Maigret and the Headless Corpse

by Georges Simenon

  ‘I’m getting to that. I was his lawyer. For years, I dined at the chateau once a week and I’ve always hunted on his lands. So I knew him well. First of all, he had a club foot, which may partly explain why he was so gloomy and touchy. No doubt the fact that everybody knew the history of his family and most of the chateaux in the region were closed to him didn’t help to make him any more sociable.

  ‘His whole life, he had the impression that people despised him and were conspiring to rob him, so he was always on the defensive, in anticipation of being attacked.

  ‘He took over a turret in the chateau and turned it into a kind of study where, for days on end, he’d go over the accounts, not only those of his tenant farmers and gamekeepers, but every one of his suppliers, correcting the butcher’s and grocer’s figures in red ink. He’d often go down to the kitchen when the servants were having their meals, to make sure they weren’t being served expensive dishes.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong in my betraying what were professional confidences between us. Anyone in Saint-André could tell you the same thing.’

  ‘Is Madame Calas his daughter?’

  ‘You guessed it.’

  ‘And Omer Calas?’

  ‘He worked at the chateau for four years as a manservant. He was the son of an alcoholic day labourer who didn’t amount to much. This all goes back twenty-five years.’

  He signalled to a passing waiter and said to Maigret:

  ‘This time, will you have a brandy with me? Two brandies, waiter! Obviously,’ he went on as soon as he turned back to Maigret, ‘you couldn’t have surmised all this just from visiting the bistro on Quai de Valmy.’

  That wasn’t entirely correct, and Maigret wasn’t in the least surprised by what he was learning.

  ‘I sometimes talked about Aline with old Dr Pétrelle, who’s sadly dead now and has been replaced by Camuzet. Camuzet never knew her and won’t be able to tell you anything about her. As for me, I’m incapable of describing her case to you in technical terms.

  ‘Even when she was a small child, she was different from the other little girls. There was something disturbing about her. She never played with anyone else, didn’t go to school either, because her father was determined for her to have a private tutor. She didn’t have just one, but a dozen at least, because the child saw to it that she made life impossible for them.

  ‘Did she hold her father responsible for the fact that she led an existence different from other people? Or was it much more complicated than that, as Pétrelle claimed? I have no idea. Most girls, it seems, love their fathers, sometimes to an exaggerated extent. I have no experience of that, because my wife and I don’t have children. Can that kind of love turn to hate?

  ‘Be that as it may, she seemed to take a delight in being the bane of Boissancourt’s life. At the age of twelve, she was caught trying to set fire to the chateau.

  ‘Fire was her obsession for quite a while, and they were forced to keep a close eye on her.

  ‘Then there was Omer, who was five or six years older than her and was then what the peasants call a strapping lad, sturdy, tough, with an insolent gleam in his eye as soon as his employer had his back turned.’

  ‘Did you see what happened between them?’ Maigret asked, looking absently around the almost empty brasserie, where the waiters were waiting for the last customers to leave.

  ‘Not at the time. Again, it was Pétrelle who told me this. According to him, she must have started taking an interest in Omer when she was no more than thirteen or fourteen. That happens to other girls that age, but it usually stays quite vague and more or less platonic.

  ‘Was it any different with her? Did Calas, who wasn’t exactly scrupulous, take advantage more than men usually do in such cases?

  ‘Whatever the truth of it, Pétrelle was convinced that they conducted a dubious relationship over a long period of time. He put it down largely to Aline’s need to defy her father, to disappoint him.

  ‘It’s possible. It’s not my field. The only reason I’m going into all these details is to make the rest more comprehensible.

  ‘One day, when she wasn’t yet seventeen, she went to see the doctor in secret and asked to be examined. He confirmed that she was pregnant.’

  ‘How did she take it?’ Maigret asked.

  ‘Pétrelle told me she looked him straight in the face and said between her teeth: “All the better!”

