“You wouldn’t be able to recognize him, then? I think you said so to the police.”
Rosalie did not answer. There was an obstinate, hostile look on her face.
“Would you recognize the ring?”
And Maigret’s eye wandered round the room, resting for a moment on one after the other of his guests’ hands: Leduc’s pudgy ones with their heavy signet ring; the long graceful hands of Dr. Rivaud with only a wedding ring; Duhourceau’s with white parched skin, which were fidgeting with a handkerchief he had just taken from his pocket.
“A gold ring,” she repeated sullenly.
“And you’ve no idea who it was that assaulted you?”
“Can I say something, monsieur?” pleaded the fiancé, his forehead beaded with sweat.
“Fire away.”
“I don’t want Rosalie to get into trouble. She’s a good girl, and I say it to her face. But she has dreams every night. Sometimes she tells me them. And sometimes she’ll tell me the same thing again a few days later just as if it had really happened. It’s the same when she reads a story.”
“Fill me a pipe, Leduc, will you?”
Through the window, Maigret could see a group of at least ten people talking in undertones in front of the hotel.
“So you really have no idea, Rosalie?”
The girl said nothing. But her eyes rested for a second on the public prosecutor, whose patent-leather boots caught Maigret’s eye once more.
“Give her a hundred francs, Leduc. You don’t mind acting as my secretary, do you? . . . Are you satisfied with her?” he asked the landlord.
“She’s a good maid. I can’t say she isn’t.”
“Right! Send in the next.”
The examining magistrate’s clerk had meanwhile worked his way into the room and was standing against the wall.
“Oh! So you’ve come? Find yourself a chair if you can.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t much time,” said the doctor, looking at his watch.
“Go on! Time enough!”
And Maigret lit his pipe with his eyes on the door, which opened to admit a young man. He had oozing eyes and a mop of stringy hair, and was dressed in rags.
“I trust you’re not going to . . .” muttered the prosecutor.
“Come in, my boy. When did you have your last fit?”
“He left the hospital a week ago,” said the doctor.
An obvious epileptic, the type of creature who, in the country, is inevitably regarded as the village idiot.
“What have you got to tell me?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Spit it out.”
But instead of speaking, the wretch burst into tears. After a moment his sobs became so convulsive that he seemed on the verge of another attack. At last, between them, he managed to stammer:
“They’re always down on me . . . I’ve done nothing . . . I swear I haven’t . . . So why shouldn’t I have a hundred francs like the others . . . to buy myself a suit with.”
“A hundred francs,” said Maigret to Leduc. “Next, please.”
The prosecutor was visibly losing patience, while the police inspector pretended to be bored.
“If we dealt out money like that,” he murmured, “we’d have the council down on us in no time.”
Rosalie and her young man, who were still in the room, were fighting it out in angry whispers in a corner. The landlord put his head out the door to listen for any others who might be coming in downstairs.
“Are you really expecting to find something out?” sighed Monsieur Duhourceau.
“Oh, dear, no . . . Nothing at all.”
“In that case . . .”
“I told you the madman would be here, and it is quite likely that he is.”
Only three more people came in: first, a road worker, who three days previously had seen a “shadow flitting between the trees.”
“Did the shadow do anything to you?”
“No.”
“And you couldn’t recognize him, of course . . . Fifty francs for the shadow, Leduc. That’s quite enough.”
Maigret was the only one to keep his good humor. There were now two or three dozen people below, gathered in little groups, throwing curious glances up at the windows of the hotel.
“And you?”
It was an old peasant, dressed in mourning, who had been waiting with a dull scowl on his face.
“I’m the father of the first one. Yes, it was my lass that was the first to be killed. And I’ve come to tell you that if ever I set hands on that monster, I’ll . . .”
His eyes too rested for a moment on the public prosecutor.
“You’ve no idea, I suppose?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it an idea. But I’m not afraid to speak my mind. They wouldn’t dare touch a man as had lost his daughter . . . And what I say is, why don’t they look in the right place? Why don’t they look where there’s been trouble before? . . . You’re a stranger to the place. You don’t know . . . But anybody could tell you there’s been things going on that no one’s ever found the answer to . . .”
Dr. Rivaud had risen to his feet and was shifting restlessly about. The police inspector looked aside and pretended not to be listening. As for the prosecutor, he seemed turned to stone.
“Many thanks, old man.”
“And I’ll tell you this, that I don’t want any of your hundred francs or your fifty francs either . . . But if you should ever pass my way . . . Anybody’ll tell you where my place is . . .”
He didn’t ask if he might go. Without so much as a nod of farewell he slouched away, and his rounded shoulders disappeared through the doorway.
His departure was followed by a long silence, during which Maigret was apparently preoccupied with his pipe, pressing down the half-burnt tobacco with his one serviceable hand.
“Strike me a match, Leduc.”
A silence that had something touching in it, and which appeared to have also taken hold of the people standing in the place du Marché, who seemed fixed in an unnatural stillness.
No sound but the steps of the old peasant crunching the gravel below, and then:
“For God’s sake hold your tongue . . .”
