‘Brown was killed, and the two women …’
He set off on foot, walking slowly, towards the villa. He passed the spot where the car had hit the rock. He almost laughed. For it was precisely the sort of accident that happened to novice drivers. A few zigzags before straightening up … Then, having achieved a straight line, finding it impossible to turn …
The butcher appearing behind them in the semi-dark … The two women starting to run with their too-heavy suitcases, abandoning one by the roadside …
A limousine drove past, driven by a chauffeur. An Asian face in the back: no doubt the maharajah … The sea was red and blue, with a hint of orange in between … The electric lights were coming on, still pale …
Maigret was all alone in this huge panorama. He went up to the gate of the villa, like an owner returning home, turned the key in the lock, left the gate open and ascended the front steps. The trees were full of birds. The door creaked – a sound that Brown must have been familiar with.
On the threshold, Maigret tried to analyse the smell … Every house has its own smell … This one was based on a strong perfume, probably musk … Then the odour of stale cigars …
He switched on the electric light, then went to the living room and sat down next to the wireless and the record-player, in the seat where Brown must have sat, as it was the most worn chair.
‘He was murdered, and the two women …’
The light was bad, but he spotted a standard lamp which was plugged into an electric socket. It was covered by an enormous lampshade made of pink silk. When he turned on the lamp, the room came to life.
‘During the war, he worked for military intelligence …’
That was well known. That is why the local papers, which he had read on the train, were making such a big deal out of it. The public loved the glamour and mystery of espionage.
Hence the idiotic headlines such as:
AN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIR
A SECOND KOTIOPOV AFFAIR?
A SPY DRAMA
Some journalists saw the hand of the Cheka, others the workings of the Secret Service.
Maigret looked around and had the feeling that there was something missing. And he located it. What was creating the chill was a large picture window, behind which the night was turning stale. There was a curtain, so he closed it.
‘There! A woman in this armchair, probably with a piece of sewing …’
And there it was: a piece of embroidery, on a small table.
‘The other one in this corner …’
And in the corner there was a book: The Passions of Rudolf Valentino …
‘All that is missing is Gina and her mother …’
He had to stare hard to make out the gentle wash of the water along the rocks of the coastline. Maigret looked at the portrait again, which bore the signature of a photographer in Nice.
‘No dramas!’
In other words, discover the truth as quickly as possible to cut short the gossip of the press and public. There were steps on the gravel in the garden. A bell with a very serious, very seductive ring sounded in the hall. Maigret went to the door and could make out the figure of a man in a kepi next to two female silhouettes.
‘You can go … I’ll take charge of them … Come in, ladies!’
He appeared to be receiving them. He couldn’t make out their features yet. On the other hand, he caught a strong scent of musk.
‘I hope you believe us now …’ came a rather strained voice.
‘Of course! … Come in, then … Make yourselves comfortable.’
They entered into the light. The mother had a very lined face, plastered with a thick layer of make-up. She stood in the middle of the living room and looked around her, as if checking that nothing was missing.
The other one was more suspicious; she observed Maigret, smoothed the folds of her dress and attempted a smile that she intended to be alluring.
‘Is it true that they have brought you down from Paris especially?’
‘Please, take your coats off … Make yourselves at home …’
They still didn’t understand what was going on. It was as if they were strangers in their own house. They feared a trap.
‘We’re going to have a bit of a chat, the three of us …’
‘Do you know something?’
It was the girl who had spoken. The mother said sharply:
‘Be careful, Gina!’
In truth, Maigret was once again having great difficulty taking his role seriously. The older woman, despite her make-up, was a ghastly sight.
As for the girl, with her full, almost too buxom figure squeezed into a dress of dark silk, she was a classic pseudo femme fatale.
And the smell! That musky odour that once more permeated the atmosphere of the room!
It evoked a concierge’s lodge in a small theatre.
Nothing dramatic, nothing mysterious. The mother doing her embroidery and keeping an eye on her daughter. And the girl reading the adventures of Valentino!
Maigret, who had returned to his seat in Brown’s armchair, watched them both with expressionless eyes but was puzzled:
‘How on earth did a fellow like Brown spend ten years with these two women?’
Ten years! Long days of unbroken sunshine, the scent of mimosa, with the constant swell of the immense blue sea beneath their windows, and ten years of quiet, interminable evenings, barely disturbed by the murmur of waves on the shore, and the two women, the mother in her armchair, the girl next to the lamp with the pink silk lampshade …
He mechanically played with the photo of this Brown, who had the impertinence to resemble him.
2. Tell Me About Brown …
‘What did he do in the evening?’
And Maigret, sitting with his legs crossed, looked on, bored, as the old woman displayed all her airs and graces.
‘We rarely went out … Mostly, my daughter read while …’
‘Tell me about Brown!’
Somewhat ruffled, she let slip:
‘He didn’t do anything!’
‘He listened to the wireless,’ sighed Gina, who had adopted a nonchalant pose. ‘As much as I like real music, I hate …’
‘Tell me about Brown. Was he in good health?’
