Just then, La Popine and Francis both stared at Maigret, at first surprised, then anxious as he stood up, his face inscrutable.
‘Do you have a telephone?’ he asked.
He had to go into the shop and lean on the icy marble counter, next to the enamel scales.
‘Hello! … Is that the Brasserie du Remblai? … Tell me … Have you seen Doctor Bellamy this evening?’
They didn’t ask who was calling.
‘No, not this afternoon … After dinner, that’s right … You haven’t seen him? … Just a moment, please … Is the chief inspector there by any chance? … He never comes in the evening? … Don’t hang up, mademoiselle … Am I talking to the waiter? … The manager? … None of the gentlemen who play bridge are there? … Yes. Monsieur Rouillet, Monsieur Lourceau … Right … Put Monsieur Lourceau on, would you? …’
A languid voice on the other end, that of a man who is on his fifth or sixth hour of bridge and at least his sixth little tipple.
‘Hello! Monsieur Lourceau … I’m sorry to disturb you … Chief Inspector Maigret … It doesn’t matter … I’d like a simple piece of information … Do you know where I’m likely to find Bellamy at this hour? … No, he’s not at home … Really? … He never goes out at night? … You have no idea? … Thank you very much …’
He became increasingly heavy, and there was a hint of anxiety in his eyes. He flicked through the telephone directory and called the coroner.
‘Hello … Inspector Maigret here … No, it’s not about an investigation … I would simply like to know whether Doctor Bellamy is with you … I thought that, given what’s happened and since you are friends … No, no! … I simply need to ask him something … You haven’t seen him? … You haven’t the least idea where I might be able to get hold of him? … What? … At the hospital? … I hadn’t thought of that.’
It was so straightforward! Might not the doctor have gone to the hospital to see one of his patients?
‘Hello … Sister Aurélie? … I’m sorry … I thought I recognized her voice … Can you tell me whether Doctor Bellamy …’
Neither at the convent hospital nor at the municipal hospital.
‘One thing, Francis … Does the doctor’s bedroom overlook Le Remblai?’
‘Not exactly … It looks on to the east façade, but you can see it from the promenade.’
‘Thank you very much.’
‘Are you going?’
He left them completely baffled in their little dining room, Francis in his slippers and his open shirt, La Popine thrilled to have spent an evening with her idol.
‘If you are in the neighbourhood tomorrow lunchtime, Monsieur Maigret, I’ll be bound to have some information about the girl …’
He was barely listening. By now the streets were completely empty. It was past midnight. He spotted a police officer under a gas lamp and almost stopped him to ask whether he had seen Doctor Bellamy.
In the big house on Le Remblai, the only lit window was that of the library. Francis had left the light on when he went home, as he had told Maigret. If the doctor had come back, there would probably be a light on in his room. In any case, he would have switched off the light in his study after drinking his whisky.
La Popine had spoken of a small town. But right now, Maigret found it too big. Big enough, in any case, for it to be impossible to locate a man and a girl in it.
If only he had known Lucile’s name earlier!
He walked with great, rapid strides. Instead of going back to his hotel, he took a detour and saw the red light of the police station where only a sergeant and a few officers were on duty.
‘Do any of you happen to know a girl called Lucile?’
They broke off their game of belote, looked at each other and racked their brains.
‘My wife’s called Lucile,’ joked one of them, ‘but, since you said a girl, it can’t be her …’
‘You don’t know her surname?’ the sergeant asked naively.
It was an officer of around thirty who taught Maigret a lesson, saying slowly:
‘That’s a question you should be asking the schoolmistresses.’
Of course! Maigret, who had never had any children, hadn’t thought of that. It was so simple!
‘How many schools are there in Les Sables d’Olonne?’
‘Hold on a minute … If you count Château d’Oléron, that makes three. I’m talking about girls’ schools … Not including the convent schools …’
‘Do the teachers sleep there?’
‘Of course not … Especially as it’s the summer holidays now …’
Maigret had conducted thousands of investigations, nosed around in the most diverse milieus. But just as, a few days earlier, he had known nothing of nuns or the atmosphere of a hospital, he was equally ignorant of everything to do with schools.
‘Do you think the teachers have the telephone?’
‘It’s unlikely … They earn about as little as we do, poor things!’
Suddenly, he was weary. Since five o’clock that afternoon, his mind had been working so fast that he suddenly felt drained, useless, just as he hit a blank wall.
Eight or ten schoolteachers were asleep somewhere in the town, in those little houses huddled together, their windows open on to narrow streets or little gardens.
One of them at least knew Lucile, whose homework she marked every day.
At one point, on the threshold of the police station, about to step out into the dark again, he had a moment’s hesitation and nearly went back inside to ask for the list of all the local schoolmistresses, then go from door to door.
Was it the feeling that he was being absurd that stopped him?
‘The town isn’t so big,’ La Popine had said.
