Maigret's Mistake
Page 11
She walked with him as far as the entrance, where she handed him the dark leather briefcase she had been holding in her hand and watched him enter the lift before setting off in the direction of the Ternes.
‘Follow her.’
‘Right, chief.’
The car only had to glide down the sloping avenue. Lucile Decaux was walking quickly, without turning. She was short, brown-haired and, as far as could be judged, plump. She turned the corner into Rue des Acacias and went straight into a pork butcher’s, then into the bakery next door and finally, after about a hundred metres, into a dilapidated-looking building.
Maigret sat in the car for about ten more minutes. Then he went into the building in his turn and spoke to the concierge, whose lodge was of a different class from the one on Avenue Carnot, cluttered with an adult’s bed and a child’s cot.
‘Mademoiselle Decaux?’
‘Fourth floor on the right. She just got home.’
There was no lift. On the fourth floor, he rang a bell and heard steps inside.
‘Who’s there?’ a voice asked from behind the door.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.’
‘One moment, please.’
The voice was neither surprised nor frightened. Before opening, she went to another room and took a few moments to come back: Maigret understood why when the door opened and he saw her in a dressing gown, her feet in slippers.
‘Come in,’ she said, looking at him curiously.
The apartment, consisting of three rooms and a kitchen, was extremely clean, the wooden floor so highly polished you could have slid on it as if on a skating rink. He was shown into the living room, which was more like a kind of studio, with a divan covered in a striped cloth, lots of books in cases, a gramophone and shelves full of records. Above the fireplace, where the young woman had just lighted some logs, was a framed photograph of Étienne Gouin.
‘Do you mind if I take my coat off?’
‘Please do. I was just making myself comfortable when you rang the bell.’
She wasn’t pretty. Her features were irregular, her lips too thick, but she seemed to have a pleasant body.
‘Am I stopping you from having your dinner?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Please sit down.’
She pointed to an armchair. She herself settled on the edge of the divan, pulling the hem of her dressing gown down over her bare legs.
She didn’t ask him any questions, merely observed him the way some people observe a famous person they at last see in the flesh.
‘I preferred not to disturb you at the hospital.’
‘You’d have found that difficult, because I was in the operating theatre.’
‘Are you usually present at the professor’s operations?’
‘Always.’
‘How long has that been the case?’
‘Ten years. Before that, I was his student.’
‘Are you a doctor?’
‘Yes.’
‘May I ask how old you are?’
‘I’m thirty-six.’
She was answering his questions without any hesitation, in a fairly neutral voice, but he nevertheless had the impression of a certain mistrust, perhaps a certain hostility.
‘I’m here to clarify a few points of detail. As I’m sure you know, in an investigation like the one I’m conducting, everything has to be checked.’
She was waiting for the question.
‘On Monday evening, unless I’m mistaken, you went to fetch your boss from Avenue Carnot just before eight.’
‘That’s right. I hailed a taxi and phoned the professor from the concierge’s lodge to let him know I was waiting for him downstairs.’
‘Is that your usual procedure?’
‘Yes. I only go up when there’s work in the office, or documents to take.’
‘Where were you while the professor was coming down?’
‘By the door of the lift.’
‘So you know he stopped on the way down?’
‘He stopped for a few minutes on the third floor. I assume you’re aware of that?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Why haven’t you asked the professor himself that question?’
He preferred not to answer.
‘Did he behave just like the other evenings? Or did he seem worried?’
‘Only about his patient’s condition.’
‘Did he say anything on the way to the hospital?’
‘He doesn’t talk a lot.’
‘You must have got to Cochin a few minutes after eight. What happened then?’
‘We went straight to the patient’s room along with the intern on duty.’
‘Did you spend the whole evening there?’
‘No. The professor stayed in the room for about half an hour, watching out for certain reactions that didn’t come. I told him he ought to get some rest.’
‘What time was it when he went up to the fourth floor?’
‘I know you already asked these questions at the hospital.’
‘Was it the head nurse of the department who told you that?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘What time was it?’
‘It wasn’t yet nine.’
‘You didn’t go up with him?’
‘I stayed with the patient. It was a child.’
‘I know. What time did the professor come back down?’
‘I went up at about eleven to tell him that what he was expecting to happen had happened.’
‘Did you go into the room where he was lying down?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was he dressed?’
‘At the hospital, he usually lies down fully dressed. He had simply taken off his jacket and loosened his tie.’
‘So you spent all the time between half past eight and eleven at the patient’s bedside. Which means it would have been possible for your boss to go back downstairs and leave the hospital without your knowing.’
She must have been expecting this, because he had asked the same question in Cochin and they must have told her, and yet he saw her chest rising more rapidly. Had she prepared her answer?
