Behind the port there was a warren of narrow streets which Maigret explored every day. The houses were only one storey high, sometimes there was just a ground floor. Generally, and this was something he had only seen in Les Sables d’Olonne, the cellar served as the kitchen, with stone steps leading up to the street.
It was highly likely that the girl lived in this neighbourhood.
He went into his fishermen’s café and drank a glass of white wine. Once the door had closed, Doctor Bellamy must have raced upstairs to join his wife or his mother. Which of the two had he questioned about the girl’s visit?
Maigret walked, as he did every day, but without realizing it he took a detour and found himself outside the police station. It wasn’t far from the railway station. A train must just have arrived, because there were people walking past carrying suitcases.
A couple caught his attention, or rather he stood there in amazement on seeing a woman who so closely resembled the two portraits in the doctor’s study that it was uncanny.
This woman was no longer young. She must have been getting on for fifty and yet she had the same hair of an ethereal blonde, the same violet eyes. She was only slightly plumper, while still preserving an extraordinary lightness.
The woman wore a white suit and a white hat, which made her stand out among the shabby crowd in the street. Leaving a trail of perfume in her wake, she walked quite fast, dragging along a man around fifteen years her senior who did not look at ease.
In her hand, she held a very expensive crocodile-skin attaché-case, while her companion struggled with two suitcases.
She could be no other than Madame Godreau, the mother of Odette Bellamy and of Lili.
They must have sent a telegram to Paris, and she had hastened here for the funeral.
Maigret gazed after the pair. There were several hotels nearby, but they did not go into any of them. Were they going to ring the bell of the house that Maigret had just left?
He entered the police station and slowly climbed the dusty staircase. He had only been here once and he already felt at home. Without knocking, he pushed open the door of the inspectors’ office, which was almost deserted, as it had been the previous day. It was past six o’clock. Chief Inspector Mansuy was busy signing letters.
‘Madame Godreau has arrived,’ announced Maigret, perching on the corner of the desk.
‘Ah! … For the funeral, of course … But how do you know?’
‘I just saw her leaving the station.’
‘Do you know her?’
‘You only need to have seen a picture of her daughter to recognize her.’
‘I’ve never met her. Apparently, she’s still beautiful …’
‘Very … and she knows it …’
A few more flourishes.
‘Have you had an interesting afternoon?’
‘Doctor Bellamy talked a great deal and did me the honour of showing me around his home. Tell me, do you by any chance know a girl of around fourteen or fifteen, tall and skinny, with reddish hair who wears a pink cotton dress and black woollen stockings?’
The inspector looked at him in surprise.
‘Is that all you know about her?’
‘She has a little handbag made of coloured beads.’
‘And you don’t know where she lives?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t know her name?’
‘Neither her first name nor her surname.’
‘Nor do you know where she works?’
‘I don’t even know if she has a job.’
‘You do realize that Les Sables d’Olonne has twenty thousand souls and that the streets are crawling with girls like the one you have just described?’
‘But I want to find this particular one.’
‘In which neighbourhood did you meet her?’
‘At Doctor Bellamy’s.’
‘And you didn’t ask him … I’m sorry! I understand … That’s already a clue, of course …’
Maigret smiled, and slowly filled a fresh pipe.
‘Look. I feel as though I’m bothering you. I’m here on holiday, that’s a fact. What is happening at Les Sables d’Olonne is none of my business. And yet I’d give a lot to find that girl.’
‘I can try.’
‘I don’t know whether she’ll return to the doctor’s house. To be honest, I don’t think so. But who knows whether she might go and hang around the house? It’s highly likely that tomorrow she’ll be standing along the route of the funeral procession. Maybe if you have a word with one of your men …’
Mansuy was beginning to worry.
‘Do you think he killed his sister-in-law? The coroner’s just telephoned me—’
‘And his report is negative, I’m sure.’
‘Correct. You’ve heard? Her head hit the road. Her body somersaulted a couple of times. It curled into a ball like a hare when it’s shot. But all the injuries are consistent with the tears and stains on her clothes. She could have been pushed, of course, but without being hit, without her defending herself …’
‘She wasn’t pushed.’
‘So you believe it was an accident?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’ve just said that she wasn’t pushed …’
‘I know nothing,’ sighed Maigret who had become more solemn. ‘The fact is, I know no more than you do. Perhaps less, because I don’t know Les Sables d’Olonne. All the same, I’d like to find that girl. I’d also like to have a private talk with Sister Marie des Anges, which is even harder. Have you ever called a nun in for questioning?’
‘No,’ replied the stocky inspector, flabbergasted.
‘Me neither. I can only hope that she’ll write to me again.’
He was talking to himself, without taking the trouble to enlighten his colleague.
‘Come and have a drink … By the way, your Polyte yesterday, did he confess?’
