‘Did he see you?’
‘Yes. With his head raised, he stared at me with hatred, his face contorted, with foam or drool on his lips. I realized that, while he was walking towards the stairs, already weakened, with his gun in his hand, to come up to kill me, his strength had failed him, he had fallen, and the revolver had rolled out of reach.’
With his eyes half closed, Maigret saw the workshop again, the staircase that rose towards the ceiling, Marton’s body as they had found it.
‘Did you continue down the stairs?’
‘No. I stayed where I was, unable to take my eyes off him. I couldn’t know exactly how much energy he still had. I was fascinated.’
‘How long did it take him to die?’
‘I don’t know. He was trying to grab the gun and talk to me at the same time, to shout out his hatred or his threats. At the same time he was scared that I would come down, that I would pick up the gun before he did and fire. That’s probably partly the reason why I didn’t go down. I don’t really know. I wasn’t thinking. He was panting. He was shaken by spasms. I thought he was going to vomit as I had done. Then he uttered a loud cry, his body was shaken several times, he clenched his hands and at last, all of a sudden, he was still.’
Without looking away, she said:
‘I knew it was over.’
‘And it was then that you went downstairs to check that he was dead?’
‘No. I knew he was. I don’t know why I was so sure of it. I went back up to my room and sat down on the edge of my bed. I was cold. I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders.’
‘Your sister still hadn’t left her room?’
‘No.’
‘And yet you just said he had uttered a loud cry.’
‘That’s right. She must have heard it. She couldn’t have helped hearing it, but she stayed in her bed.’
‘You didn’t think of calling a doctor? Or phoning the police?’
‘Had there been a telephone in the house, I might have done. I’m not sure.’
‘What time was it?’
‘I don’t know. It didn’t occur to me to check my alarm-clock. I was still trying to understand.’
‘If you had had a telephone, wouldn’t you have called your friend Harris?’
‘Certainly not. He’s married.’
‘So you don’t know, even approximately, how much time passed between the moment you saw your husband die and the one when, at about six o’clock in the morning, you went and called from the concierge’s lodge? Was it one hour? Two hours? Three?’
‘More than an hour, I would swear. Less than three.’
‘Did you expect to be accused?’
‘I was under no illusions.’
‘And you were wondering how you would answer the questions you would be asked?’
‘It’s possible. Without realizing, I thought a lot. Then I heard the familiar sound of the bins being dragged into a nearby courtyard and I went downstairs.’
‘Still without meeting your sister?’
‘Yes. In passing, I touched my husband’s hand. It was already cold. I looked up your phone number in the directory, and when I didn’t find it I called the Police Emergency Service to ask them to inform you.’
‘After which you went back home?’
‘I saw the light in my sister’s room from the courtyard. When I pushed the door open, Jenny was coming down the stairs.’
‘Had she already seen the body?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she didn’t say anything?’
‘She might have spoken if there hadn’t been a sudden knock at the door. It was your inspector.’
She added after a pause:
‘If there’s any coffee left …’
‘It’s cold.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
He poured her a cup, and also poured one for himself.
Beyond the door, beyond the window, life went on, everyday life, the way people have organized it as a source of reassurance.
Here, in these four walls, it was a different world that you could sense throbbing behind sentences, behind words, a dark and unsettling world, but one in which this young woman seemed to move easily.
‘Did you love Marton?’ Maigret asked under his breath, almost in spite of himself.
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘And yet you married him.’
‘I was twenty-eight. I was fed up with all my failed attempts.’
‘You wanted respectability?’
She didn’t seem offended.
‘Calm, at any rate.’
‘Did you choose Marton in preference over others because he was more malleable?’
‘Perhaps unconsciously.’
‘Did you already know that he was more or less impotent?’
‘Yes. That wasn’t what I was looking for.’
‘At first you were happy with him?’
‘That’s a big word. We got on quite well.’
‘Because he did what you wanted?’
She pretended not to notice the hint of aggression in his voice, or the way he looked at her.
‘I never asked myself that question.’
Nothing threw her, and yet she was beginning to show a little weariness.
‘When you met Harris or, if you prefer, Maurice Schwob, did you love him?’
She thought for a moment, with a kind of honesty, as if she was keen to be precise.
‘You’re still using that word. First of all, Maurice was able to change my situation, and I never thought my place was behind the counter of a large department store.’
‘Did he become your lover straight away?’
‘That depends on what you mean by straight away. A few days, if I remember correctly. Neither of us placed much importance on it.’
‘So your relationship was built on business more than anything else?’
‘If you like. I know that between two hypotheses you’re going to choose the more sordid one. I’ll say instead that Maurice and I felt we were two of a kind …’
‘Because you had the same ambitions. It never occurred to you to get a divorce in order to marry him?’
