Maigret Afraid, page 2
part #1 of Maigret 42 Series
“She has just gone upstairs. But she won’t be in bed before eleven o’clock or midnight. I…”
“Don’t you dare. I refuse to let her be disturbed. I shall see your mother tomorrow morning.”
“She won’t be pleased.”
Maigret calculated that Madame Chabot would be at least seventy-eight. Deep down, he was sorry he had come. Nevertheless, he hung up his overcoat, which was heavy with rain, on the old coatrack, followed Julien into his study, while Rose, who was herself in her sixties, waited for orders.
“What will you have? A brandy?”
“Yes, if you wish.”
Rose understood the Magistrate’s unspoken instructions and disappeared. The smell of the house had not changed, and this too was something Maigret had envied in the past, the smell of a well-kept house, where the floors were waxed and the cooking was good.
He would have sworn that not a single article of furniture had changed position.
“Sit down. I am very glad to see you.”
He would have been tempted to say that Chabot hadn’t changed either. His features, his expression, were just the same. Because both of them had aged, it was difficult for Maigret to judge the effect of the passing years. He was, just the same, struck by some kind of lifelessness, uncertainty, a little feebleness that he had never observed before in his friend.
Had he been like that in the old days? Had Maigret simply not noticed it?
“Cigar?”
There was a pile of boxes on the mantelpiece.
“Still the pipe.”
“Of course, I had forgotten. I myself haven’t smoked for twelve years.”
“Doctor’s orders?”
“No. One fine day I said to myself that it was stupid to cause a lot of smoke and…”
Rose entered with a tray on which there was a bottle, covered with fine cellar dust, and a single crystal glass.
“Don’t you drink any more either?”
“I gave it up at the same time. Just a little wine with a dash of water at mealtime. You haven’t changed.”
“Don’t you think so?”
“You seem to enjoy wonderful health. I’m really delighted that you have come.”
Why did he not seem altogether sincere?
“You have promised to stop here so often, then put it off at the last moment, that I confess I gave up counting on you too much.”
“Everything works out in the end, you see!”
“Your wife?”
“She’s very well.”
“She didn’t accompany you?”
“She doesn’t like congresses.”
“Did it go off well?”
“We all drank a lot, talked a lot, ate a lot.”
“I do less and less traveling.”
He lowered his voice, for footsteps could be heard on the floor above. “With my mother, it’s difficult. Besides, I cannot leave her alone now.”
“Is she still as fit as ever?”
“She doesn’t change. Her sight is the only thing that has weakened a little. It distresses her not to be able to thread her needles nowadays, but she obstinately refuses to wear glasses.”
There was the feeling that he had his mind on other things, as he watched Maigret in rather the same way Vernoux de Courçon had watched him on the train.
“Have you heard the news?”
“What about?”
“What’s been happening here.”
“I haven’t read a paper for almost a week. But I traveled just now with a certain Vernoux de Courçon, who calls himself a friend of yours.”
“Hubert?”
“I don’t know. A man of about sixty-five.”
“That’s Hubert.”
Not a sound came from the town. One could hear only the rain beating against the windowpanes and, from time to time, the crackling of the logs in the fireplace. Julien Chabot’s father, before him, had been Examining Magistrate at Fontenay-le-Comte, and the study had not changed in passing from father to son.
“In that case, you must have been told…”
“Almost nothing. A journalist descended upon me with his camera in the hotel dining room.”
“A man with red hair?”
“Yes.”
“That’s Lomel. What did he say to you?”
“He was convinced that I was here to take part in some case or other. I hadn’t had time to disabuse him before the local Police Superintendent arrived as well.”
“In fact, by now the whole town knows you’re here?”
“Does that worry you?”
Chabot barely managed to hide his hesitation.
“No… it’s only…”
“Only what?”
“Nothing. It’s very complicated. You have never lived in a country town like Fontenay.”
“I lived at Luçon for more than a year, you know!”
“There was no case of the kind I have on my hands now.”
“I remember a certain murder, at L’Aiguillon…”
“That’s true. I was forgetting.”
It was actually a case in the course of which Maigret had found himself obliged to arrest, on a charge of murder, an ex-magistrate whom everybody considered perfectly respectable.
“That wasn’t so serious, however. You will realize that tomorrow morning. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Paris newspapermen arrived on the first train.”
“A murder?”
“Two.”
“Vernoux de Courçon’s brother-in-law.”
“You see, you do know!”
“That’s all I’ve been told.”
“Yes, his brother-in-law, Robert de Courçon, was murdered four days ago. That alone would have been enough to make a fuss about. The day before yesterday, it happened to the widow Gibon.”
“Who’s she?”
“Nobody of importance. Far from it. An old woman who lived alone right at the end of Rue des Loges.”
“What’s the connection between the two crimes?”
“Both were committed in the same way, probably with the same weapon.”
“A revolver?”
“No. A blunt instrument, as we say in reports. A piece of lead piping, or a tool like a wrench.”
