Maigret Afraid, page 9
part #1 of Maigret 42 Series
“Will you come in?”
Maigret said no:
“No point in waking your mother.”
“She won’t be asleep. She never goes to bed before I’m back.”
“We’ll see each other tomorrow morning.”
“Here?”
“I’ll call at the Palais.”
“I’ve a certain number of telephone calls to make before I go to bed. Maybe there’ll be something new?”
“Good night, Chabot.”
“Good night, Maigret. Good night, Alain.”
They shook hands. The key turned in the lock; a moment later the door was shut again.
“May I come with you to the hotel?”
They were the only people in the street. For a split second, Maigret had a vision of the doctor taking his hand out of his pocket and knocking him on the skull with a hard object, a bit of lead piping or a wrench.
He replied:
“I’d be glad.”
They set off. Alain could not bring himself to speak right away. When he did so, it was to ask:
“What do you think of it?”
“Of what?”
“Of Father.”
What could Maigret reply? What was interesting was the fact that the question was being asked, that the young doctor had left his own home with no other reason than to ask it.
“I don’t think he has had a happy life,” the Chief Inspector murmured nonetheless, without much conviction.
“Are there people who do have a happy life?”
“For a while, at least. You are unhappy then, Monsieur Vernoux?”
“Oh, I don’t count.”
“Yet you try to get your share of pleasure.”
The big eyes stared at him.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Or, if you like, that totally unhappy people don’t exist. Everyone clings to something, creates a kind of happiness for himself.”
“Do you realize what that means?”
And, since Maigret did not reply:
“Do you know that it’s this search for what I would call compensation, this search for some kind of happiness in spite of everything, that produces neurotics and, often, completely unbalanced people? The men who, at this moment, are drinking and playing cards at the Café de la Poste are trying to convince themselves that they are enjoying themselves there.”
“And you?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“Don’t you look for compensation?”
This time, Alain was worried, suspected Maigret of knowing more, was reluctant to question him.
“Are you going to dare to go to the barracks district tonight?”
It was rather out of pity that the Chief Inspector asked that, in order to relieve him of his doubts.
“You know?”
“Yes.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“For quite a time.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Everything.”
“Have I done wrong?”
“I’m not judging you. You’re the one who brought up the subject of the instinctive quest for compensation. What are your father’s compensations?”
They had lowered their voices, for they had reached the open door of the hotel, where a single light was on in the lobby.
“Why don’t you answer?”
“Because I don’t know the answer.”
“Does he have no affairs?”
“Certainly not in Fontenay. He’s too well known and it would get around.”
“And you? Does it get around too?”
“No. My case isn’t the same. When my father goes to Paris or Bordeaux, I suppose he treats himself to a little amusement.”
He murmured to himself:
“Poor Papa!”
Maigret looked at him in surprise.
“Are you fond of your father?”
Modestly Alain replied:
“Anyhow, I’m sorry for him.”
“Has it always been like that?”
“It’s been worse. My mother and aunt have calmed down a bit.”
“What have they got against him?”
“That he’s a self-made man, the son of a cattle dealer who used to get drunk in village inns. The Courçons have never forgiven him for having needed him. Do you understand? And in the days of old Courçon his position was more painful, because Courçon was even more scathing than his daughters and his son, Robert. Until the death of my father, every Courçon in the land will reproach him for the fact that they live off his money.”
“How do they treat you, yourself?”
“As a Vernoux. And my wife, whose father was Vicomte de Cadeuil, is hand in glove with my mother and aunt.”
“Did you intend to tell me all this, this evening?”
“I don’t know.”
“You meant to talk to me about your father?”
“I wanted to know what you thought of him.”
“Weren’t you chiefly anxious to know if I’d discovered the existence of Louise Sabati?”
“How did you find out?”
“Through an anonymous letter.”
“Does the Magistrate know about it? The police?”
“They aren’t doing anything about it.”
“But will they?”
“Not if the murderer is discovered fairly soon. I have the letter in my pocket. I haven’t spoken to Chabot about my interview with Louise.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t think, in the present state of the case, it has any bearing on it.”
“She has nothing to do with it.”
“Tell me, Monsieur Vernoux…”
“Yes.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-six.”
“How old were you when you finished your studies?”
“I left medical school at twenty-five and then I was a resident at Sainte-Anne for two years.”
“You’ve never been tempted to live on your own?”
He seemed suddenly disheartened.
“Don’t you want to answer?”
“I’ve nothing to answer. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Lack of courage?”
“I knew you would call it that.”
“Nevertheless, you didn’t return to Fontenay-le-Comte in order to look after your father?”
“Look, it’s both simpler and more complicated than that. I came back one day to spend several weeks’ vacation here.”
“And you stayed on?”
