‘Although they might not love me unconditionally, I don’t think they hate me, and none of them would stand to gain from my death.
‘The knick-knacks you see wouldn’t fetch much at auction and they are all I own, together with the replicas of my jewellery.
‘As for the local people, they think I’m an old dear and see me as part of the landscape.
‘Nearly everyone I knew as a girl has died. There are only a few surviving old folk, like the elder Seuret sister, whom I visit from time to time.
‘That someone should get it into their head to poison me seems so unlikely, so absurd that I’m a little embarrassed to have brought you here and I’m ashamed now of having gone to see you in Paris.
‘You must have taken me for a batty old woman, admit it!’
‘No.’
‘Why not? What made you take it seriously?’
‘Young Rose is dead!’
‘That’s true.’
She glanced out of the window at the furniture scattered around the courtyard and the blankets hanging from the washing line.
‘Is your gardener here today?’
‘No. Yesterday was his day.’
‘Did the cleaner carry the furniture down on her own?’
‘We took it apart and brought it down together early this morning, before I went to Yport.’
The furniture was heavy and the staircase narrow, with an awkward bend.
‘I am stronger than I appear, Monsieur Maigret. I look as if I have the bones of a bird, and it’s true, my bones are small. But even though she was sturdy, Rose was no stronger than I am.’
She got up to refill his glass again and poured herself a drop of the aged amber Calvados, whose aroma filled the room.
She was taken aback by the question Maigret asked as he calmly puffed on his pipe:
‘Do you think that your son-in-law – Julien Sudre, he’s called, isn’t he? – turns a blind eye to his wife’s goings on?’
Astonished, she laughed.
‘I’ve never asked myself.’
‘And you’ve never asked yourself either whether your daughter had one or several lovers?’
‘My goodness, that wouldn’t surprise me.’
‘On Sunday night there was a man here in the guest room with your daughter.’
She frowned and thought.
‘Now I understand.’
‘What do you understand?’
‘Certain details that didn’t strike me at the time. All day Arlette was distracted, preoccupied. After lunch she offered to take Charles’ children for a walk along the beach and looked disappointed when he wanted to go himself. When I asked her why her husband hadn’t come with her, she told me that he had a landscape to finish by the Seine.
‘“Are you staying the night?” I asked.
‘“I don’t know. I don’t think so. It’s probably best if I take the evening train back.”
‘I urged her to stay. Several times I caught her looking out of the window, and I remember now that at nightfall a motor car drove past the house two or three times almost at a crawl.’
‘What did you women talk about?’
‘It’s hard to say. Mimi had to take care of her baby, which needed changing several times. She also had to prepare the bottle, calm Claude, who’s five and who was damaging the flower beds. We talked about the children, naturally. Arlette remarked to Mimi that the youngest must have come as a surprise, after five years, when the eldest was already fifteen, and Mimi replied that Charles never surprised her in any other way, and then she was the one who was lumbered …
‘You can imagine! We swapped recipes.’
‘Did Arlette go up to your room after dinner?’
‘Yes, I wanted to show her a dress I’d had made recently, and I tried it on in front of her.’
‘Where was she standing?’
‘She was sitting on the bed.’
‘Was she alone at any point?’
‘Perhaps for a few seconds while I was fetching the dress from the little room that serves as my linen room. But I can’t imagine that Arlette would pour poison in my sleeping potion. She’d have had to open the medicine cabinet which is in the bathroom. I would have heard her. And why would Arlette have done that? So, she’s unfaithful to poor old Julien?’
‘A man visited Arlette in her bedroom after midnight and must have left hurriedly via the window when he heard Rose’s groans.’
She couldn’t help laughing.
‘That was bad timing!’
But thinking about it retrospectively did not frighten her.
‘Who is it, someone from around here?’
‘Someone who drove her here from Paris in a car, a certain Hervé Peyrot, who’s in the wine trade.’
‘Young?’
‘Fortyish.’
‘I must say I was surprised she came by train when her husband has a car and she drives. All this is very bizarre, Monsieur Maigret. As a matter of fact, I’m glad you’re here. The inspector took away the glass and the medicine bottle, as well as various items from my room and the bathroom. I’m curious to know what the laboratory people will discover. Some plainclothes police officers came too and took photos. If only young Rose hadn’t been so stubborn! I told her the medicine had a strange taste and once she’d left the room, she still drank the remains. She didn’t need anything to help her sleep, I assure you. How many times did I lie there listening to her snoring through the partition as soon as her head touched the pillow! Perhaps you’d like to have a look around the house?’
He had been there for barely an hour and he already felt as if he knew it, as if it was familiar. The starchy figure of the cleaning woman – a widow for certain – appeared in the doorway.
‘Will you eat the rest of the stew this evening or shall I give it to the cat?’
She said this almost spitefully, without smiling.
‘I’ll eat it, Madame Leroy.’
‘I’ve finished outside. Everything’s clean. When you’re ready to help me carry the furniture back upstairs …’
Valentine gave Maigret a half-smile.
‘Later.’
‘But I don’t have anything else to do.’
‘Then rest for a minute.’