‘He won’t confess. He’s never confessed in his life. This is at least the tenth time we’ve caught him red-handed and each time he hotly denies it.’
They stopped at a café full of regulars and, all the way there, Maigret had continued to look about him on the off chance he might spot the girl.
‘You see, Mansuy, there is something we don’t know, something that’s not right, and I have a hunch that if we can track down this girl …’
He ordered an aperitif instead of his usual white wine. Then, as Mansuy insisted on buying a round, he downed another, on top of all the white wines he’d drunk during the day. There was smoke all round him and the haze of alcohol was so thick that it billowed out several metres on to the pavement.
‘Look, Mansuy …’
He seized his colleague’s arm.
‘I think it’s more important than it seems to find this girl … It’s none of my business, I repeat … It’s not so much as a professional that I’m speaking …’
‘If you want us to go back to the police station, I’ll write a memo this evening.’
‘Do you know whether the doctor’s butler is married, whether he sleeps in the house?’
Poor Mansuy had never imagined that an inspector from the Police Judiciaire could carry out an investigation in such a manner.
‘I’ll find out … I confess I’d never worried about …’
Maigret was talking to himself:
‘It would be the way to find out …’
Then to Mansuy:
‘Let’s go back to your office, yes … Don’t hold it against me … I can’t explain… I am so certain that it would be better …’
They entered the secretary’s office on
the ground floor, where there was a coffee tin on a little spirit stove.
‘Tell me, Dubois, do you know Doctor Bellamy’s butler, by any chance?’
‘Isn’t he a fairly young, blond fellow?’
It was Maigret who replied.
‘Yes, his name is Francis …’
‘He’s Belgian,’ stated the secretary. ‘I remember because he came two or three times to get his residence permit stamped …’
‘Married?’
‘Wait … He’s on my list … I’ll find him …’
It wasn’t as straightforward as all that. The list was nowhere to be found. The day secretary had left with the key to some drawers. Eventually they found it where it should not have been.
‘Here we are … Francis-Charles-Albert Decoin, born in Huy … age thirty-two … Married to Laurence Van Offel, cook … She had her permit stamped too … Hold on … Hôtel du Remblai … No, she left … Her most recent address was the Hôtel Bellevue, where she was working as a kitchen girl as recently as two months ago …’
Mansuy was still looking at Maigret inquisitively. As they left the police station, he asked him timidly:
‘Are you really …’
He did not finish. He gave a sweeping gesture that took in the town, the hotels. Was it possible that his distinguished colleague intended to go from one improbable address to another, questioning porters and chambermaids like a rookie inspector?
‘With your permission, I’ll instruct one of my men …’
Was the man serious? Just as Maigret felt he had both feet on the ground? Why not bring in Sister Marie des Anges and Doctor Bellamy too?
Maigret finally had something concrete to do.
Something that was perhaps of no use, no importance …
He thrust his hands in his pockets as if it were the depths of winter, while his teeth clenched the stem of his pipe a little harder.
‘You’ll keep me informed? … Should I look for this girl anyway? …’
Maigret forgot to answer and shook Mansuy’s hand as they parted company on a street corner, then headed for the imposing building of the Hôtel Bellevue, the most luxurious establishment on Le Remblai.
A kitchen girl, at least that would make a change from nuns and neurologists.
‘Excuse me, porter … I’d like to speak to Laurence Decoin who works in the kitchens …’
‘You’ll have to go to the service entrance … Turn left … You’ll find an alleyway … There’s a door with frosted-glass panes and a goods lift … It’s there …’
A few moments later, Maigret, who hadn’t found anyone to let him in, went up a staircase stinking of urine behind the scenes of the hotel, which reminded him of backstage in a little provincial theatre. He stopped a giant of a butcher between two swing doors through which waiters were dashing, and the latter looked at him with contempt:
‘What is it?’
‘I’d like to speak to Laurence Decoin.’
Then the butcher became almost fierce.
‘And what else … Who’s asking for her, if you please, “young man”?’
‘A friend …’
‘Really? … Laurence! …’ he yelled. ‘Come here and let me introduce a friend… A friend of yours, so he says …’
A chubby blonde came towards them, wiping her hands on her apron, and it was clear that the doctor’s young butler was no longer of much importance in her life and that in any case she was scared to death of the hairy butcher.
‘I don’t know who this man is, do you, Fernand?’ she exclaimed in a strong accent.
‘Well, what do you have to say for yourself, eh?’
He advanced, as solid and menacing as a tank.
Maigret felt himself come alive again.
4.
‘I apologize,’ he said with the utmost courtesy. ‘It is true that I do not know Madame, and that I have never seen her. I simply want to ask her where I can meet her husband outside his employers’ house.’
She turned first of all towards Fernand, triumphantly:
‘You see, you silly, jealous boy, it’s not what you thought …’
Then to Maigret:
‘Now what has Francis done?’
