“What about having a drink in the Lion d’Or? It would be most interesting to see my old colleague Cavre. I saw a young fellow at the station just now and I suspect he has been asked to come to the rescue.”
“I’ll take my leave, then…” said Alban quickly.
“No, no…If you don’t want to stop, I’ll keep you company on your way home. You can’t object to that, now, can you?”
“I am in a hurry to get back and go to bed. I’ll be quite open with you…I am prone to the most dreadful migraines and I am in the throes of one now.”
“All the more reason to escort you home. Does your maid sleep in the house?”
“Of course.”
“Some people don’t like their servants to be under the same roof at night…Look! There’s a light…”
“It’s the maid…”
“Is she in the sitting room? Of course, the room is heated…Does she do odd sewing jobs for you when you are out?”
They stopped outside the front door and Alban, instead of knocking, hunted in his pocket for the key.
“See you tomorrow, superintendent! No doubt we will meet at my friends the Nauds…”
“Tell me…”
Alban took care not to open the door lest Maigret would think he was inviting him inside.
“It’s stupid…Please forgive me…But I am afraid I’ve been taken short, and since we’re here…We men can be honest with each other, can’t we?”
“Come in…I’ll show you the way…”
The light was not on in the corridor but the sitting-room door on the left was half-open and revealed a rectangle of light. Alban tried to lead Maigret down the corridor but the superintendent, in an almost instinctive gesture, pushed the door wide-open, whereupon he stopped in his tracks and cried out:
“Well I never! It’s my old friend Cavre! What are you doing here, my dear chap?”
The ex-inspector had risen to his feet, looking as pale and sullen as ever. He glowered at Groult-Cotelle whom he deemed responsible for this disastrous meeting.
Alban was completely out of his depth. He tried hard to think of an explanation but, unable to do so, merely asked:
“Where is the maid?”
Old Cadaverous was the first to regain his composure and bowing, said:
“Monsieur Groult-Cotelle, I think?”
Alban was slow to understand the inspector’s game.
“I am sorry to disturb you at such an hour, but I just wanted a few words with you. Since your maid told me you would not be back late…”
“All right!” growled Maigret.
“What?” said Alban with a start.
“I said: All right!”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t mean anything. Cavre, where is this maid who showed you in? There is no other light on in the house. In other words, she was in bed.”
“She told me…”
“All right! I’ll try once more, and this time I don’t want any clap-trap. You can sit down, Cavre. Now! You made yourself comfortable. You took off your overcoat and left your hat on the coat stand. What were you in the middle of reading?”
Maigret’s eyes opened wide when he inspected the book lying on the table near Cavre’s chair.
“Sexual Perversions! Look at that, now! And you found this charming book in the library of our friend Groult-Cotelle…Tell me, gentlemen, why don’t you sit down? Does my presence disturb you? Don’t forget your migraine, Monsieur Groult-Cotelle…You should take an aspirin.”
In spite of everything, Alban still had enough presence of mind to retort:
“I thought you needed to relieve yourself?”
“Well, I don’t anymore…Now, my dear Cavre, what is this investigation of yours all about? You must have been really put out when you realized I was involved in this too, eh?”
“Ah! You’re involved? How do you mean, involved?”
“So Groult-Cotelle availed himself of your expertise, did he? Far be it for me to underrate it, by the way…”
“I had never even heard of Monsieur Groult-Cotelle until this morning.”
“It was Etienne Naud who told you about him when you met in Fontenay-le-Comte, wasn’t it?”
“Superintendent, if you wish to submit me to a formal interrogation, I would like my lawyer to be present when I answer your questions.”
“In the event of your being accused of stealing a cap, for instance?”
“In that event, yes.”
The electric light bulb cast a gray light over the sitting room for apart from the fact it was of insufficient strength for the size of the room, it was also coated in dust.
“May I perhaps be permitted to offer you something to drink?”
“Why not?” answered Maigret. “Seeing as fate has brought us together…By the way, Cavre, was it one of your men I saw just now at the station?”
“He works for me, yes.”
“Renfort?”
“As you wish.”
“Did you have important matters to settle with Monsieur Groult-Cotelle tonight?”
“I wanted to ask him one or two questions.”
“If you wanted to see him about his alibi, you can rest assured. He thought of everything. He even kept his bill from the HÔtel de l’Europe.”
