Maigret Goes to School

by Georges Simenon

  ‘Marcellin is a poor wretch. Everyone knows he’s not going to last much longer. We can’t hold it against him that he drinks, because he has never had any luck. Not only has there always been illness in his house, but everything he tries goes wrong. Three years ago he rented some meadows to fatten bullocks, and a drought took everything. He’s always hard up. His van spends more time broken down by the roadside than it does delivering meat.’

  ‘So Jusseau, who has nothing to lose, since the insurance is paying, said he was at fault?’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘Does everyone know this?’

  ‘More or less. An insurance company is a vague and distant entity, like the government, and it always seems only right to take money from it.’

  ‘Did you draw up the medical certificates?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Did you formulate them in such a way that Marcellin would receive as much as possible?’

  ‘Let’s say that I emphasized the complications that might arise.’

  ‘There weren’t any complications?’

  ‘There could have been. When a cow dies of a sudden sickness, five times out of ten the veterinarian writes it up as an accident.’

  It was Maigret’s turn to smile.

  ‘If I understand correctly, Marcellin’s son could have been back on his feet a week or two ago.’

  ‘One week.’

  ‘By keeping him in a cast, you’re allowing his father to claim a larger sum from the insurance company?’

  ‘You see that even the doctor is obliged to be a bit crooked. If I’d refused, I would have been long gone from here. And the teacher is clearly in prison today because he refused to provide such certifications. If he’d been more flexible, if he hadn’t fought a hundred times with Théo over his being too generous with government money, they might have adopted him in the end.’

  ‘In spite of what happened to his wife?’

  ‘They’ve all been cheated on too.’

  ‘Was Marcel Sellier the only witness to the accident?’

  ‘I told you, it was in the evening. There was no one else on the road.’

  ‘Could someone have seen them from a window?’

  ‘You’re thinking of the old Birard woman?’

  ‘I assume that she wasn’t always in her kitchen and that she sometimes went into the front room.’

  ‘She never came up in the investigation. She didn’t say anything.’

  The doctor scratched his head, completely serious, this time.

  ‘I have the feeling you’re closing in on where you’re going. Mind you, I’m not following you yet.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Why did Marcellin try to rush at me this morning?’

  ‘He was drunk.’

  ‘Why come after me, in particular?’

  ‘You were the only stranger in the inn. When he’s been drinking, he feels persecuted. From there to imagining that you’re here only to spy on him …’

  ‘You went to some trouble to calm him down.’

  ‘You would have preferred a fight?’

  ‘Théo knocked him out by making him drink a double or triple Pernod and carried him upstairs. That’s the first time I’ve seen the deputy mayor ride to the rescue.’

  ‘Marcellin is his cousin.’

  ‘I’d rather he’d been allowed to tell me what he wanted to say.’

  The others had clearly not wanted him to speak, had whisked him away, in effect, and now the butcher must have been sleeping it off in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

  ‘I’m going to have to go to my surgery,’ said Bresselles. ‘I’ve probably got a good dozen people waiting for me.’

  The two rooms of his office were in a low building, in the courtyard. Patients could be seen sitting there in a row against a wall, including a child with a bandaged head and an old man with crutches.

  ‘I think you’ll get somewhere!’ said the little doctor with a sigh, alluding to Maigret’s investigation, of course, not his career.

  He considered the inspector now with a certain respect, but also with a hint of irritation.

  ‘You would have preferred that I find nothing?’

  ‘I wonder. It might have been better if you’d never come.’

  ‘That depends on what there is at the end. You haven’t the slightest idea about that?’

  ‘I know about as much as you do.’

  ‘And you would have left Gastin in prison?’

  ‘In any case, they can’t keep him very long.’

  Bresselles was not a local man. He had been born in a city, like the teacher. But for more than twenty years he had been living with the village and, in spite of himself, he felt a part of it.

  ‘Come see me when you feel like it. Believe me, I do what I can. It simply happens that I would rather live here and spend most of my days on the local roads than shut myself up in a consulting room in a city or some suburb.’

  ‘Thank you for the lunch.’

  ‘Will you question young Marcel again?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘If you want him to talk, it would be better if you saw him without his father present.’

  ‘Is he afraid of his father?’

  ‘I don’t think that it’s fear. Admiration, rather. If he lied, he must be living in terror.’

  Back outside, Maigret found only a few groups left in the square and at the Bon Coin. Théo was playing cards in a corner, as on other days, with the postman, the blacksmith and a farmer. His eyes met Maigret’s and, although as mocking as before, they were beginning to reflect a certain respect.

  ‘Is Marcellin still upstairs?’ the inspector asked Thérèse.

  ‘He’s snoring! He’s soiled the entire room. He can’t hold his drink any more. It’s the same thing every time.’

  ‘Has anyone asked for me?’

  ‘The lieutenant came by a little while ago. He didn’t come in, only glanced inside as if looking for someone, maybe you. Are you having anything?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Even the smell of wine was nauseating. He headed slowly for the village hall. One of the sergeants was talking with Lieutenant Daniélou.

