And she recited indifferently:
‘She had been crying, in the shop … She was a woman who cried all the time … My mother had given her her monthly payment of fifty francs … I went outside with her … I promised I would give her the rest …’
‘And you both walked around the house, in the night … You came back in by the back door and you went up to the first floor …’
He looked at the door, and muttered in what was supposed to be a firm voice:
‘You opened the door … You let your companion in ahead of you … The hammer was ready …’
‘No!’
‘What do you mean, no?’
‘I didn’t hit her straight away … Perhaps I wouldn’t have had the courage to hit her … I don’t know … Except that the girl said, looking at the bed: “Is this where my brother comes to see you! You’re lucky, you know how to avoid having children!”’
Just a stupid, sordid, mundane detail.
‘How many blows?’
‘Two … She fell straight away … I pushed her under the bed …’
‘And, at the bottom, you found your mother, your sister Maria and Marguerite, who had just arrived …’
‘My mother was in the kitchen with my father, grinding the coffee for the following morning …’
‘Now, Anna!’ Madame Peeters’ voice called again. ‘The inspector wants to leave …’
And Maigret, leaning over the banister, called out:
‘Let him wait!’
He locked the door.
‘Did you tell your sister and Marguerite?’
‘No! But I knew that Joseph would come. I couldn’t do what I had to do on my own. And I didn’t want people to see my brother in the house. I told Maria to go and wait on the quay so that he didn’t show his face, and that he was to leave his motorbike as far away as possible …’
‘Was Maria surprised?’
‘She was scared. She didn’t understand. But she felt that she had to obey … Marguerite was at the piano … I asked her to play and sing … Because I knew we would be making some noise up there …’
‘And you were the one who came up with the idea of the water-tank on the roof!’
He lit his pipe, which he had filled mechanically.
‘Joseph came and joined you in your room. What did he say when he saw …?’
‘Nothing! He didn’t understand! He looked at me in horror. He was barely able to help me …’
‘To hoist the body through the skylight and drag it along the cornice to the galvanized tank!’
Big drops of sweat ran down the face of the inspector, who muttered to himself:
‘Unbelievable!’
She pretended not to hear.
‘If I hadn’t killed that woman, Joseph would have died …’
‘When did you tell the truth to Maria?’
‘Never! She didn’t dare to ask me … When she found out that Germaine had disappeared, she suspected something … She’s been ill since then …’
‘And Marguerite?’
‘If she has suspicions, she doesn’t want to know … You understand?’
Did he understand! Madame Peeters continued to come and go in the house without suspecting a thing and was furious about the accusations of the people of Givet!
Old Peeters just went on smoking his pipe in his wicker armchair, where he went to sleep two or three times a day …
Joseph appeared as rarely as possible and went back to Nancy, leaving his sister with the task of defending herself.
And Maria was in torment, passing her days at the Ursuline convent with the fear of learning, when she came home one evening, that everything had been discovered.
‘Why did you take the body out of the tank?’
‘It would have ended up smelling … I waited for three days … On Saturday, when Joseph came back, we carried it to the Meuse together …’
She too had big drops of sweat, but not on her forehead: above her upper lip, exactly where the skin was downy.
‘When I saw that the inspector suspected us and was furiously carrying out his investigation, I thought the best way to get people to be quiet was to go to the police myself … If they hadn’t found the body …’
‘The case would have been closed!’ he muttered.
And he added, starting to walk again:
‘Only there was the bargeman, who had seen the body being dumped in the water and who had fished out the hammer and the jacket …’
And was he any less cynical than professional criminals? He didn’t say anything to the police! Or rather he lied! He let people believe that he knew more than he was willing to admit!’
He went and told Gérard Piedboeuf that he could get the Peeters put in jail and, in return for that evidence, he received two thousand francs.
But he didn’t give evidence. He spoke to Anna. He told her the deal.
Either she gave him nothing, and he would talk. Or she would give him a lot of money, and he would leave the area, thus drawing suspicion to himself and turning it away from the Flemish house!
It was Marguerite who had paid! They had to get a move on! Maigret had already found the hammer! Anna couldn’t leave the grocery without attracting attention! She gave the bargeman a message for her cousin.
And her cousin hurried over a short time later.
‘What’s happening? Why did you …?’
‘Sh! Joseph’s coming … You’ll get married soon …’
And the diaphanous Marguerite didn’t dare ask anything more.
On Saturday evening there was a relaxed atmosphere in the house. The danger had been banished. The bargeman was on the run! Now all that mattered was that he didn’t get caught!
‘And since you feared your sister Maria’s nerves,’ Maigret growled, ‘you advised her to stay in Namur, to say she was sick or give herself a sprain …’
He was suffocating. The sound of the piano reached them again, but this time it was playing ‘Le Comte de Luxembourg’!
Did Anna realize the monstrousness of her action? She remained absolutely calm. She waited. Her face was still as limpid as before.
‘They’ll be getting worried down there!’ she said.
