‘I had to account for every franc I spent. And when I went out he demanded to know where I was going; he questioned me afterwards about the people I had spoken to, about what I had said and what they had replied …’
‘Were you unfaithful to him?’
She wasn’t outraged. It even seemed to Maigret that she was tempted to smile with a certain satisfaction, indeed a certain relish, but restrained herself.
‘Why would you ask that? Have people talked to you about me?’
‘No.’
‘While I was living with him, I didn’t do anything that he could reproach me for.’
‘What made you decide to leave?’
‘I had had enough. I was suffocating, as I say, and I wanted my daughters to grow up in a more breathable atmosphere.’
‘You had no more personal reason for getting your freedom back?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Did your daughters know?’
‘I haven’t hidden the fact that I have a boyfriend, and they’re on my side.’
‘Does he live with you?’
‘I go and see him at his place. He’s a widower, my age, who was no happier with his wife than I was with my husband, so we both seem to be gluing the pieces back together.’
‘Does he live around here?’
‘In this very building, two floors down. He’s a doctor. You’ll see his plaque on the door. If Alain agrees to a divorce one day, we plan to marry, but I doubt it will happen. He is very Catholic, by tradition rather than conviction.’
‘Does your husband make a living?’
‘With ups and downs. When I left him, it was agreed that he would give me a modest maintenance for the children. He kept his word for a few months. Then there were delays. And in the end he stopped paying anything at all, on the grounds that they were old enough to earn a living. That still doesn’t make him a murderer, does it?’
‘Were you aware of his uncle’s relationship?’
‘You mean Isabelle?’
‘Did you know that the Prince of V—died on Sunday morning, and that he was buried today?’
‘I read it in the paper.’
‘Do you think that if Saint-Hilaire had lived, he would have married the princess?’
‘It’s quite likely. He hoped for his whole life that they would be united one day. It touched me to hear him talking about her as if about an other-worldly being, an almost supernatural creature, when he was a man who appreciated the realities of life, sometimes even a little too much …’
This time she smiled openly.
‘One day, a long time ago, when I went to see him, I can’t remember why, I had trouble keeping his hands off me. He wasn’t embarrassed about it. In his eyes it was completely natural …’
‘Did your husband know?’
She shrugged.
‘Was he jealous?’
‘In his way. We didn’t have much contact, if you see what I mean, and it was always cold, almost mechanical. What he would have condemned wasn’t that I might have been attracted to another man, but that I might be in error, I might commit a sin, a betrayal, an act that he considered somehow unclean. Forgive me if I’ve said too much, and if it sounds as if I’m blaming him, which isn’t the case. You’ll have noticed that I don’t make myself sound any better than I am. It’s a long time since I felt like a woman, and I’m making the most of it …’
She had a full mouth and sparkling eyes. For some minutes she had been crossing and uncrossing her legs.
‘Are you sure I can’t offer you something to drink?’
‘Thank you. I should be off.’
‘I assume this will all stay confidential?’
He smiled at her and walked towards the door, where she extended a chubby, warm hand.
‘I’m going to get on with my daughter’s dress,’ she murmured, almost reluctantly.
So for a moment he had escaped the circle of old people. Leaving the flat on Rue de la Pompe, he wasn’t surprised to find himself back in the street, with its noises and smells.
He immediately found a taxi and had it take him to Rue Saint-Dominique. Before entering the building, he decided after all to have the beer that he had refused when it was offered by Madame Mazeron, and in the bar he rubbed shoulders with chauffeurs from the ministries and large firms.
The reporter was still there.
‘As you see, I didn’t try to follow you. I don’t suppose you can tell me who you went to see?’
‘The notary.’
‘Did he tell you anything new?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Still no lead?’
‘None.’
‘Are we sure that it isn’t political?’
‘It would seem not to be.’
There was a uniformed policeman here too. Maigret rang the doorbell beside the lift shaft. Janvier opened the door in his shirt-sleeves; Jaquette wasn’t in the office.
‘What have you done with her? Did you let her go out?’
‘No. She tried to, after the phone call, claiming that there was nothing to eat in the house.’
‘Where is she?’
‘In the bedroom. She’s resting.’
‘What phone call are you talking about?’
‘Half an hour after you left, the phone rang, and I answered. I heard a woman’s voice, quite faintly, at the end of the line.
‘ “Who is this?” she asked.
‘Rather than replying, I asked in turn:
‘ “Who’s calling?”
‘ “I would like to speak to Mademoiselle Larrieu.”
‘ “Who shall I say it is?”
‘There was a silence, then:
‘ “The Princess of V—.”
‘Meanwhile Jaquette was watching me like someone who knew what was going on.
‘ “I’ll just pass you to her.”
‘I held out the receiver and she said straight away:
‘ “It’s me, your highness … yes … I would have liked to go, but these gentlemen won’t let me leave the house … The apartment has been full of them, with all kinds of equipment … They spent hours asking me questions, and even now an inspector is listening to me …” ’
Janvier added:
‘She seemed to be defying me. After that she mostly listened.