“Yes.”
“Aimlessly?”
“If you like. Though it’s not exactly that.”
“You felt you couldn’t do anything else?”
Alain dropped the subject.
“How is Louise?”
“The same as ever, I imagine.”
“She isn’t worried?”
“Is it long since you saw her?”
“Two days. I went to her house yesterday evening. After that, I didn’t dare. Nor today. This evening, it’s worse, with men patrolling the streets. Do you understand why it is, since the first murder, public opinion has turned against us?”
“It’s a phenomenon I’ve often noted.”
“Why choose us?”
“Whom do you think they suspect? Your father or you?”
“It doesn’t matter to them so long as it’s one of the family. My mother or aunt would suit them just as well.”
They had to stop talking because steps were approaching. It was two men with arm bands and clubs, who took stock of them as they passed. One of them shone the beam of a flashlight on them and, as they moved off, said in a loud voice to his companion:
“It’s Maigret.”
“The other is Vernoux’s son.”
“I recognized him.”
The Chief Inspector advised his companion:
“You’d better go home.”
“Yes.”
“And don’t get involved with them.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Oh, nothing.”
He didn’t hold out his hand. His hat on one side, he went off, bent forward, in the direction of the bridge, and the patrol, which had stopped, watched him pass in silence.
Maigret shrugged his shoulders, went into the hotel, and waited for someone to hand him his key. There were two letters for him, probably anonymous, but neither the paper nor the handwriting was the same.
* * *
6
When he realized it was Sunday, he began to dawdle. Even before this, he had been playing a secret game from his early childhood. He occasionally played it still, in bed beside his wife, taking care that she should guess nothing. And she would be taken in, saying, when she brought him his cup of coffee:
“What were you dreaming of?”
“Why?”
“You were smiling in your sleep.”
This morning, at Fontenay, before opening his eyes, he felt a ray of sunshine passing through his eyelids. He didn’t merely feel it. He had the impression of seeing it through the fine skin, which was tingling, and, probably because of the blood circulating there, it was a sun redder than the one in the sky, glorious, as in a painting.
He could create a whole world with this sun, showers of sparks, volcanoes, cascades of melted gold. He simply had to keep his eyelids moving lightly like a kaleidoscope, using his lashes as a grid.
He heard pigeons cooing on a cornice above his window, then bells ringing from two directions at once, and he could imagine the steeples pointing up into the sky, which was surely an unclouded blue today.
He went on with his game, all the while listening to the noises in the street, and it was then, from the echo that lingered after footsteps, from a certain quality of the silence, that he recognized it was Sunday.
He hesitated some time before stretching out his arm to reach his watch on the bedside table. It showed half past nine. In Paris, on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, if spring had at last reached there too, Madame Maigret would certainly have opened the windows and tidied the room, in dressing gown and slippers, while a stew would be simmering on the stove.
He promised himself he would telephone her. Since there were no telephones in the bedrooms, he would have to wait until he went down, and call her from the telephone booth.
He pressed the electric bell. He thought the chambermaid looked neater, jollier than on the day before.
“What would you like to eat?”
“Nothing. I want a lot of coffee.”
She had the same curious way of looking at him.
“Shall I run you a bath?”
“Not until I’ve finished my coffee.”
He lit a pipe, went to open the window. The air was still sharp—he had to put on his dressing gown—but little waves of warmth could already be felt. The façades of houses and the roads had dried out. The street was deserted, except now and again for a family going by in their Sunday best, a country woman holding a bunch of mauve lilacs in her hand.
The life of the hotel must have slowed down, for he had to wait a long time for his coffee. He had left the two letters he had received the night before on the bedside table. One of them was signed. The handwriting was as neat as on an engraving, in black ink like India ink.
“Are you aware that the widow Gibon was the midwife who delivered Madame Vernoux of her son Alain?
“It may be useful to know.
“Best wishes.
“Anselme Remouchamps.”
The second letter, anonymous, had been written on a sheet of paper of excellent quality, the top of which had been cut off, doubtless to remove the imprint. It was written in pencil.
“Why don’t you question the servants? They know more about it than anyone.”
When he had read these two lines, the previous evening, before going to bed, Maigret had had an intuition that they had been written by the butler at Rue Rabelais, who had received him without a word and who at his departure had handed him his overcoat. The man, dark-complexioned, strongly built, was between forty and fifty years of age. He gave the impression of being a farmer’s son who has refused to cultivate the land, and who harbors as much hatred for rich people as he pours scorn on the peasants from whom he has sprung.
It would probably be easy to obtain a specimen of his handwriting. Perhaps the paper was even the Vernouxs’ own?
All this had to be checked. In Paris, the task would have been simple. Here, actually, it was no business of his.