  ‘What you should know is that in the meantime, Calas had married the butcher’s daughter, because she was pregnant, too, and she’d given him a child a few weeks earlier. He was still working as a manservant at the chateau, because he had no other trade, and his wife was living with her parents.

  ‘One Sunday, the village learned that Aline de Boissancourt and Omer Calas had disappeared. According to the servants, there had been a dramatic scene the previous evening between the girl and her father. For more than two hours, they’d been heard arguing loudly in the small drawing room.

  ‘To the best of my knowledge, Boissancourt never tried to find his daughter. And as far as I know, she never wrote to him either.

  ‘As for Calas’ first wife, she became a depressive. She survived for another three years until she was found swinging from a tree in the orchard.’

  The waiters had piled up the chairs on most of the tables, and one of them was looking at Maigret and Canonge and holding a big silver watch in his hand.

  ‘I think we ought to let them close,’ Maigret said.

  Canonge insisted on paying for the drinks and they left. The night was cool, the sky starry, and they walked for a while in silence. It was Canonge who said:

  ‘Maybe we could find another place open for one last drink?’

  Each deep in his own thoughts, they walked along much of Boulevard Raspail until they spotted a little nightclub in Montparnasse. The lights outside were blue, and music could be heard wafting out from inside.

  ‘Shall we go in?’

  Instead of letting themselves be led to a table, they sat down at the bar, where two girls were hard at work on a fat man who was more than half drunk.

  ‘The same again?’ Canonge asked, taking another cigar from his pocket.

  A few couples were dancing. Two girls left the other end of the room and came and sat down next to them, but Maigret gestured them away, and they didn’t insist.

  ‘There are still Calases in Boissancourt and Saint-André,’ Canonge said.

  ‘I know. A cattle merchant and a grocer.’

  Canonge gave a little laugh. ‘It would be funny if the cattle merchant became rich enough in his turn to buy the chateau and the land! One of the Calases is Omer’s brother, the other his cousin. He also has a sister who married a gendarme in Gien. When Boissancourt had a brain haemorrhage a month ago, just as he was sitting down to eat, I went to see all three of them to find out if they’d heard from Omer.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Maigret cut in. ‘Didn’t Boissancourt disown his daughter?’

  ‘Everyone in the area was convinced he had. People were wondering who was going to inherit the property, because in a village like that, everyone more or less depends on the chateau.’

  ‘I assume you knew?’

  ‘No. In his last years, Boissancourt made several wills, all of them different, but never gave them to me for safekeeping. He must have torn them up one by one because none of them were found.’

  ‘In other words, his daughter inherits his property?’

  ‘Automatically.’

  ‘So you put an ad in the newspapers?’

  ‘Yes, as is usual in such cases. I couldn’t put the name Calas in it, since I didn’t know if they were married. Not many people read those kinds of ads. I didn’t think it’d lead to anything.’

  He had finished his brandy and was looking at the barman in a particular way. If his train had had a restaurant car, he must have already had two or three drinks before arriving in Paris, because his face was red and his eyes glistened.

 
‘Same again, inspector?’

  Could it be that Maigret, too, had drunk more than he thought? He didn’t say no. He felt fine, physically and mentally. He even had the impression that he was endowed with a sixth sense that allowed him to enter the skin of the people being talked about.

  Would he have been capable of reconstructing the story without Canonge’s help? He hadn’t been so far from the truth a few hours earlier, which was proved by the fact that he had thought of phoning Saint-André.

  If he hadn’t guessed everything, the idea he had got of Madame Calas nevertheless matched the one he might have of her now that he knew.

  ‘She started drinking,’ he murmured, with the sudden desire to talk in his turn.

  ‘I know. I saw her.’

  ‘When? Last week?’

  On this point, too, he had sensed the truth. But Canonge wouldn’t let him speak. In Saint-André he probably wasn’t used to being interrupted.

  ‘Let me take things in the order they happened, inspector. Don’t forget I’m a lawyer, and lawyers are meticulous people.’

  That made him laugh, and the girl sitting two stools away from him took advantage to ask him:

  ‘Can I order a drink, too?’