Too big, unfortunately! They must have been talking about him as they fell asleep, the fishmonger and Francis! Perhaps that other couple too, the Flemish woman and Fernand, the butcher! And Lourceau, the coroner, the nun on night duty at the convent hospital, all the people he had bothered that evening.
He had probably left a trail of anxiety behind him, or at least curiosity.
Did he have the right, because he had a vague hunch, to disturb more streets, to disturb this entire little town nestling around its port?
He rang at the door of his hotel. Monsieur Léonard, who had waited up for him snoozing in a chair, came and opened it, a mute reproach in his eyes. Not because he had been kept up, but because he assumed that Maigret had been misbehaving.
‘You look tired,’ he said. ‘A little drink, before you go upstairs?’
‘You don’t happen to know a girl called Lucile who …’
This was ridiculous. He was annoyed with himself. Monsieur Léonard filled two small glasses with Calvados. Good Lord! How many little tipples and glasses of white wine had Maigret drunk over the past few days! Even so, he wasn’t drunk.
‘To your good health!’
He stumbled up the stairs and dropped his clothes casually on the floor of his room. The next day, or rather the same day, as it was past midnight, would be the funeral. Beforehand, he would make a telephone call to Chief Inspector Mansuy, who was in his office from eight o’clock in the morning.
The first part of the night went by in a sort of nightmare. He rang doorbells, hundreds of doorbells, and heads appeared around half-open doors, heads that shook from left to right and right to left in negation. No one spoke. Neither did he. And yet everyone understood that he was looking for the doctor and Lucile.
Then a big, dark void, nothingness, and finally a knocking on his door, the voice of Germaine, the chambermaid:
‘You
’re wanted on the telephone …’
He had gone to bed without putting on his pyjamas and had to hunt for them everywhere. His pillow was damp with an acrid sweat that smelled of alcohol. He did not hear the familiar noises in the adjacent rooms. It was either too early or too late.
He slipped on his dressing gown as he opened the door.
‘What time is it?’
‘Half past seven.’
Time seemed out of joint. He did not recognize the usual morning light. And why was Chief Inspector Mansuy calling him at half past seven?
‘Hello! … Is that you, sir?’
Mansuy’s voice also sounded strange.
‘We’ve found out the surname …’
A silence. Why didn’t Maigret dare ask any questions?
‘She’s called Lucile Duffieux …’
Another silence. Time and space were definitely out of order.
‘Well?’ he barked, exasperated.
‘She’s dead …’
Then, still holding the receiver, Maigret felt his eyes fill with tears.
‘She was strangled last night, in her bed, next to her mother’s bedroom …’
Monsieur Léonard, who was coming out of the cellar, a bottle of white wine in his hand, stood there bemused, wondering why Maigret was looking at him so fiercely and seemed not to recognize him.
5.
It was already late morning when Maigret noticed that the sky was grey and that a few drops of rain had probably fallen at dawn. Until then, the greyness of people and things, added to his own greyness, had stopped him from looking at the sky and noticing that, for the first time since his arrival at Les Sables d’Olonne, the sea was a murky green, its surface ruffled, almost black in places.
At the police station, the officers on night duty hadn’t been relieved yet, and there was an atmosphere of disarray, tiredness and disquiet. At the foot of the stairs, he bumped into the officer who, at around midnight, had had the idea of contacting a schoolmistress. What age were his own daughters? Recognizing Maigret, he started. His tunic was unbuttoned, his hair tousled. He had slept on a bench. And now, standing in front of him, was the man who, a few hours earlier, had been desperately trying to find out where the girl lived.
It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense that morning. Did the officer think that Maigret was the killer?
Maigret lumbered up the stairs. His pipe tasted stale. He had shaved and dressed in haste, had found waiting outside the police car that Mansuy had sent for him so as to save time. Why had he asked the driver to take a detour via Le Remblai?
Probably to get a glimpse of the doctor’s house. It was in its usual place, of course. The entire first floor seemed quiet, the shutters were closed, but decorators were hanging black drapes around the front door. He also drove past the church, this time because it was on the way, and there was only a handful of elderly women in starched headdresses coming out of Low Mass.
There was a certain febrility in the inspectors’ office. Several of them were on the telephone. There was incredulity in every pair of eyes. The disgruntled faces were not simply expressing annoyance at having been dragged from sleep too early, but contained shock and a muted anger.
Most of the men were unshaven. They could not have been there long. Perhaps they had found a bar open on the way and managed to grab a coffee?
The door at the back opened. Mansuy had been watching out for Maigret’s arrival and stood waiting for him in the doorway to his office, so changed that Maigret felt somewhat awkward.
Who knows? Perhaps Mansuy felt the same about him. The chief inspector had not shaved either. He had been the first to be informed. The first on the scene. People were surprised to see his cheeks invaded by a thick stubble, as pervasive as couch grass, a darker auburn than his hair.
It was no longer timidity that Maigret read in his pale blue eyes, but a genuine anxiety. Maigret advanced towards him and went in. The door closed behind him. And the stocky chief inspector’s eyes remained riveted on him, asking a silent question.
