“Do you know Nine Moinard?”
The poor man started back as if he’d had his foot trodden on.
“I don’t need to know her. Her address, rue Pigalle, is quite enough to tell me…But what was I saying? Oh yes. You saw the date of this will? It’s quite recent…Couchet died a fortnight after he’d written it…He was killed…Now suppose one of the two women mentioned here knew the terms of the will…I’ve every reason to think they’re not well off…”
“Why two women?”
“What d’you mean?”
“Three women. The will mentions three women. Couchet’s three wives, if you like.”
The Colonel concluded that Maigret must be joking.
“I was speaking seriously…” he said. “Don’t forget there is a dead man in this house. And that the future of a number of people is involved…”
Obviously. All the same, the Inspector felt like laughing. He could not have said why.
“Thank you for telling me about it…”
The Colonel was disappointed. He did not understand how so important an official as Maigret could take such an attitude.
“I suppose that…”
“Good-bye, Colonel Dormoy…Please give my regards to Madame Couchet…”
Out in the street, he could not resist muttering:
“That rascal Couchet.”
So coolly, in all seriousness, he had put down his three women in his will. Including the first, now Madame Martin, who was for ever confronting him with her contemptuous stare, like a living reproach. Including good little Nine, who did her best to cheer him up.
And on the other hand, he forgot that he had a son.
For quite a while, Maigret wondered to whom he should break the news first. To Madame Martin, who would leap out of her bed at the thought of such wealth? To Nine?
“Of course, they’ve not got the cash yet…”
The thing might drag out for ages. There would be a lawsuit. Madame Martin, in any case, would not give up readily.
“All the same, the Colonel behaved decently. He might have burned the will without anyone being the wiser…”
And Maigret stepped out briskly through the neighbourhood about the Place de l’Europe. Pale sunlight warmed the atmosphere; there was a touch of gaiety in the air.
“That rascal Couchet.”
He went into the lift in the Hôtel Pigalle without stopping at the desk, and a few minutes later was knocking at Nine’s door. There was a sound of footsteps inside. The door opened just enough to let through a hand, which remained outstretched in the space.
A woman’s hand, shrivelled with age. As Maigret did not move, the hand fluttered impatiently, the face of an elderly Englishwoman appeared above it and a long, incomprehensible speech ensued.
At least, Maigret guessed that the Englishwoman was expecting her mail, which accounted for her gesture. The obvious conclusion was that Nine no longer occupied the room, that she had probably left the hotel.
“Too dear for her.” he reflected.
And he paused, hesitating, before the neighbouring door. A manservant made up his mind for him, by asking suspiciously:
“What d’you want?”
“Monsieur Couchet…”
“Doesn’t he answer?”
“I haven’t knocked yet.”
And Maigret smiled once again. He was in a cheerful mood. That morning, he suddenly felt as if he were taking part in a practical joke. The whole of life was a joke. Couchet’s death was a practical joke, and above all that will of his.
“…C’me in.”
The bolt moved. The first thing Maigret did was to draw the curtains and open the windows a little.
Céline had not even woken up. Roger was rubbing his eyes and yawning:
“Oh, so it’s you…”
Things had improved. The room no longer smelt of ether. Clothes lay on the floor in a heap.
“…D’you want?”
He sat on his bed, took the glass of water from the bedside table and emptied it at one gulp.
“They’ve found the will.” announced Maigret, drawing the covers over Celine’s bare thigh as she lay curled up.
“Well, so what?”
Roger displayed no excitement; barely a touch of curiosity.
“Well, it’s a funny sort of will. It’ll certainly cause a lot of ink to be spilt and bring the lawyers a lot of money. Just fancy, your father has left his whole fortune to his three women.”
The young man made an effort to understand.
“His three…?”
“Yes. His present legal wife. And then your mother. And finally his girl-friend Nine, who only yesterday was living next door to you. He’s asked the lawyer to see that they each get an equal share…”
Roger was unmoved. He seemed to be thinking. But not to be thinking about anything that concerned him personally.
“That’s killing.” he said at last in a grave tone that contrasted with his words.
“Just what I said to the Colonel.”
“What Colonel?”
“An uncle of Madame Couchet’s…He’s acting the man of the family on her behalf…”
“He must be pulling a face.”
“You’re right there.”
The young man thrust his legs out of bed and seized a pair of trousers lying over the back of a chair.
“You don’t seem much upset by this news.”
“Oh, as far as I’m concerned…”
He was fastening his trousers, looking for a comb, shutting the window to keep out the chilly air.
“Aren’t you in need of money?”
Maigret had suddenly turned serious. His gaze had become weighty, inquisitorial.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if you’re in need of money?”
Roger fixed a glazed stare on the Inspector, who felt suddenly ill at ease.
“I don’t give a damn.”
“You’ve surely not been earning overmuch.”
“I don’t earn a penny.”
He yawned, and looked at himself in the glass gloomily. Maigret noticed that Céline had woken up. She wasn’t budging. She must have heard part of the conversation, for she was watching the two men with curiosity.