  ‘Did you try to see me?’

  ‘Not particularly. I went through the square a while ago and looked to see if you were at the inn.’

  ‘Anything new?’

  ‘It might not be important. Sergeant Nouli has found another rifle.’

  ‘A .22 calibre?’

  ‘Yes. Here it is. It’s the same type as the others.’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘In the shed behind the butcher’s house.’

  ‘Hidden?’

  The sergeant replied himself.

  ‘I was still busy looking for the spent cartridge with my colleague. We were going from one garden to the next. I saw the door of a shed open, with bloodstains everywhere. In a corner, I spotted the rifle.’

  ‘Did you question the butcher’s wife?’

  ‘Yes. She told me that, when Sellier beat the town drum to ask that all rifles be brought to the village hall, she hadn’t thought of her son’s rifle, given that he was laid up in bed. He had an accident a month ago and …’

  ‘I know.’

  Maigret, holding the weapon, was taking little puffs on his pipe. He finally placed the rifle in a separate corner from the others.

  ‘Would you come with me for a moment, lieutenant?’

  They crossed the courtyard, pushed open the door of the classroom, which smelled of chalk and ink.

  ‘Keep in mind that I don’t know yet where this will take us. On Tuesday morning, when the teacher left here with the farmer Piedbœuf, Marcel Sellier went to this window.’

  ‘That is what he told us.’

  ‘We can see, to the right of the linden, the tool shed. We can also see some windows, including those on the first floor of the butcher’s house.’

  Frowning slightly, t
he lieutenant listened.

  ‘The boy did not stay here. Before the teacher left the village hall office, the boy crossed the classroom.’

  Maigret did so as well, passing in front of the blackboard, the teacher’s desk, heading for the window directly opposite the first one.

  ‘From here, as you can confirm, we see Léonie Birard’s house. If she was standing at her window when she was hit, as the inquiry seems to indicate, it is possible that Marcel saw her fall.’

  ‘Do you suppose he had a reason for going from one window to the other? He might have seen something and …’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Why did he lie?’

  Maigret preferred not to answer.

  ‘You have your suspicions?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘What there is to do,’ replied Maigret flatly.

  He sighed, emptied his pipe on the greyish floor, looked at the ashes there with an air of reluctance and added, as if with regret:

  ‘It’s not going to be pleasant.’

  Directly across the courtyard, from a window on the first floor, Jean-Paul was watching them.

  8. Léonie’s Horseshoe

  Before leaving the classroom, Maigret saw another form at a window, an open one this time, further away, beyond the gardens. The person sitting on the window-sill had his back turned, but from the shape of his head and his sturdy build Maigret recognized Marcel Sellier.

  ‘I suppose that’s the butcher’s house?’

  ‘Yes … Joseph, the son, and Marcel are great friends.’

  Across the way, the boy twisted around on the sill, then looked down to watch a woman hanging laundry out to dry in a garden. He glanced automatically about the yard just at the moment when Maigret and the lieutenant were leaving the classroom and facing his way.

  In spite of the distance, one could tell from his movements that he was talking to someone in the room. He then got down off the window-sill and disappeared.

  Turning towards the inspector, Daniélou murmured pensively:

  ‘Good luck.’

  ‘Are you returning to La Rochelle?’

  ‘Would you prefer that I wait for you?’

  ‘That might allow me to take the evening train.’

  He had no more than 150 metres to cross. He did so in long, even strides. The butcher’s shop was a low, huddled house. There was no real shop; it was the left-hand room on the ground floor, which had been adapted by adding a strange sort of counter with a scale, an old-model ice box and a table for cutting meat.

  The front door opened to a hallway, the end of which, to the left of the staircase, opened on to the courtyard.

  Before knocking, Maigret had passed the right-hand window, the one in the kitchen; it was open, showing three women, including an elderly lady in a white bonnet, sitting at a round table eating some pie. One of them must have been Marcellin’s wife, the two others her mother and sister, who lived in the neighbouring village and had come for the funeral.

  They had seen him pass by. The windows were so small that he had blocked theirs for a moment with his burly torso. They heard him hesitating at the open door, looking for a bell, not finding one and taking two steps inside, making noise on purpose.

  The butcher’s wife rose, half-opened the kitchen door and asked:

  ‘What is it?’

  Then, probably recognizing him from seeing him around the village:

  ‘You’re the policeman from Paris, aren’t you?’

  If she had gone to the funeral, she had already changed her clothes. She couldn’t have been very old, yet her shoulders were bowed, her cheeks hollow and her eyes feverish.

  ‘My husband isn’t here,’ she added, without looking him in the face. ‘I don’t know when he’ll be back. Were you wanting to see him?’

  She did not invite him in to the kitchen, where the other two women sat in silence.

  ‘I would like a word with your son.’

  She was afraid, but that meant nothing, for she was a woman who must always have been afraid, who lived in the expectation of catastrophe.

  ‘He’s in bed.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He’s been upstairs for more than a month.’

  ‘May I go up?’