‘It would have been impossible, because I went upstairs at a quarter past ten to see if he needed anything.’
Maigret, who was looking her in the eyes, said without raising his voice, and with a great deal of gentleness in his tone:
‘You’re lying, aren’t you?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I sense that you’re lying. Listen, Mademoiselle Decaux, it’s easy for me to reconstruct your actions at the hospital. I can do it right now. Even if you’ve taught the staff well, there’ll be someone who’ll feel uneasy and admit the truth. You didn’t go upstairs until eleven.’
‘The professor didn’t leave the hospital.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I know him better than anyone.’
She pointed to the evening newspaper on a side table.
‘I found that on a table in Neuilly and read it. Why did you release that young man?’
She meant Pierrot. From where he was sitting, he could read the name upside down.
‘Are you so sure he didn’t do it?’
‘I’m not sure of anything.’
‘But you suspect the professor of killing that girl.’
Instead of answering her question, he asked:
‘Did you know her?’
‘You forget I’m Monsieur Gouin’s assistant. I was present when he operated on her.’
‘Did you dislike her?’
‘I had no reason to dislike her.’
As he had his pipe in his hand, she said:
‘You can smoke. It doesn’t bother me.’
‘Is it correct to say that the relationship between the professor and you was more intimate than purely professional?’
‘They told you that, too, did they?’
She smiled, with a certain condescension.
‘A
re you very bourgeois, Monsieur Maigret?’
‘That depends on what you mean by that.’
‘I’m trying to find out if you have fixed ideas about conventional morality.’
‘I’ve been in the police force for nearly thirty-five years, my dear.’
‘In that case, don’t speak about intimate relationships. Yes, we’ve had an intimate relationship – our relationship as colleagues. The rest is of no importance.’
‘Does that mean there’s no love between you?’
‘Certainly not in the sense you mean it. I admire Professor Gouin more than anyone else in the world. I try to help him as best I can. For ten hours, twelve hours a day, often more, I’m at his side, and it’s become such a normal thing for both of us that sometimes he doesn’t even notice. We often spend the whole night together waiting for particular symptoms to manifest themselves in a patient. When he operates in the provinces or abroad, I go with him. In the street, I pay his taxi fares and I’m the one who reminds him of his appointments, just as I’m the one who phones his wife to say that he won’t be home.
‘A long time ago, right at the beginning, things happened between us, the kind of things that normally happen between a man and a woman who find themselves in frequent contact.
‘It didn’t mean anything to him. He’s done the same thing with the nurses and with many others.’
‘Didn’t it mean anything to you either?’
‘Nothing at all.’
She was looking him straight in the eyes, as if challenging him to contradict her.
‘Have you ever been in love?’
‘With whom?’
‘With anyone. With the professor.’
‘Not in the way you mean it.’
‘But you’ve devoted your life to him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it he who chose you as his assistant when you qualified?’
‘It was I who put myself forward. It was something I’d been thinking about ever since I started attending his classes.’
‘You said that at the beginning certain things happened between you. Am I to understand they don’t happen any more?’
‘You’re an excellent father confessor, Monsieur Maigret. They still happen every now and again.’
‘In your apartment?’
‘He’s never set foot here. I don’t see him climbing the four floors to get here.’
‘At the hospital?’
‘Sometimes. Sometimes also in his apartment. You’re forgetting I’m also his secretary and that we often spend part of the day on Avenue Carnot.’
‘Do you know his wife well?’
‘We see each other almost every day.’
‘How would you describe your relationship with her?’
He had the impression that a harder look came into Lucile Decaux’s eyes.
‘I’m indifferent to her,’ she said.
‘Is that mutual?’
‘What is it you want me to tell you?’
‘The truth.’
‘Let’s just say that Madame Gouin looks at me the same way she looks at her servants. I suppose she has to make an effort to convince herself that she’s the professor’s wife. Have you met her?’
Once again, Maigret avoided answering.
‘Why did your boss marry her?’
‘So as not to be alone, I suppose.’
‘That was before you became his assistant, wasn’t it?’
‘Several years earlier.’
‘Does he get on well with her?’
‘He’s not the kind of man who quarrels with anyone, and he has a remarkable ability to ignore people.’
‘Does he ignore his wife?’
‘He has some of his meals with her.’
‘Is that all?’
‘As far as I know.’
‘Why do you think she married him?’
‘She was just an ordinary nurse, don’t forget. The professor is said to be a rich man.’
‘Is he?’
‘He earns a lot of money. He doesn’t care about things like that.’
‘But he has a considerable fortune?’
She nodded and uncrossed her legs, not forgetting to pull down on the hem of her dressing gown.
‘In short, in your opinion, he isn’t happy in his marriage.’
