‘Not exactly.’
‘So?’
‘It’s a question I regret not having discussed in more depth with Alain Vernoux. The little he said to us has stayed in my mind. Even a madman would not necessarily act like a madman.’
‘That’s obvious. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any more lunatics on the loose.’
‘Nor is it necessarily because he is mad that he kills.’
‘You’ve lost me there. Your conclusion?’
‘I don’t have a conclusion.’
They jumped when the telephone rang. Chabot picked up the receiver, and his attitude and tone changed.
‘Yes, madame. He is here. I’ll put him on.’
And to Maigret:
‘Your wife.’
On the other end of the line, Madame Maigret said:
‘Is that you? I’m not disturbing your lunch? Are you still eating?’
‘No.’
There was no point telling her he hadn’t eaten yet.
‘Your chief called me half an hour ago and asked if you would definitely be back tomorrow morning. I didn’t know what to tell him because when you telephoned me, you didn’t sound certain. He said that if I had the opportunity to phone you again, I should tell you that the daughter of some politician has been missing for two days. It’s not in the papers yet. Apparently it’s very important; there’s likely to be an outcry. Do you know who it is?’
‘No.’
‘He mentioned a name but I’ve forgotten it.’
‘In other words, he wants me back without fail?’
‘He didn’t say that. But I did gather that he wants you to handle the case in person.’
‘Is it raining?’
‘The weather’s beautiful. Have you made up your mind?’
‘I’ll do my utmost to be in Paris tomorrow morning. There must be a night train. I haven’t looked at the timetable yet.’
Chabot nodded to confirm that there was a night train.
‘Is everything all right in Fontenay?’
‘Everything is fine.’
‘Give my regards to Julien Chabot.’
‘I will.’
When he hung up, he couldn’t have said whether his friend was sorry or delighted that he was leaving.
‘Do you have to go back?’
‘I have to do the right thing.’
‘Perhaps it’s time to sit down and have lunch?’
Reluctantly Maigret tore himself away from the white shoe-box that had a similar effect on him as a coffin.
‘Let us not talk about it in front of my mother.’
They hadn’t got to dessert yet when the front doorbell rang. Rose went to open the door, and came back to announce:
‘It’s the chief of police who’s asking—’
‘Show him into my study.’
‘That’s what I did. He’s waiting. He says it’s not urgent.’
Madame Chabot tried hard to make small talk as if nothing were amiss. She dredged up names from her memory, people who were dead, or who had moved away from the town years ago, reeling off their stories.
They finally left the table.
‘Shall I have your coffees served in your study?’
Rose brought all three of them coffee and placed glasses and the bottle of brandy on the tray with an almost reverent gesture. They had to wait until the door closed behind her.
‘Well?’
‘I went there.’
‘Cigar?’
‘No thank you. I haven’t had lunch yet.’
‘Would you like me to ring for some food?’
‘I telephoned my wife and told her I’d be home shortly.’
‘How did it go?’
‘The manservant opened the door and I asked if I could speak to Hubert Vernoux. He left me in the hall while he went to inform him. It took a long time. A boy of seven or eight came and stared at me from the top of the stairs and I heard his mother’s voice calling him. Someone else was watching me through a half-open door, an old woman, but I don’t know if it was Madame Vernoux or her sister.’
‘What did Vernoux say?’
‘He appeared at the end of the corridor and, when he was three or four metres from me, he asked, without stopping: “Have you found him?”
‘I said that I had some bad news for him. He didn’t invite me into the drawing room, but left me standing there on the mat, while he looked down on me, but I could see his lips and hands were trembling.
‘“Your son is dead,” I finally said.
‘And he replied: “Did you kill him?”
‘“He committed suicide, this morning, in his mistress’s bedroom.”’
‘Did he seem surprised?’ queried the investigating magistrate.
‘I had the impression that it gave him a shock. He opened his mouth as if to ask a question, but merely muttered: “So, he had a mistress!”
‘He didn’t even ask who she was, or what had become of her. He headed towards the door to open it and his last words, as he dismissed me, were: “Maybe those people will leave us in peace now.”
‘He jerked his chin at the curious onlookers gathered on the pavement, the groups stationed on the opposite side of the street, the journalists who had taken advantage of his appearance on the doorstep to photograph him.’
‘He didn’t try to avoid them?’
‘On the contrary. When he saw them, he lingered, facing them, looking them in the eyes, and then, slowly, he closed the door and I heard him drawing the bolts.’
‘What about the girl?’
‘I dropped in to the hospital. Chabiron is at her bedside. We don’t know yet if she’ll pull through, because she has some heart defect.’
Without touching his coffee, he knocked back the glass of brandy and stood up.
‘Can I go and have lunch?’
Chabot nodded and rose to see him out.
‘What do I do next?’
‘I don’t know yet. Come to my chambers. The prosecutor will be meeting me there at three o’clock.’
‘I left two men outside the house in Rue Rabelais, just in case. Crowds of people are filing past, stopping to talk in undertones.’
‘Are they calm?’
