‘Our experts in Criminal Records, who know their stuff, then examined the mat from the car.
‘Here is the dust and gravel that they collected.’
He slid a paper bag across the desk.
Serre made no attempt to take the bag.
‘We should have been able to collect the same amount of dust from the mat in your car.’
‘And that proves that I killed my wife?’
‘That proves that the car has been cleaned since Sunday.’
‘Someone might have got into my garage.’
‘That’s unlikely.’
‘Didn’t your men get in?’
‘What are you insinuating?’
‘Nothing, inspector. I am not accusing anyone. I am only pointing out that your search took place without witnesses, hence with no legal safeguards.’
‘Would you like to speak to your mother?’
‘Would you like to know what I have to say to her? Nothing, Monsieur Maigret. I have nothing to say to her, and she has nothing to say to me.’
A thought suddenly crossed his mind.
‘Has she had anything to eat?’
‘I don’t know. As I said, she is a free agent.’
‘She won’t leave as long as I am here.’
‘Then she could be here a long time.’
Serre lowered his eyes and adopted a different tone. After a long pause, he murmured with what seemed like a touch of shame:
‘I don’t suppose I could ask you to take her a sandwich?’
‘We did, quite some time ago.’
‘Did she eat it?’
‘Yes.’
‘How is she?’
‘She’s busy talking.’
‘To whom?’
‘To another woman who is also sitting in the waiting room. A former lady of the night.’
Once again, the dentist’s eyes flashed with hatred.
‘You did it deliberately, didn’t you?’
‘Not at all.’
‘My mother has nothing to say.’
‘All the better for you.’
The following quarter of an hour passed in silence, then Maigret went wearily into the office next door, more irritable than ever, and waved to Janvier, who was snoozing in a corner.
‘Same again, chief?’
‘Whatever you like.’
The stenographer was exhausted. The translator was still at work in his cubby hole.
‘Go and fetch Ernestine, the woman wearing the green hat, and bring her to me in Lucas’ office.’
When La Grande Perche came in she didn’t look too happy.
‘You shouldn’t have dragged me away. She will suspect something.’
Perhaps because the night was well advanced, Maigret was in no mood for niceties.
‘What’ve you told her?’
‘That I didn’t know why I’ve been brought here, that my husband went away two days ago and I haven’t had any news. That I hate the cops and all the stunts they try to pull.
‘“They’ve kept me hanging around just to throw me off guard,” I told her. “They think that they can get away with anything.”’
‘What did she say to that?’
‘She asked me if I had been here before. I said yes, that I’d been interrogated for a whole night, about a year ago, because my husband had got into a fight in a café and someone had claimed he had drawn a knife. At first she looked at me like I was a piece of dirt. But little by little she started asking me questions.’
‘About what?’
‘Mainly about you. I painted as bad a picture as I could. I made sure to add that you always got people to talk, even if you had to use strong-arm tactics.’
‘Huh?’
‘I know what I’m doing. I mentioned that you’d once kept someone totally naked for twenty-four hours in your office in midwinter, with the window wide open.’
‘That never happened.’
‘No, but it made an impression on her. She’s less sure of herself than when I first got here. She spends her whole time craning to hear.
‘“Does he beat people up?” she asked me.
‘“Sometimes.”
‘Do you want me to go back to her?’
‘If you wish.’
‘Only, it would be better if I was escorted back to the waiting room by an officer, and he handled me a bit roughly.’
‘Still no news from Alfred?’
‘No. You neither?’
Maigret had her led away as she had requested; the officer came back with a grin on his face.
‘What happened?’
‘Not a lot. When I walked past the old woman, she raised her arms as if she were expecting me to hit her. And no sooner was La Grande Perche out of your office than she burst into tears.’
Madame Maigret rang to see if her husband had eaten.
‘Shall I wait up for you?’
‘Definitely not.’
He had a headache. He was disgruntled with himself, with the others. Perhaps he was a little worried too. He wondered what would happen if they suddenly received a telephone call from Maria Van Aerts announcing that she had changed her plans and had installed herself in some town or other.
He drank a now lukewarm beer, ordered some more to be sent up before the brasserie closed and went back to his office, where Janvier had opened the window. The din of the city had subsided. Every now and again a taxi drove across Pont Saint-Michel.
He sat down, his shoulders slumped. Janvier went out. After a long silence, he said absently:
‘Your mother thinks I am torturing you.’
He was surprised to see Serre jerk his head up, and for the first time he could see a worried look on his face.
‘What have you been telling her?’
‘I don’t know. It’s probably that woman she’s talking to. People like her like to invent stories to make themselves appear interesting.’
‘Can I see her?’
‘Who?’
‘My mother.’
Maigret pretended to hesitate, as if weighing up the pros and cons, then shook his head.
‘No,’ he decided. ‘I think I’ll interrogate her myself. And maybe I will fetch Eugénie in as well.’
