Maigret's Secret

by Georges Simenon

  ‘I wanted to go back to the house, which stood out from the others in the street. It was made almost entirely of glass and had odd, unexpected angles. It was built around 1925 in the Decorative Arts period.

  ‘It was all new to me: the décor, the colours, the furniture, the layout of the rooms. It perplexed me how people lived their lives there.

  ‘The man in front of me, fighting against exhaustion and a hangover, kept on asking with his anxious but resigned gaze: You do believe me, don’t you?

  ‘The inspector at Auteuil hadn’t believed him and had shown him no consideration.

  ‘At one point I had opened the door to tell the reporters to shut up, as they were making so much noise …’

  For the second or third time Josset refused the sandwich that was offered to him. It was as if he felt his strength might fail him at any moment and he was determined to see this through at any cost.

  And perhaps it wasn’t only that he had a divisional detective chief inspector before him, someone who could have a big influence in what happened to him.

  He needed to convince someone, anyone, a man other than himself.

  ‘Were you happy, you and your wife?’

  How would Maigret or Pardon have answered that question? Josset also hesitated.

  ‘I think there were times when we were happy. Especially when we were alone together. Especially at night. We were true lovers. Do you understand what I’m saying? And if we had been able to be on our own more often …’

  He would have been more explicit if he could!

  ‘I don’t know how familiar you are with this world. I wasn’t at all before I found my way in. Christine had grown up in it. She needed it. She had lots of friends. A packed diary. If she was ever alone for a moment she’d be on the telephone. There were lunches, cocktail parties, dinners, dress rehearsals, cabaret suppers. There were hundreds of people with whom we were on first-name terms and whom we’d bump into at all these venues.

  ‘She loved me once, I’m sure of that. And in a sense she probably still did love me.’

  ‘What about you?’ Maigret asked.

  ‘I loved her too. No one will believe me. Even our friends, who know all about it, will say otherwise. Nevertheless, we were united by something stronger than conventional love.

  ‘We weren’t lovers any more, except on rare occasions.’

  ‘How long had this been going on?’

  ‘A few years. Four or five. I can’t say exactly. I couldn’t even tell you how we got that way.’

  ‘Did you argue?’

  ‘Yes and no. It depends what you mean by “argue”. We knew each other so well. We had no illusions about each other, it was impossible to cheat. In the end we were merciless.’

  ‘Merciless about what?’

  ‘All the little faults, the tiny acts of cowardice that are part of everyone. In the beginning you turn a blind eye or, if you notice them, you try to turn them into something appealing.’

  ‘You transform them into qualities?’

  ‘Let’s just say that your partner becomes more human, more vulnerable, which makes you want to protect them and smother them with tenderness. You see, I’m sure that the fundamental thing was that I wasn’t at all prepared for this life.

  ‘Do you know our offices in Avenue Marceau? We also have laboratories in Saint-Mandé, and in Switzerland and Belgium. That was, and indeed still is, a part of my life, the most solid part. You asked me just now if I was happy. When I was there, managing an ever-expanding company, I felt fulfilled. Then, suddenly, the phone would ring. Christine would want to meet me somewhere.’

  ‘Did you feel, because of her money, that you were subordinate to her?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Some people thought, and probably still do, that it was a marriage based on money.’

  ‘Is that incorrect? Money wasn’t a factor at all?’

  ‘I swear.’

  ‘The business remained in your wife’s name?’

  ‘Unfortunately not. She retained a large share, but an almost equal-sized part was signed over to me six years ago.’

  ‘At your request?’

  ‘At Christine’s. I’d like to point out that, as far as she was concerned, this wasn’t a recognition of the results of my hard work but rather a scheme to avoid certain taxes without ceding shares to third parties. But I know I can’t prove it and it will count against me. Along with the fact that Christine drew up a new will in my favour. I haven’t read it. I haven’t seen it. I don’t even know where it is. She told me about it one evening when she was depressed and thought that she had cancer.’

  ‘Was she in good health?’

  He hesitated, still giving the impression that he was scrupulously weighing up his words and their exact meanings.

  ‘She didn’t have cancer or heart disease or any of those ailments that you read about in the papers every week and for which they collect money in the street. But in my view she was nonetheless very ill. Recently, she did not experience more than a few hours of lucidity each day, and sometimes she locked herself away in her bedroom for two or three days at a time.’

  ‘You don’t share a bedroom?’

  ‘We did for several years. But then, because I got up early in the morning and was waking her up, I moved into the adjoining room.’

  ‘Did she drink heavily?’

  ‘If you question her friends, as I’m sure you will, they will tell you that she didn’t drink more than many of them. They only saw her in her best light, if you follow me. They didn’t know that before going out for two or three hours she would spend several hours in bed and that, the next day, as soon as she woke up, she’d be back on the booze or on pills.’

  ‘Do you drink?’

  Josset shrugged, as if to say that Maigret only had to look at him to get his answer.

  ‘Less than her, anyway. Not as obsessively. Otherwise the laboratories would have gone down the pan years ago. But I do sometimes get drunk and act like someone who has had one too many, so you will find that these same friends will tell you I was more of a soak than she was. Especially as I can sometimes get aggressive when I’m drunk. If you haven’t been in the same situation, how would you understand?’

