Maigret Goes to School

by Georges Simenon

  ‘I’ll be down right away!’

  And to Maigret: ‘You won’t tell him anything?’

  He shook his head, with an encouraging smile.

  ‘Don’t forget my hot water at eight o’clock.’

  It pleased him to have met her again because with her, basically, he was on familiar ground, and it was a little like meeting up with an old acquaintance.

  He felt as if he knew the other villagers as well, although he’d hardly seen them at all, because in his village, there had been a deputy mayor who drank, card players (whose game was piquet, for belote was not yet in fashion), a postman who thought he was a big man and an innkeeper who knew everyone’s secrets.

  Their faces remained engraved on his memory. Only, he had seen them with the eyes of a child and now understood that he hadn’t known them, not really.

  While he was undressing, he heard Paumelle coming upstairs, then bumps in the neighbouring room. Thérèse joined the innkeeper shortly and began to undress in turn. Both were talking in low voices, like a husband and wife going to bed, and the last noise was a creaking of springs.

  Maigret had a little trouble arranging his burrow in the two enormous feather mattresses. He rediscovered that country smell of hay and mildew and, perhaps because of the feathers, or the brandies he had drunk in thick glasses with the innkeeper, he was sweating heavily.

  Sounds reached him through his slumber before sunrise, including those of a herd of cows going past the front of the inn, mooing now and then. The blacksmith’s forge didn’t take long to get going. Someone was taking down the shutters below. He opened his eyes, saw a sun yet more glorious than on the day before in Paris, sat up and pulled on his trousers.

  His feet bare in his slippers, he went downstairs and found Thérèse in the kitchen, busy making coffee. She was wearing a kind of dressing gown in a floral pattern over her chemise, and her legs were bare. She smelled of bed.

  ‘It isn’t eight yet. Only six thirty. Do you want a cup of coffee? It’ll be ready in five minutes.’

  Neither washed nor shaved, Paumelle descended in turn, in slippers, like the inspector.

  ‘I thought you didn’t want to get up before eight.’

  They drank their first cup of coffee in thick china bowls, standing, near the stove.

  On the square, a few women in black with baskets and two-handled shopping sacks stood in a group.

  ‘What are they waiting for?’ asked Maigret.

  ‘The bus. It’s market day at La Rochelle.’

  They heard hens clucking in the slatted crates.

  ‘Who’s teaching at the school now?’

  ‘Yesterday there was no one. This morning, there’s a replacement coming from La Rochelle. He should arrive on the bus. He’ll stay here, in the back room, since you have the one in the front.’

  Maigret was in his room when the bus stopped in the square and he saw a timid-looking young man who must have been the teacher get out, carrying a large Gladstone bag.

  The women piled into the bus; the crates were stowed on its roof. Thérèse knocked at the door.

  ‘Your hot water!’

  Casually, while looking elsewhere, he asked:

  ‘Are you one of those who think Gastin killed Léonie?’

  Before answering, she glanced over at the half-open door.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said very softly.

  ‘You don’t believe it?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem like him. But they all want it to be him, you understand?’

  He was starting to understand above all that for no reason he had taken on a difficult, if not impossible, task.

  ‘Who has a stake in the old lady’s death?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. They say she disinherited her niece when the woman got married.’

  ‘To whom will her money go?’

  ‘Perhaps to a charity. She changed her mind so often! … Or maybe to Maria, the Polish woman.’

  ‘Is it true that the deputy mayor fathered one or two of her children?’

  ‘Of Maria’s? That’s what they say. He often goes to see her and sometimes spends the night there.’

  ‘Despite the children?’

  ‘It doesn’t bother Maria. Everyone goes there.’

  ‘Paumelle too?’

  ‘He must have, when she was younger. Now she’s not very attractive at all.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Around thirty. She doesn’t take any care of herself, and her place, it’s worse than a stable.’

  ‘Thérèse!’ called the innkeeper, as he had the night before.