Maigret was too caught up in his own thoughts to worry about other people’s reactions. How could Mansuy not be intimidated by this burly man who, the previous evening, had been obstinately trying to track down this girl whom no one had ever heard of, giving a detailed description of her, just a few hours before she was strangled in her bed?
‘I presume you want to go over there?’ he said hoarsely.
There weren’t many opportunities at Les Sables d’Olonne to see such sights, and it had left him deeply upset. Maigret could tell from the way he had said ‘over there’.
‘I managed to get hold of the public prosecutor’s office at La Roche-sur-Yon on the telephone. The prosecutor will arrive at around eleven. Perhaps before, if they manage to gather his men earlier. He insisted on asking the Poitiers Flying Squad to send two inspectors over. I didn’t tell him that you were here. I thought that best. Was that right?’
‘It was right.’
‘Won’t you be handling the investigation?’
Maigret shrugged without replying, and he could tell Mansuy was disappointed. What could he do?
‘There’s a crowd outside the house, even though it’s still early. It’s on the outskirts of town, a whole neighbourhood of little houses surrounded by small gardens. Old Duffieux is night watchman in the shipyards. He took the job after he’d had his arm amputated. You’ll meet him. It must have been terrible for him. This is what happened …’
Mansuy told Maigret the story, his elbows on the desk, his chin resting on his fists.
‘He left work at six in the morning, as soon as the first crew arrived. Everything was as usual that morning, absolutely everything. He’s a calm, meticulous man. The housewives who rise early can set their watches by the time he walks past. He goes quietly home, at around six twenty. He told me all this in detail, sounding like a sleepwalker. The front door opens directly into the kitchen. There’s a chair to the left, a straw-bottomed chair, you’ll see it. His slippers are waiting by the chair.
‘He takes off his shoes, so as not to wake anyone. He puts a match in the stove, where the fire has been laid, with a sheet of newspaper and kindling …
‘The ground coffee is in the filter of the cafetière and, as soon as the water in the kettle boils, he pours it over. All he needs to do is put two lumps of sugar in the floral bowl.
‘You’ll see … By the fireside is a clock with a brass pendulum …
‘It is six thirty on the clock when, a bowl in his hand, he creeps silently into his wife’s bedroom.
‘For years, each morning, it’s been the same routine …’
Maigret opened the window, even though the morning air was cool.
‘Go on …’
‘Madame Duffieux is a pale, sickly woman. She never recovered from the birth of her last child, which doesn’t stop her from trotting around from dawn till dusk … She’s a tall and anxious woman, always tense, always agitated, one of those women who spend their lives expecting disaster to strike …
‘She got dressed while her husband took off his heavy night clothes. She commented: “It’s raining … It rained earlier …”’
It was only then that Maigret looked at the sky, which was still grey.
‘The two of them sat together for half an hour. It’s pretty much their only moment of intimacy.
‘Then, on the dot of seven, Duffieux opened a door to go and wake up his daughter.
‘Those little houses don’t have shutters. The window at the back overlooking the garden was wide open, as always at this time of year.
‘Lucile was dead in her bed, her face a bluish
colour, with big black bruises on her neck …
‘Shall we go over there?’
But he didn’t get up yet. He was waiting. He was still waiting. He couldn’t believe that Maigret had nothing to tell him.
‘Let’s go,’ was all Maigret said, with a sigh.
And the street of the outlying district was exactly as he had imagined it from Mansuy’s description. It was indeed the sort of street that girls like Lucile come from, with a corner shop that sells vegetables, groceries, kerosene and sweets, and where the women are on their doorsteps and children play on the pavements.
There were huddles in the doorways. Women still in their nightdresses had simply slipped a coat around their shoulders.
Fifty or so people clustered around a little house just like the others, where a uniformed police officer stood on guard. The car stopped and the two men alighted.
Then, standing on the pavement, Maigret paused for a moment, abruptly, for no apparent reason, the way people with heart disease sometimes stop in the street.
‘Do you want to go in?’
He nodded. The curious onlookers stood aside to let them through. Mansuy tapped discreetly on the door … It was the man who opened it. His eyes weren’t red, but he looked dazed and he walked mechanically. He glanced at Mansuy, whom he recognized, and took no further notice of them.
That day, the house seemed no longer to belong to him. A bedroom door was open and a shape lay on the bed letting out a regular, animal moan. It was Madame Duffieux. A local doctor sat at her bedside, while an old woman with a paunch, a neighbour perhaps, was bustling around the oven.
The floral bowls were still on the table, one full of coffee, the one Duffieux had taken in to his daughter at seven o’clock.
The house had only three rooms. To the right, the kitchen, which was also the sitting room and was fairly large, with one window overlooking the garden and another with a view of the street. To the left, two doors, two bedrooms, the parents’ room at the front, and the other at the back.
There were photographs on the walls and on the mantelpiece.
Maigret's Holiday Page 8