Cavre, however, kept his nerve. He had sat down in the chair he had occupied before and, with his legs crossed and his morocco-leather briefcase on his lap, seemed to be biding his time, determined, one might have said, to have the last word. Groult-Cotelle, who had filled three glasses with armagnac, offered him one which he refused.
“No, thank you. I only drink water.”
He had been teased a great deal about this at the Police Headquarters, an unintentionally cruel thing to do, since Cavre was not teetotaler by choice but because he suffered from a severe disorder of the liver.
“And what about you, superintendent?”
“Gladly!”
They fell silent. All three men appeared to be playing a strange kind of game, such as trying to see who could remain silent the longest without giving way. Alban had emptied his glass in one go and had poured himself another. He remained standing and from time to time pushed one of the books in his library back into place if it was out of line.
“Are you aware, monsieur,” Cavre said to him at last in a quiet voice, icy calm, “that you are in your own house?”
“What do you mean?”
“That as master of the house you are at liberty to entertain whomever you think fit. I should have liked to talk to you alone, not in front of the superintendent. If you prefer his company to mine, I will be glad to take my leave and arrange a meeting for some other time.”
“In short, the inspector is politely asking you to show one of us to the door forthwith.”
“Gentlemen, I don’t understand what this discussion is all about. Indeed this whole affair has nothing to do with me. I was in La Roche, as you know, when the boy died. Granted, I am a friend of the Nauds. I have been to their house a great deal. In a small town like ours, one’s choice of friends is limited.”
“Remember Saint Peter!”
“What do you mean?”
“That if you go on like this, you will have thrice denied your friends the Nauds before sunrise, assuming, of course, the fog allows the sun to rise.”
“It is all very well for you to joke. My position is a delicate one, all the same. The Nauds frequently invite me to their house. Etienne is my friend, I don’t deny the fact. But if you ask me what happened at the Nauds’ that night, I don’t know and what is more, I don’t want to know. So I am the wrong person to question, that’s all.”
“Perhaps Mademoiselle Naud would be the best person to question, then? Incidentally, I wonder if you were aware that she was looking at you far from lovingly this evening. I got the distinct impression that she had a bone to pick with you.”
“With me?”
“Especially when you handed me your hotel bill and tried with s
uch style to save your own skin. She didn’t think that was very nice, not nice at all. I would be on your guard she doesn’t get her own back, if I were you…”
Alban forced a laugh.
“You are joking. Geneviève is a charming child who…”
What made Maigret suddenly decide to play his last card?
“…who is three months pregnant,” he let drop, moving closer to Alban.
“What…What did you say?”
As for Cavre, he was stunned. For the first time that day he no longer looked his confident self and stared at his former boss in spontaneous admiration.
“Were you unaware of the fact, Monsieur Groult-Cotelle?”
“Just what are you getting at?”
“Nothing…I am looking for…You want to know the truth, too, don’t you?…Then we will try and find it together…Cavre has already laid his hands on the blood-stained cap which is proof enough of the crime…Where is that cap, Cavre?”
The inspector sunk deeper into his armchair and did not reply.
“I had better warn you that you will pay dearly for it if you’ve destroyed it…And now, I have the feeling that my presence is disturbing you…I will therefore take leave of you both…I presume I will see you for lunch tomorrow at your friends the Nauds, Monsieur Groult-Cotelle?”
He went out of the room. As soon as he had banged the front door shut he saw a thin figure standing close by.
“Is that you, superintendent?”
It was young Louis. Lying in wait behind the windows of the Trois Mules, he had doubtless seen the shadowy figures of Maigret and Alban as they went past. He had followed them.
“Do you know what they are saying, what everyone is saying in the town?”
His voice was trembling with anxiety and indignation.
“People are saying that they have got the better of you and that you are leaving on the three o’clock train tomorrow…”
And this had very nearly been the truth.
7
THE OLD POSTMISTRESS
An important contributing factor must have made Maigret more sensitive than usual at that particular moment. Scarcely had he walked out of Groult-Cotelle’s front door and taken a few steps in the darkness, the fog clinging to his skin like a cold compress, when he suddenly stopped. Young Louis, who was walking beside him, asked:
“What’s the matter, superintendent?”
Something had just occurred to Maigret and he was trying to follow the thought through. He was still mindful of the sound of voices, blurred but noisy, coming to him from behind the shutters of the house. At the same time, he understood why the youngster was alarmed: Maigret had stopped dead for no apparent reason in the middle of the pavement, like a heart patient who is immobilized by a sudden attack wherever he happens to be.