  ‘I’m trying to,’ Maigret sighed.

  Then he asked point-blank:

  ‘Do you have a mistress?’

  ‘Here we go! They asked me that this morning and when I replied the inspector looked triumphant, as if he had finally nailed the truth.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A year.’

  ‘So a long time after your relationship with your wife began to break down, which happened, I think you said, five or six years ago?’

  ‘A long time after, yes, and completely unrelated. Before that I had had a few affairs, like everyone, most of them just short flings.’

  ‘Whereas you are in love with your current mistress?’

  ‘I don’t like to use the same word that I used for Christine, because it’s something very different. But how can I put it?’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘My secretary. When I told the other inspector, he must have been expecting it, because he was immensely pleased with himself that he had seen my answer coming. Let’s face it, it’s so banal it’s the subject of jokes. And yet …’

  The beer glasses were empty. Most of the passers-by they had seen earlier on the bridge and the quayside had now been absorbed by the offices and shops, where work had resumed.

  ‘Her name is Annette Duché. She is twenty years old, and her father is head clerk at the sub-préfecture at Fontenay-le-Comte. He is in Paris currently, and I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t come to see you once the newspapers appear.’

  ‘To accuse you?’

  ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. When something happens, when a person dies under mysterious circumstances, everything becomes complicated all of a sudden. Do you see what I’m trying to say? Nothing is normal and obvious any more, nothing just happens by chance. Every
action and word takes on a damning meaning. I’m quite aware of what I’m saying, I promise you. I may need a bit of time to get my thoughts in order, but from now on I really want you to know that I’m not hiding anything from you and will do my utmost to help you to uncover the truth …

  ‘Annette worked at Avenue Marceau for six months before I even noticed her, because Monsieur Jules, the head of personnel, put her in shipping, which is on another floor from my office, and I rarely set foot there. One afternoon, when my secretary was off sick and I had an important report to dictate, they sent her to me. We worked until eleven at night in the empty building, and as I felt guilty that I had made her miss her dinner I took her for a bite to eat in a local restaurant.

  ‘That’s pretty much it. I’ve just turned forty, and she is twenty. She reminds me of some of the girls I knew in Sète and Montpellier. I didn’t make a move for a long time. At first I had her transferred into an office next to mine, where I was able to observe her. I found out things about her. I heard that she was a sensible girl, that to begin with she had lived with an aunt in Rue Lamarck, but then she had fallen out with her and moved out to a rented room in Rue Caulaincourt.

  ‘I know this sounds ridiculous, but I even walked round to Rue Caulaincourt and saw the pots of geraniums on her window-sill on the fourth floor.

  ‘Nothing happened for about three months. Then, when we set up a branch office in Brussels, I sent my secretary there and installed Annette in her place …’

  ‘Was your wife aware of all this?’

  ‘We didn’t hide anything from each other.’

  ‘Did she have lovers?’

  ‘If I answer that people will make out that I’m trying to blacken her name in order to defend myself. The dead are sacrosanct.’

  ‘How did she react?’

  ‘Christine? She didn’t react at first. She just gave me a vaguely pitying look.

  ‘ “Poor Adrien! Has it come to this?”

  ‘She would ask for updates on “the little girl”, as she called her.

  ‘ “Isn’t she pregnant yet? What will you do when it happens? Will you ask for a divorce?” ’

  Maigret frowned and observed the other man a little more closely.

  ‘Is Annette pregnant?’ he asked.

  ‘No! That, at least, can be proved easily.’

  ‘Is she still living in Rue Caulaincourt?’

  ‘She hasn’t changed her lifestyle at all. I didn’t provide her with an apartment, I didn’t buy her a car or jewels or a fur coat. The geraniums are still there on her window-sill. In her room she has a glass-fronted walnut wardrobe like the one my parents had and she still uses the kitchen as her dining room.’

  His bottom lip was trembling, as if he were issuing a challenge.

  ‘You didn’t want to change it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you often spend the night at Rue Caulaincourt?’

  ‘Once or twice a week.’

  ‘Can you give me as accurate an account as possible of what you were doing yesterday in the daytime and at night?’

  ‘Where do you want me to begin?’

  ‘The morning.’

  Maigret turned to Lapointe as if to indicate that he should take all this down.

  ‘I got up at seven thirty, as usual, and I went out on to the terrace to do my morning exercises.’

  ‘So you were in Rue Lopert?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What had you been doing the previous evening?’

  ‘Christine and I went to the première of Witnesses at the Théâtre de la Madeleine, and we had supper afterwards in a cabaret in Place Pigalle.’

  ‘Did you have an argument?’

  ‘No. I had a busy day ahead of me. We were considering changing the packaging on some of our products; good presentation can make an enormous difference to sales.’

  ‘What time did you get to bed?’

  ‘Around two o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘Did your wife go to bed at the same time?’

  ‘No. I left her in Montmartre with some friends we had met up with.’

  ‘Their names?’

  ‘The Joublins. Gaston Joublin is a lawyer. They live in Rue Washington.’

  ‘Do you know what time your wife got home?’