‘ “Yes … Yes, your highness … yes … I understand … I don’t know … No … Yes … I’ll try … I’d like to do that too … Thank you, your highness …” ’
‘Then what did she say?’
‘Nothing. She sat down on the chair again. After a quarter of an hour’s silence she murmured regretfully:
‘ “I assume you aren’t going to let me out? Even if there’s nothing left to eat in the house and I have to go without supper?”
‘ “We’ll sort that out shortly.”
‘ “In that case I don’t think there’s much point us sitting here staring at each other, and I’d rather go and rest. Is that allowed?”
‘Since then she’s been in her bedroom. She’s locked the door.’
‘No one’s come?’
‘No. Some phone calls from an American press agency, some provincial papers …’
‘You couldn’t get anything out of Jaquette?’
‘I’ve asked her some questions, as innocent as possible, in the hope of winning her trust. She merely said slyly:
‘ “Don’t try and teach your grandmother to suck eggs, young man. If your boss imagined that I was going to reveal secrets to you …” ’
‘No one called from the office?’
‘No. Only the examining magistrate.’
‘Does he want to see me?’
‘He asks you to call him as soon as you have any news. He had a visit from Alain Mazeron.’
‘And you didn’t tell me?’
‘I was keeping that until last. So the nephew went to get him to complain that you read Saint-Hilaire’s private correspondence without his permission. As an executor of the will, he requires that the flat be s
ealed until the reading of the will.’
‘What did the judge say?’
‘To talk to you.’
‘And Mazeron didn’t come back?’
‘No. He might be on the way, because I received this communication not long ago. Do you think he’ll come?’
Maigret hesitated and then pulled over a telephone directory, where he found what he was looking for, and then, standing up, looking serious and annoyed, he dialled a number.
‘Hello! The V—residence? I would like to speak to the Princess of V—. Detective Chief Inspector Maigret of the Police Judiciaire … I’ll wait, yes …’
There was a different kind of silence in the room, and Janvier looked at his boss, holding his breath. A few minutes passed.
‘No, I’m still here … Thank you … hello … Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, yes, madame …’
It wasn’t his everyday voice, and he experienced the same feeling as he had done when, as a child, he addressed the Countess of Saint-Fiacre.
‘I thought you might like me to contact you, if only to give you some details … Yes … Yes … Whenever you like … I’ll be at Rue de Varenne in an hour …’
The two men looked at each other in silence. Finally, Maigret sighed.
‘It would be better if you stayed here,’ he said at last. ‘Call Lucas and ask him to send someone. Ideally Lapointe. The old woman can go out whenever she likes, and one of the two of you will follow her.’
He had an hour ahead of him. While he waited, he took a bundle of letters out of the bookcase with the green curtain.
I saw you yesterday, at Longchamp, in your jacket, you know how much I love you like that. On your arm you had a pretty redhead who …
5.
Maigret didn’t expect to find a house that still smelled like a funeral, like the houses of ordinary people and even the upper-middle classes, with odours of candles and chrysanthemums, a red-eyed widow, relatives who had come from far away, in full mourning, eating and drinking. Because of his country childhood, the smell of spirits, and particularly of marc, was still associated in his mind with death and funerals.
‘Have a drop of this, Catherine,’ they would say to the widow, before setting off for the church and the cemetery. ‘You need picking up.’
She would drink, weeping. The men would drink at the inn, and then again back at the house.
If the entrance had been decorated with silver hangings that morning, they had been removed for a while now, and the courtyard had resumed its usual appearance, half in shade, half in sunlight, with a uniformed chauffeur washing a long black limousine and three automobiles, one a large sports car with yellow bodywork, waiting at the foot of the steps.
It was as huge as the Élysée Palace, and Maigret remembered that the V—residence was often the setting for balls and charity auctions.
At the top of the steps he pushed open the glass door and found himself alone in a hall with marble tiles. Double doors, open on either side, allowed him to see the reception rooms where objects, probably the old coins and snuffboxes that had been mentioned to him, were exhibited as if in a museum.
Should he make for one of those doors, climb the double staircase that led to the first floor? He was hesitating when a butler, emerging from God knows where, approached in silence, took his hat from his hands and murmured, without asking him his name:
‘This way.’
Maigret followed his guide along the stairs, passing through another drawing room on the first floor, and then a long room that must have been a picture gallery.
They didn’t keep him waiting. The housekeeper half opened a door, announcing in a faint voice:
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.’
The boudoir that he entered overlooked not the courtyard of honour but a garden, and the foliage of the trees, full of birds, brushed against the two open windows.
Someone rose from an armchair, and it was a moment before he understood that it was the woman he had come to see, Princess Isabelle. His surprise must have been obvious, because she said as she came towards him:
‘You weren’t expecting to find me like this, were you?’
He didn’t dare to reply that he wasn’t. He was silent, surprised at first that, even though she was dressed in black, she didn’t give the impression of being in full mourning, although he would have found it difficult to say why. Neither did she have red eyes. She didn’t seem overwhelmed.
