Maigret Afraid, page 4
part #1 of Maigret 42 Series
“The next step is to make out that Vernoux had him got rid of, or killed him in a fit of temper…”
“That has been said?”
“Yes.”
“Have you thought so too?”
“Professionally, I can reject no hypothesis a priori.”
Maigret could not help smiling at this pompous phrase.
“Have you questioned Vernoux?”
“I haven’t summoned him to my office, if that’s what you mean. After all, there haven’t been sufficient grounds for suspecting a man like him.”
He had said:
“A man like him.”
And he realized that he had given himself away, that this was acknowledging that he was more or less part of the clique. The whole evening, this visit from Maigret, were probably torture for him. Nor was it a pleasant experience for the Chief Inspector, although, by now, he no longer felt the same desire to leave.
“I met him in the street, as I do every morning, and asked him a few questions, without appearing to do so.”
“What did he say?”
“That he had not left his rooms that evening.”
“At what time was the crime committed?”
“The first one? About the same time as today, around ten o’clock in the evening.”
“What are they usually doing at the Vernouxs’ at that time?”
“Apart from bridge on Saturdays, which brings them all together in the living room, each one leads his own life without bothering about the rest.”
“Vernoux doesn’t sleep in the same room as his wife?”
“He would regard that as middle-class. Each one has his or her own suite of rooms, on different floors. Isabelle is on the second, Hubert in a wing of the ground floor, which looks onto the courtyard. Alain’s household occupies the third floor, and the aunt, Lucile, two rooms on the fourth, which are attics. When the daughter and her husband are there…”
“Are they there at present?”
“No. They’re expected in a few days.”
“How many servants?”
“A married couple, who’ve been with them for twenty or thirty years, and two fairly young maids as well.”
“Where do they sleep?”
“In the other wing on the ground floor. You’ll see the house. It’s almost a château.”
“With a way out at back?”
“There’s a door in the wall of the courtyard, which leads into a lane.”
“So that anyone can go in or out without being seen?”
“Probably.”
“You haven’t checked?”
Chabot was on the rack and, because he felt himself at fault, he raised his voice, all but furious with his friend.
“You’re talking the way some of the common people do here. If I had gone to question the servants, when I hadn’t any evidence, not the slightest clue, the whole town would have been convinced that Hubert Vernoux or his son was guilty.”
“His son?”
“He too, definitely! Because, from the moment he stopped work and became interested in psychiatry, there have been people who regard him as mad. He doesn’t go to either of the town’s two cafés, doesn’t play billiards or belotte, doesn’t run after girls, and sometimes, in the street, he will stop abruptly to stare at someone, his eyes enlarged by the lenses of his glasses. They’re so disliked that…”
“You’re defending them?”
“No. I must keep my detachment, and, in a country town, it’s not always easy. I’m trying to be fair. I too thought that the first crime was probably a family affair. I studied the matter from all aspects. The fact that there was no robbery, that Robert de Courçon did not attempt to defend himself, worried me. And doubtless I would have taken certain measures if…”
“Wait a moment. You haven’t asked the police to follow Hubert Vernoux and his son?”
“In Paris, that’s practicable. Not here. Everyone knows our four unfortunate policemen. As for the Poitiers detectives, they were spotted before they even got out of their car! It’s seldom there are more than ten people at any one time in the street. You mean that, under such conditions, someone should be followed without his suspecting it?”
He calmed down suddenly.
“Forgive me. I’m talking so loud I will wake my mother. It’s just that I’d like you to understand my position. Until there is proof to the contrary, the Vernouxs are innocent. I would swear to it that they are. The second crime, two days after the first, has almost proved it. Hubert Vernoux could be driven to kill his brother-in-law, to strike him in a moment of rage. He had no reason to take himself off to the end of Rue des Loges in order to assassinate the widow Gibon, whom he probably didn’t know.”
“Who is she?”
“A retired midwife, whose husband, long since dead, was a policeman. She lived alone, half-crippled, in a three-room house.
“Not only has there been the old Gibon woman, but Gobillard this evening. The Vernouxs knew him, all right, as the whole of Fontenay did. In every town in France, there’s at least one drunkard of his kind, who becomes a sort of popular figure.
“If you can cite me a single reason for killing a fellow of that sort…”
“Suppose he had seen something?”
“And the widow Gibon, who never left her house any longer? Would she have gone to Rue Rabelais, after ten o’clock at night, to witness the crime through the windows? No, come, come! I know the methods of criminal investigation. I didn’t attend the Bordeaux Congress, and I may be a little behindhand, perhaps, on the latest scientific discoveries, but I think I know my profession and carry it out conscientiously. The three victims belonged to completely different backgrounds, and there was not the slightest connection between them. All three were killed in the same manner and, by the look of the injuries, one might conclude with the same weapon, and all three were attacked from in front, which presupposes that they had no suspicions. If it is a lunatic, it’s not a wild or raving one, of whom everyone would steer clear. It’s therefore what I might call a clearheaded lunatic, who’s following a definite line of activity and is sufficiently circumspect to take precautions.”