And she preceded him up the narrow staircase that smelled of wax polish.
3. Arlette’s Lovers
‘Drop in and see me whenever you like, Monsieur Maigret. After bringing you here from Paris, the very least I can do is remain at your disposal. I hope you aren’t too annoyed with me for having put you to so much trouble over this ridiculous business?’
They were in the garden, just as Maigret was leaving. The widow Leroy was still waiting for her mistress to help her carry the furniture back into Rose’s room. Maigret was on the verge of offering to help, because he couldn’t imagine Valentine humping such a heavy load.
‘I’m surprised now that I urged you to come, because I’m not even afraid.’
‘Is Madame Leroy going to sleep here?’
‘Oh no! She’ll be going home in an hour’s time. She has a twenty-four-year-old son who works for the railways. She pampers him like a baby. It’s because he’ll be home soon that she can’t keep still.’
‘Will you sleep in the house alone?’
‘It won’t be the first time.’
He had crossed the little garden and pushed open the gate, which squeaked. The sun was setting over the sea, bathing the path in yellow light, already reddening. The unsurfaced road was bordered by hedgerows and nettles, like those of his childhood, and his feet stumbled in the soft dust.
A little further down was the beginning of a bend and rounding this bend he saw, coming towards him, the shape of a woman toiling up the slope.
Her back was to the light and she wore dark clothes, and he immediately knew who she was. There was no doubt it was Arlette, the old lady’s daughter. She did not look as tiny and slim as her mother, but she had the same delicateness, seemed to be made of the same fragile, p
recious stuff, and she had the same huge eyes of an incredible blue.
Did she recognize Maigret, whose photograph had so often been in the newspapers? Or did she simply say to herself, on seeing a stranger dressed like a city dweller on this road, that he could only be a police officer?
Maigret had the impression that during the brief moment when they passed each other she hesitated as if about to speak to him. He too hesitated. He wanted to speak to her, but this was neither the right time nor the right place.
So they merely looked at one another in silence, and Arlette’s eyes expressed no emotion. They were solemn and there was something faraway, something impersonal in her gaze. Maigret turned around when she had already disappeared behind the hedge, then continued on his way until he reached the first streets of Étretat.
He ran into Inspector Castaing in front of a display of postcards.
‘I was waiting for you, sir. I’ve just received the reports. They’re here, in my pocket. Do you want to read them?’
‘What I’d like more than anything is to sit down at a terrace and drink a glass of cold beer.’
‘Didn’t she offer you a drink?’
‘She gave me a Calvados that was so old, so excellent that it’s made me thirsty for something more ordinary and thirst-quenching.’
The sun, which from mid-afternoon had been slipping down like a huge red ball, heralded the end of summer, as did the dwindling number of holidaymakers, who were already wearing woollen clothes and, now driven from the beach by the coolness, didn’t know what to do with themselves in town.
‘Arlette has just arrived,’ said Maigret when they were installed at a pedestal table on Place de la Mairie.
‘Did you see her?’
‘I presume that this time she came by train.’
‘Did she go to her mother’s? Did you talk to her?’
‘We simply passed each other around a hundred metres from La Bicoque.’
‘Do you think she’s going to sleep there?’
‘I think it’s likely.’
‘There’s no one else in the house, is there?’
‘Tonight there will only be the mother and the daughter.’
This worried the inspector.
‘You’re not going to make me read all these papers, are you?’ said Maigret, pushing away the bulging yellow envelope full of documents. ‘Tell me about the glass, first of all. You’re the one who found it and packaged it up?’
‘Yes. It was in the maid’s room, on the bedside table. I asked Madame Besson if it was the one that had contained her medicine. Apparently there’s no mistaking it, because the glass is slightly tinted; it’s the last remaining one from an old set.’
‘Fingerprints?’
‘The old lady’s and Rose’s.’
‘The bottle?’
‘I found the sleeping potion in the medicine chest in the bathroom, where I’d been told it was kept. It had only the old lady’s prints on it. Did you see her bedroom, by the way?’
Like Maigret, Castaing had been surprised on entering Valentine’s room. She had let the detective chief inspector in with a cheerful ease, without a word, but she must have been aware of the effect the room would produce.
Since the rest of the house was pretty and in good taste, displaying a certain sophistication, visitors did not expect to find themselves in an extremely coquettish boudoir whose walls were covered with cream satin. In the midst of a huge bed a Persian cat with bluish fur was having a nap and barely opened his golden eyes to acknowledge the intruder.
‘It’s perhaps a rather ridiculous room for an old woman, isn’t it?’
When they had moved into the yellow-tiled bathroom, she added:
‘It’s probably because when I was young I never had my own bedroom. I had to share an attic room with my sisters and we had to go and wash in the courtyard, on the edge of the well. In Avenue d’Iéna, Ferdinand had a pink marble bathroom put in for me. All the fittings were silver gilt and there was a sunken bath with three steps down.’
Rose’s room, with its waxed floor and floral wallpapers, was empty and there was a draught blowing that made the cretonne curtains billow like crinolines.
‘What did the coroner say?’