She was smaller than in her photographs, but unlike Jaquette, for example, the years didn’t weigh heavy on her. He didn’t have time to analyse his impressions. He would do it later. For now, he registered everything mechanically.
What surprised him the most was to find a plump woman, her cheeks full and smooth, with a round body. Her hips, barely perceptible in the princess dress in the photograph in Saint-Hilaire’s bedroom, had become as broad as those of a farmer’s wife.
Was the boudoir around them the room where she spent most of her time? Old tapestries decorated the walls. The parquet gleamed, each item of furniture in its place, and for no precise reason it reminded Maigret of the convent where as a child he had visited one of his aunts, who was a nun.
‘Please, sit down.’
She pointed to a gilded armchair, but he chose instead a straight-backed chair, even though he was afraid of breaking its delicate legs.
‘My first thought was to go there,’ she confided in him, sitting down in turn, ‘but I realized that he would have gone. The body has been taken to the Forensic Institute, hasn’t it?’
She wasn’t afraid of the words, or the images that they evoked. Her face was serene, almost smiling, and that too reminded him of the convent, the particular serenity of the sisters, who never seemed to be completely of this world.
‘I would like to see him once more. I’ll tell you about it soon. What I need to know above all is whether he suffered. Tell me honestly.’
‘Don’t worry, madame. The Count of Saint-Hilaire was killed instantly.’
‘Was he in his office?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sitting down?’
‘Yes. Apparently he was busy correcting proofs.’
She closed her eyes, as if to give the image time to form in her mind, and Maigret was sufficiently emboldened to ask a question in turn.
‘Have you ever been to Rue Saint-Dominique?’
‘Only once, long ago, with Jaquette’s complicity. I had chosen a time of day when I was sure he wasn’t there. I wanted to get to know the setting of his life, to locate him in my mind at his home, in the different rooms.’
An idea struck her.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve read the letters?’
He hesitated for a moment and then chose to confess the truth.
‘I ran through them. Not all of them, though.’
‘Were they still in the Empire bookcase with the gilded grilles?’
He nodded.
‘I suspected you would have read them. I don’t blame you. I understand that it’s your duty.’
‘How did you learn of his death?’
‘Through my daughter-in-law. Philippe, my son, came from Normandy with his wife and children for the funeral. Just now, on the way back from the cemetery, she flicked through one of the newspapers that the maidservants usually put on a table in the hall.’
‘Is your daughter-in-law aware?’
She looked at him with a surprise that seemed almost naive. Had it been anyone else, he might have thought that she was playing a part.
‘Aware of what?’
‘Of your relationship with the Count of Saint-Hilaire.’
Her smile too was the smile of a nun.
‘But of course. How could she not have been aware? We never hid ourselves. There was nothing bad between us. Armand was a very dear friend …’
‘Did your son know him?’
‘My son knew everything too, and when he was a child I sometimes pointed Armand out to him in the distance. I think the first t
ime was in Auteuil …’
‘He never went to see him?’
Her reply was not without logic, or at least it had a logic of her own:
‘What for?’
Chirruping, the birds chased each other in the foliage, and an agreeable freshness came from the garden.
‘Won’t you have a cup of tea?’
Alain Mazeron’s wife, in Rue de la Pompe, had offered him a drink. Here it was tea.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Tell me everything you know, Monsieur Maigret. You see, for fifty years I have become used to living with him in my thoughts. I knew what he was doing at every hour of the day. I visited the cities where he lived when he was still an ambassador and arranged with Jaquette to cast an eye over each of his houses in succession. At what time of day did he meet his death?’
‘As far as we know, between eleven o’clock and midnight.’
‘But he wasn’t ready to go to bed.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because before he went to his bedroom he always wrote me a little note that finished his daily letter. He began it every morning in a ritual fashion:
‘ “Good morning, Isi …”
‘As he would have welcomed me upon waking, if fate had allowed us to live together. He added a few lines and then, during the day, he came back to it to tell me what he had done. Invariably, in the evening, his last words were:
‘ “Goodnight, pretty Isi …” ’
She smiled with confusion.
‘Forgive me for repeating that word, which risks making you laugh. For him, I had stayed the twenty-year-old Isabelle.’
‘He had seen you since.’
‘In the distance, it’s true. So he knew I had become an old woman, but for him the present was less real than the past. Can you understand that? He hadn’t changed for me either. Now tell me what happened. Tell me everything, without trying to spare my feelings. When you reach my age, you see, you have a certain resilience. The murderer entered the apartment. Who? How?’
‘Someone came in, because we haven’t found a weapon either in the room or in the apartment. Since Jaquette maintains that she closed the door at about nine o’clock, as she does every evening, putting on the chain and bolt, we must believe that the Count of Saint-Hilaire welcomed his visitor himself. Do you know if he was in the habit of receiving people in the evening?’
Maigret and the Old People Page 7
