‘Is that the magistrate?’ she asked.
‘Investigating magistrate Chabot, yes. How can I help?’
She repeated just as loudly:
‘Is that the magistrate?’
‘Speaking. What do you want?’
‘Are you the magistrate?’
And he, furious:
‘Yes. I am the magistrate. Can’t you hear me?’
‘No.’
‘What do you want?’
If she had asked him one more time if he was the magistrate, he would probably have flung the telephone on to the floor.
‘The inspector wants you to come.’
‘What?’
But now, talking to someone else in the room from which she was telephoning, she said in a different tone:
‘I told him. What?’
A voice commanded:
‘Hang up.’
‘Hang what up?’
There was a racket coming from the law courts. Chabot and Maigret listened out.
‘Someone’s banging on the door.’
‘Come on.’
They raced down the corridors. The din was even louder. Chabot hurriedly drew back the bolts and turned the key in the lock.
‘Did someone call you?’
It was Lomel, surrounded by three or four fellow journalists. Others could be seen running down the street towards the open countryside.
‘Chabiron has just driven past in his car. There was an unconscious woman next to him. He must be taking her to the hospital.’
A car was parked at the foot of the steps.
‘Whose is it?’
‘Mine, or rather my newspaper’s,’ said a reporter from Bordeaux.
‘Drive us.’
‘To the hospital?’
‘No. Drive to Rue de la République first of all then turn right, towards the barracks.’
They piled into the car. Outside the Vernoux’s house, a knot of around twenty people had formed and they watched the car go by in silence.
‘What’s going on, sir?’ asked Lomel.
‘I don’t know. We were about to make an arrest.’
‘The doctor?’
He didn’t have the heart to deny it, or to play games. A few people were sitting on the terrace of the Café de la Poste. A woman in her Sunday best was coming out of the patisserie, dangling a white cardboard box from a red ribbon.
‘Down here?’
‘Yes. Now, left . . . Wait . . . Turn after this building . . .’
There was no mistaking it. In front of the house where Louise had lodgings a crowd had gathered, mainly women and children, who ran over to the doors when the car pulled up. The fat woman who had given Maigret directions the previous day was standing at their head, her hands on her hips.
‘It’s me who went and phoned you from the grocer’s. The inspector’s up there.’
There was a lot of confusion. The little troop made their way to the rear of the house with Maigret, who knew his way around, at their head.
Around the back of the building they found even more curious onlookers who were blocking the door. There were even people on the stairs, at the top of which the puny police inspector was forced to stand guard in front of the broken-down door.
‘Make way please . . . Stand aside . . .’
Féron’s face was haggard, his hair tumbling on to his forehead. He had lost his hat. He looked relieved to see reinforcements arriving.
‘Have you told the police station to send me more men?’
‘I didn’t know that—’ began Chabot.
‘I asked that woman to tell you—’
The journalists were trying to take photos. A baby was crying. Chabot, whom Maigret had allowed to go ahead of him, reached the top of the stairs, asking:
‘What’s going on?’
‘He’s dead.’
He pushed the door, which had splintered into pieces.
‘In the bedroom.’
The room was a mess. The open window let in the sun and the flies.
On the unmade bed, Doctor Alain Vernoux lay fully dressed, his spectacles on the pillow next to his face, from which the blood had already drained.
‘Tell us, Féron.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. We got here, the inspector and myself, and people showed us to this staircase. We knocked. Since no one replied, I gave the usual orders. Chabiron put his shoulder to the door and gave two or three hard shoves. We found him like this, lying where he is. I felt his pulse. It was not beating. I held a mirror in front of his mouth.’
‘What about the girl?’
‘She was on the floor, as if she’d slid off the bed, and she had vomited.’
They were all stepping in the pool of vomit.
‘She wasn’t moving, but she’s not dead. There’s no telephone in the house. I couldn’t comb the neighbourhood looking for one. Chabiron put her over his shoulder and took her to the hospital. There was nothing else to be done.’
‘Are you certain she was breathing?’
‘Yes, with a strange rattle in her throat.’
The photographers were still at work. Lomel was scribbling in a little red notebook.
‘The entire household was on my back. At one point, some kids managed to slip into the room. I couldn’t leave. I wanted to let you know. I sent the woman who seems to act as the concierge and asked her to tell you . . .’
Indicating the mess around him, he added:
‘I haven’t even been able to look around the place.’
One of the journalists held out an empty vial of Veronal.
‘In any case, there’s this.’
That was the explanation. In Alain Vernoux’s case, it was undoubtedly suicide.
Had he persuaded Louise to kill herself with him? Had he administered the drug to her without saying anything?
In the kitchen, there were the remains of a bowl of café au lait and a piece of cheese next to a slice of bread, and in the bread the girl’s teeth marks.
She got up late and Alain Vernoux had probably found her having her breakfast.
‘Was she dressed?’
‘In her nightdress. Chabiron wrapped her in a blanket and carried her off as she was.’