‘My mother knows nothing.’
‘And you?’
‘Neither do I.’
‘Then there is no reason why I shouldn’t interrogate her as I have interrogated you.’
‘Have you no pity, inspector?’
‘For whom?’
‘For an old woman.’
‘Maria would have liked to become an old woman too.’
He walked around the office with his hands behind his back, but what he was waiting for didn’t happen.
‘Over to you, Janvier! I’m off to have a go with the mother.’
In truth, he wasn’t yet sure if he would or wouldn’t. Later on, Janvier would recount that he had never seen the inspector as tired and surly as he was that night.
It was one o’clock in the morning. Everyone in the building had lost faith; behind Maigret’s back, despairing looks were being exchanged.
8.
Where the La Grande Perche has some information wormed out of her, and where Maigret finally decides to change opponent
Maigret was leaving the inspectors’ room to pay a visit to the translator when one of the men from the cleaning team, who had been at work for half an hour by now, came to tell him:
‘There’s a lady who wants to speak to you.’
‘Where?’
‘It’s one of the two ladies who were in the waiting room. It seems she’s not feeling very well. She came into the office I was sweeping, looking pale, like she was about to pass out, and asked me to come and tell you.’
‘The old woman?’ Maigret asked with a frown.
‘No, the young one.’
Most of the doors along the corridor were open. In the second office along, Maigret saw Ernestine with her hand on her chest. He walked quickly towards her, with a seriou
s expression and a question forming on his lips.
‘Close the door,’ she whispered when he got closer.
And once he had done that:
‘Phew! I had to get out, but not because I’m sick. I just put it on to have an excuse to escape for a few minutes. Not that I feel that great, by the way. Do you have a proper drink anywhere?’
He had to return to his office to fetch a bottle of cognac he always kept in his cupboard. Not having proper glasses, he poured some out into a tumbler, and she knocked it back in one go and gagged slightly.
‘I don’t know how you’re getting on with the son, but I’ve had it up to here with the mother. My head was spinning by the end.’
‘Did she talk?’
‘She’s cleverer than me. That’s what I wanted to tell you. At the start, I was convinced that she’d swallowed all the fibs I came out with.
‘Then, I can’t remember how it started, she began asking me these little, innocent-sounding questions. I’ve had the third degree before, so I thought I was well up to defending myself.
‘But she played me for a fool.’
‘Did you tell her who you were?’
‘Not exactly. That woman is frighteningly intelligent, Monsieur Maigret. How did she guess that I’ve worked the streets? Tell me that. Is it really still that obvious? Because she said to me:
‘“You’ve had experience of these people, haven’t you?”
‘By “these people” she meant you lot.
‘Eventually she asked me about life in prison, and I answered her.
‘If you’d told me when I first sat down opposite her that I’d be the one spilling the beans, I wouldn’t have believed you.’
‘Did you talk to her about Alfred?’
‘Sort of. Without mentioning what he does. She thinks he’s a money-launderer. That’s not really what interests her. She’s been asking about life in prison for at least three-quarters of an hour: what time do you get up? How do the warders treat you? . . . I thought you’d be interested to know about that, so I made out I was feeling sick. I got up and told her I was going to get something to drink and complained that it was inhuman to keep women hanging around all night . . .
‘Could I have another slug?’
She was really tired. The drink brought some colour back into her cheeks.
‘Is the son talking?’
‘Not yet. Has she mentioned him at all?’
‘She’s listening out to every sound. She gives a start every time a door opens. She asked me another question. She wanted to know if I have ever known anyone who was sent to the guillotine. Right, now I’m feeling a bit better, I’ll go back to her. I’ll be on my guard this time, don’t worry.’
She took the opportunity to apply some face powder. She looked at the bottle but didn’t dare ask for a third drink.
‘What time is it?’
‘Three o’clock.’
‘I don’t know how she does it. She doesn’t look the slightest bit tired, and she’s sitting as bolt upright as at the start of the evening.’
Maigret allowed her to pass, took a breath of air at a window opening on to the courtyard well and drank a mouthful of cognac from the bottle. When he passed by the office where the translator was working, the latter showed him a passage in a letter that he had underlined.
‘This is from a year and a half ago,’ he said.
Maria wrote to her friend:
I had a good laugh yesterday. G was in my room – not for the reason you think, but to talk to me about a plan I had made the previous evening to go to Nice for a couple of days.
Those two hate travelling. Apart from one single occasion they have never left France. The only time they ever travelled abroad was when the father was still alive and they all went to London together. It seems they were all seasick, and the ship’s doctor had to attend to them.
But that’s not what this is about. Whenever I say anything that displeases them they don’t respond straight away. They stay silent and, as the saying goes, you can hear a pin drop.