“Is that all?”
“Isn’t that enough?… Hush!”
The door opened silently, and a very small, very thin woman, dressed in black, came forward with her hand outstretched.
“There you are, Jules!”
How many years was it since anyone had called him by that name?
“My son went to the station. When he returned, he assured me that you wouldn’t be coming and I retired upstairs. Haven’t they given you any dinner?”
“He dined at the hotel, Mama.”
“What do you mean, at the hotel?”
“He is staying at the Hôtel de France. He refuses to…”
“Oh, no, never! I shall not allow you to…”
“Madame, please. There’s all the more reason for me to stay at the hotel now that the reporters are already after me. If I accepted your invitation, tomorrow morning, if not tonight, they would be hanging on your doorbell. Besides, it’s better that nobody should suppose I’m here at your son’s request…”
It was this, after all, that was bothering the Magistrate, and Maigret saw it confirmed in his face.
“They will say that anyway!”
“I shall deny it. This case, or, rather, these cases are no concern of mine. I haven’t the slightest intention of being involved in them.”
Had Chabot been afraid that he would interfere in things that didn’t concern him? Or had he imagined that Maigret, with his occasionally somewhat personal methods, might put him in a delicate situation?
The Chief Inspector had arrived at an awkward moment.
“I wonder, Mama, if Maigret isn’t right.”
And, turning to his old friend:
“You see, this isn’t an ordinary case. Robert de Courçon, who’s been murdered, was a well-known man, more or less closely related to all the big families in the district. His brother-in-law Vernoux is also an important figure. After the first crime, rumors began to get around. Then the widow Gibon was murdered, and that slightly altered the course of the gossip. But…”
“But…?”
“It’s difficult to explain to you. The Police Superintendent is in charge of the investigations. He’s a good fellow and he knows the town, though he comes from the Midi, from Arles, I believe. The Poitiers Flying Squad is also on the spot. So, in my position…”
The old lady had sat down, as though she were paying a call, on the edge of a chair, and was listening to her son speaking as she might have listened to the sermon at high mass.
“Two murders in three days is a lot in a town of eight thousand inhabitants. Some people are getting frightened. It’s not simply because of the rain tonight that you don’t meet anyone in the streets.”
“What does the public think?”
“Some maintain it’s a lunatic.”
“There was no robbery?”
“In neither case. And in both cases the murderer was able to get himself let in the door without his victims being suspicious. It’s a clue. And it’s about the only one we’ve got.”
“No fingerprints?”
“None. If it’s a lunatic, he’ll probably commit other murders.”
“I see. And you, what do you think?”
“Nothing. I am trying to puzzle it out. I’m worried.”
“By what?”
“It’s still too confused for me to explain. I have a terrible responsibility on my shoulders.”
He said this like an overworked official. And it was indeed an official Maigret had before him now, a smalltown official living in terror of making a false step.
Had the Chief Inspector too grown like this with age? He felt older himself, because of his friend.
“I wonder if I wouldn’t do better to take the first train back to Paris. After all, I only came to Fontenay to say ‘How do you do.’ That’s done. My presence here may cause complications for you.”
“What do you mean?”
Chabot’s first reaction had not been one of protest.
“Already the redhead and the local Superintendent are convinced that you have called me to the rescue. They will say that you’re scared, that you don’t know how to deal with it, that…”
“Oh, no.”
The Magistrate rejected this notion only rather weakly.
“I will not allow you to leave. I may still receive my friends as I please.”
“My son is right, Jules. And for my part, I think you should stay with us.”
“Maigret prefers to have his freedom of movement, is that it?”
“I have my own habits.”
“I don’t insist.”
“It will still be better if I leave tomorrow morning.”
Perhaps Chabot was going to agree. The telephone rang, and its ring was not like any other, a quaint sound.
“Will you excuse me?”
Chabot lifted the receiver.
“Chabot, Examining Magistrate, speaking.”
The way in which he said that was yet another sign, and Maigret forced himself not to smile.
“Who?… Ah, yes… It’s you, Féron …What?… Gobillard?… Where?… At the corner of the Champ de Mars and… I’ll come immediately… Yes. He’s here… I don’t know… Tell them not to touch a thing until I arrive.”
His mother looked at him, her hand held to her breast.
“Another one?” she stammered.
He nodded.
“Gobillard.”
He explained to Maigret:
“An old drunkard, whom everybody in Fontenay knows because he spends the best part of his days fishing beside the bridge. They have just found him on the sidewalk, dead.”
“Murdered?”
“His skull’s been fractured, like the other two, most likely with the same instrument.”
He had risen, opened the door, unhooked from the stand an old trenchcoat and a battered hat, which he probably used only on rainy days.
“Are you coming?”
“Do you think I ought to accompany you?”
“Now that it’s known you’re here, they would wonder why I didn’t bring you. Two crimes was a lot. With a third, the town is going to be frightened out of its wits.”
