Maigret's Doubts (Inspector Maigret)

by Georges Simenon

  ‘ “Then it must have been my brother-in-law who served you …” ’

  ‘Is that all?’ Maigret asked him.

  ‘More or less. I saw two or three sales representatives, but I didn’t dare to be too specific. The Martons seem to be well regarded in the area, and to pay their rent regularly.’

  Maigret suddenly noticed that it was Torrence’s glass that he had emptied.

  ‘Sorry, old man. Send another one up on my account …’

  He added:

  ‘And one for me. I’ll come and drink it when I’ve finished with the woman who came to see me.’

  She hadn’t moved from her armchair in his absence but had lit a cigarette.

  He returned to his place and put his hands flat on the desk.

  ‘I can’t remember where we were. Ah yes! You invited me to question you. But I don’t really see what I can ask you. Do you have a maid, Madame Marton? Because, if I’ve understood you correctly, you work all day.’

  ‘All day, yes.’

  ‘For yourself?’

  ‘Not exactly. However, my boss, Monsieur Harris, who set up the lingerie house on Rue Saint-Honoré, gives me quite a high commission, because I’m usually the one who keeps the business going.’

  ‘So you have an important position?’

  ‘Quite important, yes.’

  ‘I think I may have heard of the Harris house.’

  ‘It’s one of the three best houses in Paris for fine lingerie. We have a select clientele, including crowned heads.’

  This gave him a clearer sense of certain details that had struck him at the beginning, the discreet and yet slightly particular elegance of his visitor. As happens in certain fashion houses and in certain businesses, she had gradually acquired the tastes and attitudes of her clientele, while at the same time retaining an indispensable modesty.

  ‘Were your parents in lingerie?’

  She relaxed, now that they were on more ordinary territory, and the questions seemed innocent.

  ‘Far from it. My father was a history teacher at a school in Rouen, and my mother never did anything in her life apart from being the daughter of a general.’

  ‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’

  ‘One sister, who spent a certain amount of time in the United States, in Green Village, New Jersey, not far from New York, with her husband. Her husband was an engineer in an oil refinery.’

  ‘You say: “was”?’

  ‘He was killed two years ago in an explosion in the laboratories. My sister came back to France, so shaken, so discouraged, that we took her into our house.’

  ‘I asked you just now if you had a maid.’

  ‘No. My sister doesn’t work. She has never worked in her life. She is younger than me and she married at the age of twenty, when she was still living with my parents. She has always been a spoilt child.’

  ‘Does she do your housework?’

  ‘It’s her way of paying her share, if you like. We didn’t ask, she volunteered.’

  ‘Were you also living with your parents when you met your husband?’

  ‘No. Unlike Jenny – she’s my sister – I didn’t feel Rouen was the place for me and I got on quite badly with my mother. As soon as I graduated from high school I came to Paris.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You had no friends here?’

  ‘I see. Since I’m the one who invited you to question me, I have no excuse not to answer you. I came to find someone I knew, in fact, a young lawyer, and we lived together for a few months. It didn’t work, and I looked for a job. Then I realized that my high-school certificate, by which my father set such store that he tortured me for years, is useless. All I could find, after weeks of toing and froing around Paris, was a job as a saleswoman at the Magasins du Louvre.’

  ‘And you met Marton.’

  ‘Not straight away. We weren’t on the same floor. We finally became acquainted on the Métro.’

  ‘Was he already the head salesman?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘That’s what he wanted. I would have been happy to live with him …’

  ‘Do you love him?’

  ‘Why would I be here otherwise?’

  ‘When did you leave the shop?’

  ‘Wait … About … It’ll be five years ago next month.’

  ‘So after seven years of marriage.’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘And at that point your husband had become head of department?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you were still a humble salesgirl.’

  ‘I don’t see what you’re getting at.’

  He said, thoughtfully:

  ‘Neither do I. So you went to work for Monsieur Harris.’

  ‘That’s not exactly how it happened. First of all, Harris is the name of the company. My boss’s real name is Maurice Schwob. He worked at the Magasins du Louvre, where he was lingerie buyer.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Forty-nine. But it’s not what you think. Our relationship is purely businesslike. He has always planned to branch out on his own. In his shop he needed a young woman who knew the trade. When it comes to lingerie and girdles, women don’t like being served by a man. He had noticed me at the Louvre. That’s the whole story.’

  ‘Are you effectively partners?’

  ‘In a sense, although my interests in the business are much smaller than his, which is perfectly natural, since he put up the original funds and he does the designs.’

  ‘In short, until about five years ago your husband’s position was more important than yours. And he had a larger salary. But for five years the opposite has been the case. Is that right?’

  ‘That’s right, but believe me, it’s not something I even think about.’