  It was better not to push it. Paumelle did not seem pleased. Perhaps he was jealous? Or he simply didn’t want her to tell the inspector too much.

  When Maigret went downstairs, the young teacher was eating and looked at him a little blankly.

  ‘What will you have for breakfast, inspector?’

  ‘Do you have any oysters?’

  ‘Not during a neap tide.’

  ‘Will it last long?’

  ‘Five or six days more.’

  Since Paris he had been craving oysters washed down with white wine, and now he was probably not going to get any while he was there.

  ‘There’s soup. Or we can make you ham and eggs.’

  He ate nothing at all, drank a second cup of coffee, standing in the doorway, looking out at the sunny village square and two silhouettes moving about inside the Coopérative Charentaise.

  He was considering indulging in a glass of white wine nonetheless, to erase the taste of the awful coffee, when he heard an eager voice nearby exclaim:

  ‘Inspector Maigret?’

  The man was short, thin and lively, with a youthful gaze, although he was past forty. He held out his hand without hesitation and introduced himself.

  ‘Doctor Bresselles! The lieutenant told me yesterday that we were expecting you. I came to offer you any assistance you might need, before I open my surgery. In an hour, the waiting room will be full.’

  ‘Will you have a little something?’

  ‘At my house, if you like, it’s next door.’

  ‘I know.’

  Maigret followed him into the grey stone house. All the other village houses were lime-washed, some in a raw white, the others in a creamier tone, and the pink roofs gave the place a cheerful air.

  ‘Come in! What would you like to drink?’

  ‘Since I left Paris, I’ve been wanting oysters and some local white wine,’ admitted Maigret. ‘As to the oysters, I’ve already learned that I’ll have to do without them.’

  ‘Armande,’ the doctor went to shout at the door. ‘Bring up a bottle of white wine. One from the red bin.

  ‘She’s my sister,’ he explained. ‘She has managed my household ever since I became a widower. I have two children, one at the lycée in Niort, the other doing his military service. What do you think of Saint-André?’

  Everything seemed to amuse him.

  ‘I forget that you haven’t seen much of it yet. Hang on! As a sample, you have that scoundrel Paumelle, who was a farmhand and married the owner of the Bon Coin when her husband died. She was twenty years older than Louis, and partial to bending her elbow. So, since she was fiendishly jealous and the money belonged to her, he did her in sip by sip. Can you imagine? He managed to get her drinking more and more, and it wasn’t unusual for her to go back to bed after lunch. She held out for seven years, with a liver like stone, and he was finally able to give her a handsome funeral. Since then, he sleeps with a run of housemaids. They leave one after the other, except for Thérèse, who seems to be hanging on.’

  The sister entered, timid, unobtrusive, carrying a tray bearing a bottle and two crystal glasses, and Maigret thought she looked like the servant of a parish priest.

  ‘My sister … Inspector Maigret.’

  She backed out of the room, and that as well seemed to amuse the doctor.

  ‘Armande never married. Deep down, I am convinced that she has waited all her lif
e for me to become a widower. Now she finally has her house and can spoil me the way she would have spoiled a husband.’

  ‘What do you think of Gastin?’

  ‘A poor sap.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he does what he can, desperately, and the people who do what they can are poor saps. No one is grateful to him. He labours to teach something to a gang of young snot-noses whom their parents would rather keep on the farm. He even tried to make them wash. I remember the day he sent one home because his head was crawling with lice. Within fifteen minutes the father came running, furious, and they almost came to blows.’

  ‘His wife is ill?’

  ‘To your health! Strictly speaking, she isn’t ill, but she isn’t healthy, either. You see, I’ve learned not to believe too much in medicine. The Gastin woman is eating her heart out. She’s ashamed. She blames herself every moment of the day for having brought misfortune on her husband.’

  ‘Because of Chevassou?’