And yet she, too, needed that glass of water. And the atmosphere of the room, with its untidiness, its stale smell, these two demoralized creatures, seemed the quintessence of a defeated world.
“Had you any money saved?”
Roger was beginning to have had enough of this conversation. He looked for his jacket, took out a slender wallet stamped with his initials, and threw it at Maigret.
“Search that.”
Two hundred-franc notes, a few cuttings, a driving licence, and an old cloakroom ticket.
“What will you do if you’re done out of your inheritance?”
“I don’t want the inheritance.”
“You won’t contest the will?”
“No.”
The words had a strange ring. Maigret, who was staring at the carpet, raised his head.
“Three hundred and sixty thousand francs are enough for you?”
Then the young man’s attitude changed. He walked up to the Inspector, halting less than a pace away from him so that their shoulders were touching. And he muttered, clenching his fists:
“Say that again.”
At this point there was something of the street bully in his attitude; it suggested brawls in bistros.
“I’m asking you if Couchet’s three hundred and sixty thousand francs are…”
He had barely time to grab the other man’s arm as it flew out. Otherwise he’d have caught as savage a blow as he’d ever had in his life.
“Calm down.”
Roger, in fact, was calm. He did not struggle. He was pale, with a fixed stare. He was waiting for the Inspector to release him.
Was he going to hit out again? As for Céline, she had leapt out of bed, in spite of being half naked. She was clearly prepa
red to open the door and call for help.
It all passed off quietly. Maigret only gripped the young man’s wrist for a few seconds and, when he allowed him to move freely again, Roger did not stir.
There was a long silence. It seemed as if each hesitated to break it, just as, in a fight, neither man wants to strike the first blow.
In the end it was Roger who spoke.
“You’re making the biggest mistake of your life.”
He picked a mauve dressing-gown off the floor and flung it at his companion.
“Will you tell me what you’re going to do once you’ve spent your two hundred francs?”
“What have I done up till now?”
“There’s just one little difference: your father is dead and you can’t sponge on him any more…”
Roger shrugged his shoulders as if to imply that Maigret understood nothing at all about it.
There was something in the atmosphere that couldn’t be pinned down. Not exactly drama. Something different, something distressing. Perhaps it was this unromantic bohemianism? Perhaps that wallet with its two hundred-franc notes?
Or was it the presence of that anxious woman who had just learnt that tomorrow was going to be different from yesterday and the days before, that she would have to look for a new friend?
No, it wasn’t that. It was Roger himself who was frightening. Because his behaviour did not correspond to his past, it contrasted with what Maigret knew about his character.
That calm manner…And it was not a pose…He really was calm, as calm as somebody who…
“Give me your revolver.” the Inspector said suddenly.
The young man extracted it from his trouser pocket and held it out with the ghost of a smile.
“You promise me to…”
He did not finish, for he saw the woman about to scream out in terror. She could not understand. But she felt that something terrible was happening.
There was irony in Roger’s eyes.
Maigret practically ran away. He could find nothing more to say, no gesture to make, and he beat a retreat, knocking against the frame of the door as he went out and stifling an oath.
Back in the street, he had lost his earlier good humour. Life had ceased to seem like a joke. He raised his head to look up at the couple’s window. It was shut. There was nothing to be seen.
He felt uneasy, as one suddenly feels when one has ceased to understand.
Once or twice, there had been a look in Roger’s eyes…
He could not have explained it…But it was not the sort of look he had expected…It was a look that did not fit in with the rest of the picture…
He retraced his steps, because he had forgotten to ask at the hotel for Nine’s new address.
“Don’t know.” said the porter. “She paid for her room and she went off with her suitcase. She didn’t need a taxi…She must have picked a cheaper hotel in the neighbourhood…”
“Look here…if…if anything should happen in your place…Yes…anything unexpected…I’d like you to get in touch with me personally at Police Headquarters…Inspector Maigret…”
He was vexed with himself for having done that. What was likely to happen? All the same, he kept thinking of the two hundred-franc notes in the wallet and the frightened look in Celine’s eyes.
A quarter of an hour later he went into the Moulin Bleu through the stage door. The house was empty, dark, the stalls and the edges of the boxes covered with shiny green material.
On the stage six women, shivering in spite of their coats, were rehearsing the same ridiculously simple steps over and over again, while a fat little man shouted himself hoarse, yelling out a tune.
“One…Two…Tra la la la…No, no…Tra la la la…Three…Three, for God’s sake.”
Nine was the second of these women. She had recognized Maigret, who was standing beside a pillar. The man had seen him too, but didn’t care.
“One…Two…Tra la la la…”
This went on for a quarter of an hour. It was colder than outside, and Maigret’s feet were frozen. At last the little man mopped his brow and yelled an insult to his troupe by way of farewell.
“Did you want me?” he shouted to Maigret.
“No…I wanted…”
Nine came towards him, ill at ease, wondering if she should offer her hand to the Inspector.