  ‘And your husband doesn’t either?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘At first men aren’t keen for that to happen. He’s got used to it. We still live modestly.’

  ‘Do you have a car?’

  ‘Yes, we do, but we barely use it except at the weekend and on holiday.’

  ‘Do you go on holiday with your sister?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not, indeed?’

  There was quite a long silence. Maigret looked embarrassed.

  ‘I can’t think of any more questions to ask you. Tell me, Madame Marton, what would you like me to do?’

  That was enough to put her on the defensive again.

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ she murmured.

  ‘You don’t want us to keep an eye on your husband?’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Are you willing to sign a formal request which would allow us to make him undergo a medical examination?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘So that’s everything?’

  ‘That’s everything … I suppose …’

  ‘In that case I don’t see any reason to keep you here any longer.’

  He got to his feet. She did the same, a little stiffly. As he led her towards the door he seemed to change his mind.

  ‘Do you use zinc phosphide?’

  She didn’t give a start. She must have been waiting for that question all along, and perhaps she had even come here just to answer it.

  ‘I do use it, yes.’

  ‘For what purpose?’

  ‘Rue Saint-Honoré is one of the oldest streets in Paris and, behind the luxury boutiques, most of the houses are in a bad state; there is a whole network of courtyards, alleys and passageways that you wouldn’t even guess were there. And the proximity of the market also attracts an extraordinary number of rats, an
d they have damaged the merchandise. We tried several products without success. Someone recommended to Monsieur Schwob that he use zinc phosphide, which gave excellent results.

  ‘And we had rats on Avenue de Châtillon as well, and my husband complained about them. I took a certain amount of phosphide from the shop …’

  ‘Without mentioning it to your husband?’

  ‘I can’t remember whether I talked to him about it or not.’

  She stared wide-eyed, as if an idea had struck her.

  ‘I don’t suppose he imagined …?’

  He didn’t finish the sentence for her and she went on:

  ‘If he talked to you about it, it’s because … My God! And there I was racking my brains to guess what was troubling him … I’ll sort things out with him this evening … Then again … If I broach that subject he’ll know I’ve come to see you …’

  ‘Did you think you’d be able to hide it from him?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know any more, Monsieur Maigret. I came … how should I put it …? I came candidly, with the idea – a naive one, in fact – of confiding in you. I have told you the truth about Xavier and about my anxieties. Rather than helping me, you asked me questions which, I realize, indicate that you don’t believe me, that you suspect me of planning heaven knows what …’

  She wasn’t crying but did seem to be in a certain amount of distress.

  ‘Too bad …! I had hoped … I have no option but to do my best …’

  She opened the door with her gloved hand. Standing in the corridor, she said again:

  ‘Goodbye, inspector … And thank you for seeing me anyway …’

  Maigret watched her walk away with short, precise steps, perched on very high heels, and shrugged as he went back into his office. A quarter of an hour had passed by the time he left and went to the chief’s office, asking Joseph in passing:

  ‘Is the commissioner in?’

  ‘No. He’s in a meeting with the prefect and he told me he probably wouldn’t be back before this afternoon.’

  Maigret still went into the office of the commissioner of the Police Judiciaire, turned on the lamp and started reading the titles of the books that filled the two mahogany bookshelves. There were works on statistics that no one had ever opened, technical books in several languages that the publishers sent as a matter of course. There were many criminology textbooks, and works on forensics and legal medicine.

  At last, on a shelf, Maigret saw several books on psychiatry, and flicked through three or four before choosing one which seemed to be written in a simpler and more accessible language than the others.

  That evening he took the book home. After dinner, in slippers in front of the log fire, with the radio turned down, he began to read while Madame Maigret repaired the cuffs of some shirts.

  He didn’t plan to read the whole of the thick book, and there were whole pages which, in spite of his brief medical studies, he was unable to understand.

  He looked for certain chapter headings, certain words that had come up that morning during his conversation with Pardon, words whose meaning everyone thinks they know, but which have a very different resonance for professionals.

  … Neuroses … For Adler, the source of the neuroses is a threatening feeling of inferiority and insecurity … A defensive reaction against the patient’s feeling drives the patient to identify with a fictional ideal structure …

  He repeated it under his breath, making his wife look up:

  ‘… fictional ideal structure …’

  … Physical syndrome … Neurasthenics are well known to specialists of all kinds … Without any appreciable damage to the organs, they suffer and, more particularly, worry about possible complications; they have multiple consultations and examinations …

  … Mental syndrome … The feeling of incapacity is dominant … Physically, the patient feels lethargic and in pain, tired by the slightest effort …

  Like Maigret that very morning. Now he still felt lethargic, perhaps not in pain, but …

  He sullenly turned the pages.

