The Hatter's Ghosts, page 17
‘I didn’t do anything!’
‘You definitely didn’t kill them. But admit you knocked the old man about a bit. It was his fault anyway! He disturbed the two of you and to defend yourself you—’
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘As for Emma, you certainly wouldn’t have harmed her, she was your mistress.’
‘You’re wasting your time! I didn’t do anything.’
Later, Maigret had been tougher, threatening even.
‘So it’s like that. Well, let’s see what happens when you’re on the boat with the two bodies.’
But Gradut hadn’t flinched at the prospect of a reconstruction of the crime.
‘Whenever you like. I didn’t do anything.’
‘All the same, when they find the money you hid …
’ At which Emile Gradut had given a smile. A smile of pity. Such a superior smile …
That evening, only a motorized barge and a ‘stable’ remained at La Citanguette. At the lock below, a gendarme was still standing guard on the deck of the Astrolabe and was quite surprised when Maigret climbed on board and announced:
‘I don’t have time to get back to Paris. I’ll sleep here.’
There was the sound of water gently lapping against the hull, then the gendarme, afraid of falling asleep, walking up and down the deck. This poor gendarme, in fact, soon began to wonder if Maigret had gone mad: he was making as much noise, all alone inside, as if the two horses had been let loose in the hold.
‘Excuse me, my friend …’
It was Maigret, emerging from the hatch.
‘Could you go and fetch me a pickaxe?’
Going to fetch a pickaxe, at ten in the evening, in a place like this! The gendarme, however, woke the sad-looking lock keeper, and it turned out that the lock-keeper owned a pickaxe, because he had a garden.
‘What does he want with it, your inspector?’
‘How should I know?’
And they looked at each other knowingly. As for Maigret, he went back into the cabin with his pickaxe, and for more than an hour after that, the gendarme heard dull blows.
‘Hey, my friend …’
It was Maigret again, sweaty and panting, sticking his head through the hatch.
‘Could you go and make a phone call for me? I’d like the examining magistrate to come here first thing in the morning and bring Emile Gradut with him.’
Never had the lock-keeper looked so gloomy as he did now, guiding the magistrate towards the barge, with Gradut following between two gendarmes.
‘No, I swear I don’t know a thing.’
Maigret was asleep in the Aerts’ bed! He didn’t even apologize and seemed not to notice the magistrate’s astonishment at the state of the cabin.
The floor had been pulled up. Beneath this floor was a layer of cement, but this cement had been broken with big blows of the pickaxe. It was a total mess.
‘Come in, sir. I got to bed quite late and haven’t had time to have a wash yet.’
He lit a pipe. He had found some bottles of beer somewhere and he poured himself a drink.
‘Come in, Gradut … And now …’
‘Now what?’ the magistrate asked.
‘It’s quite simple,’ Maigret said, puffing at his pipe. ‘I’m going to explain to you what happened the other night. You see, there was one thing that struck me from the start, which is that old Aerts was hanging from a chain and his wife was hanging from a bedsheet.’
‘I don’t see—’
‘You will. Look in the police annals, and I swear you won’t find a single case of a man who hanged himself with a wire or a chain. Strange, perhaps, but that’s how it is. People who kill themselves can be quite sensitive to pain, and the thought of the links of a chain squeezing their throat or pinching the skin of their necks …’
‘So Arthur Aerts was murdered?’
‘That’s my conclusion, yes, especially as the trauma found on his chin seems to prove that the chain, which was put on him from behind, when he was drunk, first struck his face.’
‘I don’t see—’
‘Wait! Remember, his wife was found hanging from a rolled-up bedsheet. Not even a rope, even though there’s plenty of rope on board a boat! No, a bedsheet, which is the gentlest way to hang yourself, if I can put it like that.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning she hanged herself. That’s indicated by the fact that, in order to summon up courage, she needed to knock back half a litre of Dutch gin, even though she never drank. Remember the pathologist’s reports.’
‘I do remember.’
‘So, one murder and one suicide, the murder committed at about ten fifteen, the suicide at midnight or one in the morning. From that point, everything becomes simple.’
The magistrate was looking at him with a certain mistrust, Emile Gradut with ironic curiosity.
‘For a long time,’ Maigret continued, ‘Emma, who didn’t get what she wanted by marrying old Aerts, and who’s in love with Emile Gradut, has been haunted by one thought: to get hold of the money and run away with her lover. The opportunity suddenly arises. Aerts returns in a very obvious state of intoxication. Gradut’s nearby, on board the tug. She’s already seen, when she did her shopping at the bistro, how drunk her husband was. So she unchains the dog and waits, with the chain ready to be put around the man’s neck.’
‘But—’ the magistrate objected.
‘Hold on, let me finish! … Now, Aerts is dead. Emma, giddy with her victory, runs to fetch Gradut – and here don’t forget that the tug skipper’s wife hears voices near her boat at ten forty-five. Is that right, Gradut?’
‘Yes, it is!’
‘The couple come back on board to look for the money, even search the mattress, but can’t find the famous hundred thousand francs. Is that right, Gradut?’
‘Yes, it is!’
‘Time passes, and Gradut gets impatient. I suspect he even starts to wonder if he’s been deceived, if the hundred thousand francs really exists. Emma swears it does. But what’s the point of it, if it can’t be found? They keep looking. Gradut has had enough. He knows he’ll be blamed. He wants to go. Emma wants to go with him.’
‘Excuse me,’ the magistrate said.
‘Hold on! As I was saying, she wants to go with him, and, as he doesn’t want to lumber himself with a woman who doesn’t even have any money, he knocks her out with a punch to the face and gets away. Then, once on dry land, he cuts the mooring ropes. Is that right, Gradut?’
This time, Gradut hesitated to answer.
‘That’s pretty much it!’ Maigret concluded. ‘If they’d found the hoard, they would have left together, or else they would have tried to make it look as if the old man had killed himself. As they didn’t find it, Gradut wanders through the countryside in a panic, looking for a place to hide. Emma regains consciousness with the boat drifting on the water and the hanged man swaying beside her. No more hope, right? Not even the hope of running away. She’d have to wake Claessens to manoeuvre the barge with a hook. A complete failure! So she decides to kill herself. But she’s scared, so first she drinks, then she chooses a soft bedsheet …’
‘Is that right, Gradut?’ the magistrate said, looking him in the face.
‘If that’s what the inspector says.’
‘But wait,’ the magistrate goes on. ‘What’s to prove that he didn’t find the hoard and that precisely in order to keep it …’
Maigret merely pushed back a few pieces of cement with his foot, to reveal a hiding place filled with Belgian and French gold coins.
‘Do you understand now?’
‘More or less,’ the magistrate murmured, although he didn’t sound convinced.
‘What we should have known,’ Maigret said, refilling his pipe, ‘is that when old barges are repaired, a layer of cement is put on the bottom. But nobody told me that.’
Then, abruptly changing tone:
‘The main thing is that I counted, and there really is a hundred thousand francs here … An odd couple, don’t you think?’
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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First published as Les Fantômes du chapelier 1949
This translation published in Penguin Classics 2022
Copyright 1949 by Georges Simenon Limited
Translation copyright © Howard Curtis, 2022
GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm
The moral right of the translator has been asserted
Cover: detail from Still Life, 1918 by Giorgio Morandi © Pinacoteca di Brera, Milano/Bridgeman Images DACS 2022
ISBN: 978-0-141-99888-6
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Georges Simenon, The Hatter's Ghosts
