Maigret: The Shadow in the Courtyard (1987)

by Georges Simenon

  “She used to give him advice… ‘Your father’s rich. He ought to be ashamed of not fixing you up better. You haven’t even got a car…And d’you know why? Because of that woman who married him for his money. For that was all she married him for… Not to mention that heaven knows what she’s planning against you…D’you expect you’ll get a penny of the fortune that’s due to you? That’s why you ought to get some money out of him now, and put it aside in a safe place… I’ll keep it for you, if you like…Tell me. Wouldn’t you like me to keep it for you?’”

  And Maigret, staring at the grimy floor, pondered, with a grim frown.

  Amidst that jumble of feelings he thought he could recognize one feeling that dominated, that had perhaps given rise to all the rest: anxiety. A morbid, unhealthy anxiety, verging on madness…

  Madame Martin was always talking about what might happen: her husband’s death, her destitution if he left her without a pension…She worried about her son’s future too…

  It was a nightmare, an obsession.

  “What did Roger reply?”

  “Nothing. He never stayed long. He must have had something better to do elsewhere…”

  “Did he come on the day of the murder?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And in her corner the madwoman, as old as Mathilde, was still staring at the Inspector with an engaging smile.

  “Did the Martins have a more interesting conversation than usual?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did Madame Martin come downstairs about eight o’clock that evening?”

  “I don’t remember. I can’t be in the passage the whole time.”

  Was it unawareness, or transcendent irony? In any case she was keeping something back. Maigret could feel it. All the poison hadn’t come out yet.

  “They had a quarrel that evening…”

  “What about?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Didn’t you listen?”

  She made no reply. Her face seemed to say: That’s my own business.

  “What else do you know?”

  “I know why she’s ill.”

  And that was the moment of triumph. Her hands, still clasped across her stomach, were quivering. The culminating point of her whole career.

  “Why?”

  This had to be savoured.

  “Because…Wait while I ask my sister if she needs anything…Fanny, aren’t you thirsty? Hungry? Too hot? ”

  The small cast-iron stove was glowing. The old woman glided about the room on her noiseless felt soles.

  “Because?”

  “Because he didn’t bring back the money.”

  She uttered this sentence deliberately, and followed it up with a heavy silence. That was the end. She’d stop talking. She had said enough.

  “What money?”

  Waste of time. She would answer no more questions.

  “It’s none of my business. That was what I heard. Make what you like of it…Now it’s time for me to look after my sister…”

  He went off, leaving the two old women engaged in heaven knows what ministrations.

  It had made him feel quite ill. He was utterly nauseated, as though from seasickness.

  “He didn’t bring back the money…”

  Couldn’t it all be explained? Martin must have made up his mind to rob the former husband, perhaps so as to incur no more reproaches for his mediocrity. She would have watched him through the window. He’d come out with the three hundred and sixty bank notes…

  Only when he came back he hadn’t got them with him. Had he put them away in a safe place somewhere? Had he been robbed himself? Or had he taken fright and got rid of the money by throwing it into the Seine?

  Had he committed a murder? Ordinary little Monsieur Martin in his buff overcoat?

  He had been anxious to talk, a short while ago. His weariness was surely that of a guilty man who no longer feels strong enough to keep quiet, who prefers immediate imprisonment to the agony of suspense.

  But why was it his wife who was ill?

  And, above all, why was it Roger who killed himself?

  And wasn’t the whole thing a figment of Maigret’s imagination? Why not suspect Nine, or Madame Couchet, or even the Colonel?

  The Inspector, walking slowly down the stairs, ran into Monsieur de Saint-Marc, who turned round.

  “Hello, it’s you…”

  He held out a condescending hand.

  “Anything fresh? D’you think we shall be clear of it all?”

  And then a cry from the madwoman upstairs, whose sister must have deserted her to take up her post behind some door or other.

  An impressive funeral. A large congregation. Highly respectable people, especially Madame Couchet’s relations and the neighbours from the Boulevard Haussmann.