‘Did the neighbours hear them arguing?’
‘I haven’t had a chance to question them. The kids are all at the front of the crowd and the mothers aren’t making any effort to shoo them away. Listen to them.’
One of the journalists leaned his back against the door, which would no longer close, to prevent people from pushing their way in.
Julien Chabot paced up and down as if in a nightmare, like a man who had lost control of the situation.
Two or three times, he moved closer to the body before plucking up the courage to touch the dangling wrist.
He repeated several times, forgetting that he had already said it, or as if trying to convince himself:
‘It’s obviously suicide.’
Then he asked:
‘Shouldn’t Chabiron be back by now?’
‘I imagine he’ll stay there to question the girl if she regains consciousness. We need to inform the police station. Chabiron promised to send me a doctor . . .’
Just then someone knocked at the door, and a young doctor walked straight over to the bed.
‘Dead?’
Chabot nodded.
‘How’s the girl who was brought to you?’
‘They’re looking after her. There’s a good chance she’ll pull through.’
He looked at the vial, shrugged and muttered:
‘Same thing again.’
‘How come he’s dead whereas she . . .?’
He pointed to the vomit on the floor.
One of the reporters, who had slipped away unnoticed, came back into the room.
‘There was no argument,’ he said. ‘I questioned the neighbours. It’s all the more certain because this morning most of the windows in the building were open.’
Meanwhile, Lomel was rummaging shamelessly thro
ugh the drawers, which contained very little apart from some underwear, cheap clothes and knick-knacks of no value. Then he bent down to look under the bed, and Maigret saw him lie down on the floor, stretch out his arm and pull out a cardboard shoe-box tied up with a blue ribbon. Lomel withdrew to one side with his find and there was enough confusion in the room for him to be left in peace.
Only Maigret went over to him.
‘What is it?’
‘Letters.’
The box was almost full, not only of letters but also brief notes hastily scribbled on scraps of paper. Louise Sabati had kept everything, perhaps unbeknown to her lover, almost certainly in fact, otherwise she would not have hidden the box under the bed.
‘Let me see.’
Lomel seemed upset on reading them. He said in a tremulous voice:
‘They’re love letters.’
The magistrate had finally become aware of what was going on.
‘Letters?’
‘Love letters.’
‘From whom?’
‘From Alain. Signed with his first name, sometimes only his initials.’
Maigret, who had read two or three of them, wanted to stop them being passed around. They were probably the most moving love letters he had ever read. The doctor had written them with the passion and sometimes the naivety of a twenty-year-old.
He called Louise: ‘My little darling’.
Sometimes: ‘My poor little darling’.
And he told her, like all lovers, how long the days and nights were without her, how empty life was, how empty the house, where he banged into the walls like a hornet; he told her he wished he had met her sooner, before any man had touched her, and about the rages he felt, alone in his bed at night, when he thought about the caresses she had endured.
At times, he spoke to her as if she were an irresponsible child, and at others his words were howls of hatred and despair.
‘Gentlemen . . .’ began Maigret, a lump in his throat.
No one took any notice of him. It was none of his business. Chabot, blushing, went on skimming through the letters, the lenses of his spectacles misty.
I left you half an hour ago and I’m back in my prison. I need to be close to you again . . .
He had known her for barely eight months. There were almost 200 letters and, some days, he had written three, one after the other. Some had no stamp. He must have brought them with him.
If I were man enough . . .
Maigret was relieved to hear the police arrive. They shepherded the crowd and the swarm of kids out of the way.
‘You’d do better to remove them,’ he whispered to his friend.
The letters had to be collected up from everyone in the room. The people who handed them over looked sheepish. Now they averted their gaze from the bed, and when they glanced at the body lying there, it was furtively, almost apologetically.
Like that, without his glasses, his face relaxed and peaceful, Alain Vernoux appeared ten years younger than he had done when alive.
‘My mother must be getting worried,’ said Chabot, checking his watch.
He was forgetting the house in Rue Rabelais where there was an entire family, a father, a mother, a wife, children, whom they were going to have to go and inform.
Maigret reminded him. The magistrate murmured:
‘I’d much rather not go there myself.’
Maigret didn’t dare offer. And perhaps his friend didn’t dare ask.
‘I’ll send Féron.’
‘Where?’ asked the latter.
‘Rue Rabelais, to inform them. Talk to his father first.’
‘What shall I tell him?’
‘The truth.’
The puny chief inspector muttered under his breath:
‘Nice job!’
There was nothing more for them to do there. Nothing more to discover in the rooms of a poor girl whose box of letters was her only treasure. She probably hadn’t understood all of them. It made no difference.
‘Are you coming, Maigret?’
And, to the doctor:
‘Will you arrange for the body to be removed?’
‘To the morgue?’
‘There’ll have to be an autopsy. I don’t see how . . .’
He turned to the two police officers.
‘Don’t let anyone in.’