  ‘You know about that? Because of Chevassou, yes. She must really have loved him. What’s called a devouring passion. You would never believe it to look at her, because she’s an ordinary little nothing of a woman, who resembles her husband as sisters do brothers. Perhaps that’s the problem, in the end. They are too much alike. As for Chevassou, who’s a big brute full of life, a kind of satisfied bull, he did what he wanted with her. She still has some pain in her right arm, which has remained a bit stiff.’

  ‘What were her relations with Léonie Birard?’

  ‘They only saw one another from one window to the other, across the courtyards and gardens, and Léonie stuck out her tongue at her sometimes, as she did at everyone. The most extraordinary thing in this whole business, I find, is that Léonie, who seemed indestructible, was killed by a little bullet from a child’s rifle. And that’s not all. There are unbelievable coincidences. That left eye, the one injured, was her bad eye, which has always stared a little fixedly and has been blind for years. What do you say to that?’

  The doctor raised his glass. The wine had greenish glints, was light and dry, with a pronounced taste of its region.

  ‘To your health! They will all try to trip you up. Don’t believe a thing they’ll tell you, whether it’s parents or children. Come and see me whenever you want, and I will do my very best to help you out.’

  ‘You don’t like them?’

  The doctor’s eyes shone with laughter, and he exclaimed wholeheartedly:

  ‘I adore them. They’re priceless!’

  3. Chevassou’s Mistress

  The door to the village hall stood open into a freshly whitewashed hallway along which official notices were tacked up. Certain small ones, like the announcement of a special session of the municipal council, were handwritten, with the headings in Round Hand, probably by the teacher. The floor was of grey flagstones and the panelling grey as well. The door on the left doubtless led to the council room, with its flag and the bust of Marianne, while the door on the right, which stood ajar, led to the secretary’s office.

  The room was empty, and the air smelled stale with cigar smoke; Lieutenant Daniélou, who for the past two days had made the place his headquarters, had not yet arrived.

  Opposite the street door, at the other end of the hallway, a double door stood open on to the courtyard, in the centre of which was a linden. To the right of this courtyard, the low building with three windows visible was the school, with its rows of boys’ and girls’ faces and the upright figure of the substitute teacher Maigret had seen at the inn.

  All that was as quiet as a convent; the only sound was from the hammer on the anvil at the forge. There were hedges and gardens at the back, some tender green beginning to show on the lilac branches, white and yellow houses, a few windows open here and there.

  Maigret went to the left, towards the two-storey house of the Gastins. When he reached out to knock on the door, it opened, revealing a kitchen where a boy in glasses, sitting at a table covered with brown oilcloth, was bent over a notebook.

  It was Madame Gastin who had opened the door. Through the window she had seen him halt in the courtyard, look around and walk slowly forwards.

  ‘I learned yesterday that you would come,’ she said, stepping back to let him pass. ‘Come in, inspector. If you knew how much better that made me feel!’

  She wiped her wet hands on her apron and turned towards her son, who had not looked up and seemed to be ignoring the visitor.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say good morning to Inspector Maigret, Jean-Paul?’

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Would you go up to your room?’

  The kitchen was small but, even though it was still early morning, perfectly clean and tidy. Young Gastin picked up his book without protest, went out to the corridor and up the stairs.

  ‘Come this way, inspector.’

  They went out to the corridor as well and entered the room that served as a parlour, probably never used. There were armchairs with antimacassars of point lace, an upright piano against a wall, a round table of solid oak, photographs on the walls and knick-knacks everywhere.

  ‘Please, do sit down.’

  There were four rooms in the house, all equally small, and Maigret felt both too tall and too big there. He had also felt, from the moment he stepped inside the house, that he had suddenly entered an unreal world.

  He had been warned that Madame Gastin was a female version of her husband, but he had never imagined her to be so like him that they could indeed be taken for brother and sister. Her hair was of the same nondescript colour, also already thinning, while the middle part of her face seemed thrust forwards, and her pale eyes seemed myopic. As for the child, he was a caricature of both his parents.