When the chambermaid came in at last with the coffee, he asked her:
“Are you from Fontenay?”
“I was born on Rue des Loges.”
“Do you know anyone called Remouchamps?”
“The shoemaker?”
“His Christian name’s Anselme.”
“He’s the shoemaker who lives two doors away from my mother; he has a wart on his nose as big as a pigeon’s egg.”
“What sort of man is he?”
“He’s been a widower for I don’t know how many years. I’ve always known him as a widower. He leers strangely when girls go by to frighten them.”
She looked at him in surprise.
“Do you smoke your pipe before drinking your coffee?”
“You may get my bath ready.”
He went to have it in the bathroom at the end of the hall and spent a long time in the warm water, daydreaming. Several times he opened his mouth as if to speak to his wife, whom, when he was having a bath, he usually heard going to and fro in the next room.
It was quarter past ten when he went downstairs. The hotel proprietor was behind the desk, in consultation with the cook.
“The Examining Magistrate telephoned twice.”
“At what time?”
“The first time, a little after nine o’clock, the second a few minutes ago. The second time he called I replied that it wouldn’t be very long before you were down.”
“May I make a call to Paris?”
“Being Sunday, perhaps it won’t take long.”
He gave his number, went to take the air outside the front door. There was no one there, today, to watch him. A cock crowed somewhere, not far off, and one could hear the waters of the Vendée flowing past. When an old woman in a mauve hat came by, he would have sworn he caught a whiff of incense from her clothes.
It was well and truly Sunday.
“Hello! Is that you?”
“You’re still at Fontenay? Are you telephoning from Chabot’s? How is his mother?”
Instead of replying, he inquired in turn:
“What’s the weather like in Paris?”
“Since midday yesterday it’s been spring.”
“Midday yesterday?”
“Yes. It began immediately after lunch.”
He had lost half a day of sunshine!
“And what’s it like there?”
“It’s fine too.”
“You haven’t caught a cold?”
“I’m very well.”
“Are you coming back tomorrow morning?”
“I think so.”
“Aren’t you sure? I thought…”
“I may be detained a few hours.”
“What with?”
“Some work.”
“You told me…”
… That he would seize the chance of having a rest, of course! Wasn’t he having a rest?
That was practically all. They exchanged the remarks they usually exchanged by telephone.
After which he rang Chabot at his home. Rose answered that the Magistrate had left for the Palais at eight in the morning. He called the Palais de Justice.
“Anything new?”
“Yes. They have recovered the weapon. That’s why I called you. They told me you were asleep. Can you come up here?”
“I’ll be along in a few minutes.”
“The gates are closed. I’ll watch out for you at the window and let you in.”
“Has something gone wrong?”
Chabot’s voice on the phone seemed dejected.
“I’ll talk to you about it.”
Maigret nonetheless took his time. He was determined to savor the Sunday and was soon walking slowly along Rue de la République, where the Café de la Poste had already set out its chairs and little yellow tables on the terrace.
Two houses farther on, the baker’s shop door was open, and Maigret slowed down still more to inhale the sugary smell.
The bells were ringing. There was starting to be more life on the street, roughly opposite Julien Chabot’s house. It was the crowd beginning to come out of the half past ten mass at the church of Notre Dame. It seemed to him that the people were not behaving quite as they would on other Sundays. There weren’t many of the faithful making straight for home.
Groups were forming in the square; they were not arguing noisily but talking in low voices, often stopping completely as they watched the doors out of which the stream of parishioners was flowing. Even the women were in no hurry, holding their gilt-edged missals in their gloved hands, and almost all of them were wearing bright spring hats.
Outside the porch stood a long, gleaming motorcar, with, standing by its door, a chauffeur in black uniform whom Maigret recognized as the Vernouxs’ butler.
Did these people, who lived no more than four hundred yards away, generally drive to high mass by car? It was possible. It was, perhaps, part of their tradition. It was also possible that they had taken the car today in order to avoid contact with inquisitive people in the streets.
They were just coming out, and the white head of Hubert Vernoux stood out above the others. He was walking with slow steps, his hat in his hand. When he reached the top of the steps, Maigret recognized, beside him, his wife, sister-in-law, and daughter-in-law.
The crowd dispersed imperceptibly. Strictly speaking they didn’t clear the way, but there was, nevertheless, a wide space around them, and all eyes converged on their group.
The chauffeur opened the door. The women entered first. Then Hubert took his place on the front seat and the limousine glided off in the direction of Place Viète.
Perhaps at that moment, a word uttered by someone in the crowd, a shout, a gesture would have sufficed to make popular fury assert itself. Anywhere else than at the exit from church it might well have happened. People’s faces were hard, and though the clouds had been swept from the sky, there yet remained a sense of unrest in the air.