‘Now that Alain Vernoux has killed himself, I don’t think there’s any more danger. You know how it is.’
Chabot looked at Maigret as if to say: ‘You see!’
He would have given anything for his friend to reply: ‘Of course. It’s all over.’
Except that Maigret said nothing.
8. The Invalid of Gros-Noyer
Maigret had walked down the road from the Chabots’ house, turning right shortly before the bridge, and for ten minutes he followed a long road that was neither town nor country.
At first, the white, red and grey houses, including the large residence and cellars of a wine merchant, were close together, but this street was very different in nature from Rue de la République, for instance, and some of the buildings, whitewashed and single-storeyed, were almost cottages.
Then there were gaps, little alleys giving a glimpse of vegetable gardens sloping gently down to the river, sometimes a white goat tethered to a stake.
He met almost no one in the street, but through the open doors he caught sight of families who seemed motionless, listening to the radio or eating tart. In one house a man in shirt-sleeves sat reading the newspaper and, in another, a little old lady was snoozing beside a big grandfather clock with a brass pendulum.
The gardens gradually took over more and more, the gaps between the walls were wider, the Vendée flowed closer to the road, sweeping downriver the branches ripped off by the recent gales.
Maigret had refused to allow himself to be driven by car and now he was beginning to regret it because he hadn’t realized it was such a long way, and the sun was already burning the back of his neck. It took him almost an hour to reach the Gros-Noyer crossroads, after which there seemed to be nothing but meadows.
Three youths dressed in navy blue,
their hair brilliantined, were lolling against the door of an inn. They could not have known who he was, and watched him with the hostile disdain of villagers for the town-dweller lost among them.
‘Madame Page’s house?’ he asked them.
‘You mean Léontine?’
‘I don’t know her first name.’
That was enough to make them laugh. They found it funny that someone didn’t know Léontine’s first name.
‘If it’s her, go and knock on that door over there.’
The house they pointed to was only one-storeyed, and was so low that Maigret could reach up and touch the roof. The green door had two sections, like a stable door, the top half open and the bottom half closed.
At first he couldn’t see anyone in the kitchen, which was very clean, with a white ceramic stove, a round table covered with a gingham oilcloth and lilacs in a colourful vase probably won at the fair; the mantelpiece was crammed with knick-knacks and photographs.
He rang a little bell hanging on a string.
‘What is it?’
Maigret saw her come out of the bedroom whose door opened to the left: these were the only two rooms. The woman could have been any age between fifty and sixty-five. Blunt and hard, like the hotel chambermaid, she studied him with the suspicion of a countrywoman, without moving towards the door.
‘What do you want?’
Followed immediately by:
‘Aren’t you the one whose picture’s in the newspaper?’
Maigret heard a noise coming from the bedroom. A man’s voice asked:
‘Who is it, Léontine?’
‘The inspector from Paris.’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret?’
‘I think that’s what he’s called.’
‘Let him in.’
Without moving, she repeated:
‘Come in.’
Maigret drew back the bolt to open the bottom part of the door himself. Léontine did not invite him to sit down, remaining silent.
‘You were Robert de Courçon’s cleaner, weren’t you?’
‘For fifteen years. The police and the journalists have already asked me all the questions. I don’t know anything.’
From where he stood, Maigret could now see a white room, its walls hung with colour prints and the foot of a walnut bed covered in a red eiderdown, and the smell of pipe smoke reached his nostrils. There were still sounds coming from within.
‘I want to see what he’s like,’ mumbled the man.
And she, to Maigret, ungraciously:
‘Do you hear what my husband says? Come in, he can’t get up.’
The man sitting up in bed had a face devoured by his beard; newspapers and novels were strewn around him. He was smoking a long-stemmed meerschaum pipe and on the bedside table, within arm’s reach, was a litre of white wine and a glass.
‘It’s his legs,’ explained Léontine. ‘Since he got crushed between two buffers. He used to work for the railway. His bones are all shattered.’
Lace curtains subdued the light and two pots of geraniums brightened up the window-sill.
‘I’ve read all the stories about you, Monsieur Maigret. I read all day long. I never used to read before. Bring a glass, Léontine.’
Maigret couldn’t say no. He clinked glasses. Then, taking advantage of the fact that Léontine had stayed in the room, he pulled from his pocket the piece of lead piping he had asked permission to take away.
‘Do you recognize this?’
Without becoming flustered, she said:
‘Of course.’
‘Where was it the last time you saw it?’
‘On the big table in the lounge.’
‘At Robert de Courçon’s house?’
‘At Monsieur’s, yes. It comes from the outhouse, where some of the piping had to be replaced last winter when the water pipes froze and burst.’
‘He kept that length of piping on the table?’
‘There were all sorts of things. It was called a lounge, but it was the room where he lived all the time and where he worked.’
‘You cleaned his house?’
‘What he allowed me to do: I swept the floor and dusted – as long as I didn’t move any of his things! – and did the washing-up.’
‘Was he obsessive?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You can tell the inspector,’ whispered her husband.
