‘Shall we walk around the park?’
They weren’t there to listen to the music. It was simply part of their routine to go past the bandstand at that time, and besides, there wasn’t a concert every day.
On some evenings, that area of the park was almost deserted. They strolled across it, turned right, and set out down the tree-lined avenue that ran parallel to a street full of neon signs. There were hotels, restaurants, shops and a cinema. They hadn’t been there yet, it wasn’t on their itinerary.
Some people were following the same route, almost at the same pace, others were going in the opposite direction. A few took a shortcut to the casino theatre where they’d arrive late, and there were glimpses of the occasional dinner-jacket or evening gown.
Elsewhere, these folk led different lives, in different neighbourhoods of Paris, in provincial towns or in Brussels, Amsterdam, Rome or Philadelphia.
They belonged to particular social circles that had their rules, their taboos and their passwords. Some were wealthy, others poor. There were invalids whose lives the treatment merely prolonged, and others whom it enabled to spend the rest of the year without having to worry too much about their health.
Here, they all mingled. For Maigret, it had all begun uneventfully, one evening when they were having dinner at the Pardons. Madame Pardon had cooked pressed duck, one of her specialities, which Maigret loved.
‘Isn’t it any good?’ she’d asked anxiously, seeing Maigret eat only a few mouthfuls.
Whereas Pardon suddenly looked at his guest with concern.
‘Are you in pain?’
‘Not really … It’s nothing …’
Even so, the doctor noticed that his friend’s face was pale and that there were beads of sweat on his forehead.
He said no more during the meal. Maigret had barely taken a sip from his glass. When offered a vintage Armagnac with the coffee, he raised his hand.
‘Not tonight … I’m sorry …’
Only later, Pardon said quietly:
‘Shall we go into my consulting room for a moment?’
Maigret followed him reluctantly. For some time he had foreseen that this would happen one day, but he kept postponing that day. The doctor’s consulting room was neither big nor luxurious. On the desk a stethoscope lay next to vials, tubes of ointment and paperwork, and the bed where patients were examined seemed to have retained the deep imprint of the last one.
‘What’s wrong, Maigret?’
‘I don’t know. Age, probably …’
‘Fifty-two?’
‘Fifty-three … I’ve had a lot of work recently, worries … No sensational cases … Nothing exciting, on the contrary … On the one hand, lots of red tape, because we’re in the middle of overhauling the Police Judiciaire, and on the other, this spate of attacks on lone girls and women, sometimes involving rape … The press is making a hoo-ha and I don’t have enough men to set up the necessary patrols without decimating the department …’
‘Are you having problems with your digestion?’
‘Occasionally … Sometimes, like this evening, my stomach’s in a knot, I have pain, or rather a sort of tightening of my chest and abdomen … I feel heavy, tired …’
‘Would you mind if I examined you?’
His wife, in the next room, must have guessed, Madame Pardon too, and that bothered Maigret. He had a horror of anything even remotely connected with illness.
As he removed his tie, jacket, shirt and vest, he recalled one of his adolescent notions.
‘I can’t live,’ he’d announced at the time, ‘with pills, potions, a diet, reduced activity. I’d rather die than be an invalid …’
His idea of ‘an invalid’ was someone who was forever listening to their heart, worrying about their stomach, their liver or their kidneys, and exhibiting their naked body to the doctor on a regular basis.
He no longer wished to die young, but he was putting off the time when he would become ill.
‘My trousers too?’
‘Drop them a little …’
Pardon took his blood pressure, examined him and felt his stomach and abdomen, pressing certain places with his fingers.
‘Does that hurt?’
‘No … Maybe a little tender … No, lower …’
Now he was like the others, anxious, ashamed of his fears and not daring to look his friend in the face. He got dressed again, awkwardly. Pardon’s tone hadn’t changed.
‘How long is it since you’ve had a holiday?’
‘Last year I managed to get away for a week, then I was called back because—’
‘What about the previous year?’
‘I stayed in Paris …’
‘With the life you lead, your organs should be in five times worse shape than they are—’
‘My liver?’
‘It has nobly withstood the strain you put it under … It’s slightly enlarged, for certain, but not hugely swollen, and it has maintained its elasticity …’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing specific … More or less everything … You’re tired, that’s a fact, and it’s not a one-week holiday that will rid you of that fatigue … How do you feel when you wake up in the morning?’
‘Crabby …’
That made Pardon laugh.
‘Do you sleep well?’
‘My wife says I’m restless and that I sometimes talk in my sleep …’
‘You’re not filling your pipe?’
‘I’m trying to smoke less.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know … I’m also trying to drink less …’ ‘Have a seat.’
Pardon sat down too, and, at his desk, looked more like a doctor than in the dining room or the living room.
‘Now listen to me … You’re not ill and you enjoy exceptional good health given your age and your occupation … So get that into your head once and for all … Stop worrying about the odd twinge and vague aches and pains, and don’t start being nervous about climbing stairs—’
‘How do you know?’
‘And you, when you question a suspect, how do you know?’
They both smiled.
