‘No.’
‘He doesn’t know you’re here?’
As she spoke, she darted a frightened glance towards the door. She remained standing, on the defensive.
‘Don’t be frightened.’
‘Are you from the police?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘What’s happened? Where’s Alain?’
‘At home, most likely.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Why would he be anywhere else?’
She bit her lip and drew blood. She was very anxious, pathologically anxious. For a moment, he wondered whether she was a drug addict.
‘Who told you about me?’
‘How long have you been the doctor’s mistress?’
‘Someone told you?’
He put on his sincerest manner and it was no effort for him to be kind to her.
‘Have you only just got up?’ he asked, instead of replying.
‘What business is it of yours?’
She still had a trace of an Italian accent. She couldn’t be much more than twenty and her body, beneath the ill-fitting dressing gown, was curvaceous; only her breasts, which must have been provocative, were sagging a little.
‘Would you mind sitting down?’
She was unable to keep still. She frantically grabbed a cigarette and lit it.
‘Are you sure Alain isn’t coming?’
‘Are you afraid he will? Why?’
‘He’s jealous.’
‘He has no reason to be jealous of me.’
‘He’s jealous of all men.’
She added in a strange voice:
‘So he should be.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That’s his right.’
‘Does he love you?’
‘I think so. I don’t know if I deserve it, but . . .’
‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, of the Paris Police Judiciaire.’
‘I’ve heard of you. What are you doing here?’
Why not be open with her?
‘I came here by coincidence, to visit a friend I hadn’t seen for years.’
‘Was he the one who told you about me?’
‘No. I also met your friend Alain. As a matter of fact, I’ve been invited to his house this evening.’
She could tell he was speaking the truth, but she still wasn’t reassured. All the same, she pulled a chair towards her, although she didn’t sit down straight away.
‘He may not be in trouble at the moment, but he’s likely to be very soon.’
‘Why?’
From the way she asked, he deduced that she already knew.
‘Some people think he may be the wanted man.’
‘Because of the murders? It’s not true. It’s not him. He had no reason to—’
He interrupted her, holding out the anonymous letter the magistrate had handed over to him. She read it, her expression tense, frowning.
‘I wonder who wrote that.’
‘A woman.’
‘Yes. And most likely a woman who lives here.’
‘Why?’
‘Because no one else knows. Not even in the house. I’d have sworn that no one knew who he was. It’s spiteful, a dirty trick. Alain never—’
‘Sit down.’
She finally did, carefully smoothing the folds of her dressing gown over her bare legs.
‘How long have you been his mistress?’
She answered without hesitation:
‘Eight months and one week.’
He suppressed a smile at her precision.
‘How did it start?’
‘I was working as a waitress at the Café de la Poste. He would come in from time to time, in the afternoon. He always sat at the same table by the window and watched the people going by. Everyone knew him and said hello to him, but he didn’t find it easy to strike up conversations. After a while, I noticed he was watching me.’
She suddenly looked at him defiantly.
‘Do you really want to know how it started? Well, I’ll tell you! And you’ll see he’s not the man you think he is. After a while, he’d sometimes drop in for a drink in the evening. One night, he stayed until closing time. I tended to laugh at him, because of his big eyes that followed me everywhere. That night, I was seeing someone, the wine merchant who you’re bound to meet. We turned right into the little street and—’
‘And what?’
‘Well! We cuddled up on a bench on the Champ-de-Mars, if you get my meaning. It never lasted long. When it was over, I left on my own to cross the square and go home, and I heard footsteps behind me. It was the doctor. I was a bit scared. I turned around and asked him what he wanted. He went all shamefaced and didn’t know what to say. Do you know what he mumbled in the end? “Why did you do that?”
‘And me, I burst out laughing: “Does it bother you?”
‘“It upsets me deeply.”
‘“Why?”
‘That was how he finally admitted that he was in love with me but had never dared tell me, and that he was very unhappy. Are you smiling?’
‘No.’
It was true. Maigret wasn’t smiling. He could picture Alain Vernoux in that situation.
‘We walked until one or two o’clock in the morning, along the towpath, and in the end I was the one who was crying.’
‘Did he come back here with you?’
‘Not that night. It took a whole week. During those days, he spent nearly all his time at the café, watching me. He was even jealous seeing me say thank you to a customer when I was given a tip. He still is. He doesn’t want me to go out.’
‘Does he hit you?’
She instinctively raised her hand to the bruise on her cheek and, as her dressing gown sleeve rode up, he saw more bruises, as if her arms had been squeezed hard between powerful fingers.
‘It’s his right,’ she replied, not without pride.
‘Does it happen often?’
‘Almost every time.’
‘Why?’
‘If you don’t understand, I can’t explain it to you. He loves me. He has to live in town, with his wife and children. He doesn’t love his wife and he doesn’t love his children either.’
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘I know it.’
‘Are you unfaithful to him?’