  What could she do? She let him pass without daring to protest, clutching a corner of her apron. He had climbed only four or five steps when he saw Marcel coming down the same stairs, and it was Maigret who now pressed back against the wall.

  ‘Excuse me …’ stammered the boy, who also avoided looking straight at him.

  He was hurrying to get outside, must have expected Maigret to stop him on his way or call him back, but the inspector did not and went on upstairs.

  ‘The door to the right,’ the mother told him when he reached the landing.

  He knocked.

  ‘Come in,’ said a child’s voice.

  The mother stayed there, motionless, her face lifted towards him as he pushed open the door and closed it behind him.

  ‘Don’t bother.’

  Sitting on his bed, propped up by several pillows, one leg in plaster up to mid-thigh, Joseph had moved as if to get up.

  ‘I passed your friend on the stairs.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Why didn’t he wait for me?’

  The ceiling was low, and Maigret almost touched the main beam with his head. The room was not large. The bed took up most of it. The place was untidy, littered with illustrated magazines and bits of wood carved with a pocketknife.

  ‘Bored, are you?’

  There was a chair, but it was heaped with various things: a jacket, a slingshot, two or three books and more pieces of wood.

  ‘You can take everything off it,’ said the boy.

  Jean-Paul Gastin resembled his father and mother. Marcel resembled the tinsmith.

  Joseph, though, looked neither like the butcher nor his wife. Of the three children, he was without question the handsomest, the one who seemed most like a healthy, well-adjusted child.

  Maigret had gone to sit on the window-sill, his back to the landscape of courtyards and gardens, in the place where Marcel had recently been sitting, and he was in no hurry to talk. This was not, as so often happened with him at Quai des Orfèvres, intended to unnerve another person, but because he had no idea where to begin.

  Joseph spoke first.

  ‘Where is my father?’

  ‘At Louis’ place.’

  The child hesitated before his next question.

  ‘How is he?’

  What point was there in hiding what he must certainly have known?

  ‘Théo put him to bed.’

  Instead of worried, he seemed comforted by the news.

  ‘Is my mother downstairs with my grandmother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The sun, setting in a still-clear sky, gently warmed the inspector’s back, and birdsong rose from the gardens. Somewhere, a child was playing a tin trumpet.

  ‘Don’t you want me to take off your plaster cast?’

  It was as if Joseph expected that, understanding the implication. He was not worried, like his mother. He did not seem afraid. Studying the bulky form of his visitor and his seemingly impassive face, he thought about what tack to take.

  ‘You know about that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The doctor told you?’

  ‘I’d guessed earlier. What were you doing, you and Marcel, when the motorbike hit you?’

  Joseph was truly relieved.

  ‘Didn’t you find the horseshoe?’ he asked.

  And those words brought an image to Maigret’s mind. He had seen a horseshoe somewhere. It was when he had visited Léonie Birard’s house. The rusty horseshoe had been lying on the floor, in the corner to the right of the window, not far from the chalk lines marking the position of the body.

  It hadn’t escaped him. He had even almost asked a question. Then, straightening up, he had noticed a na
il, had told himself that the shoe had probably been hanging up on this nail. Lots of people out in the country keep a horseshoe they’ve found on the road as a good-luck charm.

  Daniélou and the gendarmes who had already examined the premises must have thought the same thing.

  ‘There is indeed a horseshoe in Léonie Birard’s place,’ he replied.

  ‘I’m the one who found it,’ said the boy, ‘the night of the accident. I was on the sea road with Marcel when I tripped over it. It was dark. I took the horseshoe with me. We were passing the old lady’s house, and I had it in my hand. The window on the street side was open. We went over, without making any noise.’

  ‘Was the postmistress in the front room?’

  ‘In the kitchen. The door was ajar.’

  He could not keep from smiling.

  ‘First I had the idea of throwing the horseshoe into the house to scare her.’

  ‘The way you used to throw in dead cats and other filth?’

  ‘I’m not the only one who did that.’

  ‘You changed your mind?’

  ‘Yes. I thought it would be funnier to sneak the horseshoe into her bed. I climbed quietly through the window, took a few steps; unfortunately, I bumped into something, I don’t know what. She heard. I dropped the horseshoe and jumped out of the window.’

  ‘Where was Marcel?’

  ‘He was waiting a little further along. I started to run. I heard the old woman shouting threats from her window, and that’s when the motorbike hit me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so?’

  ‘First off, they took me to the doctor, and it hurt a lot. They gave me some medicine that put me to sleep. When I woke up, my father was there and the first thing they talked about was the insurance. I understood that if I told the truth, people would say it was my fault, and the insurance wouldn’t pay. My father needs money.’

  ‘Marcel came to see you?’

  ‘Yes. I made him promise not to say anything, either.’

  ‘Since then, he’s been by to see you every day?’

  ‘Almost every day. He’s my friend.’

  ‘Jean-Paul isn’t your friend?’

  ‘He isn’t anyone’s friend.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. He probably doesn’t want it. He’s like his mother. His mother never speaks to the women in the village.’

  ‘Aren’t you bored, alone in this bedroom for a month?’