He went down the stairs, the cardboard box under his arm, and had to push through the crowd gathered outside. He had not thought of the matter of a car. They were on the other side of town. Of his own accord, the journalist from Bordeaux hurried over.
‘Where would you like me to drop you off?’
‘At my house.’
‘Rue Clemenceau?’
They drove most of the way in silence. It was only when they were within 100 metres of the house that Chabot murmured:
‘I suppose that’s the end of the case.’
He could not have been so certain because he studied Maigret covertly. And Maigret did not acquiesce. He said neither yes nor no.
‘I don’t see any reason, if he wasn’t guilty, why . . .’
He clammed up, because on hearing the car, his mother, who must have been fretting, was already opening the door.
‘I was wondering what’s going on. I saw people running as if something had happened.’
Chabot thanked the reporter and felt obliged to offer:
‘A quick drink?’
‘No thank you. I have to call my paper urgently.’
‘The roast will be overdone. I was expecting you at half past twelve. You look tired, Julien. Don’t you think he looks under the weather, Jules?’
‘You’ll have to leave us for a moment, Mother.’
‘Don’t you want to eat?’
‘Not straight away.’
She gripped Maigret.
‘Nothing bad?’
‘Nothing you need to worry about.’
He preferred to tell her the truth, or at least some of the truth.
‘Alain Vernoux has committed suicide.’
She merely said:
‘Oh!’
Then, shaking her head, she headed towards the kitchen.
‘Let’s go into my study. Unless you’re hungry?’
‘No.’
‘Pour yourself a drink.’
He would have liked a beer, but he knew there wasn’t any in the house. He opened the drinks cabinet and chose a bottle of Pernod at random.
‘Rose will bring you some water and ice.’
Chabot had sunk into his armchair, where his father’s head before his had made a dark stain on the leather. The shoe-box was on the desk, with the blue ribbon that had been retied.
The magistrate desperately needed reassurance. His nerves were frayed.
‘Why don’t you have a nightcap?’
From the look Chabot shot in the direction of the door, Maigret gathered that it was at his mother’s insistence that he no longer drank.
‘I’d rather not.’
‘As you wish.’
Despite the mild temperature that day, there was still a fire burning in the hearth and Maigret, who was too warm, had to move away.
‘What do you think?’
‘About what?’
‘About what he did. Why, if he wasn’t guilty—’
‘You read some of his letters, didn’t you?’
Chabot bowed his head.
‘Chief Inspector Féron burst into Louise’s rooms yesterday, questioned her, took her to the police station and kept her in the cells all night.’
‘He wasn’t acting under my instructions.’
‘I know. He did it anyway. This morning, Alain rushed over to see her and found out everything.’
‘I don’t see what difference that made.’
He had a very good idea, but didn’t want to admit it.
‘Do you think that’s why . . . ?’
‘I think it’s enough. Tomorrow, the whole town would have known. Féron would probably have continued to harass the girl,
and she’d have ended up being sentenced for prostitution.’
‘He was rash. That’s not a reason to kill oneself.’
‘That depends on the person.’
‘You’re convinced he’s not guilty.’
‘What about you?’
‘I think everyone will believe he’s guilty and will be satisfied.’
Maigret looked at him in surprise.
‘You mean you’re going to close the case?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know any more.’
‘Do you remember what Alain said to us?’
‘About what?’
‘That a madman has his own logic. A madman who has lived his entire life without anyone noticing his madness doesn’t suddenly start killing for no reason. There has to be some provocation at least. There has to be a cause, which might not seem sufficient to a rational person, but which does to him.
‘The first victim was Robert de Courçon and, in my view, that’s the one that counts, because it’s the only one that can provide us with a clue.
‘Public speculation isn’t born out of nothing either.’
‘Do you trust the opinion of the masses?’
‘They’re sometimes misguided. But, as I’ve noticed over the years, there is nearly always a sound basis. I’d say that the crowd has an instinct—’
‘So it is indeed Alain who—’
‘That’s not what I’m saying. When Robert de Courçon was killed, the townspeople made a connection between the two houses in Rue Rabelais and at that point no one was talking about madness. Courçon’s murder wasn’t necessarily the act of a madman or a maniac. There could have been specific reasons why someone decided to kill him, or did so in a moment of anger.’
‘Go on.’
Chabot had no fight left. Maigret could have said anything to him and he would have agreed. He had the impression that it was his career, his life, that was being destroyed.
‘I know no more than you do. There have been two more murders, one after the other, both inexplicable, both committed in the same way, as if the murderer wanted to underline that it was one and the same culprit.’
‘I thought that criminals generally kept to one method, always the same.’
‘I’m asking myself why he was in such a hurry.’
‘Such a hurry to what?’
‘To kill again. Then again. As if to firmly establish in the public mind that a maniac was at large.’
This time, Chabot looked up sharply.
‘You mean he’s not mad?’
Maigret is Afraid Page 11