It was Rosalie’s fiancé who spoke, not realizing he had said the words out loud. Rosalie stared straight in front of her with pursed lips, perhaps obediently, or perhaps only biding her time.
“Well, gentlemen,” sighed Maigret at last, “that’s not so bad for a start, is it?”
“We’ve been through all this already,” said the police inspector, picking up his hat and rising.
Maigret ignored the reproof. He looked at nobody. Gazing at his counterpane, he said:
“Do you think, doctor, that after an attack has passed, the madman would remember what he’s done?”
“It’s practically certain.”
The landlord was standing in the middle of the room now, feeling very conspicuous in his white clothes.
“Have a look outside the door, Leduc. See if there’s anybody else.”
“You must excuse me,” said Dr. Rivaud, “but I really must be going. I’ve an appointment at eleven, and it too is a question of life and death.”
“I’ll come down with you,” said the police inspector.
“And what about you, monsieur le procureur?”
“Hum! . . . Yes . . . I think I . . .”
Somehow Maigret seemed dissatisfied. He kept glancing out of the window. Everyone was standing, and on the point of going.
But Maigret, raising himself slightly in the bed, said quietly:
“One moment, gentlemen . . . I don’t think we’re finished yet.”
He pointed to a woman who was crossing the place du Marché at a run. The surgeon could see her from where he stood and exclaimed:
“Françoise!”
“You know her?”
“She’s my sister-in-law . . . She must be coming to fetch me. An urgent call. Some accident, I suppose.”
There were
voices below and hurried steps on the stairs. Then the door opened and Françoise burst breathless into the room, staring wild-eyed around her.
“Jacques! . . . Inspector! . . . Monsieur le procureur! . . .”
She was young, hardly past twenty, slim, pretty, and nervous.
But her dress was covered in dust, and even torn in one place. Instinctively she kept putting her hands to her neck.
“I . . . I’ve seen him . . . He tried to . . .”
She could hardly get the words out. Everyone stood still, staring at her. Then she went up to her brother-in-law.
“Look!”
She showed him her neck. There were marks on it.
“It was over in the Moulin-Neuf Wood . . . I was walking along when a man . . .”
“I thought we’d find out something,” said Maigret, who had quite recovered his equanimity. Leduc, who really knew him very well, looked at him, puzzled.
“You saw him, I suppose?”
“Not very well. I don’t know how I managed to shake him off. I think he must have tripped over a root. Anyhow, he loosened his grip for a second and I broke free . . . I hit him . . .”
“Describe him.”
“I hardly know how to. Some sort of a tramp. Dressed like any peasant. His ears stuck out . . . One thing I’m sure of—it was no one I’d ever seen before.”
“He ran away?”
“I heard a car passing along the road. He must have heard it too . . . And he knew I was going to shout . . . In a second he disappeared into a thicket.”
She was getting her breath back, though she still panted, with one hand on her breast, the other at her neck.
“My God, I had a fright . . . If it hadn’t been for that car . . . I didn’t stop running all the way here.”
“But wouldn’t it have been shorter to go home?”
“I knew there was nobody there except my sister.”
“Were you to the left of the farm?” asked the local inspector.
“A little beyond the old quarry.”
“I’ll have the wood searched at once. It’s not too late,” the inspector said to the prosecutor.
Dr. Rivaud looked annoyed. With a frown on his face he studied the girl, who was now leaning on the table, breathing more normally. There was a spark of mockery in Leduc’s eye as he caught Maigret’s. And he couldn’t help saying:
“This proves one thing anyhow, and that is that the madman didn’t accept your invitation after all.”
The inspector went downstairs and hurried across to the police station in the town hall. The prosecutor stood slowly brushing his bowler with his sleeve. Then he turned to Françoise.
“As soon as the examining magistrate returns, I must ask you to go and see him. He’ll take a statement from you, which you’ll have to sign.”
He held his dry hand out to Maigret.
“I suppose you don’t want us anymore?”
“It was good of you to come. I had no right to expect it.”
At a sign from Maigret, Leduc cleared the room. Rosalie and her young man were still sparring as they left. Returning to the bedside with a smile on his lips, he was surprised to see an anxious expression on his friend’s face.
“Well?”
“Nothing.”
“It didn’t work, did it?”
“On the contrary. It worked too well! Fill me another pipe, will you, before my wife comes back?”
“But I thought you were expecting the madman here?”
“I was.”
“But ...”
“Let’s not talk about it now . . . You know, it would be dreadful if there was to be another murder. Because this time ...”
“What?”
“Never mind. Don’t try to understand. Here’s my wife crossing the marketplace. She’ll say I’ve been smoking too much and take away the tobacco. Take a bit out of the pouch and stuff it under the pillow.”
He was hot. No doubt his temperature was up again.
“Leave me now, if you don’t mind . . . Just put the telephone there where I can reach it.”
“I’m having lunch here today. It’s always good on Thursdays. Goose in aspic . . . I’ll look in again before I go.”
“Do . . . By the way, about that girl—you know, the one you spoke to me about—is it long since you saw her?”