“Alain Vernoux hasn’t fully explained his presence in the town, this evening, in such pouring rain.”
“He said he was going to see a friend on the other side of the Champ de Mars.”
“He didn’t give any name.”
“Because it’s not necessary. I know that he often goes to visit a certain Georges Vassal, a bachelor, whom he knew at college. Even without that knowledge, I wouldn’t have been surprised.”
“Why not?”
“Because the case fascinates him even more than me, for more personal reasons. I’m not suggesting that he suspects his father, but I don’t think he’s far from it. Some weeks ago, he talked to me about him and the family failings…”
“Just like that?”
“No. He was coming back from La Roche-sur-Yon and was quoting a case that he had been studying. It concerned a man in his sixties, who up to that time had behaved normally, but who, on the day when he should have presented the long-promised dowry to his daughter, went off his head. It was not immediately detected.”
“In other word’s, you’re saying that Alain Vernoux might have been wandering around Fontenay at night on the lookout for the murderer?”
The Examining Magistrate was roused to fresh indignation.
“I presume he is more qualified to recognize a demented person on the street than our worthy policemen grubbing around the town, or than you or me?”
Maigret didn’t reply.
It was past midnight.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to sleep here?”
“My bags are at the hotel.”
“Shall I see you tomorrow morning?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll be at the Palais de Justice. You know where it is?”
“On Rue Rabelais, isn’t it?”
“A little farther up than the Vernouxs’ house. You’ll notice the prison railings first, then a not very imposing building. My office is at the end of the hall, near that of the Public Prosecutor.”
“Good night, old man.”
“I have welcomed you poorly.”
“Of course not!”
“You must understand my state of mind. It’s the kind of case that could set the whole town against me.”
“Indeed!”
“You’re laughing at me?”
“No, I promise you.”
This was true. Maigret was sad, rather, as one is each time one sees a little of the past vanish. In the hallway, as he struggled into his sodden overcoat, he sniffed again the smell of the house that had always appeared so pleasant to him and now seemed musty.
Chabot had lost practically all his hair, which left uncovered a pointed cranium, like that of certain birds.
“I’ll drive you back…”
He did not really want to. He said it out of politeness.
“Certainly not!”
Maigret added a not very subtle joke, for something to say, to finish on a cheerful note:
“I know how to swim!”
Whereupon, turning up the collar of his coat, he plunged into the storm. Julien Chabot remained for a while in the rectangle of pale yellow light, then the door closed again, and Maigret had the impression that, in the streets of the town, there was no one else still about besides himself.
* * *
3
The streets presented a more depressing sight in the light of morning than at night, because the rain had dirtied everything, leaving its dark traces on the façades of buildings, turning their colors ugly. Large drops still fell from cornices and electric wires, occasionally from the sky, which was draining itself, still in a dramatic style, as though gathering strength for fresh convulsions.
Maigret, having risen late, had not felt in the mood to go downstairs for his breakfast. Ill-tempered, with no appetite, he simply wanted two or three cups of black coffee. In spite of Chabot’s brandy, he thought he could still discern in his mouth the aftertaste of the oversweet white wine he had consumed in Bordeaux.
He pressed a little pear-shaped bell hanging by the head of his bed. The chambermaid, in black with a white apron, who answered his call, looked at him so strangely that he felt obliged to check that he was decently covered.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like some hot croissants? A man like you needs to eat in the morning.”
“Only coffee, my dear. An enormous pot of coffee.”
She noticed the suit of clothes the Chief Inspector had put to dry over the radiator the night before, and seized them.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m just going to press them.”
“No thank you. It’s not worth it.”
She took them, just the same!
Judging by her physical appearance, he would have said that she was usually rather a crosspatch.
Twice while he was dressing she came and disturbed him, once to make sure he had some soap, and again to bring a second pot of coffee, which he hadn’t ordered. Then she returned with his suit, dry and pressed. She was thin, flat-chested, with a look of having poor health, but was probably as tough as iron.
It crossed his mind that she had seen his name on the register, downstairs, and that she was an avid reader of news items.
It was nine-thirty in the morning. He dawdled, in protest against something or other, something he vaguely considered to be a conspiracy of the fates.
As he descended the red-carpeted staircase, a handyman, coming up, greeted him with a respectful:
“Good morning, Monsieur Maigret.”
On arriving in the lobby, he understood, for Ouest-Eclair was displayed on a small table, with his photograph on the front page.
It was the picture taken when he was bending over Gobillard’s body. A large headline announced across three columns:
chief inspector maigret engaged on
the fontenay crimes
a rabbitskin dealer the third victim
Before he had time to glance through the article, the hotel manager came up to him, with as much eagerness as the chambermaid.
“I hope you slept well and that Number 17 didn’t disturb you too much?”
“Who’s Number 17?”
“A salesman who drank too much last night and was noisy. We eventually put him in another room, so that he wouldn’t wake you.”
He had heard nothing.
“By the way, Lomel, the Ouest-Eclair correspondent, came in to see you this morning. When I told him you were still in bed, he said there was no hurry and that he would see you shortly at the Palais de Justice. There’s a letter for you, as well.”
A cheap envelope, such as are sold in packs of six, in six different colors, in grocery stores. This one was greenish. Just as he was opening it, Maigret realized that there were half a dozen people outside pressing their faces to the glass door, between the palm trees in tubs.
“Don’t let yourself be inflewenced by them that’s High Sossiety.”
The people waiting on the sidewalk, two of them women dressed to go shopping, drew aside to let him pass, and there was something trusting, friendly in the way they looked at him, not so much out of curiosity, not so much because he was a celebrity, but as if they, counted on him. One of the women said, without daring to come nearer:
“You’ll find him, Monsieur Maigret, you will!”
And a youngster who looked like a delivery boy kept pace with him on the opposite sidewalk, the better to look at him.
On the doorsteps, women were discussing the latest crime and broke off to watch him go by. A group came out of the Café de la Poste, and there too he read sympathy in their eyes. They seemed to want to encourage him.
He passed Chabot’s house, where Rose was shaking a duster out of the second-floor window, didn’t stop, crossed Place Viète and ascended Rue Rabelais, where on the left stood a vast town house, a coat of arms emblazoned on the pediment, which must surely be the Vernouxs’ mansion. There was no sign of life behind the closed windows. Opposite, a little house, also an old one, with closed shutters, was probably where Robert de Courçon had lived out his solitary days.
From time to time there blew a small gust of damp wind. Clouds were driving low, dark against a sky the color of frosted glass, and drops of water were falling from their fringe. The railings of the prison seemed blacker for being wet. Some ten people were standing about in front of the Palais de Justice, which was not at all imposing, being smaller, in fact, than the Vernouxs’ house, but which was nevertheless graced with a row of columns and a low flight of steps.
Lomel, with his two cameras still slung around him, was the first to hurry forward, and there wasn’t a trace of remorse on his baby face or in his bright-blue eyes.
“Will you let me have your impressions before you give them to my Paris colleagues?”
And as Maigret scowlingly pointed to the newspaper sticking out of his pocket, he smiled.
“Are you annoyed?”
“I thought I’d told you…”
“Listen, Inspector. I have to do my job as a journalist. I knew you would eventually become concerned in the case. I’ve simply anticipated by a few hours…”
“Another time, don’t anticipate.”
“Are you going to see Magistrate Chabot?”
Among the group there were two or three reporters from Paris already and he had difficulty in getting rid of them. There were also a few inquisitive people who seemed determined to spend the day on guard outside the Palais de Justice.
The hallways were dark. Lomel, his self-appointed guide, went ahead, showing him the way.
“Along here. It’s much more important for us than for the rag-mongers in the capital! You must realize that! ‘He’ has been in his office since eight o’clock this morning. The Public Prosecutor’s here too. Last night, when they were looking for him everywhere, he was at La Rochelle, where he’d popped over by car. Do you know the Prosecutor?”
Maigret, who had knocked and been called to enter, opened the door and closed it behind him, leaving the redheaded reporter in the hall.
Julien Chabot was not alone. Dr. Alain Vernoux was sitting opposite him in an armchair and got up to greet the Chief Inspector.
“Did you sleep well?” the Magistrate inquired.
“Not at all badly.”
“I’ve been reproaching myself for my poor hospitality last night. You know Alain Vernoux. He’s dropped in to see me.”
That wasn’t true. Maigret was sure that it was he for whom the psychiatrist was waiting and even, perhaps, that this interview had been arranged between the two men.
Vernoux had taken off his overcoat. He was wearing a suit of rough wool, which with its indeterminate creases, could have done with some pressing. His tie was badly knotted. A yellow sweater protruded from under his vest. His shoes had not been polished. Even like this, he nonetheless belonged to the same class as his father, whose appearance was so meticulous.
Why did it make Maigret wince? One was too well groomed, dressed to the nines. The other, on the contrary, affected a carelessness that a bank employee, a schoolmaster, or a salesman could not have allowed himself; yet, one surely did not find suits of such material except at an exclusive tailor’s in Paris, or possibly Bordeaux.
There was a rather embarrassing silence. Maigret, who was doing nothing to help the two men, went and stood in front of the meager log fire beneath the mantelpiece, which was surmounted by the same black marble clock as the one in his own office at Quai des Orfèvres. At some time the authorities must have ordered them in hundreds, if not thousands. Perhaps they all alike lost twelve minutes a day, like Maigret’s?
“Alain was just telling me some interesting things,” murmured Chabot at last, his chin in his hand, in a pose very much that of an examining magistrate. “We were speaking of criminal lunacy…”