‘You’re right! Let’s go down …’
But she didn’t move. She remained standing in the middle of the room, stopping her companion with a gesture.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ve told you three times!’ Maigret sighed wearily. ‘I’m going back to Paris this evening.’
‘But … the …’
‘I’m not concerned with the rest! I’m not on duty here. See Inspector Machère …’
‘Will you tell him?’
He didn’t reply. He was already on the landing. He was breathing the mild, sweet smell that spread throughout the whole house, and the dominant hint of cinnamon brought back old memories.
There was a chink of light under the dining-room door. The sound of music could be heard more clearly.
Maigret pushed the door and was surprised to see Anna, whom he hadn’t heard, coming in at the same time as he did.
‘What have you two been plotting?’ asked Dr Van de Weert, who had just lit an enormous cigar and was sucking the end of it like a child sucking on a dummy.
‘Excuse us … Mademoiselle Anna was asking me for information about a trip that I think she wants to take one of these days …’
Marguerite had abruptly stopped playing.
‘Is that true, Anna?’
‘Oh! Not straight away …’
And Madame Peeters, who was knitting, looked at them all with a hint of concern.
‘I have filled your glass, inspector … I know your tastes now …’
Machère, frowning, studied his colleague, trying to guess what had happened.
As for Joseph, he was in high spirits, because he had drunk several glasses of genever in a row. His eyes were shining, his hands agitated.
Maigret said, ‘Would you do me the
pleasure, Mademoiselle Marguerite? Play me “Solveig’s Song” one last time …’
And, turning to Joseph:
‘Why don’t you turn the pages for her?’
It was perversity, as when you prod a diseased tooth with the tip of your tongue in order to provoke the pain.
From the place where he was standing, with one elbow on the mantelpiece, his glass of Schiedam in his hand, Maigret dominated the whole drawing room, Madame Peeters, leaning over her table and haloed by the light of the lamp, Van de Weert, smoking, stretching his little legs, Anna, still standing against the wall.
And at the piano Marguerite playing and singing, Joseph turning the pages.
The top of the instrument was decorated with a piece of embroidery and lots of photographs: Joseph, Maria and Anna, at all ages …
… May God in his great goodness …
But most of all it was Anna that Maigret was studying. He didn’t think he was beaten yet. He was hoping for something, without knowing exactly what.
Genuine emotion, at least! Perhaps a tremor of the lips? Perhaps some tears? Perhaps even a dash out of the room …
The first couplet passed with nothing of the kind happening, and Machère murmured in Maigret’s ear:
‘Are we staying long?’
‘A few minutes …’
During that brief exchange of words, Anna looked at them over the table, as if to check that no danger was being prepared for her.
… Never leave me …
And while the last chord was still echoing, Madame Peeters murmured, her white head still bent over her work:
‘I’ve never wished any harm to anyone, but I repeat that God knows what he has to do! Wouldn’t it have been miserable if these children …’
She was too emotional to finish. She wiped away a tear on her cheek with the stocking she was busy knitting.
And Anna remained impassive, her eyes fixed on Maigret. Machère was getting impatient.
‘Right! You’ll forgive me for leaving you abruptly, but my train is at seven o’clock and …’
Everyone got up. Joseph didn’t know where to look. Machère stammered, before finally finding the phrase he was looking for, or something close to it.
‘I’m sorry to have suspected you … But you must admit that appearances … And if that bargeman hadn’t gone on the run …’
‘Will you show these gentlemen out, Anna?’
‘Yes, Mother …’
So it was just the three of them who crossed the grocery. The door was locked, because it was Sunday. But there was a night light on, making reflections on the brass plates of the scales.
Machère anxiously shook the girl’s hand.
‘Please accept my apology once again …’
Maigret and Anna spent a few seconds standing facing one another, and Anna stammered at last:
‘Don’t worry … I won’t be staying here …’
In the darkness of the quay, Machère spoke ceaselessly, but Maigret only listened to scraps of what he said.
‘… as soon as the name of the guilty man is known, I will go back to Nancy tomorrow …’
‘What did she mean?’ Maigret wondered. ‘“I won’t be staying here” … Did she really have the courage …?’
He looked at the Meuse, where there was a line of distorted reflections of street lamps at fifty-metre intervals. A brighter light, on the other side of the river, in the yard of the factory where, tonight, old Piedboeuf would bring potatoes that he would cook in the ashes.
They passed by the sidestreet. There was no light on in the house.
11. Anna’s Ending
‘Did you solve your case?’
Madame Maigret was surprised to see her husband in such a bad mood. She patted the overcoat that she had just helped him take off.
‘You’ve been walking around in the rain again … One day you will catch your death, and that will be you done for. And what was this one all about? A crime?’
‘A family affair!’
‘And the girl who came to see you?’
‘A girl! Will you give me my slippers?’
‘It’s fine! I’m not going to ask you any more questions! Not about this, anyway. Did you eat well in Givet, at least?’