Leduc bristled. Staring hard into Maigret’s eyes, he snapped:
“We’ve had enough of that.”
And he went downstairs, leaving his straw hat on the table.
5
PATENT-LEATHER BOOTS
“Yes, madame . . . The Hôtel d’ Angleterrre . . . But please understand that you are perfectly free not to come . . .”
Leduc had left. Madame Maigret was climbing the stairs. Dr. Rivaud was standing by his car in front of the hotel, with his sister-in-law and the prosecutor.
It was to Madame Rivaud that Maigret was telephoning. Françoise had said she was alone in the house. He asked her to come and see him. It did not surprise him in the least to find that the voice at the other end of the line was an anxious one.
Madame Maigret listened to the end of the conversation as she took off her hat.
“Is it true what they say—that there’s been another assault? I met some people who were hurrying off to the wood.”
Maigret was too absorbed in his own thoughts to answer. The aspect of the town seemed to change under his eyes as the news spread rapidly. More and more people were hurrying down a street that branched off on the left of the place du Marché.
“Isn’t there a level crossing along there?” asked Maigret, who was beginning to know the topography of the town.
“Yes, it’s a long street that changes gradually into a country road. Moulin-Neuf is after the second turning. In spite of its name, there’s no mill there now, only a large whitewashed farm. When I passed, they were harnessing some oxen to a cart. The farmyard was full of poultry, including some fine young turkeys.”
Maigret listened like a blind man to whom a landscape is being described.
“Is it a big farm?”
“They measure land in journaux in these parts. Two hundred journaux, they told me—but it means nothing to me. The wood begins just beyond the house. Farther on you come to the main road to Périgueux.”
Doubtless the country gendarmes were out there by now. Maigret could imagine them slowly combing the wood like game beaters. And groups of people held back on the road, children climbing up trees.
“I think you’d better go back. I’d like you to be on the spot.”
Without a murmur she put her hat on again. Downstairs in the hall, she crossed a young woman who was coming in. She turned to look at her critically, perhaps not altogether benevolently.
It was Madame Rivaud.
“Do sit down . . . I hope you’ll forgive my having bothered you, particularly for so little. For I’m not even sure I’ve any questions to ask you. It’s such a complicated business . . .”
He kept his eyes riveted on her, and she sat before him as though hypnotized. Maigret was puzzled by her, but not altogether astonished. He had somehow guessed that he would find her interesting, but she was a more curious specimen than he had dared to expect.
Her sister Françoise was slim and elegant. Certainly there was nothing provincial about her.
Madame Rivaud was not nearly so good-looking. In fact, she could not have been called attractive at all. She was between twenty-five and thirty, neither tall nor short, but definitely on the stout side. Her clothes must have been made by a pretty humble dressmaker; if not, she didn’t know how to wear them.
But what excited Maigret’s interest were her eyes. Sad eyes. Anxious eyes. Yet for all their anxiety, there was resignation in them, too.
She looked at Maigret. She was obviously frightened, yet fear seemed only to paralyze her. With a little exaggeration one could say that she sat as though expecting to be hit.
It was impossible to imagine her as anything but a model o
f country-town respectability. She was fidgeting with her handkerchief. No doubt she would be dabbing her eyes with it on the first suitable occasion.
“How long have you been married, madame?”
She didn’t answer at once. The question frightened her. Everything frightened her.
“Five years,” she said at last in a dull voice.
“Were you already living in Bergerac?”
Again she looked at Maigret for a considerable time before answering:
“I was living in Algiers with my mother and sister.”
Maigret found it quite difficult to go on. The least word seemed to scare her.
“And Dr. Rivaud was living there too?”
“He spent two years at the hospital there.”
Maigret was studying her hands. Somehow they didn’t seem the right hands for a doctor’s wife. Surely those hands had known rough work. How could he maneuver the conversation tactfully on to that subject?
“Your mother . . .” he began.
But he didn’t finish the sentence. Madame Rivaud was sitting with her face to the window. And all at once she jumped from her chair, looking more frightened than ever. The door of a car slammed below.
It was Dr. Rivaud, who dashed into the hotel and up the stairs, gave one knock on the door, and burst straight in.
“What are you doing here?”
He spoke to his wife in a hard, dry voice without a glance at Maigret. It was only after a moment that he turned to him to say:
“What’s the meaning of this? If you wanted to see my wife, why couldn’t you speak to me about it?”
She hung her head, while Maigret assumed an expression of innocent astonishment.
“Really, doctor! . . . What is there to be so angry about? I felt I’d like to make Madame Rivaud’s acquaintance. As I’m tied to my bed, I asked her here.”
“Have you finished interrogating her?”
“There’s been no interrogation, doctor. Merely a little friendly chat. When you arrived we had just got on to the subject of Algiers. Did you like it out there?”
Maigret spoke in a leisurely, offhand way, but his casualness was only on the surface. In reality he was mustering all the energy he possessed, determined to let nothing escape him as he studied the two people before him. Madame Rivaud seemed on the verge of tears, while her husband’s eye roved over the room as though looking for some clue to the conversation that had been taking place.
The Madman of Bergerac Page 5
