen. He carried on to the end. As he turned the page, Anna, who had been leaning over his shoulder, halted him:

  ‘Wait …’

  She had another three lines to read. Then together they both started the following page, which began with:

  … the wound in the cranium was such that it has been impossible to find the slightest trace of brain …

  ‘Would you take your glass, inspector? I’m about to lay the table …’

  And Madame Peeters set down the ashtray, the cigars and the bottle of genever on the mantelpiece, and spread a hand-embroidered cloth on the table.

  Her children were still reading. Marguerite looked at them enviously. As for the doctor, he had noticed that no one was listening to him and was smoking in silence.

  At the end of the second page, Joseph Peeters was pale, with a dark hollow on each side of his nose and perspiration on his temples. He forgot to turn the page and Anna had to do it, before reading on to the end alone.

  Marguerite took the opportunity to get up and touch the young man’s shoulder.

  ‘Poor Joseph! You shouldn’t have … Believe me. Go and get a breath of fresh air …’

  Maigret saw an opportunity.

  ‘That’s an idea! I need to stretch my legs too …’

  A little later they were both on the quay, bare-headed. It had stopped raining. A few anglers were making use of the tiniest free spaces between the barges. From the other side of the bridge there came the constant noise of a cinema.

  Nervously, Peeters lit a cigarette, gazing vacantly at the receding surface of the water.

  ‘It does something to you, doesn’t it? … Forgive my question … Do you still expect to marry Marguerite?’

  The silence lasted for a long time. Joseph avoided turning towards Maigret, who could only see his profile. At last he looked at the shop door, decorated with transparent advertisements, then the bridge, then the Meuse again.

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘But you loved her …’

  ‘Why did you make me read that report?’

  And he ran his hand over his forehead. When he took it back it was wet, in spite of the cold air.

  ‘Was Germaine much less pretty?’

  ‘Be quiet … I don’t know … I’ve heard it said so often that Marguerite is beautiful, that she’s fine, intelligent, well brought-up …’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  He didn’t want to speak. He only articulated the words reluctantly, because he couldn’t fall completely silent. He had torn the paper of his cigarette.

  ‘Has she agreed to get married, in spite of your son?’
r />   ‘She wants to adopt him.’

  His features didn’t move. But he seemed ill with disgust, or with weariness. He observed Maigret from the corner of his eye, afraid that he might start asking him new questions.

  ‘Everyone seems to think there’s a wedding on the way. Is Marguerite your lover?’

  He muttered, in a very low voice:

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t she want to?’

  ‘It wasn’t her, it was me … I didn’t even think about it … You can’t possibly understand …’

  And suddenly, in a furious voice:

  ‘I have to marry her! I have to, and that’s all there is to it!’

  The two men still weren’t looking at each other. Maigret, who didn’t have his overcoat with him, started to feel the cold.

  At that moment the door to the shop opened. There was the sound of the bell, familiar to Maigret. Then Marguerite’s voice, too sweet, too caressing.

  ‘Joseph! What are you doing?’

  Peeters’ eyes met Maigret’s. It was almost as if he was saying, ‘That’s all there is to it!’

  While Marguerite went on:

  ‘You’re going to catch cold … Everyone’s sitting at the table … What’s wrong? You’re pale …’

  A pause, to look at the corner of the little street where, invisible from the grocery, the Piedboeufs’ house stood.

  Anna sliced the tarts.

  Madame Peeters didn’t speak much, as if she had realized her inferiority. On the other hand, as soon as one of her children spoke, she showed her approval by smiling or nodding her head.

  ‘You’ll forgive my indiscretion, inspector … I may be about to say something stupid …’

  And she set down a big slice of rice tart on Maigret’s plate.

  ‘I … I heard they’d found some things on board the Étoile Polaire, and that the bargeman was on the run … He came here a few times … I had to throw him out, first because he wanted everything on credit, then because he was drunk from dawn till dusk … But that’s not what I wanted to say … If he’s on the run, it’s because he’s guilty … And in that case the investigation’s over, isn’t it?’

  Anna ate indifferently, without looking at Maigret. Marguerite said to Joseph: