14 - (Maigret) The Flemish Shop, page 5
“A month behindhand?”
“Yes. He’s been paying a hundred francs a month all along on account of the child. He couldn’t do less, could he? You see, it’s like this…”
Fearing his father was going to embark on a long rigmarole, Gérard quickly intervened.
“The inspector isn’t interested in all that. What he wants are facts. And there’s one fact that can’t be got away from, and that is, that Joseph Peeters was here on the evening of the 3rd, however much he may swear he wasn’t.”
“You’re referring to the man who says he saw his motorbike? I’m afraid that’s not much good now. Another fellow passed this way a little after eight that evening, and he was riding a motor-bike of the same make.”
“Ah!”
And more aggressively:
“Just what we thought! You’re on their side.”
“I’m not on anybody’s side. I’m merely trying to find out what happened.”
But Gérard only sneered. Turning to his father, he went on:
“The inspector’s only come here to see if he can trip us up.”
And then to Maigret:
“You’ll excuse me, won’t you? Lunch is ready, and I have to be back in the office by two.”
What was the good of arguing? Maigret cast a final look round him, caught sight of a child’s cot in the next room, then walked along the passage and let himself out.
Machère was waiting for him at the Hôtel de la Meuse. The commercial travellers were having lunch in a small room, separated from the café by a partition with a glass-panelled door. But meals were also served, for those who preferred it, on the marble tables of the café itself, and there were a few people eating as Maigret entered.
Machère was not alone. Sitting at the same table, with an apéritif before him, was a short man with a monstrously long moustache and arms as long as a hunchback’s. Both men stood up as Maigret approached.
“The skipper of the Etoile Polaire, Gustave Cassin,” announced Machère, whose eyes shone brightly.
Maigret sat down. A glance at the saucers that had accumulated in two little piles told him they had had three drinks apiece.
“Cassin has something to tell you.”
Indeed he had! He was bursting with it. With an air of great importance he leant over towards the inspector.
“Say what you’ve got to say—that’s right, isn’t it? Only, no need to say it till you’re asked to. That’s what my father used to say. No need to go butting in.”
“Un demi!” called out Maigret, ordering a glass of beer.
He pushed his bowler on to the back of his head and unbuttoned his overcoat. Then, while the bargee was groping for his words, he cut in:
“If my information’s correct, on the night of the 3rd you were drunk as a lord.”
“Not as drunk as all that. Not by any means. I’d had two or three glasses, but I could walk straight. And what’s more, I could see straight.”
“Did you see a motor-bike draw up at the Flemish shop?”
“Me?… Certainly not.”
Machère made a sign to Maigret not to interrupt the man, to whom he nodded encouragingly.
“I saw a woman on the quay… And I can tell you which one it was. The one who never serves in the shop and who takes the train every day…”
“Maria?”
“She might be called Maria, but I don’t know anything about that. But I know it was the thin one, with fair hair… And now tell me this: is it natural she should be wandering about on the quay in a wind sharp enough to go right through you?”
“What time was it?”
“The time I was going back to bed. It might have been eight o’clock; it might have been later.”
“Did she see you?”
“No. For instead of going straight on as I was going, I slipped behind the customs house and watched. I thought it could only be a man as could bring a girl out on a night like that, and I thought I might see a bit of fun.”
“You’ve been had up, I hear, for assaulting girls.”
Cassin grinned, showing a horrible set of rotten teeth. He might have been any age. His face was heavily lined, but the hair, which grew low on his forehead, was not yet turning grey.
He was eager to know the effect he was producing. After each sentence he looked at Maigret, then at Machère, then at a man sitting at the next table, who was listening to the conversation.
“Go on.”
“She wasn’t looking for a man… She was looking to see there was nobody!”
Cassin paused to let the words sink in. He swallowed down his drink in one mouthful and called out to the waiter: The same again.
Then out it came:
“She was looking to see the coast was clear. And then some other people came out of the house—by the back door. And they were carrying something long. Long and heavy it was. And they threw it into the Meuse, just between my boat and the Deux Frères, which was the next one downstream.”
“Waiter! The bill, please.”
Maigret didn’t seem in the least astonished. Machère was disconcerted, and so was the bargee.
“Come along with me.”
“Where?”
“Never mind. Come.”
“But I’m waiting for the drink I ordered.”
Maigret waited patiently till it was brought and duly swallowed. Then, telling the landlord he’d be back for lunch a few minutes later, he took the old drunkard out on to the quay.
The latter was deserted at that time of the day, everybody having returned home for lunch. Big drops of rain began to fall. Machère had followed them out.
“Now! Show me exactly where you stood.”
He was already familiar with the customs house. He watched Cassin take station in a corner.
“And you didn’t budge from there?”
“I should think not. I didn’t want to get mixed up in anything.”
“Come out of it!”
And Maigret went and stood in his place.
He didn’t stay there many seconds. Then, looking straight at Cassin, he said:
“You’ll have to think of something better than that, my friend.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what I say. In other words: it won’t wash… From that corner you can’t see the shop at all, nor the bit of the river you spoke of.”
“When I said I was there, I meant…”
“That’ll do! I tell you, you’ve got to think up something better than that. When you have, you can come and see me again! And if it doesn’t hold water… Well! There’s a very good chance of your being locked up again.”
Machère was crestfallen. He in turn took up his position in the corner. What Maigret had said was incontestable.
“You’re quite right,” he groaned.
As for the bargee, he didn’t say another word. With lowered head, he stared at Maigret’s feet, and his eyes were venomous.
“Don’t forget what I’ve told you. If your next story isn’t more plausible than that, we’ll clap you in gaol… Come along, Machère…”
And Maigret turned on his heel and made for the bridge, filling his pipe as he went.
“Do you think Cassin…?”
“I think it won’t be very long before he’s back again with another story to incriminate the Peeters.”
“All the same… We have to listen to evidence. If he’s got any…”
“He certainly will have!”
“What evidence?”
“How should I know?… But he’ll think of something.”
“To clear himself?”
But Maigret changed the subject by asking for some matches, having used all his own trying vainly to light his pipe in the wind.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t any. I don’t smoke.”
Machère wasn’t sure what Maigret said next, but it sounded rather like:
“I ought to have known it!”
* * *
Chapter V
AT THE CAFÉ DE LA MAIRIE
« ^ »
THE rain had started at lunch-time. It had increased before dark, and by eight o’clock had turned into a downpour.
The streets of Givet were empty. The barges glistened with wet. Maigret, with his coat collar turned up, trudged along towards the Flemish shop, pushed open the door, ringing the now familiar bell, and plunged into the warm atmosphere of coffee and spices.
It was at that time of the day on the 3rd of January that Germaine Piedbœuf had entered the shop, never to be seen by her family again.
Maigret hadn’t noticed before that the door to the kitchen was panelled with glass. A muslin curtain was drawn across it, so that he could hardly make out the people on the other side.
Someone got up.
“All right! It’s only me.”
And he walked straight through into the kitchen, thrusting himself abruptly into the private life of the family. It was Madame Peeters who had risen to go and serve in the shop. Her husband was in his wicker chair, as usual, so close to the stove that he looked in danger of catching fire. He was holding a clay pipe with a long stem of wild cherry, but he wasn’t smoking. His eyes were shut and his mouth half open, and his breathing came regularly.
As for Anna, she was sitting at the deal table, scrubbed with silver sand and polished with the years. She was totting up figures in a little account-book.
“Take the inspector into the sitting-room, Anna.”
“Please don’t move,” answered Maigret. “I’ve only looked in for a moment.”
“Well; take your coat off, anyhow.”
Another thing the inspector noticed for the first time was that Madame Peeters had a beautiful voice. It was low, grave, and caressing, and the Flemish accent made it all the more attractive.
“And you’ll have some coffee, won’t you?”
He wondered what Madame Peeters had been doing before his arrival, but the question was no sooner formulated than it was answered by the evening paper lying on the table and the steel-rimmed glasses that had been hastily put down.
He had butted in on a typically homely scene. The old man’s breathing seemed like the pulse of this quiet house. Anna shut up her account-book and fetched a cup and saucer from the dresser.
“I was hoping to see your sister.”
Madame Peeters shook her head sadly, while Anna explained:
“I’m afraid you won’t be seeing her for some days. That is, unless you go to Namur. One of the mistresses, who also lives at Givet, called a little while ago to tell us that Maria was laid up. When she got out of the train this morning, she slipped and sprained her ankle.”
“Where is she?”
“At the convent. They’ve put her up.”
Still shaking her head, Madame Peeters sighed:
“I don’t know what we’ve done for God to send us all this trouble.”
“And Joseph?”
“He won’t be back again till Saturday… But I was forgetting—that’s tomorrow.”
“Have you seen any more of Marguerite?”
“Only in church. At Vespers.”
Steaming coffee was poured into his cup. Madame Peeters disappeared for a moment, returning with a wine-glass and a bottle of gin.
“It’s old Schiedam schnapps.”
Maigret sat down. He wasn’t expecting to find out anything. In fact, his presence there was not wholly a matter of duty.
The house reminded him of Holland. His thoughts ran back to the case which had taken him to Delfzijl. Certainly there were differences. But here was the same calm, the same density of the air, the same feeling that the atmosphere was not fluid, but was composed of some solid substance that would be shattered if you moved.
Now and again the old man’s chair creaked, though he never moved. With his patient, even breathing he seemed not so much to be living as marking time.
Anna said something in Flemish, the meaning of which Maigret guessed as:
“You ought to have brought a bigger glass.”
From time to time a man in sabots would pass along the quay. The rain could be heard pattering on the shop window.
“I think you said it was raining on the third? Was it raining as hard as it is now?”
“Yes. I think so.”
The two women had resumed their seats. They watched Maigret raise his glass to his lips. In fact, Anna’s eyes never left him.