‘I don’t have any complaints about him.’
‘Except that you hadn’t been paid for months.’
‘It’s not his fault. If the others, over the road, had given him the money they owed him . . .’
‘Weren’t you tempted to throw the piping away?’
‘I tried. He ordered me to leave it there. He used it as a paperweight. I recall him saying that it could come in useful if burglars tried to break into the house. That was a strange notion, because there were lots of guns on the walls. He collected them.’
‘Is it true, inspector, that his nephew killed himself?’
‘It is true.’
‘Do you think it was him? Another glass of wine? Me, you see, as I was saying to my wife, the rich, I don’t try to understand them. They don’t think, they don’t feel the way we do.’
‘Do you know the Vernoux family?’
‘Like everyone else, from passing them in the street. I’ve heard people saying they had no money left, and they even borrowed from their servants, and that must be true because Léontine’s boss wasn’t getting his allowance any more and couldn’t pay her.’
His wife was signalling to him not to talk so much. He didn’t actually have a lot to say, but he was glad to have company and to meet Detective Chief Inspector Maigret in the flesh.
Maigret left with the acrid taste of the white wine in his mouth. On the way back, he came across some life. Boys and girls on bicycles were returning to the villages, while families from the town were making their way slowly home.
At the law courts, they were probably still conferring in the magistrate’s chambers. Maigret had declined to join them, because he didn’t want to influence the decision they were going to make.
Would they resolve to close the investigation in the light of the doctor’s suicide, taking it as an admission of guilt?
It was likely, and in that case, Chabot would feel remorse for the rest of his life.
When he reached Rue Clemenceau and gazed all the way down it to Rue de la République, the streets looked almost crowded: people were strolling along both pavements, others were coming out of the cinema, and every chair was taken on the terrace of the Café de la Poste. The sky already had the rosy glow of sunset.
He headed towards Place Viète, walking past his friend’s house where he glimpsed Madame Chabot at an upstairs window. In Rue Rabelais, curious onlookers were still lingering around the Vernoux’s home but, perhaps because death had visited the house, they kept a respectful distance, most of them on the opposite pavement.
Maigret told himself again that this case was none of his business, that he had a train to catch that evening, that he risked annoying everyone and falling out with his friend.
After which, unable to resist, he reached for the door knocker. He had to wait for a long time, watched by the onlookers, until at last he heard footsteps and the manservant opened the door a fraction.
‘I should like to see Monsieur Hubert Vernoux.’
‘Monsieur is not at home.’
Maigret entered uninvited. The hall was gloomy. There wasn’t a sound to be heard.
‘Is he in his apartment?’
‘I think he is in bed.’
‘One question: do your bedroom windows overlook the street?’
The manservant looked uncomfortable and spoke in an undertone.
‘Yes. On the third floor. My wife and I sleep in the attic rooms.’
‘And can you see the house opposite?’
Although they hadn’t heard anything, the drawing-room door opened and Maigret recognized the si
lhouette of the sister-in-law standing in the doorway.
‘What is it, Arsène?’
She had seen Maigret, but did not address him directly.
‘I was telling Inspector Maigret that Monsieur is not at home.’
She eventually turned to him.
‘Did you wish to speak to my brother-in-law?’
She resigned herself to opening the door a little wider.
‘Come in.’
She was alone in the vast drawing room with closed curtains; a single lamp was lit on a pedestal table. No book was lying open, no newspaper, no needlework or tapestry. She must have been sitting there doing nothing when he had knocked.
‘I can see you in his stead.’
‘He’s the person I wish to speak to.’
‘Even if you go to his apartment, he probably won’t be in a state to answer you.’
She walked towards the table on which stood a number of bottles and grabbed one which had contained Marc de Bourgogne and was now empty.
‘This was half-full at lunchtime. He was in this room for only fifteen minutes while we were still at the table.’
‘Does this happen often?’
‘Nearly every day. Now he’ll sleep until five or six o’clock and then his vision will be blurred. My sister and I have tried to lock up the bottles, but he always finds a way of getting at them. It’s better that it should happen here than in some dreadful bar.’
‘Does he sometimes frequent bars?’
‘How should we know? He sneaks out through the back door, and later, when we see his bulging eyes and he starts stuttering, we know what it means. He’ll end up like his father.’
‘Has it been going on for long?’
‘Years. Maybe he drank before too, but it had less effect on him. He doesn’t look his age, but he is sixty-seven, after all.’
‘I’m going to ask the servant to take me to him.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather come back later?’
‘I’m leaving for Paris this evening.’
She realized there was no point arguing and pressed a bell. Arsène appeared:
‘Show Inspector Maigret to Monsieur’s rooms.’
Arsène looked at her in surprise, as if doubting her wisdom.
‘Whatever will be will be!’
Without the manservant, Maigret would have got lost in the intersecting corridors, wide and echoing like those of a convent. He caught a glimpse of a kitchen full of gleaming copper pans. Like at Gros-Noyer, a bottle of white wine stood on the table, most likely Arsène’s.
Maigret is Afraid Page 12