‘No. This is the first time. I’ve taught at La Rochelle and Fouras.’
‘Do you know Joseph Gastin?’
‘No.’
The desks and benches were black, covered with gouges, and violet ink stains made bronze reflections on the varnish. Maigret went to the first window on the left, saw one section of the yard, the gardens, the tool shed. From the window to the right, he could then see the back of the Birard house.
‘Did you notice anything today, in the children’s attitudes?’
‘They’re more withdrawn than city children. Perhaps it’s from timidity.’
‘They weren’t huddling together, or passing notes during class?’
The substitute wasn’t even twenty-two years old and was visibly intimidated by Maigret, not so much because he was from the police, but because he was famous. The teacher would probably have behaved the same way before a noted politician or a film star.
‘I must say that I didn’t pay any attention to that. Should I have?’
‘What do you think of young Sellier?’
‘One moment … Which one is he? … I don’t know all the names yet …’
‘A boy taller and sturdier than the others, a very good pupil …’
The teacher looked at the first seat on the first bench, which was evidently Marcel’s place, and Maigret went over to sit there, although unable to slide his legs under the low desk. From that spot, he saw, through the second window, not the kitchen gardens, but the linden in the yard and the Gastins’ house.
‘He did not seem anxious to you, troubled?’
‘No. I remember quizzing him in arithmetic and noting that he was very smart.’
To the right of the Gastins’ house could be seen, further along, the second-storey windows of two other houses.
‘I might ask you for permission, tomorrow, to come and see the children for a moment during class.’
‘I’ll be available. We’re staying at the same inn, I believe. It will be easier for me if I prepare my lesson plans over here.’
Maigret left him and was about to cross to the teacher’s house. It was not Madame Gastin he wanted to see, but Jean-Paul. Halfway there he noticed a curtain moving and stopped, put off by the idea of finding himself once again in a small, stifling room before the unhappy faces of the mother and son.
His courage gave way to a feeling of laziness, absorbed no doubt from the rhythm of village life, the white wine, the sun beginning to vanish behind the roofs.
After all, what was he doing there? A hundred times, in the middle of an investigation, he’d had the same feeling of helplessness or, rather, futility. He would find himself abruptly plunged into the lives of people he had never met before, and his job was to discover their most intimate secrets. This time, as it happened, it wasn’t even his job. He was the one who had chosen to come, because a teacher had waited for him for hours in Purgatory at the Police Judiciaire.
The air was taking on a blue tint, becoming cooler, more humid. Windows were lighting up here and there, and Marchandon’s forge stood out in red, with dancing flames visible at each puff of the bellows.
In the shop across the way, two women were as still as figures in an advertisement, with only their lips moving slightly. They seemed to be speaking each in turn, and after every sentence, the shopkeeper would nod sadly. Were they talking about Léonie Birard? Probably. And about the funeral the next day, which would be a memorable event in the history of Saint-André.
The men were still playing cards. They doubtless wore away hours like that every afternoon, exchanging the same remarks, reaching occasionally for their glasses and wiping their lips.
He was about to go inside, ask for a carafe and sit in a corner to wait for dinner when a car stopped startlingly close to him.
‘Did I scare you?’ called the doctor cheerily. ‘You haven’t ferreted out that truth yet?’
He emerged from the car, lit a cigarette.
‘It doesn’t look like the Grands Boulevards,’ he remarked, waving at the village around them, the dimly lit shop windows, the forge, the half-open church portal emitting a faint gleam. ‘You should see it all in the depths of winter. Have you begun to get used to our village routines?’
‘Léonie Birard kept letters addressed to different people.’
‘She was an old bitch. Some folk called her the louse. If you knew how frightened she was of dying!’
‘Was she ill?’
‘Deathly ill. Only, she wasn’t dying. Like Théo, who ought to have died at least ten years ago and who continues to drink his four daily litres of white wine, not counting the aperitifs.’
‘What do you think of the Selliers?’
‘They do what they can to join the middle class. Julien arrived here as a welfare ward and has worked hard to make a place for himself. They’ve only the one son.’
‘I know. He’s smart.’
‘Yes.’
Maigret sensed some reserve in the doctor’s voice.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing. He’s a well-brought-up child. He’s an altar boy. He’s the priest’s pet.’
Another one who didn’t like priests, apparently.
‘Do you think he lied?’
‘I didn’t say that. I don’t believe anything. If you’d been a country doctor for twenty-two years, you’d be like me. All that interests them is to earn money, change it into gold, put the gold into bottles and bury the bottles in their garden. Even when they are ill or hurt, it has to pay.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘There are always insurance policies, or benefits, some way to turn everything into money.’
He sounded almost like the postman.
‘A bunch of crooks!’ he concluded, in a tone that seemed to belie his words. ‘They’re funny. I’m fond of them.’
‘Even Léonie Birard?’
‘She was a phenomenon.’
‘And Germaine Gastin?’
‘She’ll spend her life torturing herself and the others because she slept with Chevassou. I bet they didn’t do it often, perhaps only one time. And just when for once in her life she had enjoyed some pleasure … If you’re still here tomorrow, come and have lunch with me. This evening I have to go to La Rochelle.’