  ‘If you wish, my dear, provided you don’t butt into our conversation. It’s more important than you might think.’

  Smugly, he turned to Maigret.

  ‘Anyway, for three weeks my ad produced no results, apart from a few letters from crazy women. In the end, it wasn’t the ad that led me to Aline, but pure chance. A week ago, a hunting rifle I’d sent to Paris to be repaired was returned to me, by express service. I was at home when it was delivered and so I was the one who opened the door to the lorry driver.’

  ‘A lorry from Zenith Transport?’

  ‘You know that? That’s right. I offered the driver a glass of wine, as is the custom in the country. The Calas grocery is just opposite my house, on the church square. As he was having his drink, the man looked through the window and said:

  ‘ “I wonder if that’s the same family that owns the bistro on Quai de Valmy.”

  ‘ “Is there a Calas on the Quai de Valmy?” I asked.

  ‘ “A funny little bistro, where I’d never set foot before last week. It was one of the timekeepers who took me there.” ’

  Maigret would have sworn that the timekeeper was none other than Dieudonné Pape.

  ‘Did you ask him if the timekeeper had red hair?’

  ‘No. I asked him the first name of this particular Calas. He started searching in his memory, vaguely remembering reading the name on the front of the bistro. I suggested Omer, and he said that was it. To be sure, I took a train to Paris the next day.’

  ‘The evening train?’

  ‘No. The morning one.’

  ‘What time did you arrive at Quai de Valmy?’

  ‘Just after three in the afternoon. In the bistro, which was quite dark, I saw a woman I didn’t recognize immediately. I asked her if she was Madame Calas, and she said she was. Then I asked her her first name. She gave me the impression she was half drunk. She does drink, doesn’t she?’

  He, too, drank, not in the same way, but enough to now have watery eyes.

  Maigret wasn’t sure their glasses hadn’t been filled once again. The woman, who had changed stools, was leaning over Canonge and holding his arm. If she was following his story, nothing showed on her expressionless face.

  ‘ “You were born Aline de Boissancourt, weren’t you?” I asked her.

  ‘She looked at me and didn’t deny it. I remember she was sitting near the stove with a big ginger cat in her lap.

  ‘ “Have you heard that your father has died?” I continued.

  ‘She said she hadn’t, but didn’t show any surprise or emotion.

  ‘ “I was his lawyer, and now I’m handling his estate. Your father didn’t leave a will, Madame Calas, which means that the chateau, the land and his entire fortune pass to you.”

  ‘ “How did you get my address?” she asked.

  ‘ “I got it from a lorry driver who came here by chance.”

  ‘ “Does anybody else know it?”

  ‘ “I don’t think so.”

  ‘She stood up and went to the kitchen.’

  To have a drink from the bottle of cognac, obviously!

  ‘When she came back, she looked like someone who’d made up her mind.

  ‘ “I don’t want that money,” she declared in an indifferent voice. “I assume I have the right to give up the inheritance?”

  ‘ “Anyone has the right to refuse an inheritance. All the same …”

  ‘ “All the same what?”

  ‘ “I advise you to think it over and not come to a hasty decision.”

  ‘ “I have thought it over. I refuse. I assume I also have the right to demand that you don’t tell anyone where I am?”

  ‘As she spoke, she occasionally threw an anxious glance outside, as if she was afraid of seeing someone walk in, maybe her husband. At least that’s what I assumed.

  ‘I insisted, as was my duty. I haven’t found any other inheritors of Boissancourt.

  ‘ “It’s probably best if I come back another time,” I suggested.

  ‘ “No. Don’t come back. Omer absolutely mustn’t see you here. That would be the end of everything!” She seemed terrified.

  ‘ “Don’t you think you should consult your husband?”

  ‘ “Especially not him!”

  ‘I argued with her for a while longer, then got up to leave. I gave her my card and suggested she phone or write to me if she changed her mind over the next few weeks. A customer came in, who looked as if he was quite at home there.’