  … A constitution that is said to be paranoid … Hypertrophy of the Ego …

  … Unlike hypersensitive individuals, these patients project on to family and particularly on to social life an inflated and dominant Ego …

  … They never see themselves as being at fault or responsible for anything … They are characterized by a strong sense of pride … Even if they are relatively unintelligent, they often dominate their families with their authoritarianism and their trenchant certainty …

  Was it Xavier Marton that this applied to, or his wife? And couldn’t it be applied to a quarter of the population of Paris?

  Vindictive psychosis … Persecuted-persecuting …

  … This is a typical passionate psychosis the nosological situation of which has led to interminable discussions … With Kraepelin and Capgras, I contend that it does not fall among the class of true deliria … The patient considers himself the victim of an injustice which he wants to put right and attempts to obtain satisfaction regardless of the cost …

  Xavier Marton? Madame Marton?

  He moved from neuroses to psychoses, from psychoses to psychoneuroses, from hysteria to paranoia and, like those people who immerse themselves in a medical dictionary and discover that they are suffering from every illness in turn, under each heading he found symptoms that would apply equally well to one or other of his characters.

  From time to time he grunted, repeated a word or a phrase, and Madame Maigret darted him anxious little glances.

  In the end he got up, as a man who has had enough, threw the book on the table and, opening the sideboard in the dining room, picked up the bottle of plum brandy and filled one of the little gold-rimmed glasses.

  It was like a protestation of common sense against all that scientific gobbledygook, a way of getting back down to earth.

  Pardon was right: by investigating the anomalies of human behaviour, classifying and subdividing them, in the end it was impossible to tell what a man of sound mind might be.

  Was he even one himself? From what he had just read, he was no longer so sure.

  ‘Do you have a difficult case on?’ Madame Maigret asked shyly; she seldom inquired into her husband’s activities at Quai des Orfèvres.

  He merely shrugged and grumbled:

  ‘Just some mad people!’

  He added a little later, after draining his glass:

  ‘Let’s go to bed.’

  But the next morning he asked to see the commissioner a few minutes before the morning briefing, and the chief saw immediately that he was troubled.

  ‘What’s wrong, Maigret?’

  He tried to tell him the story of the two visits as succinctly as possible. His boss’s first reaction was to look at him with a degree of surprise.

  ‘I don’t see what’s bothering you. Since we haven’t received a formal complaint …’

  ‘That’s it exactly. Each of them came to tell me their little story. And neither story, in itself, is a cause for concern. But when you try to compare the two, you notice that they don’t match … In fact, let me give you back your book …’

  He set it down on the desk, and the commissioner looked at the title, then looked at the inspector with even greater surprise.

  ‘Listen to what I’m saying, chief. And don’t imagine that I’ve been hoodwinked by this book. I’m not claiming that either of the two is entirely mad. But there’s still something that isn’t quite right. There must be a reason why two people, husband and wife, come to see me on the same day as if delivering a confession. If, tomorrow or in a week, or in a month, we learned that there was a corpse, my conscience wouldn’t be clear …’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m in two minds. It’s a littl
e like carrying out an investigation in reverse. Usually we have a crime at the beginning, and it’s only once it’s been committed that we try and find the motives for it. This time we have motives but as yet no crime.’

  ‘Don’t you think there might be thousands of cases when motives aren’t followed by a crime?’

  ‘I’m sure. Except in those cases no one came to present them to me beforehand.’

  His boss thought for a moment.

  ‘I’m starting to understand.’

  ‘Where we are at the moment, there’s nothing I can do. Particularly after the recent press coverage of the police taking liberties with suspects.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I came to ask your permission to talk to the public prosecutor just in case.’

  ‘So that he can order an investigation?’

  ‘More or less. To put my conscience at rest, in any case.’

  ‘I doubt it will work.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Well, if it makes you feel better.’

  ‘Thank you, chief.’

  He hadn’t said exactly what he had promised himself he would say, perhaps because the matter was too complicated and still confused. At this time the previous day he had never heard of the Martons; now the train-set specialist was beginning to haunt his thoughts, as was the elegant young woman who, he admitted, had boldly stood up to him when he had done everything he could to unsettle her.

  Even the widowed sister-in-law, a poignant woman according to Janvier, worried him as if he had known her for ever.

  ‘Hello! Maigret here. Would you ask the public prosecutor if he could grant me a few minutes …? This morning if possible, yes … Hello! I’ll stay on the line …’

  It was in the Palais de Justice too, in the same building but in a different world, where the walls were covered in carved wooden panels and where people talked in low voices.

  ‘Straight away …? Yes … I’m on my way …’

  He passed through the glass-panelled door separating the two universes, walked past some lawyers in black gowns and, as he waited between two gendarmes near anonymous doors, he spotted people who had passed through his hands several weeks or several months earlier. Some of them seemed happy to see him again and greeted him almost as if he was an old friend.