‘That’s not quite correct. His wife couldn’t make him unhappy.’
‘What about Lulu?’
‘Nor could Lulu, that’s my belief.’
‘If he wasn’t in love with her, how do you explain the fact that for more than two years—’
‘I can’t explain it. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.’
‘Someone told me she’d got under his skin.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Isn’t it true?’
‘It is and it isn’t. She’d become something that belonged to him.’
‘But he wouldn’t have got a divorce in order to marry her?’
She looked at him in astonishment.
‘No, of course not! He would never have put himself through the complication of a divorce.’
‘Even to marry you?’
‘He’s never thought about it.’
‘And you?’
She blushed.
‘Neither have I. What would I have gained by it? On the contrary, I would have lost on the deal. You see, I’ve always had the best of him, and still have. He does hardly anything without me. I take part in his work. I read his books as he writes them and often I’m the one who does the research. He won’t cross Paris by taxi without me at his side.’
‘Is he afraid of dying suddenly?’
‘Why do you ask that?’
She seemed surprised at Maigret’s insight.
‘It’s been true for a few years now, pretty much ever since he discovered that he has a weak heart. At the time, he consulted several of his colleagues. You may not know this, but most doctors are more frightened by illness than their patients.’
‘I do know that.’
‘He’s never said anything to me about it, but gradually he’s got into the habit of never being on his own.’
‘If he had an attack, in a taxi, say, what could you do?’
‘Not very much. But I understand him.’
‘So basically, it’s the thought of dying alone that frightens him.’
‘Why exactly have you come to see me, inspector?’
‘Perhaps in order not to disturb your boss needlessly. His mistress was killed on Monday evening.’
‘I don’t like that word. It’s inaccurate.’
‘I use it in the meaning that’s usually given to it. Physically speaking, Gouin could have committed the murder. As you yourself admitted earlier, he was alone on the fourth floor of the hospital from a quarter to nine until eleven. There was nothing to stop him going downstairs and getting a ride to Avenue Carnot.’
‘First of all, if you knew him, the idea would never even occur to you that he could kill someone.’
‘On the contrary!’ he retorted.
He was so categorical that she looked at him with astonishment, without thinking of objecting.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You admit that his work, his career – his scientific research, his teaching, his medical activities, whatever – is the only thing that matters to him.’
‘To an extent.’
‘To a much greater extent than anyone else I’ve ever met. Someone used about him the words “force of nature”.’
This time, she didn’t ask who.
‘Forces of nature don’t care about the damage they cause. If, for one reason or another, Lulu had become a threat to his activities—’
‘How could she have threatened the professor’s activities?’
‘You know she was pregnant?’
‘What difference would that have made?’
She didn’t seem surprised.
‘So you knew?’
‘The professor told me.’
‘Last Saturday.’
‘Are you certain that he told you on Saturday?’
‘Absolutely. We were in the taxi, coming back from the hospital. He told me, just as he tells me lots of things, without making much of it, as if he was talking to himself, “I think Louise is pregnant.” ’
‘How did he seem?’
‘Fine. Quite ironic, the way he usually is. You see, there are lots of things people think are important and he doesn’t.’
‘What surprises me is that he could have talked to you about it on Saturday, when it wasn’t until about six on Monday evening that Lulu herself found out.’
‘You forget that he’s a doctor and that he was sleeping with her.’
‘You think he told his wife, too.’
‘It’s unlikely.’
‘What if Louise Filon had got it into her head to get him to marry her?’
‘I doubt the thought ever crossed her mind. And, even if it had, he wouldn’t have killed her. You’re barking up the wrong tree, inspector. I’m not claiming you let the real culprit go. I don’t see why that Pierrot would have killed the girl either.’
‘Out of love, if she’d threatened not to see him again.’
She shrugged.
‘That’s going a bit far.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I have no reason to think anything.’
He stood up to empty his pipe in the fireplace and, automatically, as if he were in his own home, picked up the tongs to arrange the logs.
‘Are you thinking about his wife?’ he asked in a casual tone, with his back turned.
‘I’m not thinking about anyone.’
‘You don’t like her?’
How could she have liked her? Germaine Gouin was a mere nurse, a fisherman’s daughter, who overnight had become the lawful wedded wife of the professor while she, Lucile Decaux, who had devoted her life to him and was quite capable of helping him in his work, was only his assistant. Every evening, when they got back from the hospital, she would get out of the taxi with him, but only to say goodnight in the doorway of his building and go home to her apartment in Rue des Acacias while he went upstairs to his wife.
‘Do you suspect her, Mademoiselle Decaux?’
‘I never said that.’
‘But you think it?’
‘I think you’re only too eager to pry into my boss’s actions during Monday evening, but that you don’t care about hers.’
‘How do you know that?’