After which he slumped on a chair, near the window, picked up another receiver and asked for the private number of the public prosecutor. He would just have got up and right now he would probably be getting dressed and having his breakfast. And yet it wasn’t a servant who answered, but the prosecutor himself.
‘Maigret here, sir … Marton is dead … The man I told you about yesterday morning. No, I’m at Quai des Orfèvres … I left an inspector at Avenue de Châtillon, Lapointe … Doctor Paul has been alerted … So has Criminal Records, yes … I don’t know … The two women are in my office …’
He spoke in a low voice, even though the connecting door between the two rooms was closed.
‘I don’t think I can go there this morning … I’ll send another inspector to take over from Lapointe …’
He almost looked guilty. Once the call was over he looked at his watch and chose to wait for Janvier, who would be there soon, and who knew about the case.
After running his hands over his cheeks, he asked the third inspector, Bonfils, who was busy writing his report on the events of the evening:
‘Would you go to my cupboard and find my razor, my shaving soap and my towel?’
He preferred not to do that in front of the two women. Holding his washing implements, he walked to the corridor and went into the toilets, where he took off his jacket and shaved. He took his time, as if to put off the moment when he would have to do what he still had to do. Having splashed cold water on his face, he returned to his colleagues and the waiter from the Brasserie Dauphine, who didn’t know where to set down his tray.
‘In my office … Over here …’
He picked up the phone again, and this time he spoke to his wife.
‘I’m going to have a busy morning. I don’t yet know if I’ll be home for lunch.’
His tired voice worried her:
‘Has something bad happened?’
What could he say?
‘Don’t worry. I’m about to have my breakfast.’
Finally, he said to Bonfils:
‘When Janvier comes, tell him to come and see me.’
He went into his office, which the coffee-waiter was just leaving, and let Janin go. Then, as if in slow motion or in a dream, he poured coffee into the three cups.
‘Sugar?’ he asked Gisèle first of all.
‘Two, please.’
He held out the cup and the plate of croissants, but she gestured that she didn’t want to eat.
‘Sugar?’
The sister-in-law shook her head. She didn’t eat either, and he was the only one who nibbled on a warm croissant without much of an appetite.
The day had broken, but it was still too dim to turn out the lights. Twice more, Jenny had opened her mouth to ask a question, but had given up both times at the sight of Maigret’s expression.
The time had come. Maigret, who had poured himself a second cup of coffee, was slowly filling a pipe that he had chosen from among the pipes scattered on his desk.
Then, still standing, he looked at the women in turn.
‘I think I’ll start with you,’ he murmured, stopping at Madame Marton.
Jenny gave a start and, once again, wanted to say something.
‘As for you, I would like you to wait in another room with one of my inspectors.’
He called Janin back.
‘Please take this lady to the green office and stay with her until I call you.’
It wasn’t the first time this had happened. They were used to it.
‘Certainly, chief.’
‘Isn’t Janvier here yet?’
‘I think I heard his voice in the corridor.’
‘Tell him to come straight away.’
Janin left with the sister-in-law. Janvier came in a moment later and stopped with surprise as he recognized Madame Marton sitting on a chair, holding a cup of coffee.
‘Marton is dead,’ Maigret announced. ‘Lapointe is at the scene. He spent the night there and it would be a good idea to go and relieve him.’
‘No orders, chief?’
‘Lapointe will give you your instructions. If you take a car, you’ll get there before the prosecutors do.’
‘You’re not coming?’
‘I don’t think so.’
At last the two doors were closed, and Maigret and Madame Marton were left alone in the office. It seemed as if she too had been waiting for that moment, and while he remained silent in front of her, puffing on his pipe, she grew slowly animated and began to shed some of her torpor, or rather her tension.
It was curious to see her face turning human again, her skin colouring slightly, her eyes expressing something other than waiting.
‘You think I poisoned him, don’t you?’
He took his time. It wasn’t the first time he had avoided, as he had just done, asking questions at the moment a crime had been revealed. It is often preferable to avoid making people talk too quickly, whether suspects or witnesses, because once they have spoken they feel they have to stick to what they said for fear that they will be accused of lying.
He had deliberately given them both time to think, to decide on their attitudes and the statements they would make.
‘I don’t think anything,’ he murmured at last. ‘You’ll notice that I didn’t bring in the officer who takes shorthand. I won’t record what you say to me. Just tell me simply what happened.’
He knew she was disconcerted by his calm demeanour and his simple way of speaking.
‘Let’s start with yesterday evening, for example.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything.’
It was awkward. She was wondering where to start her story, and he helped her along a little.
‘You went home …’
‘As I do every evening, obviously.’