‘If he’d listened to me he wouldn’t have had all that trouble with his liver, or his kidneys … Once a man gets past forty …’
Maigret had the expression of someone listening to an idiotic comedian telling old jokes and roaring with laughter at every punchline. Each of the women was as ridiculous as the other, the mother with her nose in the air, the daughter posing like a rosy-cheeked odalisque.
‘You said that he came home that evening in the car, walked across the garden and fell on the front steps.’
‘As if he were dead drunk, yes! I yelled at him through the window that he couldn’t come in until he had sobered up.’
‘Did he often come home drunk?’
The old woman again:
‘If only you knew how much he has tested our patience, during these last ten years …’
‘Did he often come home drunk?’
‘Every time he went on one of his little escapades or almost every time … We called them his novenas …’
‘And did he do these novenas often?’
Maigret couldn’t resist a happy smile. So Brown hadn’t spent every day in the last ten years in the company of the two women!
‘About once a month.’
‘And for how long?’
‘He was away for three or four days, sometimes more … He would come home filthy, stinking of alcohol …’
‘And yet you still let him go?’
A silence. The old woman stiffened and shot the inspector a sharp look.
‘I’m guessing that, between you, you must have exerted some influence over him?’
‘He had to go to fetch some money!’
‘And you couldn’t go with him?’
Gina had stood up. She sighed wearily
:
‘This is all quite trying! … I’ll be honest with you, inspector … We weren’t married, even though William always treated me as his wife and even had my mother move in with us … As far as people were concerned I was Madame Brown … Otherwise, I wouldn’t have put up with it …’
‘Me neither!’ her mother piped up.
‘But it’s all a bit more complicated than that … I won’t speak ill of William … But there was just one point on which we differed: money …’
‘Was he rich?’
‘I don’t know …’
‘And you don’t know where his fortune came from? … Is that why you let him leave each month, to go in search of cash …?’
‘I tried to follow him, I admit … I had a right to, didn’t I? … But he was very careful … He always took the car …’
Maigret was feeling relaxed now. He was even starting to enjoy himself. He had made his peace with this joker called Brown who lived with two shrews, from whom, over the course of ten years, he had managed to conceal the source of his income.
‘Did he bring home large amounts of cash at a time?’
‘Barely enough to live off for a month … Two thousand francs … In the second half of the month we had to tighten our belts …’
He had hit a nerve! Just the thought of it was enough to send them both into a rage!
Indeed! Once the funds started to run low, they must have watched William anxiously, wondering whether he was intending to go on a novena again. They could scarcely say to him: ‘So … Are you not going off on one of your sprees?’
They had to be more oblique! Maigret could see that clearly!
‘So who held the purse strings?’
‘Mother,’ said Gina.
‘Did she plan your meals?’
‘Of course! And she did the cooking! Since we didn’t have enough money to hire a servant!’
So that was the key to it. At the end of the month, they started serving Brown meagre, inedible meals. And when he made a fuss, they replied: ‘That’s all we can manage on the money we have left!’
Did he need much persuading? Or, on the contrary, was he eager to go?
‘At what time of day did he usually set off?’
‘No particular time! You’d think he was out in the garden, or else pottering in the garage, cleaning the car … Then all of a sudden you’d hear the car engine …’
‘And you tried to follow him … In a taxi?’
‘I had one parked a hundred metres from here for three days … But he managed to shake us off in the backstreets of Antibes … However, I do know where he parked the car – in a garage in Cannes. He left it there the whole time when he was on one of his escapades …’
‘So he could have taken the train to Paris or anywhere?’
‘Maybe!’
‘Or maybe he stayed in the area?’
‘It would be surprising that no one ever bumped into him …’
‘Was he returning from a novena the day that he died?’
‘Yes … He’d been away for seven days …’
‘Did you find any money on him?’
‘Two thousand francs, as usual.’
‘Do you want to know what I think?’ the old woman interjected. ‘Well, I think William must have had a much bigger income … Maybe four thousand … Maybe five … He preferred to spend the rest of it himself … And he condemned us to live off a paltry sum …’
Maigret was blissfully ensconced in Brown’s armchair. The more the interrogation proceeded, the wider his smile grew.
‘Was he mean?’
‘Him? … He was the finest of men …’
‘Just a moment. If you’ll bear with me, I’d like to reconstruct the timetable of a typical day. Who would get up first?’
‘William … He would mostly sleep on the divan in the hall. We’d hear him moving around at the crack of dawn … I told him a hundred times …’
‘Excuse me, did he make the coffee?’
‘Yes … When we came down, around ten, there would be coffee on the stove … But it was cold …’
‘And Brown?’
‘He would be pottering in the garden or in the garage. Or else he would sit by the sea. Come market day, he would get the car out … Another thing I could never get him to do: wash before going out shopping. He would always have his nightshirt on under his jacket, his slippers, his hair in a mess … We would go into Antibes. He would wait outside the shops …’
‘Did he get dressed when he got home?’