Night had fallen. Maigret still lingered on the square, emptied his pipe by tapping the bowl against one heel and entered the Bon Coin with a sigh, heading for a table that was already his table while Thérèse, without asking, set a glass and a carafe of white wine at his place.
Across from him, Théo, cards in hand, flashed him a look sparkling with malice, which meant:
‘You’re getting there! You’re getting there! Another few years on that diet and you’ll be like the others.’
6. The Postmistress’s Funeral
It was not because of the postmistress’s funeral, due to take place that day, that Maigret awakened with a weight on his shoulders. The death of Léonie Birard, in broad daylight, had not distressed anyone or offered any dramatic interest, and in the village and on their farms the people of Saint-André must have been dressing for her burial service as gaily as for a wedding. In fact, Louis Paumelle, out in the courtyard early on in a starched white shirt and black cloth trousers – but no collar or tie – was filling an impressive number of carafes with wine, carafes he set not only behind the counter, but on the kitchen table as well, as if for a village fair.
The men were shaving. Everyone would be in black, as though the entire village were in mourning. Maigret remembered one of his aunts, when he was little, whom his father had asked why she’d bought yet another black dress.
‘You see, my sister-in-law has breast cancer and might die in a few months or a few weeks. It’s so hard on clothes to have them dyed!’
In a village, everyone has so many relatives who can die from one moment to the next that they all spend their lives in mourning clothes.
Maigret was shaving, too.
He saw the morning bus l
eave almost empty for La Rochelle, even though it was Saturday. Thérèse had brought him up a cup of coffee and his hot water, because she had seen him spend hours the previous evening off in his corner drinking wine, and then, after dinner, shots of brandy.
It was not because he had been drinking the evening before that he had a feeling of tragedy, either. Perhaps, in the end, the reason was simply that he had slept badly. He had spent the night seeing the faces of children, in close-up, as in a film, faces that resembled the Gastin and Sellier boys but were not exactly either one.
He was trying, without succeeding, to remember those dreams. Someone was angry at him, one of the children, he didn’t know which, they were all mixed up together. He kept telling himself that it was easy to recognize them because the teacher’s son wore glasses.
Only, immediately afterwards, he saw Marcel Sellier wearing glasses, too, and when he expressed surprise about it, the boy told him:
‘I only wear them when I go to confession.’
It was doubtless not so tragic for Gastin to be in prison since the police lieutenant did not believe that much in his guilt, nor did the examining magistrate, either. The teacher was better off over there for a few days, instead of in the village or confined to his house. And one witness report, especially that of a child, would not be enough to condemn him.
To Maigret it was more complicated than that. This often happened to him. It could be said that during each new inquiry his humour followed more or less the same curve.
At the beginning, you see the people from the outside. It is their little troubles that stick out the most and it’s amusing. Then, gradually, you get inside their skin, you wonder why they react in this or that way, you catch yourself thinking as they do and it becomes much less funny.
Perhaps, much later, when you’ve seen so, so much of them that nothing astonishes you any more, it is possible to laugh at them, like Doctor Bresselles.
Maigret was not there yet. The kids preoccupied him. He felt that at least one of them, somewhere, must be living a kind of nightmare in spite of the airy sunshine always bathing the village.
He went downstairs to have breakfast in his corner while carts were already delivering the inhabitants of the most distant farms to the square. The farmers did not come straight to the inn, forming dark groups in the street and in front of the church, and the flash of their shirts looked dazzling against their deep tans.
He did not know who had arranged the funeral, had not thought to ask about that. In any case, the coffin had been brought from La Rochelle and placed directly in the church.
The black shapes multiplied rapidly. Maigret noticed faces he had not seen before. The lieutenant shook his hand.
‘Nothing new?’
‘Nothing. I saw him yesterday evening in his cell. He still denies the charge, just can’t understand why Marcel Sellier insists on accusing him.’
Maigret went to the school courtyard, where there were no classes that day, and the windows of the teacher’s house were closed. No one was visible; surely the mother and son would not attend the funeral but stay at home, silent, fearful, expecting trouble.
Yet the crowd did not seem angry. The men called to one another; a few of them began entering Louis’ place for a quick one and reappeared, wiping their lips. As the inspector passed, all fell silent, then began to speak in low voices as they followed him with their eyes.
Wearing a tightly belted raincoat even though the sky was clear, a young man came up to him with an outsize pipe in his mouth.
‘Albert Raymond, reporter at La Charente!’ he announced importantly.
He wasn’t more than twenty-two, thin, with long hair, his mouth twisted in a sarcastic smile.
Maigret simply nodded.
‘I tried to come and see you yesterday, but I didn’t have time.’
His words and demeanour made it clear that he considered himself the equal of the inspector. More precisely, that they were both outsiders to the crowd, both able to observe it from on high, as people in the know, who have explored every last little corner of human nature.
‘Is it true,’ he asked, pad and pencil in hand, ‘that the teacher went to offer you his savings so that you would get him out of trouble?’