‘Now we’re in late June. Paris is sweltering. You are going to take a nice holiday, without leaving an address, if possible. In any case, you must avoid telephoning Quai des Orfèvres every day …’
‘I could do,’ said Maigret gruffly. ‘Our little house in Meung-sur-Loire—’
‘You’ll have time to enjoy that once you’ve retired … This year, I have other plans for you. Do you know Vichy?’
‘I’ve never set foot there, even though I was born less than fifty kilometres away, near Moulins … In those days, people didn’t all have cars …’
‘By the way, does your wife have a driving licence?’ ‘We’ve even bought a four-CV …’
‘I think that a course of treatment at Vichy would do you the world of good … A thorough cleansing of your body …’
He nearly burst out laughing on seeing Maigret’s expression.
‘Take the waters?’
‘A few glasses of water each day … I don’t think the specialist will make you sit in mud baths or hot springs, or prescribe mechanotherapy and all that nonsense … You’re not a serious case … Twenty-one days of a regular lifestyle, without any worries—’
‘Without beer, without wine, without eating out, without—’
‘How many years have you been indulging?’
‘I’ve had my share …’ he admitted.
‘And you’ll have more, even if that share is slightly reduced … Is that agreed?’
Maigret was amazed to hear himself say, as he stood up, like any other of Pardon’s patients:
‘It’s agreed.’
‘When?’
‘In a few days’ time, a week at most, once I’ve tied up all the loose ends …’
‘I’m going to refer you to one of my colleagues there who’s more knowledgeable about these things than I am … I know half a dozen specialists
… Let’s see … Rian is still young and isn’t at all pompous … I’ll give you his address and telephone number … I’ll write to him tomorrow to inform him.’
‘Thank you, Pardon …’
‘That wasn’t too painful, was it?’
‘You were very gentle.’
In the living room, he gave his wife a reassuring smile, but they didn’t talk about illness at the Pardons.
It was only when they reached Rue Popincourt, walking arm in arm, that Maigret muttered, as if it was something unimportant:
‘We’re spending our holiday in Vichy …’
‘Are you going to take the waters?’
‘May as well, while I’m there!’ He laughed. ‘I’m not ill. Apparently, I’m in exceptionally good health. That’s why I’m being sent to drink water …’
It didn’t just date from that visit to Pardon. For some time he’d had the strange impression that everyone was younger than him, whether it was the prefect or the examining magistrates, defendants he was questioning or, now, this Doctor Rian, who was fair-haired and affable and not yet forty.
A kid, in other words, a young man at the most, nevertheless earnest and self-assured, who was going to decide his fate.
This thought both annoyed and worried him, because he didn’t feel like an old man, or even one who was ageing.
Despite his youthfulness, Doctor Rian lived in a pretty pink-brick residence on Boulevard des États-Unis and, while the décor was reminiscent of the 1900s, it was still opulent-looking, with its marble staircases, carpets, polished furniture and the maid in a frilly broderie anglaise cap.
‘I presume your parents are no longer living …? What did your father die of?’
The doctor wrote his replies down on an index card, painstakingly, in the calligraphic style characteristic of a Sergeant-Major nib pen.
‘What about your mother …? Do you have any brothers …? Sisters …? Childhood illnesses …? Measles …? Scarlet fever …?’
Not scarlet fever but measles, very young, when his mother had still been alive. It was even the warmest, most comforting memory he had of her, because he was to lose her shortly afterwards.
‘What sports have you played …? No accidents …? Do you often get throat infections …? Heavy smoker, I presume …?’
The young doctor smiled mischievously, to show Maigret that he knew him by reputation.
‘One could say that you led a sedentary life …’
‘It all depends. Sometimes I spend three weeks or a month in my office all day and then suddenly I’m out and about for several days …’
‘Regular meals?’
‘No …’
‘You don’t follow a diet of any kind?’
Was he not obliged to admit that he loved slow-cooked dishes, stews and sauces of every imaginable flavour?
‘Not just a food lover, but a big eater, eh?’
‘Quite big, yes …’
‘What about wine? Half a litre? A litre a day?’
‘Yes … No … More … With meals, I usually have just two or three glasses … At the office, sometimes a beer, which I have sent up from a nearby brasserie.’
‘Aperitif?’
‘Quite often, with one or another of my colleagues …’
At the Brasserie Dauphine. It wasn’t to get drunk but for the atmosphere, the familiar crush, the smell of cooking, aniseed and calvados that had impregnated the walls. Why was he ashamed of it all of a sudden, in front of this young man who was so spruce and so comfortably housed?
‘In short, no real excesses …’
He wanted to be honest.
‘It depends what you call excesses. In the evenings, I don’t say no to a glass or two of sloe brandy which my sister-in-law sends us from Alsace … My investigations often require me to spend a certain amount of time in cafés or bars … It’s hard to explain … If I start one of these investigations on Vouvray, for example, because I find myself in a bar specializing in it, I tend to continue on Vouvray.’
‘How many a day?’
This reminded him of his childhood, the village confessional redolent of mouldy old wood and the priest who snorted snuff.
‘A lot?’
‘You’d probably say it was a lot …’
‘Does it go on for long?’