There was a door near them. It opened into a long, narrow, dingily lit room with the fanlight placed too high, where the electric lights burned all day. A table with two benches filled the entire length of the room, like an army mess. It was the staff dining room where, at that moment, there were only two waiters sitting at the far end, eating in silence. This was the room that Laurence showed him into, so as not to get under the feet of the bustling waiters.
‘You’re from the police, aren’t you? That doesn’t worry me, mind you. It would even be a good thing if he were in big trouble because that would help me get a divorce, wouldn’t it, Fernand?’
She was sturdy and on the short side, with a slightly snub nose, but there was something fresh about her.
‘When I think that I’m the one who has to pay for the kid’s upkeep with what I earn here, because that loafer doesn’t want to know—’
‘You don’t live with him?’
It was Fernand who answered, in order to dot the ‘i’s once and for all:
‘We’ve been together for two years now.’
‘Do you happen to know whether he has a room in town?’
The plump Laurence burst out laughing:
‘A room and all the rest too, you mean! And his slippers by the bed …’
She suddenly grew suspicious:
‘You’re not from the local police?’
‘I am from Paris.’
‘Because anyone from around here would know that Francis knocks about with La Popine—’
‘La Popine?’
‘Madame Popineau… The fishmonger … The one who has a pretty shop on the corner of Rue de la République … A tough bitch, you don’t want to mess with her … People say she’s already worn out three husbands, even though they were strapping fellows. She’s kept busy visiting their graves on All Saints’ Day … It won’t be long before poor Francis … I even wonder how the poor thing manages to satisfy her … In any case, you’re almost bound to find him at her place after ten o’clock at night … Tell me, monsieur, is it serious?’
Maigret avoided replying in order to learn more.
‘He can’t help it … He can’t stop himself nicking little things … It’s not even to sell them, mind you … It’s to give them to women … Because he always needs to impress them …’
She burst out laughing, giving Fernand a knowing look:
‘You impress them with what you can, isn’t that right, monsieur?’
Maigret dined in a corner, all alone, and he wasn’t wearing exactly the expression they were familiar with at the Hôtel Bel Air. Monsieur Léonard waited for him in vain for their nightly chat in the back room. Once Maigret had finished eating, he went for a walk in the dark. The sky was studded with light from the gas lamps and the waves were phosphorescent.
It was still too early, barely nine thirty. He walked past the doctor’s house and saw that the lights were on. Then he came to the port, the little cafés where you have to go inside to sit down for a moment. He would have found it hard to say what was going on in his mind. His thoughts were vague, slightly disjointed. They began with Sister Marie des Anges. The calm convent atmosphere that was rubbing off on Madame Maigret herself.
Then the doctor and his beautiful, genteel house, his calm way of speaking and his piercing eyes.
Then, suddenly, a flaxen-haired girl sent him to the sordid underbelly of the Hôtel Bellevue, and there was Fernand the
butcher, and the plump Laurence with her raucous laugh.
There were few passers-by in the narrow streets, where there was the occasional yellowish oblong of a shop and most of the windows were open. People went to bed early. From the street you could almost imagine them, tossing and turning in beds damp with sweat. Sometimes, passing a dark window, he heard whisperings, so close that he felt as if he were intruding on someone’s privacy and was tempted to walk on tiptoe, like at the hospital.
He asked for Madame Popineau’s house. It stood at the end of the dock, in the new part of town, a fine house built of pretty pink bricks. The shop’s shutters were closed. It had its own front door, in varnished oak, with a brass letterbox and door knob. He bent over and peeked through the keyhole like when he was a child, and saw a light inside.
It was eleven o’clock. When he rang the bell he heard the sound of a chair being scraped back, voices, footsteps. The door opened into a corridor that smelled of linoleum, with a bamboo coat stand to the right, and house plants in earthenware plant-pot holders.
‘Forgive me, madame …’
In front of him stood a woman of around the same build as the plump Laurence, short and fat too, but a brunette, wearing the local costume, with a pretty starched headdress that lit up her face.
‘What is it?’ she asked, trying to fathom out his features in the dark.
‘I’d like to have a few words with Francis.’
‘Come in.’
The door on the left was ajar. It opened into a dining room that looked brand new, with its red and yellow linoleum, brass plant-pot holders, knick-knacks and carved oak Henry II-style furniture.
Doctor Bellamy’s butler was there, in felt slippers, wearing no jacket or waistcoat, his open shirt revealing his chest. Ensconced deep in an armchair, his legs crossed, a small glass within reach, a pipe in his mouth, he was quietly reading the newspaper.
There was another armchair facing him, that of La Popine, with another small glass and an illustrated weekly.
‘It’s Monsieur Maigret who wants to talk to you, Francis …’
The Belgian was less surprised than Maigret himself.
Maigret's Holiday Page 6