She clammed up and glared fiercely at him. Then:
‘Has someone told you?’
And, in a quieter voice:
‘It did happen, at first, when I hadn’t understood. I thought it was like with the others. When you start at fourteen, like me, you don’t take it seriously. When he found out, I thought he was going to kill me. I’m not kidding. I’ve never seen such a terrifying man. He lay there on the bed for an hour, staring at the ceiling, his fists clenched, without saying a word, and I could tell he was very, very hurt.’
‘Did you do it again?’
‘Two or three times. I was a bit stupid.’
‘And since?’
‘No!’
‘Does he come and see you every night?’
‘Nearly every night.’
‘Were you expecting him yesterday?’
She hesitated, wondering what her answers might divulge, wanting to protect Alain at all costs.
‘What difference can that make?’
‘You have to go out to buy food, don’t you?’
‘I don’t go into town. There’s a little grocer’s on the corner of the street.’
‘The rest of the time, you stay shut up in here?’
‘I’m not shut up. I opened the door to you, didn’t I?’
‘He’s never talked about locking you in?’
‘How did you guess?’
‘Did he do it?’
‘For a week.’
‘Did the neighbours notice?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that why he let you have the key back?’
‘I
don’t know. I don’t get what you’re driving at.’
‘Do you love him?’
‘Do you think I’d live this life if I didn’t love him?’
‘Does he give you money?’
‘When he can.’
‘I thought he was rich.’
‘That’s what everyone thinks, but he’s in exactly the same situation as a young man who has to ask his father for a little money every week. They all live in the same house.’
‘Why?’
‘How do I know?’
‘He could work.’
‘That’s his affair, isn’t it? His father leaves him without any money for weeks on end.’
Maigret looked at the table, on which there was only bread and butter.
‘Is that the case at the moment?’
She shrugged.
‘What does it matter? Me too, I used to imagine things about people thought to be rich. It’s all appearances! A big house with nothing in it. They’re always bickering over scrounging a bit of money off the old man, and the tradesmen sometimes have to wait months to get paid.’
‘I thought Alain’s wife was wealthy.’
‘If she’d been wealthy, she wouldn’t have married him. She reckoned he was. When she found out he wasn’t, she started to hate him.’
There was a fairly lengthy silence. Maigret filled his pipe, slowly, dreamily.
‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.
‘I think you truly love him.’
‘Well, that’s something!’
Her sarcasm was bitter.
‘What I want to know,’ she added, ‘is why everyone’s suddenly against him. I read the paper. It doesn’t say so directly, but I get the feeling he’s under suspicion. Earlier, through the window I overheard women talking in the yard, very loudly, on purpose, to make sure I heard every word they were saying.’
‘What were they saying?’
‘That if the police were looking for a madman, they didn’t need to look very far.’
‘I presume they’ve heard the scenes at your place?’
‘So what?’
She suddenly became enraged and got up from her chair.
‘You too, because he loves a girl like me and because he’s jealous, you’re going to think he’s crazy?’
Maigret rose and tried to calm her by putting his hand on her shoulder, but she pushed him away angrily.
‘Say so, if that’s what you think.’
‘It is not what I think.’
‘Do you think he’s crazy?’
‘Certainly not because he loves you.’
‘But he’s crazy anyway?’
‘Until there’s proof to the contrary, I have no reason to think he is.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean, exactly?’
‘It means that you are a good girl and—’
‘I’m not a good girl. I’m a slut, a tramp, and I don’t deserve—’
‘You are a good girl and I promise to do my utmost to find the real culprit.’
‘Are you certain it’s not him?’
He exhaled, and began to light his pipe to hide his unease.
‘You see, you don’t dare say it!’
‘You’re a good girl, Louise. I’ll probably come and see you again . . .’
But she had lost her trust in him and, closing the door behind him, she muttered:
‘You and your promises!’
From the stairs, at the foot of which kids were watching him, he thought he heard her say to herself:
‘You’re just a stinking cop!’
5. The Game of Bridge
When they left the house in Rue Clemenceau at 8.15, they were so surprised by the calm and silence that suddenly enveloped them that they almost recoiled.
By around 5 p.m., the sky had become apocalyptically dark and it had been necessary for all the town’s streetlamps to be lit. There had been two brief, dramatic rolls of thunder, and finally the heavens had opened, sending down not rain but hail. All the people in the street vanished, as if blown away by the wind, and white hailstones bounced off the cobbles like ping-pong balls.
Maigret, who at that moment had been in the Café de la Poste, had jumped to his feet like everyone else, and they all stood at the window watching the street the way people watch a fireworks display.
Now it was over and it was bewildering to hear neither the rain nor the wind, to walk through the still air and look up to see stars between the rooftops.
Perhaps because of the silence disturbed only by the sound of their footsteps, they walked without speaking, making their way up towards Place Viète. On the corner of the square, they brushed past a man standing stock-still in the dark, a white armband on his overcoat, a cosh in his hand, who was observing them without breathing a word.