‘Sometimes three days, sometimes eight or ten if not more. It depends on luck …’
The doctor didn’t reprimand him. He wasn’t given a rosary to recite, but he could guess what the fair-haired doctor, sitting in the sunlight, perched on a fine mahogany desk, thought of him.
‘No severe indigestion? No heartburn, dizziness …?’
Dizziness, yes. Nothing serious. Occasionally, especially over the past few weeks, he felt as if he were in a less solid world that was slightly unreal. He himself was floating, his legs wobbly.
It wasn’t bad enough to seriously worry him, but it was unpleasant. Luckily this sensation only lasted a few minutes. Once, it had happened when he was about to cross Boulevard du Palais and he’d waited before venturing into the road.
‘I see … I see …’
What did he see? That he was ill? That he smoked and drank too much? That it was time, at his age, to go on a diet?
Maigret wasn’t dismayed. He smiled, with the smile his wife had seen on his face since they’d been in Vichy. He appeared to be laughing at himself, but even so he was a little dispirited.
‘Let us go next door …’
The whole works this time! The doctor even made him climb up and down the rungs of a stepladder for three minutes. Blood pressure lying down, sitting and standing. Then the screen.
‘Breathe … Deeper … Hold your breath … Breathe in … Hold it … Breathe out …’
It was funny and upsetting, dramatic and crazy. He had another thirty years to live, perhaps, but it was equally possible that in a few minutes he’d be told tactfully that his life as a man in good health, as a normal man, was over and that from now on he would be an invalid.
They had all been through the same thing, all the people they met in the park, around the springs, under the luxuriant trees, by the lake, and even those who sun-bathed on the beach, the boules players, the tennis players glimpsed on the other side of the Allier in the shade of the Sporting Club.
‘Mademoiselle Jeanne …’
‘Yes, monsieur …’
The nurse knew what she had to bring. It was all part of a routine like the one the Maigrets were going to adopt.
First of all, the little device to prick his fingertip and collect drops of blood that would be divided among several test tubes.
‘Relax … Clench your fist …’
A needle pricked the vein in his arm.
‘Unclench …’
This wasn’t the first time he’d had his blood taken, but it felt as if this time the test had taken on a sort of solemnity.
‘Thank you … You can put your clothes back on now.’
They met up again in the office whose walls were lined with books and medical journals bound year by year.
‘I don’t think heavy medication is required in your case … I’ll see you the day after tomorrow at the same time, when I’ll have the results of your tests … In the meantime, I’ve devised a regimen for you … You’re staying at a hotel, I assume …? Just give this sheet to the hotel manager … He’ll know what to do.’
A printed card with two columns: in one, dishes that were allowed, and in the other, dishes that were prohibited. There were even sample menus on the back.
‘I don’t know whether you’re aware of the therapeutic benefits of the various springs. There used to be a little book on the subject, written by two of my colleagues, but I think it’s out of print … We’re going to try, first of all, to alternate the waters of two springs, Chomel and Grande Grille, both of which you’ll find in the park …’
The two men were solemn. Maigret didn’t feel like shrugging or laughing while the doctor scribbled on a notepad.
> ‘Are you in the habit of rising early and having breakfast …? I see … Is your wife here with you …? In that case, I shan’t send you across town on an empty stomach … Let’s see … Start in the morning, at around ten thirty, at the Grande Grille … You’ll find chairs to sit on and, if it’s raining, a big glazed hall … Drink a glass of water every half-hour, three times, as hot as you can manage …
‘In the afternoon, at around five, do the same thing at the Chomel spring …
‘Don’t be surprised if, the next day, you feel a bit lethargic … It’s a temporary effect of the treatment … Besides, I’ll see you again then …’
All that was already ages ago. Then he was just a novice confusing one spring with another. Now, he was settled into the treatment routine, like the thousands, the tens of thousands of men and women he rubbed shoulders with from morning to evening.
Sometimes all the little yellow chairs in the park were taken, like in the evening, around the bandstand, each person waiting until it was time to go and drink their second, third or fourth dose.
Like the others, he’d bought a measuring glass and Madame Maigret had insisted on having her own.
‘But you’re not taking the waters.’
‘Why not? What harm can it do? I read in the brochures that the waters make you lose weight …’
The glasses were kept in woven-straw cases and Madame Maigret wore both of them over her shoulder the way racegoers wear their binoculars.
The two of them had never been for so many walks. They were outdoors from nine o’clock in the morning and, apart from delivery men, they were almost the only people in the quiet streets of the neighbourhood they were staying in, the France district, close to the Célestins spring.
A few minutes from their hotel there was a children’s playground, with a paddling pool, swings, games of all kinds and even a puppet theatre that was bigger than the one on the Champs-Élysées.
‘Do you have your ticket, monsieur?’
They had paid one franc each and strolled beneath the trees, watching the almost naked kids frolicking, and had come back the next day.
‘If you buy a book of twenty tickets, it’ll be cheaper …’
He didn’t dare. It was too premeditated. They had walked past by chance. It was only out of habit, out of idleness that they came back each day at the same time.
Maigret Hesitates Page 15