‘What would have been the point? He is married, to an older woman, who has money, and who enabled him to set up the shop on Rue Saint-Honoré. And as to the rest …’
The rest, she implied, was of no importance.
‘When did you begin to suspect that your husband was losing his mind? Because you did have that impression, didn’t you?’
‘It wasn’t an impression, it was a certainty. From the beginning, I knew he wasn’t exactly like anyone else. He had periods of exaltation, in which he talked about his work as a genius might have done, and others when he complained of being a failure that everyone laughed at.’
‘Including you.’
‘Of course. I think I know that it was always like that. During that last period he was gloomy and anxious, he observed me with suspicion, before exploding into rebukes when I least expected it. Other times, on the contrary, he operated by insinuation.’
‘Didn’t that make you want to leave him?’
‘I think I was sorry for him. He was unhappy. When my sister arrived from the United States, in full mourning, playing the part of the inconsolable widow, he avoided her at first. She disturbed his habits, and he couldn’t forgive her; he spent whole days not addressing a word to her.
‘I still wonder how she managed to win him over. What did seem to work was making herself look forlorn.
‘So, he suddenly had someone weaker than him in his power. At least that was what he thought. Do you understand? With my sister, he had a sense of being a man, a solid and superior being …’
‘You still didn’t think of divorcing him to give them a free hand?’
‘They would have been miserable together in any case, because my sister isn’t really so weak – quite the contrary.’
‘Do you hate her?’
‘We’ve never liked each other.’
‘In that case, why did you take her in?’
‘Because she imposed herself.’
If Maigret felt a weight on his shoulders, and had a bad taste in his mouth, it was because he sensed it was all true.
The atmosphere in the house on Avenue de Châtillon would indeed have been as described so succinctly by Madame Marton, and he could imagine the almost silent evenings during which each of them remained wrapped up in their hatred.
‘What were you hoping? That it wouldn’t last for long?’
‘I went to see a doctor.’
‘Steiner?’
‘No. Another one. I told him everything.’
‘And he didn’t advise you to have your husband committed?’
‘He advised me to wait, telling me that the symptoms weren’t yet well enough defined, that a more violent crisis would occur in due course …’
‘So you predicted that crisis and stayed on the alert?’
She shrugged very slightly.
‘Have I answered all your questions?’ she asked after a short silence.
Maigret tried to think and couldn’t come up with anything else to ask, because almost everything had been cleared up.
‘When you stopped on the stairs and saw your husband on the floor, you didn’t try to help him?’
‘I didn’t know if he had the strength to pick up the revolver …’
‘You’re sure that your sister was aware of everything you’ve just told me?’
She looked at him without replying.
What was the point of going on? He would have liked to make her contradict herself. He would have liked to accuse her. She didn’t lay herself open. But neither did she hide herself away.
‘I assume,’ he murmured, shooting one last arrow, ‘that you have never had any intention of getting rid of your husband?’
‘By killing him?’
She was marking the distinction between killing him and having him committed. Since he said yes, she announced simply:
‘If I had had to kill him, I would have left nothing to chance and I wouldn’t be here now.’
That was true. If anyone was capable of committing a perfect crime, it was this woman.
Unfortunately she hadn’t killed Marton, and after relighting his pipe and looking at her grudgingly, Maigret rose heavily to his feet, his body and mind numb, and headed towards the door of the inspectors’ office.
‘Have somebody call 17, Avenue de Châtillon … The concierge’s lodge … Janvier is in the house at the end of the courtyard … I’d like to have a word with him …’
He came back to his chair, and while he waited she put a little powder on her face, as she might have done at the theatre during the interval. The telephone had rung at last.
‘Janvier …? I’d like you to go into the house, without hanging up, and carefully examine a tray that must be in the kitchen …’
He turned towards Gisèle Marton.
‘A round or a square tray?’
‘A rectangular tray, made of wood.’
‘A wooden tray, rectangular, big enough to carry three cups and three saucers … What I want to know is whether there’s any kind of mark, a scratch, any sign that would tell us if the tray is set down in one direction or another … You see what I mean …? Just a moment … The experts are still there? … Good! … Ask them to look for a little bottle in the broom cupboard, containing a whitish powder … and take fingerprints …’
Janvier was able to answer the second question straight away.
‘There are no prints. They’ve already checked. The bottle was wiped with a damp and slightly greasy cloth, probably a dishcloth.’
‘Did people from the prosecutor’s office arrive?’
‘Yes. The examining magistrate isn’t happy.’
‘Because I didn’t wait for him?’
‘Mostly because you took away the two women.’
‘Tell him that by the time he gets to his office it will probably be over. Which judge is it?’