‘Sometimes yes! Sometimes no! He could sometimes go four or five days without washing.’
‘Where did you eat?’
‘In the kitchen. When you don’t have a maid, you try not to get all the rooms dirty …’
‘And in the afternoon?’
Good heavens! They had a siesta. Then, at around five o’clock, he would mope around the house in his slippers again.
‘Lots of arguments?’
‘Almost none! Though when you said anything to him, William had an insulting way of snubbing you.’
Maigret did not laugh. He was starting to develop a strong fellow feeling with this confounded Brown.
‘So, he was killed … That could have happened while he was crossing the garden … However, as you found some blood in the car …’
‘Why would we lie about it?’
‘Quite! So, he was killed somewhere else. Or rather, wounded! And, instead of taking himself to a doctor, or to the police station, he came here to expire … Did you carry the body indoors?’
‘We couldn’t leave it outside!’
‘Now, tell me why you did not inform the authorities … I’m sure you must have had an excellent reason …’
The old woman stood up straight and insisted:
‘Yes, inspector! And I will explain that reason to you! You would have found out the truth one day in any case. Brown had married before, in Australia … He is an Australian … His wife is still alive. She has always refused to divorce him, who knows why? If we don’t live in the finest villa on the Côte d’Azur, it’s all because of her …’
‘Have you ever seen her?’
‘She has never left Australia … But she has arranged things so that her husband was placed under legal guardianship … For ten years we have been living with him, taking care of him, consoling him … Thanks to us he has a bit of money put aside … So, if …’
‘If Madame Brown had learned about her husband’s death, she would have had all his assets here seized!’
‘Exactly! We would have made all those sacrifices for nothing! And not just that. I am not entirely without resources of my own. My husband was in the army, and I still draw a small pension … A lot of the things here belong to me … But this woman has the law on her side and she could simply have turned us out of our house …’
‘So you hesitated … You weighed up the pros and cons for three days, with the dead body presumably lying on the divan in the hall …’
‘Two days! We buried him on the second day …’
‘The pair of you! Then you gathered up the most valuable items in the house and … So tell me, where did you intend to go?’
‘Anywhere! Brussels, London …’
‘Had you driven the car before?’ Maigret asked Gina.
‘Never! Though I have started it up in the garage.’
A heroic undertaking, then! It was almost like a dream, this departure, with the dead body in the garden, the three heavy suitcases and the car swerving all over the place …
Maigret was starting to feel sick of the atmosphere in here, the smell of musk, the reddish light filtering through the lampshade.
‘Do you mind if I have a look round the house?’
They had regained their poise, their dignity. Perhaps they even felt a bit baffled because the inspector was taking everything in his stride and seemed, deep down, to find these events perfectly normal.
‘Please excuse the mess.’
And what mess! Mess wasn’t the word for it. It was something far more sordid! A cross between a den, where animals live in their own stench, among leftover food and excrement, and a bourgeois interior, with all its preening pomposity.
On a coat-peg in the hall there was an old overcoat that had belonged to William Brown. Maigret searched through its pockets, took out a worn pair of gloves, a key, a tin of cachous.
‘He ate cachou lozenges?’
‘When he had been drinking, to disguise the smell on his breath. We wouldn’t let him touch whisky … The bottle is still hidden away.’
Above the coat-peg there was a stag’s head with antlers. And further along, a rattan pedestal table with a silver platter for visitors’ cards.
‘Was he wearing this coat here?’
‘No, his gabardine …’
The shutters were closed in the dining room. The room was used as little more than a shed, and Brown must have done some fishing, for there were lobster pots stacked on the floor. Then there was the kitchen, where the big stove had never been lit. The alcohol stove was the one that was used. Next to it stood fifty or sixty empty bottles, which had once contained mineral water.
‘The water round here is too hard, and …’
The stairs, covered with a threadbare carpet, were held in place by copper grips. You just had to follow the scent of musk to find Gina’s bedroom.
No bathroom, no toilet. Dresses thrown higgledy-piggledy on the bed, which was unmade. It was here that they had sorted through the clothes in order to take only the best ones.
Maigret preferred to avoid the old woman’s room.
‘We had to leave in such a hurry … I am so ashamed to show you the house in such a state.’
‘I’ll come back and see you later.’
‘Are we free?’
‘Let’s just say you won’t be going back to prison … At least not for the time being … But if you try to leave Antibes …’
‘We wouldn’t dream of it!’
They saw him to the door. The old woman remembered her good manners.
‘A cigar, inspector?’
Gina went even further. Always best to keep such an influential man onside.
‘You can take the whole box. William won’t be smoking them …’
You couldn’t make it up! Outside, Maigret felt almost giddy. He wanted to laugh and grit his teeth at the same time. Once outside the gate, he turned around and got quite a different view of the villa, stark white against the greenery.
Liberty Bar Page 2