  In the front row, only Couchet’s sister did not quite fit in, although she had done her utmost to look smart. She was in tears. Above all she had a noisy way of blowing her nose that each time earned her an angry look from the dead man’s mother-in-law.

  Immediately behind the family, the staff from the Serum laboratory.

  And with the staff, old Mathilde, looking very dignified, very sure of herself and of her right to be there.

  The black dress she was wearing must have been kept for that sole purpose: to go to funerals. Her eyes met Maigret’s. And she deigned to give him a slight nod.

  Organ music broke forth, the precentor’s bass, the deacon’s falsetto: “Et ne nos inducat in tentationem…”

  The sound of chairs being pushed back. The hearse was a high one and yet it was completely hidden under flowers and wreaths.

  From the tenants of 61 Place des Vosges.

  Mathilde must have contributed. Had the Martins put their names on the subscription list too?

  Madame Martin was not to be seen. She was still in bed.

  “Libéra nos, Domine…”

  The absolution. The end…The chief usher slowly led out the procession. In a corner, near a confessional box, Maigret discovered Nine; her little nose was red, but she had not bothered to powder it.

  “It’s terrible, isn’t it?” she said.

  “What’s terrible?”

  “Everything. I don’t know. That music…And that smell of chrysanthemums…”

  She bit her lower lip to check a sob.

  “You know…I’ve been thinking a lot…Well. I sometimes wonder if he hadn’t been suspecting something…”

  “Are you going to the cemetery?”

  “What d’you think? I might be seen, mightn’t I? Perhaps I’d better not go…And yet I’d so much like to know where they’re putting him…”

  “You’ve only to ask the caretaker.”

  “Yes…”

  They were speaking in whispers. The footsteps of the last members of the congregation died away on the other side of the door. Cars started off.

  “You were saying he suspected something?”

  “Maybe not that he’d die the way he did…But he knew he wouldn’t last much longer…He had serious heart trouble…”

  It was obvious that she had been worrying about it, that for hours and hours her mind had been occupied with a single theme.

  “Things he said, that keep coming back to me…”

  “Was he afraid?”

  “No. Rather the reverse…When anyone happened to mention a graveyard, he’d say with a laugh: ‘The only place where you can be quiet…A cosy little corner in the Père-Lachaise…’”

  “Did he often joke?”

  “Specially when he wasn’t feeling cheerful…You understand? He didn’t like people to see that he had worries…At times like that he’d look for any excuse to be lively and have a laugh…”

  “When he talked about his first wife, for instance?”

  “He never talked about her to me.”

  “Or about the second?”

  “No. He didn’t talk about anyone in particular…Just about people in general…He though
t they were a funny sort of creature…If a waiter robbed him in a restaurant he’d give him a particularly affectionate look; “A scoundrel.” he’d say.”

  “And he’d look quite pleased and happy as he said it.”

  It was cold. Regular Hallowe’en weather. Maigret and Nine had nothing to do in the Saint-Philippe-du-Roule district.

  “How are things at the Moulin Bleu?”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll come and see you there some evening soon…”

  Maigret shook her hand and jumped on to the platform of a bus.

  He wanted to be alone, to think, or rather to let his thoughts wander. He imagined the procession, which would soon have reached the cemetery…Madame Couchet…the Colonel…the brother…People talking about that strange will…

  “What were they after, round those dustbins? ”

  For that was the crux of the drama. Martin had prowled round the dustbins under pretext of looking for a glove, which he had not found, and yet he had been wearing next morning. Madame Martin had also ransacked the rubbish, saying that a silver spoon had been thrown away by mistake.

  “…Because he didn’t bring back the money…” old Mathilde had said.

  Actually, things must be cheerful at the Place des Vosges just now. Was the madwoman, left by herself, screaming as usual?

  The crowded bus, sped past the stops. Somebody close to Maigret was saying to his neighbour:

  “Did you read that story about the thousand-franc notes?”