  ‘A red-headed man with a pockmarked face?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing. She put my card in the pocket of her apron and walked me to the door.’

  ‘What day was this?’

  ‘Last Thursday.’

  ‘Did you see her again?’

  ‘No. But I saw her husband.’

  ‘In Paris?’

  ‘In my office, in Saint-André.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Saturday morning. He arrived in Saint-André on Friday afternoon or Friday evening. The first time he came to see me was on Friday at about eight. I was at the doctor’s house, playing bridge, and the maid told him to come back the next day.’

  ‘Did you recognize him?’

  ‘Yes, even though he’d put on weight. He must have been staying at the village inn, where, of course, he’d heard about Boissancourt’s death. He must also have been told that his wife would inherit the family fortune. It didn’t take him long to throw his weight around, claiming that as the husband he was entitled to accept the inheritance on behalf of his wife. They married without a contract, in other words under the convention of common assets.’

  ‘Meaning one of them couldn’t do anything without the other?’

  ‘That’s what I told him.’

  ‘Did you have the impression that he’d had a conversation with his wife about this?’

  ‘No. At first, he didn’t even know she’d refused the inheritance. He seemed to think she’d got hold of it without his knowledge. I won’t tell you the whole conversation, it would take too long. I think his wife must have left my card lying about, probably forgetting I’d given it to her, and he’d found it. What could have brought a lawyer from Saint-André to Quai de Valmy, unless it was something to do with the Boissancourt inheritance?

  ‘It was only gradually, in my house, that he discovered the truth. He left in a rage, telling me that I’d be hearing from him and slamming the door.’

  ‘Did you see him again?’

  ‘No, and I didn’t hear from him either. This happened on Saturday morning, and he took the bus to Montargis, where he caught the train for Paris.’

  ‘Which train would that have been?’

  ‘Probably the one that gets into the Gare d
’Austerlitz just after three.’

  That meant he had got home about four, a little earlier if he had taken a taxi.

  ‘When I read that parts of a dismembered body had been found in the Canal Saint-Martin, on Quai de Valmy to be precise, I admit I was struck by the coincidence. As I told you earlier, I almost phoned you, then I told myself you might laugh at me. It was only when I heard the name Calas on the radio this afternoon that I made up my mind to come and see you.’

  ‘May I?’ the girl next to him asked, pointing to her empty glass.

  ‘Yes, of course, my dear. What do you think of that, inspector?’

  That word was enough for the girl to let go of his arm.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ murmured Maigret, whose head was starting to feel heavy.

  ‘Admit you never suspected a story like this! It’s only in the country that you encounter such bizarre characters, and even I confess …’

  Maigret wasn’t listening to him. He was thinking about Aline Calas, who had at last become a complete person in his mind. He could even imagine her as a little girl.

  And this person didn’t surprise him. He would have been hard put to explain it in words, especially to a man like Judge Coméliau, and he fully expected the latter’s incredulous reaction the next day.

  ‘The fact is,’ Coméliau would reply, ‘she committed a murder with the complicity of her lover.’

  Omer Calas was dead, and he obviously hadn’t killed himself. Someone must therefore have struck the fatal blow and then cut up his body.

  Maigret thought he could hear Coméliau’s shrill voice:

  ‘I call that cold blood, don’t you? You’re surely not going to tell me it’s a crime of passion? No, Maigret. I do sometimes agree with you, but this time …’

  Canonge held up a full glass.

  ‘Cheers!’

  ‘Cheers!’

  ‘What were you thinking about?’

  ‘Aline Calas.’

  ‘You think she followed Omer just to annoy her father?’

  Even with Canonge, and even after a few glasses of brandy, it was impossible to express what he thought he understood. It was necessary first of all to admit that everything the girl had done at the Boissancourt chateau was already a protest.

  Dr Pétrelle would no doubt have presented the case better than he could. Her arson attempts, first of all. Then her sexual relations with Calas. Finally, her departure with Calas, while others in her situation would have provoked an abortion.