  Upstairs, was he trying to listen in, or had he returned to his notebook? He was twelve or thirteen and already looked like a little old man or, more precisely, a creature of no particular age.

  ‘I didn’t send him to school,’ explained Madame Gastin, closing the parlour door. ‘I thought it best. You know how cruel children are.’

  If Maigret had remained standing, he would almost have filled the room. Sitting quietly in an armchair, he gestured towards the woman to sit down, for it tired him to see her standing there.

  She looked as ageless as her son. He knew she was only thirty-four, but he had rarely seen a woman abandon all femininity to such an extent. Beneath her dress of an indefinable colour her body was thin and tired, with the suggestion of two breasts that hung like empty pockets, while her back was beginning to hunch and her skin, instead of colouring in the country sun, had gone greyish. Even her voice sounded washed out!

  She tried to smile, though, and timidly touched Maigret’s forearm as she told him:

  ‘I am so grateful to you for having believed in him!’

  He could not tell her that he was certain of nothing yet, or admit that it was the first spring sunshine in Paris and the memory of oysters with white wine that had suddenly impelled him to come.

  ‘If you knew how I reproach myself, inspector! Because I’m the one responsible for what’s happening. I am the one who spoiled both his life and my son’s. I’m doing my best to atone for it. I try so hard, you see …’

  He felt uncomfortable, as when you unwittingly enter a house where someone you don’t know has died and you don’t know what to say. Maigret had just walked into another world, one that did not belong to the village pressing in all around it.

  Those three, Gastin, his wife and their son, belonged to such a different race that the inspector understood the country people’s distrust.

  ‘I don’t know how it will all turn out,’ she continued, after a sigh, ‘but I don’t want to believe that the courts will condemn an innocent person. He is such an extraordinary man! You’ve met him, but you don’t know him. Tell me, how was he, yesterday evening?’

  ‘Fine. Quite calm.’

  ‘Is it true that he was handcuffed at the station?’

  ‘No. H
e went with the police officers of his own accord.’

  ‘Were there people who saw him?’

  ‘It was all very discreet.’

  ‘Do you think he needs anything? His constitution is delicate. He’s never been very strong.’

  She wasn’t crying. She had probably cried so much in her life that she had run out of tears. Just above her head, to the right of the window, was the photograph of an almost-chubby young woman, and Maigret could not take his eyes off it, wondering if she had ever really been like that, with laughing eyes and even dimples in her cheeks.

  ‘You’re looking at my portrait when I was young?’

  There was another one, of Gastin, to make a pair. He had hardly changed at all, except that back then he had worn his hair rather long, ‘bohemian style’ had been the phrase, and he had doubtless written poetry as well.

  ‘Did they tell you?’ she murmured, after a glance at the door.

  And he felt that this was what she most wanted to talk about, this was what she’d been thinking about ever since hearing that he was coming, this was the only thing, for her, that mattered.

  ‘You mean what happened in Courbevoie?’

  ‘Charles, yes …’

  She caught herself, blushed, as if this name were taboo.

  ‘Chevassou?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I still wonder how that could have happened. I’ve suffered so, inspector! And I wish someone would explain it to me! You see, I’m not a wicked woman. I met Joseph when I was fifteen and I knew right away that he was the one I would marry. We planned our life together. Together, we decided that we would become teachers.’

  ‘Was he the one who gave you the idea?’

  ‘I think so. He’s more intelligent than I am. He is a man of superior gifts. Because he’s too modest, people don’t always realize this. We earned our diplomas the same year, we got married, and thanks to an influential cousin, we were both sent to Courbevoie.’

  ‘Do you think that this is connected to what happened here on Tuesday?’

  She looked at him, startled. He ought not to have interrupted her, because she had lost her train of thought.

  ‘It’s all my fault.’