‘There’s no doubt she was poisoned. A high dose of arsenic. The sleeping draught did not cause the maid’s death. The report adds that the liquid must have had a very bitter taste.’
‘That’s what Valentine said too.’
‘But Rose drank it all the same. Do you see that man over the road, walking towards the stationer’s? That’s Théo Besson.’
He was a tall, big-boned man with strongly defined features and looked around fifty. He wore a very English-looking rust-coloured tweed jacket. He was bareheaded, his hair grey and sparse.
He spotted the two men. He knew the inspector already and most likely recognized Detective Chief Inspector Maigret. He hesitated, as Arlette had done, gave a slight nod in greeting and went inside the stationer’s.
‘Have you interviewed him?’
‘In passing. I asked him if there was anything he wanted to tell me and whether he intended to stay in Étretat for long. He replied that he had no plans to leave town before the hotel closes on the 15th of September.’
‘How does he spend his days?’
‘He often walks along the coast, alone, with big, regular strides, like people of a certain age who want to stay fit.
‘He goes for a swim at around eleven and hangs around the casino bar or in the cafés the rest of the time.’
‘Does he drink a lot?’
‘Ten or so whiskies a day, but I don’t think he gets drunk. He reads four or five newspapers. Sometimes he gambles, without ever sitting down at one of the gaming tables.’
‘Nothing else in these reports?’
‘Nothing of interest.’
‘Has Théo Besson seen his stepmother since Sunday?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Who has seen her? Give me a summary of what happened on Monday. I’ve more or less got an idea of the Sunday, but I can’t quite picture the events of Monday.’
He knew how Valentine had spent Tuesday because she had told him. She’d left La Bicoque early and caught the first train to Paris, leaving Madame Leroy on her own. On arrival, he’d taken a taxi to Quai des Orfèvres, where she’d called on Maigret.
‘Did you go and see your daughter afterwards?’ he’d asked her earlier.
‘No. Why?’
‘Do you ever visit her when you’re in Paris?’
‘Seldom. They have their life and I have mine. Besides, I don’t like the Saint-Antoine neighbourhood, where they live, or their pretentious apartment.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I had luncheon in a restaurant in Rue Duphot, where I’ve always liked to eat, did some shopping in the Madeleine area, then caught my train home.’
‘Did your daughter know you were in Paris?’
‘No.’
‘Nor your stepson Charles?’
‘I didn’t tell them about my idea.’
Now he really wanted to know what had happened on the Monday.
‘When I arrived, at around eight o’clock,’ said Castaing, ‘I found the household in quite a state, as you can imagine.’
‘Who was there?’
‘Madame Besson, of course.’
‘Wearing what?’
‘Her usual outfit. Her daughter was there too, in her slippers, her hair unbrushed. Doctor Jolly was sitting with them, a man of a certain age, a family friend, calm, level-headed, and the elderly gardener had just arrived. As for Charles Besson, he was just a few steps ahead of me.’
‘Who told you what had happened?’
‘Valentine. From time to time the doctor interrupted her to ask about an important detail. She told me that she was the one who’d asked someone to telephone her stepson to let him know. He was very upset, “devastated”. He seemed relieved that the press hadn’t shown up yet and that the l
ocals weren’t aware of anything. You’ve just seen his brother. He’s very much like him, only fatter and flabbier.
‘The fact that there’s no telephone in the house made my job more difficult, because I had to call Le Havre several times and each time I had to come into town.
‘The doctor left first because he had patients to see.’
‘Weren’t Rose’s parents informed?’
‘No. It didn’t occur to anybody to tell them. It was me who went to Yport to see them. One of her brothers came back with me, and her mother.’
‘How did that go?’
‘Not well. The mother glared at Madame Besson as if she blamed her for what had happened and refused to speak to her. As for the brother, I don’t know what Charles Besson said to him, but he flew off the handle.
‘“We must know the truth. Don’t you think I’ll allow this to be hushed up because you can pull a few strings!”
‘They wanted to take the body to Yport. I had a great deal of difficulty convincing them that first of all it had to be transferred to Le Havre for the autopsy.
‘At that point the father arrived on his bicycle. He didn’t say a word to anyone. He’s a short, stocky man, very strong, very solidly built. As soon as the body was loaded into the van, he took his family away. Charles Besson offered to drive them home in his car, but they refused, and the three of them left on foot, the old man pushing his bicycle.
‘I can’t vouch for the exact timing of what I’m telling you. Neighbours began to arrive, then people from the town were swarming all over the garden. I was upstairs with Cornu, from Criminal Records, who was taking photos and looking for fingerprints.
‘When I came back downstairs, at around midday, I couldn’t see Arlette and her mother told me she’d gone back to Paris for fear her husband would be worried.
‘Charles Besson stayed until three o’clock and then returned to Fécamp.’
‘Did he mention me?’
‘No. Why?’
‘He didn’t tell you that he was planning to ask the minister to put me in charge of the investigation?’
‘He didn’t say anything to me, other than that he would handle the press. I can’t think of anything else on the Monday. Oh yes! That evening, I spotted Théo Besson in the street. Someone pointed him out to me and I stopped to have a few words with him.
Maigret and the Old Lady Page 4