  “No. What was that?”

  “Wish I’d been there…At the Bougival lock the morning before yesterday…Thousand-franc notes floating down the stream…A waterman was the first to spot them, and he managed to fish up a few…But the lock-keeper realized what had happened…He sent for the police…So they put a cop to keep his eye on people fishing for loot…”

  “Not really? That can’t have stopped them from pinching a few on the sly…”

  “The paper says they’ve recovered about thirty notes, but that there must have been many more, because a couple were fished up at Mantes too…What d’you say to that? Notes swimming all down the Seine…Better than gudgeon, eh? ”

  Maigret did not move a muscle. He was a head taller than anyone else. His face was placid.

  “…Because he didn’t bring back the money…”

  So that was it? Little Monsieur Martin, seized with terror or remorse at the thought of his crime? Martin, who admitted having gone for a walk on the Île Saint-Louis that evening to clear his head…

  Maigret gave a faint smile, however, when he pictured Madame Martin witnessing the whole thing from her window and waiting.

  Her husband must have come back weary and depressed. She’d have watched his every action. She’d expect to see the notes, perhaps to count them…

  He’d have undressed, got ready for bed.

  Didn’t she go and pick up his clothes then and hunt through the pockets?

  Anxiety would dawn. She would stare at Martin with his mournful moustache.

  “The…the…the money.”

  “What money?”

  “Who did you give it to? Answer me…Don’t try to lie.”

  And Maigret, as he got off the bus at the Pont-Neuf, from which he could see the windows of his office, caught himself saying half aloud:

  “I bet Martin burst into tears in his bed…”

  10

  Cards of Identity

  Things started to happen at Jeumont. It was eleven o’clock at night. A few third-class travellers were making their way towards the customs office, while the officials began their tour of inspection of the second and first-class carriages.

  Meticulous people were preparing their luggage in advance, spreading things out on the seat. One was a man with worried eyes, in a second-class compartment where he was alone except for an elderly Belgian couple.

  His luggage was a model of order and forethought. The shirts had been wrapped in paper to keep them clean. There were a dozen pairs of cuffs, warm pants and summer pants, an alarm clock, shoes and a pair of tired-looking slippers.

  A woman’s hand was obvious in the arrangement. Not a corner had been wasted. Nothing could get crumpled. A customs official turned the things over with a careless hand, his eye on the man in the buff overcoat who looked just the type to own that sort of luggage.

  “O.K.”

  A cross scribbled in chalk on the cases.

  “You people got anything to declare?”

  “Excuse me.” the man asked. “Where exactly does Belgium begin?”

  “You see the first hedge over there? No, you can’t see anything. But look…Count the lights…The third on the left…Well, that’s the frontier…”

  A voice in the corridor, repeating at every door:

  “Passports and identity cards ready, please.”

  And the man in the buff overcoat was struggling to put his cases back on the rack.

  “Passport?”

  He turned round, saw a young man wearing a grey hat.

  “French? Your identity card, then…”

  That took a few moments. His fingers fumbled in his wallet.

  “Here, monsieur.”

  “Right. Edgar Emile Martin…That’s it…Follow me…”

  “Where? ”

  “You can bring your cases…”

  “But…the train…”

  The Belgian couple were staring at him now in alarm, thrilled none the less at having travelled with a malefactor. Monsieur Martin, his eyes starting out of his head, climbed on to the seat to take down his cases again.

  “I swear to you…Whatever…?”

  “Hurry up…The train’s about to leave…”

  And the young man in the grey hat trundled the heaviest of the cases on to the platform. It was pitch black. Under the lamplight people were hurrying back from the refreshment room. The whistle blew. A woman was arguing with the customs officials, who prevented her from leaving.

  “We’ll see about that tomorrow morning…”

  And Monsieur Martin followed the young man, labouring under the weight of his luggage. He had never imagined such a long platform. It was like an endless, deserted racecourse, with a row of mysterious doors alongside it.