So, later or the next day, G comes to see me in my room, looking a bit put out, beats about the bush a bit and finally spits out what is bothering him. In short, it seems my idea of going to Nice for the Carnival is absurd, almost indecent. He made no bones about the fact that his mother was shocked and was begging me to change my mind.
Now it just so happens that the drawer of my bedside table was slightly open. He gave it a cursory glance, and then I saw him turn quite pale.
‘What’s that?’ he stammered, pointing to the small pistol with the mother-of-pearl handle that I had bought on my trip to Egypt.
Do you remember? I told you about it at the time. I had been warned that a woman on her own is not safe in those countries.
I don’t know why I had put it in the drawer. I said quite calmly:
‘It’s a revolver.’
‘Is it loaded?’
‘I can’t remember.’
I picked it up and checked if it was loaded. There were no bullets in it.
‘Do you have any ammunition?’
‘I must do somewhere.’
Half an hour later my mother-in-law showed up on some pretext or other. She too beat around the bush before she came out and told me that it was not the done thing for a woman to possess a firearm.
‘But it’s little more than a toy,’ I replied. ‘I’ve kept it as a souvenir, because it has a pretty handle and has my initials engraved on it. I don’t think it would do anyone any great harm.’
In the end she gave way. But not before I had handed over the box of ammunition that I had at the back of the drawer.
The funny thing was, no sooner had she left the room than I found another packet of bullets, which I had forgotten about, in one of my handbags. I didn’t tell her about that . . .
Maigret still had the bottle of cognac in his hand and he poured out a drink for the translator, then went and gave some to the stenographer and to another inspector, who was trying to stay awake by doodling stick men on his blotter.
He returned to his office, which Janvier vacated on cue. And so began the next round.
‘I’ve been having a think, Serre. I’m beginning to conclude that you haven’t been lying as much as I thought you were.’
He had dropped the ‘Monsieur’, as if, after hours of face-to-face talking, they had developed a certain familiarity. The dentist continued to eye him distrustfully.
‘You didn’t intend Maria to disappear any more than your first wife. You have no interest in her disappearing. She had packed her bags and had announced that she was heading back to Holland. She had every intention of taking the night train.
‘I don’t know if she was meant to die in the house or once she was outside. What are your thoughts about that?’
Guillaume Serre didn’t reply, but his face was showing distinct signs of interest.
‘If you prefer, she was meant to die a natural death, by which I mean a death that could be passed off as natural.
‘But that’s not what happened, otherwise you would have had no reason to dispose of her body and her luggage.
‘There is another detail that doesn’t quite fit. You had said your goodbyes. So she had no reason to go back into your study. Yet her body was seen in there later that night.
‘I’m not asking you to reply, just to follow my reasoning. I have just learned that your wife possessed a pistol.
‘I’d be prepared to believe that you used it to defend yourself. Then, seized by panic, you left the body where it lay while you went to the garage to fetch your car. It was at that moment, around midnight, that the concierge spotted you.
‘What I am trying to understand is: what happened to change your plans and hers? You were in your study, is that correct?’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘You told me that you were.’
‘Maybe I did.’
‘I am convinced that your mother was not in her room but was with you.’
/>
‘She was in her room.’
‘You remember that?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you also remember that you were in your study? Your wife hadn’t yet gone out to find a taxi. If she had hailed a taxi that night, we would have tracked down the driver. In other words, before leaving the house, she changed her plan and came to your study. Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you acknowledge that she came to see you?’
‘No.’
‘You’re making a mistake, Serre. There are very few cases in the criminal records where a body was not found sooner or later. We will find hers. I am now convinced that the post-mortem will show that she was killed by one or two bullets. What I am asking myself is whether the bullet came from your gun or hers.
‘The answer to that will determine the seriousness of this case. If the bullet was from her gun, it would imply that, for one reason or another, she decided to go and settle accounts with you and threatened you.
‘Was it about money, Serre?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘You rush at her, disarm her but press the trigger without meaning to. Another hypothesis is that she threatened your mother, not you. A woman can more easily hate another woman than a man.
‘A final hypothesis is that your own revolver was not in your room, where you placed it a short time afterwards, but in a drawer of your desk.
‘Maria comes in. She is armed. She threatens you. You open the drawer and shoot first.
‘In all these cases, no death penalty would apply. There is no question of premeditation, as it is quite normal to keep a revolver in a desk drawer.
‘You could even plead self-defence.
‘What remains to be explained is why your wife, as she was about to leave, should come at you with a gun in her hand.’
He leaned back and slowly filled his pipe without taking his eyes off Serre.
‘What do you think about that?’
‘This is likely to take a while,’ said Serre with a sort of disgust.
‘Are you still insisting on saying nothing?’
‘I am obediently answering your questions.’
‘You haven’t told me why you pulled the trigger.’
‘I didn’t do that.’
Maigret and the Tall Woman Page 12