‘At what time?’
‘Eight o’clock. After the shop shut, I went for a drink in a bar on Rue Castiglione.’
‘With Monsieur Harris?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then?’
‘My husband came home before I did. My sister was home as well. We sat down to eat.’
‘Was it your sister who made dinner?’
‘As always.’
‘You eat downstairs, in the living room, which is both your husband’s workshop and bedroom?’
‘He decided to sleep there some months ago.’
‘How many months?’
She counted mentally. Her lips moved.
‘Eight months,’ she said at last.
‘What did you have?’
‘Soup first of all … The same as the previous day … Jenny always makes soup for two days … Then some ham and salad, cheese and pears …’
‘Coffee?’
‘We never have coffee in the evening.’
‘You didn’t notice anything unusual?’
She hesitated, looking him straight in the eyes.
‘That depends what you call unusual. I don’t know exactly what to say to you, because I suspect there are some things that you know better than me. The proof is that there was an inspector at the door. Before going to sit at the table I got up to take off my coat and put on my slippers. That’s how I knew that my sister had gone out, and that she had only just come back.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Because I opened the door of her room and saw a pair of shoes that were still wet. Her coat was damp, too.’
‘What were you going to do in her room?’
‘Just check that she had gone out.’
‘Why?’
Still without looking away, she replied:
‘To know.’
‘Jenny cleared the table?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does she always clea
r it?’
‘She likes to pay her share by looking after the housework.’
‘And did she do the washing-up as well?’
‘Sometimes my husband helps her.’
‘Not you?’
‘No.’
‘Go on.’
‘She made the herbal tea, as she did on the other evenings. She was the one who got us used to drinking herbal tea in the evening.’
‘Lime-flower? Camomile?’
‘No. Star anise. My sister has a weak liver. Since living in the United States, she has a cup of star anise every evening, and my husband wanted to try it, I didn’t. You know how it is …’
‘She brought in the cups on a tray?’
‘Yes.’
‘With the teapot?’
‘No. She filled the cups in the kitchen and then came and set the tray down on the table.’
‘What was your husband doing at that moment?’
‘He was looking for a radio station.’
‘So if I remember the room correctly, he had his back towards you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘I had just started reading a magazine.’
‘Near the table?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your sister?’
‘She went back into the kitchen to start doing the washing-up. I know what you’re getting at, but I’ll tell you the truth anyway. I didn’t pour any substance into the cups, either into my husband’s or into the others. All I did was take a precaution that I’ve been taking for some time whenever possible.’
‘What was that?’
‘To turn the tray discreetly in such a way that the cup meant for me becomes my husband’s or my sister’s.’
‘And last night, your cup became …’
‘My husband’s.’
‘And he took it?’
‘Yes. He took it with him and then set it down on the radio …’
‘You never left the room at any time? There couldn’t have been any other substitution?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that for almost two hours.’
‘What conclusion did you reach?’
‘Before my sister brought the tray, my husband went into the kitchen. Jenny will probably deny it, but it’s the truth.’
‘What did he go there to do?’
‘By his account, to see if his glasses were there. He wears glasses to read. He also needs them to see the screen of the radio. From the studio you can hear everything that’s going on in the kitchen. He didn’t talk to my sister, he came back almost immediately and found his glasses near the train set.’
‘And it was because of this visit to the kitchen that you swapped the cups around?’
‘Perhaps. Not necessarily. I told you, I do it often.’
‘Because you’re afraid he’s going to poison you?’
She looked at him without replying.
‘Then what happened?’
‘Nothing different from the other evenings. My sister came back to drink her herbal tea and went back into the kitchen. Xavier listened to a radio programme while repairing a little electric motor intended for God knows what.’
‘And you read?’
‘For an hour or two. It was about ten o’clock when I went upstairs.’
‘You went first?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was your sister doing at that point?’
‘She was making my husband’s bed.’
‘You usually left them alone?’
‘Why not? What difference would it have made?’
‘Do you think they took advantage of the fact to kiss?’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Do you have reason to believe that your husband was your sister’s lover?’
‘I don’t know if they were lovers. I doubt it. He behaved with her like a smitten seventeen-year-old.’
‘Why did you just say: “I doubt it”?’
She didn’t reply immediately. At last, in response to Maigret’s insistent gaze, she answered his question with another question.
‘Why do you think we don’t have children?’
‘Because you didn’t want to.’
‘That’s what he told you, isn’t it? And it’s probably what he told his colleagues. A man doesn’t like to admit that he’s practically impotent.’
‘Is that the case?’
She nodded wearily.