A few steps further on, Maigret opened his mouth to ask a question and his friend, who had guessed it, explained in a constrained voice:
‘The chief inspector telephoned me just before I left my chambers. It had been brewing since yesterday. This morning, kids went around putting notices in letterboxes. There was a meeting at six o’clock and they have set up a vigilance committee.’
They clearly did not mean the kids, but the town’s hostile elements.
Chabot added:
‘We can’t stop them.’
There were three more vigilantes with armbands right outside the Vernoux’s house in Rue Rabelais. They kept their eyes on Chabot and Maigret as they approached. They weren’t patrolling but stood there on sentry duty. It was almost as if they were waiting for them and might stop them from going into the house. Maigret thought he recognized in the shortest of the three the lean shape of the teacher, Chalus.
They were quite intimidating. Chabot hesitated to go up to the house, and was probably tempted to carry on walking. It didn’t feel like a riot yet, nor even a disturbance, but this was the first time they had come across such a tangible sign of popular discontent.
Outwardly calm, very dignified, not without a degree of solemnity, the investigating magistrate eventually mounted the steps and raised the door knocker.
Behind him, there wasn’t a murmur, not a wisecrack. Still without moving, the three men stared after him.
The noise of the knocker echoed inside the house like in a church. At once, as if he had been waiting behind the door for them, a manservant drew back the chains and bolts and welcomed them with a silent bow.
This was obviously not the way things usually were, because Julien Chabot paused in the doorway of the drawing room, regretting perhaps that he had come.
In a room the size of a ballroom, the huge crystal chandelier was lit, other lamps blazed on the tables, and arranged in the various corners and around the fireplace were enough armchairs to seat forty people.
However, there was only one man there, at the far end of the room, Hubert Vernoux, with his white, silky hair, ensconced in a vast Louis XIII armchair. He rose to greet them, his hand outstretched.
‘I told you yesterday, on the train, that you would come and see me, Monsieur Maigret. In fact, I telephoned our friend Chabot today to make sure that he would be bringing you.’
He was dressed in black, wearing what looked like a dinner jacket, with a monocle dangling from a ribbon on his chest.
‘My family will be here in a minute. I don’t understand why they haven’t all come downstairs.’
In the dim train compartment, Maigret hadn’t been able to see him clearly. Here, the man seemed older. When he had walked across the room, his gait had had the mechanical stiffness of an arthritis sufferer whose movements seem to be controlled by springs. His face was puffy and an almost artificial pink.
Why was Maigret reminded of an ageing actor determined to carry on in his role, living in the fear that the audience will notice that he’s already half-dead?
‘I’ll have to let them know that you’re here.’
He rang the bell and spoke to the manservant.
‘Go and see if Madam
e is ready. And tell Mademoiselle Lucile, the doctor and Madame . . .’
Something was amiss. He was annoyed with his family for not being there. To put him at his ease, Chabot said, looking at the three bridge tables that had been laid out:
‘Is Henri de Vergennes coming?’
‘He telephoned me to apologize. The storm damaged the driveway of the château and it is impossible for him to get his car out.’
‘Aumale?’
‘The notary went down with flu this morning. He went to bed at lunchtime.’
In other words, no one would be coming. And it was as if the family too were loath to join them downstairs. The manservant did not reappear. Hubert Vernoux gestured towards the bottles on the table.
‘Pour yourself a drink, would you? Please excuse me for a moment.’
Intending to fetch them himself, he went up the grand staircase with stone steps and a wrought-iron rail.
‘How many people usually attend these bridge evenings?’ asked Maigret quietly.
‘Not many. About half a dozen, in addition to the family.’
‘Who are normally in the drawing room when you arrive?’
Chabot nodded regretfully. Someone entered, noiselessly. Doctor Alain Vernoux, who hadn’t dressed up and was sporting the same crumpled suit he’d worn that morning.
‘Are you on your own?’
‘Your father has just gone upstairs.’
‘I passed him on the stairs. What about the ladies?’
‘I think he’s gone to call them.’
‘I don’t believe anyone else is coming.’
Alain turned his head towards the windows masked by heavy curtains.
‘Did you see?’
And, knowing they understood what he meant:
‘They’re watching the house. Some of them must be standing guard outside the side door too. It’s a very good thing.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, if there’s another murder, people won’t be able to say that it’s someone in the house.’
‘Do you think there’ll be another murder?’
‘If it’s a madman, there’s no reason for the killings to stop.’
Madame Vernoux, the doctor’s mother, finally made her entrance, followed by her husband, who was slightly red in the face, as if he’d had to argue to persuade her to come downstairs. She was in her sixties, with hair that was still chestnut and dark rings around her eyes.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret of the Police Judiciaire in Paris.’
Maigret is Afraid Page 7