‘You went home …’
‘As I do every evening, obviously.’
‘At what time?’
‘Eight o’clock. After the shop shut, I went for a drink in a bar on Rue Castiglione.’
‘With Monsieur Harris?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then?’
‘My husband came home before I did. My sister was home as well. We sat down to eat.’
‘Was it your sister who made dinner?’
‘As always.’
‘You eat downstairs, in the living room, which is both your husband’s workshop and bedroom?’
‘He decided to sleep there some months ago.’
‘How many months?’
She counted mentally. Her lips moved.
‘Eight months,’ she said at last.
‘What did you have?’
‘Soup first of all … The same as the previous day … Jenny always makes soup for two days … Then some ham and salad, cheese and pears …’
‘Coffee?’
‘We never have coffee in the evening.’
‘You didn’t notice anything unusual?’
She hesitated, looking him straight in the eyes.
‘That depends what you call unusual. I don’t know exactly what to say to you, because I suspect there are some things that you know better than me. The proof is that there was an inspector at the door. Before going to sit at the table I got up to take off my coat and put on my slippers. That’s how I knew that my sister had gone out, and that she had only just come back.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Because I opened the door of her room and saw a pair of shoes that were still wet. Her coat was damp, too.’
‘What were you going to do in her room?’
‘Just check that she had gone out.’
‘Why?’
Still without looking away, she replied:
‘To know.’
‘Jenny cleared the table?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does she always clear it?’
‘She likes to pay her share by looking after the housework.’
‘And did she do the washing-up as well?’
‘Sometimes my husband helps her.’
‘Not you?’
‘No.’
‘Go on.’
‘She made the herbal tea, as she did on the other evenings. She was the one who got us used to drinking herbal tea in the evening.’
‘Lime-flower? Camomile?’
‘No. Star anise. My sister has a weak liver. Since living in the United States, she has a cup of star anise every evening, and my husband wanted to try it, I didn’t. You know how it is …’
‘She brought in the cups on a tray?’
‘Yes.’
‘With the teapot?’
‘No. She filled the cups in the kitchen and then came and set the tray down on the table.’
‘What was your husband doing at that moment?’
‘He was looking for a radio station.’
‘So if I remember the room correctly, he had his back towards you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘I had just started reading a magazine.’
‘Near the table?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your sister?’
‘She went back into the kitchen to start doing the washing-up. I know what you’re getting at, but I’ll tell you the truth anyway. I didn’t pour any substance into the cups, either into my husband’s or into the others. All I did was take a precaution that I’ve been taking for some time whenever possible.’
‘What was that?’
‘To turn the tray discreetly in such a way that the cup meant for me becomes my husband’s or my sister’s.’
‘And last night, your cup became …’
‘My husband’s.’
‘And he took it?’
‘Yes. He took it with him and then set it down on the radio …’
‘You never left the room at any time? There couldn’t have been any other substitution?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that for almost two hours.’
‘What conclusion did you reach?’
‘Before my sister brought the tray, my husband went into the kitchen. Jenny will probably deny it, but it’s the truth.’
‘What did he go there to do?’
‘By his account, to see if his glasses were there. He wears glasses to read. He also needs them to see the screen of the radio. From the studio you can hear everything that’s going on in the kitchen. He didn’t talk to my sister, he came back almost immediately and found his glasses near the train set.’
‘And it was because of this visit to the kitchen that you swapped the cups around?’
‘Perhaps. Not necessarily. I told you, I do it often.’
‘Because you’re afraid he’s going to poison you?’
She looked at him without replying.
‘Then what happened?’
‘Nothing different from the other evenings. My sister came back to drink her herbal tea and went back into the kitchen. Xavier listened to a radio programme while repairing a little electric motor intended for God knows what.’
‘And you read?’
‘For an hour or two. It was about ten o’clock when I went upstairs.’
‘You went first?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was your sister doing at that point?’
‘She was making my husband’s bed.’
‘You usually left them alone?’
‘Why not? What difference would it have made?’
‘Do you think they took advantage of the fact to kiss?’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Do you have reason to believe that your husband was your sister’s lover?’
‘I don’t know if they were lovers. I doubt it. He behaved with her like a smitten seventeen-year-old.’
‘Why did you just say: “I doubt it”?’
She didn’t reply immediately. At last, in response to Maigret’s insistent gaze, she answered his question with another question.
‘Why do you think we don’t have children?’
‘Because you didn’t want to.’
‘That’s what he told you, isn’t it? And it’s probably what he told his colleagues. A man doesn’t like to admit that he’s practically impotent.’
‘Is that the case?’
She nodded wearily.