  Finally the young man pushed open the last door.

  “Come in.”

  It was dark. Nothing but a lamp with a green shade, hanging so low over the table that it only shone on a few papers. Something was stirring, however, in the depths of the room.

  “Good evening, Monsieur Martin…” said a friendly voice.

  And an enormous figure emerged from the shadows: Inspector Maigret, huddled in his heavy velvet-collared overcoat, his hands in his pockets.

  “Don’t bother to put them down. We’re going to take the train to Paris, which is just coming in on Platform Three…”

  This time there was no doubt about it: Martin was weeping silently, his hands immobilized by his beautifully-arranged suitcases.

  The detective who had been stationed at 61 Place des Vosges had telephoned Maigret a few hours previously:

  “Our man’s on the run…He took a taxi and asked to be driven to the Gare du Nord…”

  “Let him run…Keep watching the woman…”

  And Maigret had taken the same train as Martin. He had travelled in the next compartment, with two N.C.O.s who had told ribald stories the whole way.

  From time to time, the Inspector had put his eye to the little peephole between the two compartments, and caught sight of Martin looking gloomy.

  Jeumont…Identity cards…The Special Inspector’s office.

  Now they were both travelling back to Paris in a reserved compartment. Martin was not handcuffed. His suitcases were on the rack above his head, and one of them, precariously balanced, looked like tumbling down on him.

  At Maubeuge, Maigret had not yet asked him a single question.

  It was uncanny. He was wedged in his corner with his pipe between his teeth. He never stopped smo
king, watching his companion with little twinkling eyes.

  A dozen times, a score of times Martin had opened his mouth without bringing himself to speak. A dozen times, a score of times the Inspector had taken no notice.

  It happened at last, however; a voice beyond description, which Madame Martin herself would probably not have recognized.

  “It was…”

  And Maigret still uttered no word. His eyes seemed to be saying: Really?

  “I…I was hoping to cross the frontier…”

  There is a certain way of smoking that is exasperating to whoever watches the smoker: at every puff the lips part voluptuously with a tiny poc. And the smoke, instead of flying forward, escapes slowly, forming a cloud round the face.

  Maigret was smoking like that, and his head was swaying from right to left, from left to right, to the rhythm of the train.

  Martin was leaning forward, his gloved hands painfully tense and his eyes feverish.

  “D’you think it’ll be a long business? It won’t, will it? since I’m confessing…For I confess everything…”

  How did he manage not to break into sobs? Every nerve must have been strained. And from time to time his eyes wore an imploring look, saying clearly to Maigret: “Please help me. You see I’m at the end of my tether…”

  But the Inspector did not budge. He was as placid, with the same interested but dispassionate look, as if he had been in a zoo, in front of the cage of some exotic animal.

  “Couchet caught me…so then…”

  And Maigret sighed. A sigh that meant nothing, or rather that could be interpreted in a hundred different ways.

  Saint-Quentin. Footsteps in the corridor. A stout traveller tried to open the door of the compartment, discovered that it was fastened, stopped for a moment looking in with his nose pressed against the window, and at last resigned himself to looking for a seat elsewhere.

  “As I’m confessing everything, surely? It’s not worth trying to deny…”

  He might just as well have been speaking to a deaf man, or to someone who did not know a word of French. Maigret was filling his pipe, prodding it meticulously with his forefinger.

  “Have you any matches?”

  “No…I don’t smoke…You know I don’t…It’s because my wife doesn’t like the smell of tobacco…I’d like it to be over quickly, d’you understand? I shall say so to the lawyer I shall have to choose…No complications…I’ll confess everything…I read in the paper that they’ve found some of the notes…I don’t know why I did that…Knowing I’d got them in my pocket, I felt as if everybody in the street was staring at me…At first I thought of hiding them somewhere…But what for? I walked along the embankment…There were some barges…I was afraid of being seen by a boatman… Then I crossed the Pont-Marie and on the Île Saint-Louis I was able to get rid of the bundle…”