‘Coméliau.’
The two men couldn’t stand each other.
‘Go and take a quick look at the tray. I’ll stay on the line.’
He heard the voice of Gisèle Marton, to whom he hadn’t been paying attention.
‘If you’d asked me, I could have told you. There’s a mark. It wasn’t made on purpose. The varnish has formed a blister on one of the short sides of the rectangle.’
A few moments later, Janvier, slightly out of breath, said to him:
‘There’s a swelling in the varnish.’
‘Thank you. Nothing else?’
‘In Marton’s pocket they found a bit of crumpled paper that had contained zinc phosphide.’
‘I know.’
Not that the paper would be in the dead man’s pocket, but that they would find it somewhere in the room.
He hung up.
‘When you saw your husband going into the kitchen, you suspected what he was going to do, didn’t you? That’s why you swapped the cups around?’
‘I swapped them around whenever I could.’
‘Did he sometimes swap them as well?’
‘He certainly did. Except yesterday evening he couldn’t, because I didn’t take my eyes off the tray.’
At Boulevard Richard-Lenoir as well there was a tray, not made of wood, but of silver plate, a wedding present. Maigret’s cup and his wife’s were the same, except that his had a barely visible crack.
And yet they never got them muddled. When Madame Maigret put the tray down on the table, near her husband’s armchair, he would know that his own cup was on his side, within hand’s reach.
He had got up once more. Madame Marton watched him, curious but not anxious.
‘Will you come here for a moment, Lucas? Find an empty office, any one will do, and go there with her. Stay there until I call you. On the way, tell them to bring in the sister-in-law.’
Madame Marton followed Lucas without asking Maigret a single question. Once he was on his own, he opened his cupboard, took out the bottle of cognac that he kept there, less for himself than for some of his clients who sometimes needed it, and poured some into the water glass.
When there was a knock at the door, he closed the cupboard door and only just had time to wipe his lips.
‘Come in!’
Jenny was brought in, her face pale and swollen, with the red marks of someone who has been crying.
‘Take a seat.’
The chair where her sister had been sitting was still warm. Jenny looked around, disconcerted to find herself on her own with the inspector.
He remained standing, pacing back and forth, uncertain how to attack, and at last, standing in front of her, he said:
‘Which lawyer are you going to choose?’
She lifted her head abruptly, her eyes wide and moist. Her lips were moving, but she couldn’t speak.
‘I would rather question you in the presence of your lawyer, so that you don’t feel that I’m setting traps for you.’
‘I don’t know any lawyers.’
He took down a directory from the bookshelf and held it out to her.
‘Choose from this list.’
She shook her head.
‘What’s the point?’
How he wished it had been the other one!
‘You confess?’
She nodded, rummaged in her handbag for her handkerchief and blew her nose inelegantly, making it even redder.
‘You admit that you planned to poison your sister?’
Then she burst into a fit of
sobs.
‘I don’t know any more … Don’t torture me … I just want it all to be over …’
She was shaken by hiccups. It didn’t occur to her to hide her wet face.
‘Did you love your brother-in-law?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know any more. I suppose so …’
Her eyes were pleading.
‘Please get it over with, inspector! I can’t bear it any more …’
And now that he knew, he made it as quick as possible. He even, in passing, touched the young woman’s shoulder, as if he knew that she needed human contact.
‘You realized that Xavier wasn’t like other people?’
She nodded. She shook her head. She was battling with problems that were too complicated for her, and at last she exclaimed:
‘She was the one who didn’t understand him, and who was driving him mad …’
‘On purpose?’
‘I don’t know. He needed …’
The words struggled to come.
‘I tried …’
‘To reassure him?’
‘You can’t know what an atmosphere we were living in … It was only when we were alone, he and I … Because with me he felt at ease, confident …’
‘When he joined you by the river, yesterday evening, did he tell you that he was to come and take a test this morning?’
Surprised that Maigret knew about it, she sat there for a moment, looking at him open-mouthed.
‘Give me an answer … I’m trying to deliver you as quickly as possible as well …’
She understood the word. She didn’t imagine that he was talking about giving her back her freedom, but rather that he was talking about delivering her from herself in some sense.
‘He told me,’ she admitted reluctantly.
‘He was frightened about it?’
She said yes, sniffing, and added, again on the point of tears:
‘He imagined that she had won …’
The choice of words betrayed the chaos in her thoughts.
‘Because she was the one who drove him to all that. She had made sure that he would find the poison, that he would get ideas …’
‘Did he hate her?’
She stared at him fearfully, without daring to reply.
‘And so did you, isn’t that right? You began to hate your sister?’
Maigret's Doubts (Inspector Maigret) Page 13