‘You see, inspector, there are lots of things you don’t know. Xavier gave you his version of our lives. When I came to see you, I didn’t take the trouble to go into details. Things happened last night that I don’t understand, and I know that when I tell you, you won’t believe me.’
He didn’t push her. On the contrary, he gave her all the time in the world to speak and even to weigh her phrases.
‘I heard the doctor just now saying that Xavier had been poisoned. Perhaps it’s true. But I have been too.’
He couldn’t help giving a start and looking at her more keenly.
‘You’ve been poisoned?’
A memory came back to him, one which inclined him to believe her: the stains that had already dried on the porcelain of the basin and the tiles.
‘I woke up in the middle of the night with horrible burning in my stomach. When I got up I was surprised to feel my legs were weak, my head empty. I hurried to the bathroom and stuck two fingers into my mouth to vomit. I’m sorry if that puts you off your food. It was like fire, with an aftertaste that I would recognize anywhere.’
‘Did you alert your sister or your husband?’
‘No. Perhaps they heard me, because I flushed the toilet twice. I made myself sick twice too, each time spitting out a liquid that had the same aftertaste.’
‘It didn’t occur to you to call a doctor?’
‘What would be the point? Since I had caught it in time …’
‘You went back to bed?’
‘Yes.’
> ‘You weren’t tempted to go back downstairs?’
‘I just listened. I heard Xavier tossing and turning in his bed as if he was sleeping badly.’
‘Do you think it was his cup that you drank from?’
‘I assume so.’
‘You still insist that you swapped the cups around on the tray?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then you didn’t take your eyes off the tray? Your husband, or your sister, couldn’t have made another substitution?’
‘My sister was in the kitchen.’
‘So your husband took the cup that was meant for you?’
‘I would have to believe that.’
‘Which is to say that it was your sister who tried to poison your husband?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Or since your husband was poisoned as well, she wanted to poison both of you?’
She repeated:
‘I don’t know.’
They looked at each other in silence for a long time. In the end it was Maigret who broke eye contact and went and stood by the window, where, watching the Seine flow beneath the rain, he filled a fresh pipe.
8. A Mark on the Tray
Pressing his forehead against the cold glass, as he had done when he was a child, keeping it there until his skin turned white and he felt pins and needles in his head, Maigret was unwittingly following the movements of two men working on scaffolding on the other side of the Seine.
When he turned around, his face bore a resigned expression and, as he made for his desk to sit back down in his chair, he said, deliberately avoiding Gisèle Marton’s eyes:
‘Is there something else you want to tell me?’
She didn’t hesitate for very long, and, when she spoke, he couldn’t help raising his head, because she did so in a calm and measured voice free of either defiance or despondency:
‘I saw Xavier dying.’
Did she know the impression she was making on the inspector? Did she realize that she was inspiring in him an involuntary, so to speak technical admiration? He couldn’t remember seeing, in this office through which so many people had passed, a creature with such clarity and level-headedness. Neither could he remember anyone so detached.
There was no sense in her of human feeling. There was no flaw.
With his elbows on his desk-blotter, he sighed:
‘Tell me.’
‘I had gone to bed and was having trouble getting back to sleep. I was struggling to understand what had happened. I had no real notion of passing time. You know how that happens sometimes. You have a sense of following a continuous train of thought, but in fact there are gaps. I must have gone back to sleep several times. Once or twice I thought there was a noise downstairs, the noise my husband made when he turned over abruptly in bed. At least that was what I thought.
‘Once, I’m sure, I heard a groan and thought he must be having nightmares. It wasn’t the first time he had spoken and thrashed about in his sleep. He told me that as a boy he had sleepwalked, and that happened to him several times with me.’
She went on choosing her words, without any more emotion than if she was telling a story.
‘At one point I heard a louder noise, as if something heavy was falling on the floor. I was too frightened to get up at first. Pricking up my ears, I thought I heard a death rattle. Then I got up, put on my dressing gown and walked silently towards the stairs.’
‘Did you see your sister?’
‘No.’
‘Or hear a sound in her room? There was no light under her door?’
‘No. To look into the room downstairs I had to go down a few steps, and I hesitated, alert to potential danger. I still did it, reluctantly. I leaned down.’
‘How many steps did you go down?’
‘Six or seven. I didn’t count them. There was a light on in the workshop, only the bedside lamp. Xavier was lying on the floor, about halfway between his bed and the spiral staircase. It looked as if he had been crawling, as if he was trying to crawl some more. He had raised himself up on one elbow, his left elbow, and his right arm was stretched out to pick up the revolver that was about thirty centimetres away from his hand.’
‘Did he see you?’
‘Yes. With his head raised, he stared at me with hatred, his face contorted, with foam or drool on his lips. I realized that, while he was walking towards the stairs, already weakened, with his gun in his hand, to come up to kill me, his strength had failed him, he had fallen, and the revolver had rolled out of reach.’