Maigret turned to him, looked him up and down, was about to open his mouth and then, with a shrug, turned his back on him.
The fool was probably going to imagine that he had struck home. It was of no importance. Bells were ringing. The women filled the entire church, along with a few men. There was a murmuring of organ music, the altar boy’s bell.
‘Will there be a mass, or only an absolution?’ the inspector asked someone he did not know.
‘A mass and an absolution. We have enough time.’
Enough time to go and have a drink at Louis’ place. Most of the men had gradually gathered in front of the inn, going inside in groups, standing around and downing a carafe or two, then coming back outside. There was constant coming and going, with men in the kitchen and even in the courtyard. Louis Paumelle, who had found time to go inside the church, had removed his jacket and was hard at work, helped by Thérèse and a young man who seemed accustomed to lending him a hand.
Sellier and his wife were attending the service. Maigret had not seen their son Marcel but saw why a little later, when he entered the church in turn. Marcel was there, in the surplice of an altar boy, assisting at the mass. He must have been able to go directly to the sacristy, cutting through his parents’ courtyard.
‘Dies irae, dies illa …’
The women were moving their lips and actually seemed as if they were praying. Was it for the soul of Léonie Birard that they prayed, or for themselves? A few old men were at the back of the nave, hats in hand, and others came now and then to peek through the door to see how far along the service was.
Maigret came back outside and noticed Théo, who, by way of a greeting, gave him his usual smile dripping with irony.
Someone certainly knew. Perhaps even several did and were keeping quiet? Inside the Bon Coin, voices were growing louder, and a lean farmer with a drooping moustache was already more than half-drunk.
The butcher as well, Maigret suspected, was walking less steadily, his eyes unusually bright, and Maigret saw him empty three big glasses with one man or another in the space of a few minutes.
Less intrigued than the inspector, or more put off by the crowd’s inquisitiveness, the lieutenant was keeping to the secretariat of the village hall, where the courtyard was empty around the linden.
A cart passed, serving as a hearse and pulled by a chestnut horse with a black cloth over its back. The cart pulled up in front of the church, and the driver came over for a drink.
There was a light breeze stirring. A few clouds, way up in the sky, gleamed like mother-of-pearl.
Finally the church doors opened. The drinkers rushed over. The coffin emerged borne by four men, among whom Maigret recognized Julien Sellier and the deputy mayor.
They hoisted it up on to the cart, not without difficulty. They covered it with a black cloth with a silver fringe. Then young Sellier appeared, carrying the silver cross at the end of a staff of black wood, and his surplice puffed up two or three times like a balloon.
The priest followed, reciting prayers, finding the time to observe each person around him and to stare for an instant at Maigret.
Next came Julien Sellier and his wife, both in black, she with a crêpe veil over her face. The mayor followed, a tall, strong man, composed, grey-haired, with an entourage of municipal councillors, and then came the bulk of the crowd, the men first, the women after them and some – especially at the end of the cortège – dragging a child along by the hand.
The young reporter came and went, taking notes, talking to people whom Maigret did not know. Advancing slowly, the cortège passed the Bon Coin, where Thérèse stood alone in the doorway, as Paumelle had joined the group of councillors.
For the second time that morning Maigret was tempted to
go and knock on the Gastins’ door and talk to Jean-Paul. While all the others were going to the cemetery, weren’t the mother and son feeling more alone than ever in the deserted village?
He followed the rest, for no particular reason. They passed Léonie Birard’s house, then a farm where a calf in the yard began to bawl.
At the entrance to the cemetery there was some milling about, slightly disorganized. The priest and altar boy were already at the grave before everyone had entered the burial ground.
That was when Maigret spotted a face looking over the wall. He recognized Jean-Paul. One of the lenses in his glasses was reflecting the sun like a mirror.
Instead of following the crowd, the inspector hung back and began walking around the cemetery, intending to reach Jean-Paul. Wouldn’t the boy be too intent on what was happening around the grave to notice his manoeuvre?
He was walking through a stretch of waste ground. When he was only about thirty metres from the child, he stepped on a dead branch.
Jean-Paul instantly looked over in his direction, jumped off the stone he’d been standing on and dashed towards the road.
Maigret almost called after him, but the others would have heard him, so he simply quickened his pace, hoping to catch up with the boy along the way.
It was a ridiculous situation, he realized that. He didn’t dare run. Neither did Jean-Paul. The child was even too scared to look back. He was in school clothes, doubtless the only one in the village not wearing his Sunday best.
The boy probably wanted to go home and thus ought to have passed by the gate to the cemetery, where there was a group of farmers.
He turned left, towards the sea, perhaps hoping that the inspector would not follow him.
Maigret followed him. There were no more farms or houses, only fields and some meadows where a few cows were grazing. A hillock was still hiding the sea. The road was climbing slightly.
The boy walked as fast as he could without running, and Maigret, at his end, lengthened his stride. He did not even know exactly why he was pursuing the child like this and quickly realized that it was cruel.
To Jean-Paul, he must have represented a formidable power hot on his heels. But the inspector could hardly start shouting:
Maigret Goes to School Page 9