As they were going out, a nervous little hand seized Maigret’s sleeve and old Mama whispered in his ear:
“Look after him, Jules! He is so conscientious that he doesn’t realize the danger.”
* * *
2
With such a degree of obstinacy, of violence, in it as this, the rain was no longer just rain, or the wind a mere icy wind; it was becoming a vicious conspiracy of the elements, and already, on the poorly sheltered platform of the station at Niort, harassed by this winter whose final convulsions seemed determined not to end, Maigret had been put in mind of a beast which refuses to die and struggles to bite, to the very last.
It was no use now trying to protect oneself. Water was not only pouring from the sky, but also falling from drainpipes in large, cold splashes, and running down the doors of houses and along the sidewalks, where streams of it reared like a torrent. There was water all over one, on one’s face, down one’s neck, into one’s shoes, and even into the pockets of clothes, which were past drying out between excursions.
They were walking against the wind, without speaking, leaning forward, the Magistrate in his old raincoat, with its skirts flapping like flags, Maigret in his overcoat, which weighed two hundred pounds. After a few paces, the tobacco sizzled out with a sputter in the Chief Inspector’s pipe.
Here and there, the odd lighted window could be seen, but not many of them. After the bridge, they passed the windows of the Café de la Poste, and were aware that people were watching them over the tops of the curtains; the door opened after they had gone on a bit farther, and they heard footsteps, voices, behind them.
The murder had taken place very near there. At Fontenay, nothing is ever very far away, and it is usually pointless to take your car out of the garage. A short street struck off to the right, joining Rue de la République to the Champ de Mars. In front of the third or fourth house a group of people was standing on the sidewalk, near the headlights of an ambulance, some of them holding flashlights in their hands.
A little man detached himself from the group—Superintendent Féron, who almost put his foot in it by addressing Maigret rather than Chabot.
“I telephoned you immediately from the Café de la Poste. I also telephoned the Public Prosecutor.”
A human form was lying across the sidewalk. One hand hung in the gutter, and the gleam of his pale skin could be seen between his black shoes and the bottom of his trousers. Gobillard, the dead man, was wearing no socks. His hat lay a yard away. Féron directed his flashlight on the face, and, as Maigret and the Magistrate were both bending over, there was a flash, a click, then the voice of the red-haired journalist asking:
“One more, please. A bit closer, Monsieur Maigret.”
The Chief Inspector stepped back, groaning. Near the body, two or three people were observing him; then, quite separate, five or six yards away, there was a second group, bigger in number, where they were talking in whispers.
Chabot inquired, in a manner both official and exhausted:
“Who found him?”
And Féron answered, pointing to one of the nearest figures standing by, “Doctor Vernoux.”
Did he too belong to the same family as the man in the train? As far as one could judge in the darkness, he was much younger. Perhaps thirty-five? He was tall, with a long nervous face, wore glasses, across which drops of rain were sliding.
Chabot and he shook hands mechanically, in the manner of men who meet every day and even several times a day.
The doctor explained in a low voice:
“I was calling on a friend, on the other side of the square. I saw something on the sidewalk. I bent over. He was already dead. To save time, I dashed to the Café de la Poste, from where I telephoned the Superintendent.”
Other faces were caught one after another in the beams of the flashlights, always with streaks of rain haloing them.
“Is that you, Jussieux?”
A handshake. These men knew each other like pupils in the same class at school.
“I was in the café just now. We were playing bridge and we’ve all come…”
The Magistrate, remembering Maigret, who was keeping in the background, proceeded to introduce him:
“Doctor Jussieux, a friend of mine. Chief Inspector Maigret…”
Jussieux was explaining:
“Same methods as with the other two. A violent blow on the top of the skull. The weapon slipped slightly to the left, this time. Gobillard too has been attacked from in front, without attempting to protect himself at all.”
“Drunk?”
“You have only to lean over and sniff. At this time of night, besides, since you know him well…”
Maigret was listening with only half an ear. Lomel, the redheaded journalist, who had just taken a second picture, was trying to draw him to one side. What struck the Chief Inspector was something rather difficult to define.
The smaller of the two groups, the one standing near the corpse, appeared to be composed only of men who knew each other, who belonged to a particular set: the Magistrate, the two doctors, the men who, doubtless, had just been playing bridge with Dr. Jussieux, all of whom were probably local worthies.
The other group, less in the light, was not keeping so quiet. Without, strictly speaking, showing it, it emanated a kind of hostility. There were even two or three derisive snorts.
A dark car had just parked behind the ambulance and a man got out, who stopped short on recognizing Maigret.
“You here, Chief!”
He did not appear too pleased to meet the Chief Inspector. It was Chabiron, a Flying Squad detective, for the past few years attached to the Poitiers force.
“Did they send for you?”
“I’m just here by chance.”
“That’s what they call striking it lucky, eh?”
He too laughed derisively.
“I was busy patrolling the town in my jalopy, which explains why it took so long to inform me. Who is it?”