Her features were not so delicate as her mother’s. Nor did she possess her mother’s benevolent, indulgent smile.
Had she missed the photograph he had pinched from her room? Probably not. Surely her face would have betrayed it.
“It’s thirty-five years since we came here,” said Madame Peeters. “We started off with just the wicker business. Then we added the shop, and then we built another story on the house.”
But Maigret’s mind was wandering. He was picturing Anna four years younger, walking in the woods with Gérard Piedbœuf.
How had it happened? What sudden streak of wildness had assailed her? Or was Gérard really the expert hand he made himself out to be? What had she thought about it afterwards?
One thing Maigret felt pretty sure of. It was the one and only adventure of her life, and would always remain so.
There was something overpowering about the atmosphere of this house. Partly as a result of the schnapps, a dull warm glow gradually pervaded his brain. All the same, his senses vere acutely alive. Not a sound escaped him—a little squeak from the wicker chair, a gentle snore from the old man, the slightest increase or decrease in the pattering rain…
“Would you like to play me that piece again?” he asked Anna. “The one you played this morning.”
She was on the point of protesting, but her mother chimed in:
“Yes. Do… She plays well, doesn’t she? She had three lessons a week for six years from the best teacher in Givet.”
Anna went into the sitting-room, leaving the two doors open behind her. They could hear her opening the piano, then her right hand running casually over the keys.
“She ought to sing,” murmured Madame Peeters. “Though, of course, Marguerite has a better voice. There was even a question of her taking it up properly and going to the conservatoire.”
The notes swelled in the quiet house. Anna had started playing. The old man still slept unheeding, and his wife, fearing he might drop his pipe, took it gently from his hand and hung it on a nail in the wall.
What was Maigret doing there? Was he working? Was he following some clue?
Madame Peeters listened, glancing frequently at her paper, which she would have liked to go on with. Another person ought to have been sitting at that table—Maria correcting her pupils’ exercises.
And that was all.
Or would have been, if all the town hadn’t been accusing them of a ghastly murder, committed on just such an evening as this.
Maigret started at the sound of the shop bell. For a second, he could almost have fancied that he was three weeks younger and that this was Germaine Piedbœuf come to claim her little monthly allowance of a hundred francs.
It was a bargee in oilskins, who produced a little bottle for Madame Peeters to fill with gin.
“Eight francs.”
“In Belgian money?”
“No. In French. Or ten Belgian francs if you’d rather.”
Maigret got up and crossed the shop.
“Are you going already?”
“I’ll be looking in again tomorrow.”
Outside he saw the bargee making towards his boat. The inspector turned round to look at the house. With its shop window lit up, it looked like a stage setting, largely because of the music, faintly audible behind the scenes.
Gentle, sentimental music. Anna was singing now:
“Mais tu me reviendras,
Ô mon beau fiancé.”
Maigret splashed through the puddles. The drenching rain soon put his pipe out.
And now it was the whole of Givet which looked like a stage setting. The bargee had disappeared, and he was thus the only person left on the stage. All round him, nothing but the subdued lights showing through curtained windows, and the roar of the rushing Meuse, which gradually obliterated the music.
When he had gone some two hundred yards or so, he had both houses in sight. Behind him, the Flemish shop; on the right, close to, the Piedbœufs’ cottage.
There was no light upstairs, but the passage was lit up. The child would be in bed now. Would anybody else be in the house? Not much fun for a young man like Gérard, sitting there all alone. Or perhaps the midwife…
Maigret was fed up. Rarely had he had such a feeling of the futility of what he was about.
Indeed, what was he about? He hadn’t been sent there. The Peeters were accused of murdering a girl, but there was nothing whatever to show she was even dead.
Perhaps she’d had as much as she could stand of her dismal life in Givet. Perhaps she’d cleared out. Perhaps she was at that moment in Brussels, Rheims, or Paris, having a drink with friends she’d picked up.
Even if she was dead, it didn’t necessarily mean she’d been killed. What sort of a reception had the Peeters given her? Had they made her despair of ever marrying Joseph? And had she gone straight out and thrown herself into the river?
No proof. Not even a decent clue. Wasn’t Machère doing all he could? Yet he wasn’t getting anywhere, and it looked as though the case would in the end simply be pigeon-holed unsolved.
Why should Maigret have allowed himself to become involved in it? Once more: what was he doing there? There was no doubt of the answer most people in Givet would have given to that question! He had been hired by the Belgians to whitewash them!
Just opposite him, on the other bank of the river, was the factory, whose yard was lit up by a single electric lamp. The only other light came from the night-watchman’s lodge at the gate.
Old Piedbœuf would be on duty now. What would he do with himself to pass the night away?
And without exactly knowing why, Maigret, with his hands deep in his overcoat pockets, made straight for the bridge. In the bar he’d been in that morning, the bargees and tug skippers were talking so loudly that their words carried right across the quay, but he didn’t stop.