‘I don’t know …’
It was true! He could barely remember the meals he had had.
‘Guess what I’m making.’
‘Quiches!’
It wasn’t hard to guess, given that the whole house smelled of them.
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Yes, darling … At any rate, I’ll be hungry soon … Tell me what’s been going on here … Oh, and by the way, that business with the furniture has been sorted out …’
Why, when he looked at the dining room, did he always look at the same corner, where there wasn’t anything? He didn’t realize it himself until his wife said:
‘You seem to be looking for something!’
Then, out loud, he exclaimed:
‘Good heavens! The piano …’
‘What piano?’
‘Nothing! You wouldn’t understand … Your quiches are astonishing …’
‘What’s the point of being Alsatian if you don’t know how to make quiches? Except if you go on, you won’t leave me so much as a slice … About pianos, the people on the fourth floor …’
A year later, Maigret went into the offices of an import-export company on Rue Poissonnière pursuing a case involving fake bank notes.
The warehouses were enormous, stuffed with goods, but the offices were very small.
‘I’ll bring you the fake note that I discovered in a bundle …’ said the boss, pressing down on a stamp.
Maigret looked elsewhere. He vaguely noticed a grey skirt coming towards the desk, legs sheathed in cotton. Then he looked up and stood motionless for a moment looking at the face leaning over the desk.
‘Thank you, Mademoiselle Anna …’
And as the inspector watched after the office worker, the businessman explained:
‘She might look a bit of a dragon … But I hope you have a secretary like that one day! She replaces precisely two clerks. She does all the mail and she still has time to do the accounts …’
‘Have you had her for long?’
‘About ten months.’
‘Is she married?’
‘No! It’s her little vice: a mortal hatred that extends to all men … One day a colleague who had come to see me tried to pinch her waist as a joke … If you’d seen the look he got …
‘She comes at eight o’clock in the morning, sometimes earlier … In the evening she’s the one who closes up … She must be foreign, because she has a slight accent …’
‘Can I have a quick word with her?’
‘I’ll call her.’
‘No! I’d like to go to her office and …’
And Maigret passed through a glass door. The office looked out on to a yard full of lorries. And the whole company seemed to suffer from the juddering of the flood of buses and cars flowing along Rue Poissonnière.
Anna was calm, as she had been just now when she leaned over her boss, as Maigret had always known her. She must have been twenty-seven, but she looked more like thirty, because her complexion no longer had the same freshness, and her features had faded.
In two or three years, it would be impossible to tell what age she was. In ten years she would be an old woman!
‘Have you had any news of your brother?’
She looked away without replying, while mechanically using a rocking blotter.
‘Is he married?’
She merely nodded.
‘Happily?’
Then the tears for which Maigret had been waiting for such a long time began to pour; at the same time as her throat swelled, and she shouted at him, as if blaming him for everything:
‘He’s started drinking … Marguerite’s expecting a baby …’
‘His business?’
‘His chambers didn’t bring i
n anything … He had to accept a job at a thousand francs per month, in Reims …’
She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief, little dry, angry blows.
‘Maria?
‘She died, a week before taking the veil …’
The phone rang, and Anna answered it in a different voice, reaching for a notepad:
‘Yes, Monsieur Worms … of course. Tomorrow evening … I’ll send a cable right this minute … About the cargo of wool, I’ll send you a letter containing a few remarks … No! I haven’t time … You’ll read it …’
She hung up. Her boss was in the doorway, looking at her and Maigret in turn.
The inspector came back into the adjacent office.
‘What do you think? And I haven’t even mentioned how honest she is. Almost fanatically so …’
‘Where does she live?’
‘I don’t know … Or rather I don’t know her address, but I know it’s in a furnished house for women living on their own, kept by some charity or other … But … Hello! You’re starting to scare me … You didn’t meet her in the course of your professional duties, did you? Because it would be a bit worrying …’
‘It wasn’t in the course of my professional duties!’ Maigret replied slowly. ‘So, we were saying that you found that note in a bundle of …’
He listened out for the sounds of the adjacent office, where a woman’s voice was saying on the telephone:
‘No, sir, he’s busy! This is Mademoiselle Anna speaking … I know about it …’
He never heard anything more about the bargeman.
1. The Restless Passenger
It all came about by pure chance! The previous day, Maigret had not known that he was about to go on a journey, even though it was the time of year when he usually began to find Paris oppressive. It was a March spiced up with a foretaste of spring and a clear, sharp sun that was already warm.
Madame Maigret was away in Alsace for a couple of weeks, staying with her sister, who was having a baby.
On the Wednesday morning, the inspector received a letter from a former colleague who had retired from the Police Judiciaire two years earlier and moved to the Dordogne.
… And of course, if you happen to be in the area, do come and stay with me for a few days. I have an elderly housekeeper who is only too happy when there are guests to fuss over. And it’s the start of the salmon season—
The Flemish House Page 11