  ‘No. I was fast asleep.’

  ‘Had you been drinking?’

  ‘A few glasses of champagne. I was fully compos mentis; my mind was on my work the next day.’

  ‘Did you go into your wife’s room in the morning?’

  ‘I peeked round the door and saw that she was still asleep.’

  ‘You didn’t wake her up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why did you open the door?’

  ‘Just to make sure she had got home.’

  ‘Did she sometimes not come home?’

  ‘Occasionally.’

  ‘Was she alone?’

  ‘As far as I know, she has never brought anyone home.’

  ‘How many servants do you have?’

  ‘Not very many for a house of our size. Of course, we rarely ate at home. The cook, Madame Siran, who is more like what the English call a housekeeper, doesn’t spend the night at Rue Lopert but lives with her son in the Javel quarter, on the other side of Pont Mirabeau. He is around thirty, single, in poor health and works for the Métro.

  ‘The only one in residence is the chambermaid, a Spanish woman called Carlotta …’

  ‘Who makes your breakfast?’

  ‘Carlotta. Madame Siran doesn’t arrive until just before I set off.’

  ‘So did everything happen as normal yesterday morning?’

  ‘Yes … I’m thinking … No, nothing out of the ordinary … I had my bath, got dressed, went downstairs to eat, and when I got into my car, which I leave parked outside the front door at night, I noticed Madame Siran coming round the corner, her shopping basket in her hand, because she does her shopping on the way here.’

  ‘Do you have just the one car?’

  ‘Two. The one I use is an English two-seater, because I have a passion for sports cars. Christine drives an American car.’

  ‘Was your wife’s car parked by the pavement?’

  ‘Yes. Rue Lopert is a quiet street, not much traffic, very easy to park there.’

  ‘Did you go straight to Avenue Marceau?’

  ‘No! And I know this will be used against me too. I went to Rue Caulaincourt to pick up Annette.’

  ‘Do you go there every morning?’

  ‘More or less. I have a retractable roof. In spring it’s a real pleasure driving through Paris early in the morning.’

  ‘Did you turn up at work with your secretary?’

  ‘For a long time I dropped her off at the nearest Métro station. Some people from work saw us. So everyone knew in the end, and I decided to be up-front about it. Indeed, I think I derived a certain pleasure from being so open, defying public opinion, as it were. You see, I detest all the smirks, the whispering behind your back, the knowing looks. Since there was nothing inappropriate about our relationship, I didn’t see why …’

  He was hoping for approval, but Maigret remained impassive. That was his role.

  It was a lovely spring morning, as on the day before, and the little sports car drove down from Montmartre and threaded its way through the traffic, skirting the gold-tipped railings at the edge of Parc Monceau, crossing Place des Ternes, circling the Arc de Triomphe, at an hour when the crowds looked fresh and ready for the new day as they hurried to work.

  ‘I spent the morning in discussions with my departmental heads, especially the sales director.’

  ‘Was Annette present?’

  ‘Her desk is in my office.’

  Which would have tall windows, no doubt, and overlook the elegant avenue, where expensive cars would be parked along the pavements.

  ‘Did you have lunch with her?’

  ‘No. I took an important English client who had just arrived to lunch at the Berkeley.’
r />   ‘Did you receive any word from your wife?’

  ‘I rang her at two thirty, when I got back to the office.’

  ‘Was she awake?’

  ‘She was just getting up. She told me that she was going to do some shopping and then would be dining with a girlfriend.’

  ‘Did she mention a name?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I would have remembered. It was something she did a lot, so I didn’t pay it much attention. I returned to the meeting, which had broken up for lunch.’

  ‘Did anything out of the ordinary happen that afternoon?’

  ‘Not out of the ordinary, but important nonetheless. Around four o’clock I sent one of our errand boys to a shop in the Madeleine to buy some hors d’œuvres – a lobster, some Russian salad and some fruit. I told him, if the first cherries had arrived, to buy two punnets. He put all the shopping in my car. At six o’clock, my colleagues went home, as did most of the staff. At six fifteen Monsieur Jules, the firm’s most senior employee, popped in to see if I needed him any more, then went off in turn.’

  ‘What about your partner, Monsieur Virieu?’

  ‘He had already left around five o’clock. In spite of his experience, he is a bit of an amateur and his role is largely as the face of the firm. He is the one who usually invites our foreign associates and major clients out to lunch or dinner.’

  ‘Was he at the lunch with the Englishman?’

  ‘Yes. He also goes to conferences.’

  ‘So you and your secretary were alone in the building?’

  ‘Apart from the concierge, obviously. It happens quite often. We left, and once we were in the car I decided to make the most of the good weather to go for an aperitif out of town. Driving relaxes me. We soon got to the Chevreuse valley and had a drink in an inn.’

  ‘Did you and Annette ever eat out in a restaurant?’

  ‘Rarely. At first I avoided it because I wanted to keep our relationship more or less secret. Later, I simply grew fond of our little dinners in her apartment in Rue Caulaincourt.’

  ‘With the geraniums in the window?’

  Josset looked offended.

  ‘You find that amusing?’ he said with a hint of aggression.