With his eyes half closed, Maigret saw the workshop again, the staircase that rose towards the ceiling, Marton’s body as they had found it.
‘Did you continue down the stairs?’
‘No. I stayed where I was, unable to take my eyes off him. I couldn’t know exactly how much energy he still had. I was fascinated.’
‘How long did it take him to die?’
‘I don’t know. He was trying to grab the gun and talk to me at the same time, to shout out his hatred or his threats. At the same time he was scared that I would come down, that I would pick up the gun before he did and fire. That’s probably partly the reason why I didn’t go down. I don’t really know. I wasn’t thinking. He was panting. He was shaken by spasms. I thought he was going to vomit as I had done. Then he uttered a loud cry, his body was shaken several times, he clenched his hands and at last, all of a sudden, he was still.’
Without looking away, she said:
‘I knew it was over.’
‘And it was then that you went downstairs to check that he was dead?’
‘No. I knew he was. I don’t know why I was so sure of it. I went back up to my room and sat down on the edge of my bed. I was cold. I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders.’
‘Your sister still hadn’t left her room?’
‘No.’
‘And yet you just said he had uttered a loud cry.’
‘That’s right. She must have heard it. She couldn’t have helped hearing it, but she stayed in her bed.’
‘You didn’t think of calling a doctor? Or phoning the police?’
‘Had there been a telephone in the house, I might have done. I’m not sure.’
‘What time was it?’
‘I don’t know. It didn’t occur to me to check my alarm-clock. I was still trying to understand.’
‘If you had had a telephone, wouldn’t you have called your friend Harris?’
‘Certainly not. He’s married.’
‘So you don’t know, even approximately, how much time passed between the moment you saw your husband die and the one when, at about six o’clock in the morning, you went and called from the concierge’s lodge? Was it one hour? Two hours? Three?’
‘More than an hour, I would swear. Less than three.’
‘Did you expect to be accused?’
‘I was under no illusions.’
‘And you were wondering how you would answer the questions you would be asked?’
‘It’s possible. Without realizing, I thought a lot. Then I heard the familiar sound of the bins being dragged into a nearby courtyard and I went downstairs.’
‘Still without meeting your sister?’
‘Yes. In passing, I touched my husband’s hand. It was already cold. I looked up your phone number in the directory, and when I didn’t find it I called the Police Emergency Service to ask them to inform you.’
‘After which you went back home?’
‘I saw the light in my sister’s room from the courtyard. When I pushed the door open, Jenny was coming down the stairs.’
‘Had she already seen the body?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she didn’t say anything?’
‘She might have spoken if there hadn’t been a sudden knock at the door. It was your inspector.’
She added after a pause:
‘If there’s any coffee left …’
‘It’s cold.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
Beyond the door, beyond the window, life went on, everyday life, the way people have organized it as a source of reassurance.
Here, in these four walls, it was a different world that you could sense throbbing behind sentences, behind words, a dark and unsettling world, but one in which this young woman seemed to move easily.
‘Did you love Marton?’ Maigret asked under his breath, almost in spite of himself.
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘And yet you married him.’
‘I was twenty-eight. I was fed up with all my failed attempts.’
‘You wanted respectability?’
She didn’t seem offended.
‘Calm, at any rate.’
‘Did you choose Marton in preference over others because he was more malleable?’
‘Perhaps unconsciously.’
‘Did you already know that he was more or less impotent?’
‘Yes. That wasn’t what I was looking for.’
‘At first you were happy with him?’
‘That’s a big word. We got on quite well.’
‘Because he did what you wanted?’
She pretended not to notice the hint of aggression in his voice, or the way he looked at her.
‘I never asked myself that question.’
Nothing threw her, and yet she was beginning to show a little weariness.
‘When you met Harris or, if you prefer, Maurice Schwob, did you love him?’
She thought for a moment, with a kind of honesty, as if she was keen to be precise.
‘You’re still using that word. First of all, Maurice was able to change my situation, and I never thought my place was behind the counter of a large department store.’
‘Did he become your lover straight away?’
‘That depends on what you mean by straight away. A few days, if I remember correctly. Neither of us placed much importance on it.’
‘So your relationship was built on business more than anything else?’
‘If you like. I know that between two hypotheses you’re going to choose the more sordid one. I’ll say instead that Maurice and I felt we were two of a kind …’
‘Because you had the same ambitions. It never occurred to you to get a divorce in order to marry him?’
‘What would have been the point? He is married, to an older woman, who has money, and who enabled him to set up the shop on Rue Saint-Honoré. And as to the rest …’
Maigret's Doubts Page 12