‘You see, inspector, there are lots of things you don’t know. Xavier gave you his version of our lives. When I came to see you, I didn’t take the trouble to go into details. Things happened last night that I don’t understand, and I know that when I tell you, you won’t believe me.’
He didn’t push her. On the contrary, he gave her all the time in the world to speak and even to weigh her phrases.
‘I heard the doctor just now saying that Xavier had been poisoned. Perhaps it’s true. But I have been too.’
He couldn’t help giving a start and looking at her more keenly.
‘You’ve been poisoned?’
A memory came back to him, one which inclined him to believe her: the stains that had already dried on the porcelain of the basin and the tiles.
‘I woke up in the middle of the night with horrible burning in my stomach. When I got up I was surprised to feel my legs were weak, my head empty. I hurried to the bathroom and stuck two fingers into my mouth to vomit. I’m sorry if that puts you off your food. It was like fire, with an aftertaste that I would recognize anywhere.’
‘Did you alert your sister or your husband?’
‘No. Perhaps they heard me, because I flushed the toilet twice. I made myself sick twice too, each time spitting out a liquid that had the same aftertaste.’
‘It didn’t occur to you to call a doctor?’
‘What would be the point? Since I had caught it in time …’
‘You went back to bed?’
‘Yes.’
‘You weren’t tempted to go back downstairs?’
‘I just listened. I heard Xavier tossing and turning in his bed as if he was sleeping badly.’
‘Do you think it was his cup that you drank from?’
‘I assume so.’
‘You still insist that you swapped the cups around on the tray?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then you didn’t take your eyes off the tray? Your husband, or your sister, couldn’t have made another substitution?’
‘My sister was in the kitchen.’
‘So your husband took the cup that was meant for you?’
‘I would have to believe that.’
‘Which is to say that it was your sister who tried to poison your husband?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Or since your husband was poisoned as well, she wanted to poison both of you?’
She repeated:
‘I don’t know.’
They looked at each other in silence for a long time. In the end it was Maigret who broke eye contact and went and stood by the window, where, watching the Seine flow beneath the rain, he filled a fresh pipe.
8. A Mark on the Tray
Pressing his forehead against the cold glass, as he had done when he was a child, keeping it there until his skin turned white and he felt pins and needles in his head, Maigret was unwittingly following the movements of two men working on scaffolding on the other side of the Seine.
When he turned around, his face bore a resigned expression and, as he made for his desk to sit back down in his chair, he said, deliberately avoiding Gisèle Marton’s eyes:
‘Is there something else you want to tell me?’
She didn’t hesitate for very long, and, when she spoke, he couldn’t help raising his head, becau
se she did so in a calm and measured voice free of either defiance or despondency:
‘I saw Xavier dying.’
Did she know the impression she was making on the inspector? Did she realize that she was inspiring in him an involuntary, so to speak technical admiration? He couldn’t remember seeing, in this office through which so many people had passed, a creature with such clarity and level-headedness. Neither could he remember anyone so detached.
There was no sense in her of human feeling. There was no flaw.
With his elbows on his desk-blotter, he sighed:
‘Tell me.’
‘I had gone to bed and was having trouble getting back to sleep. I was struggling to understand what had happened. I had no real notion of passing time. You know how that happens sometimes. You have a sense of following a continuous train of thought, but in fact there are gaps. I must have gone back to sleep several times. Once or twice I thought there was a noise downstairs, the noise my husband made when he turned over abruptly in bed. At least that was what I thought.
‘Once, I’m sure, I heard a groan and thought he must be having nightmares. It wasn’t the first time he had spoken and thrashed about in his sleep. He told me that as a boy he had sleepwalked, and that happened to him several times with me.’
She went on choosing her words, without any more emotion than if she was telling a story.
‘At one point I heard a louder noise, as if something heavy was falling on the floor. I was too frightened to get up at first. Pricking up my ears, I thought I heard a death rattle. Then I got up, put on my dressing gown and walked silently towards the stairs.’
‘Did you see your sister?’
‘No.’
‘Or hear a sound in her room? There was no light under her door?’
‘No. To look into the room downstairs I had to go down a few steps, and I hesitated, alert to potential danger. I still did it, reluctantly. I leaned down.’
‘How many steps did you go down?’
‘Six or seven. I didn’t count them. There was a light on in the workshop, only the bedside lamp. Xavier was lying on the floor, about halfway between his bed and the spiral staircase. It looked as if he had been crawling, as if he was trying to crawl some more. He had raised himself up on one elbow, his left elbow, and his right arm was stretched out to pick up the revolver that was about thirty centimetres away from his hand.’
Maigret's Doubts (Inspector Maigret) Page 12