“I’ve some important news to tell you…”
“Not here…We’re not allowed to have visitors in the theatre…Except at night, because it brings customers…”
They sat down at a small table in a near-by bar.
“Couchet’s will has been found…He leaves all his fortune to three women…” She was looking at him in astonishment, without suspecting the truth.
“His first wife for one, although she’s remarried…Then his second wife…Then you…”
She kept her eyes fixed on Maigret, who saw them widen and then mist over.
And at last she hid her face in her hands and wept.
8
The Sick-Nurse
“He had heart trouble. He knew it.”
He took a sip of her ruby-red apéritif.
“That’s why he took care of himself. He said he’d done enough work, it was time for him to enjoy life…”
“Did he sometimes talk about death?”
“Often…But not about…that sort of death. He was thinking of his heart trouble…”
They were in one of those small bars patronized only by regular customers. The bartender was looking slyly at Maigret, whom he took for a bourgeois on a spree. At the counter they were discussing that afternoon’s racing.
“Was he depressed?”
“It’s hard to explain. Because he wasn’t an ordinary sort of man. For instance, we’d be at the theatre, or somewhere like that. He’d be enjoying himself. Then, for no reason, he’d say with a big sigh: ‘It’s a lousy life, eh, Ninette?’”
“Was he interested in his son?”
“No…”
“Did he talk about him?”
“Hardly ever. Only when he’d been to sponge on him.”
“And what did he say then?”
“He’d give a sigh: ‘What a hopeless fool’.”
Maigret had already sensed it: for one reason or another, Couchet had had little fondness for his son. He even seemed to have been sickened by the young man. Sickened to the point of not trying to pull him through.
For he had never lectured him. And he gave him money to get rid of him, or out of pity.
“Waiter. What do I owe you?”
“Four francs sixty.”
Nine went out with him and they paused for a moment on the pavement of the rue Fontaine.
“Where are you living now?”
“Rue Lepic, the first hotel on the left. I haven’t seen what its name is yet. It’s fairly clean…”
“When you’re rich, you’ll be able to…”
She gave a tearful smile.
“You know I shan’t ever be rich. I’m not that type…”
The strange thing was that Maigret had exactly the same feeling. Nine didn’t look the type who would ever be rich. He could not have said why.
“I’ll go along with you as far as the Place Pigalle, where I catch my bus.”
They walked slowly, the huge, heavy man, and the girl looking fragile by the side of her companion’s broad back.
“If you knew how lost I feel all by myself. Luckily there’s the theatre, with rehearsals twice a day till the new revue’s ready…”
She had to take two steps to Maigret’s one, so that she was almost running. At the corner of the rue Pigalle she suddenly stopped, while the Inspector frowned and muttered between his teeth:
“The fool.”
And yet they could not see what had happened. Opposite the Hotel Pigalle was a crowd of some forty people. A policeman, in the doorway, was trying to move people on.
That was all. But there was that special atmosphere, that silence that only reigns in a str
eet when something disastrous has taken place.
“What’s happened?” stammered Nine. “At my hotel…”
“No. It’s nothing. You go home…”
“But…if…”
“Go home.” he ordered sharply.
And she obeyed, frightened, while the Inspector forced his way through the crowd. He bore down on it like a battering ram. Women abused him. The policeman recognized him and took him into the hallway of the hotel.
The District Inspector was already there, talking to the porter, who looked at Maigret and cried:
“That’s him…I recognize him…”
The two policemen shook hands. Sobs and moans and a confused murmur of voices could be heard from a small sitting-room that opened into the hall.
“How did he do it?” asked Maigret.
“The woman who lives with him says that he was standing in front of the window, quite calm. She was getting dressed. He was watching her and whistling. He just broke off whistling to tell her that she had nice thighs, but that her calves were too thin…Then he began whistling again…And suddenly she heard nothing more…She had an agonizing sensation of emptiness…He wasn’t there any more…He couldn’t have gone out through the door…”
“Right. Did he hurt anyone when he fell on the pavement?”
“Nobody. Killed outright. His spine broken in two places…”
“They’ve come.” announced the policeman.
And the District Inspector explained to Maigret:
“The ambulance…There’s nothing else to be done…D’you know if there are any relatives to be told? When you turned up the porter was just telling me the young man had had a visitor this morning…A big, tall man…He was just describing the man when I saw you…It was you…Am I to make a report all the same, or are you going to take charge of everything?”
“Make a report.”
“And what about the family?”
“I’ll see to that.”
He pushed open the sitting-room door, and saw a figure stretched on the floor, entirely shrouded in a coverlet taken from one of the beds.
Céline, slumped in an armchair, was now keeping up a steady wailing, while a stout woman, the proprietor’s wife or the manageress, was lavishing consolation on her.
“It’s not as if he’d killed himself on your account, is it? You couldn’t have stopped it…You never refused him anything…”
Maigret: The Shadow in the Courtyard (1987) Page 8