But this had nothing to do with Maigret’s current preoccupations. He did, however, make a mental note:
“Ah! So there’s a heart patient in Saint-Aubin…”
He was later to learn, in fact, that the old doctor had died of angina pectoris. For years people had become accustomed to seeing him suddenly stop thus in the middle of the street, rooted to the spot with his hand on his heart.
There was a violent argument going on inside the house, or at least the sound of angry voices gave this impression, but Maigret paid no attention. The pock-marked Louis, who thought he had discovered the cause of the superintendent’s sudden halt, listened conscientiously. The louder the voices, the harder it was to make out the words. The noise sounded exactly like a record whirling round off-center, due to a second hole having been bored, and blaring out unintelligible sounds.
It was not because of this fight between Inspector Cavre and Alban Groult-Cotelle that Maigret stopped like this and looked round rather uncertainly, staring at nothing in particular.
The minute he left the house, an idea had occurred to him. It was not even an idea, but something vaguer, so vague that he was now striving to recapture the memory of it. Every now and then, an insignificant occurrence, usually a whiff of something barely caught, reminds us in the space of a second of a particular moment in our life. It is such a vivid sensation that we are gripped by it and want to cling to this living reminder of that moment. It disappears almost at once and with it all recollection of the experience. Try as we might, we end up wondering, for want of an answer to our questions, if it was not an unconscious evocation of a dream, or, who knows, of some pre-existent world?
Something struck Maigret the moment he banged the front door shut. He knew he was leaving behind two embarrassed and angry men. Brought together by fate that night, the two of them had one thing in common, although there was no rational explanation for this. Cavre made one think not of a bachelor, but of a husband who has been subjected to ridicule and looks woeful and abashed. Envy oozed out of every pore and envy can make one behave just as equivocally as certain hidden vices.
Deep down, Maigret did not bear him a grudge. He felt sorry for him. While relentlessly pursuing him, determined to get the better of his rival, Maigret nonetheless felt a kind of pity for this man who, after all, was nothing but a failure.
What was the connection between Cavre and Alban? The connection which exists between two completely different but equally sordid things. It was almost a question of color. Both men had something of the gray, greenish quality of moral and material dust.
Cavre exuded hatred. Alban Groult-Cotelle exuded panic and cowardice. His whole life had been run on the principle of cowardice. His wife had left him and taken the children with her. He had made no effort either to join them or bring them back. He probably had not suffered. He had selfishly reorganized his existence. A man of humble means, he lived in other people’s homes, like the cuckoo. And if some misfortune befell his friends, he was the first to let them down.
And now Maigret suddenly recalled the trifling matter that had triggered off this train of thought: it was the book he had caught Cavre holding when they came into the room, one of those disgusting, erotic books that are sold under the counter in certain backrooms in the Faubourg Saint-Martin.
Groult-Cotelle kept books like this in his country library; Cavre came upon one of them seemingly quite by chance!
But there had been something else, and it was this something else that the superintendent was struggling to put his finger on. For a tenth of a second, perhaps, his mind had been lit up, as it were, by a glaring truth, but no sooner had he realized this than the thought vanished and all that remained was a vague impression. In reality, this was why he stood motionless like a heart patient trying to outwit his heart.
Maigret was trying to outwit his memory. He was hoping…
“What is that light?” he asked, however.
They were both standing still in the fog. A little way off, Maigret could see a large halo of white, diffuse light. He concentrated his thoughts on this material thing in order to give his intuition time to revive. He now knew the town. So where, then, was this light almost opposite Groult-Cotelle’s house coming from?
“It isn’t the post office, is it?”
“It’s the window next door,” replied Louis. “The postmistress’s window. She sleeps badly and reads novels well into the night. Hers is always the last light to be switched off in Saint-Aubin…”
Now, he was still aware of the sound of angry voices. Groult-Cotelle was shouting the loudest, as if he point-blank refused to listen to reason. Cavre’s voice was more ponderous, more imperious.
Why was Maigret strongly tempted to cross the street and press his face against the postmistress’s window? She was doubtless sitting reading in her kitchen. Was it intuition? A moment afterwards, the thought had gone from his mind. He knew that Louis was looking at him anxiously and impatiently as he wondered what on earth was going on in his hero’s head.
What was it he had sensed as he went out of the front door?…Well…First of all, Paris had come to mind…The books, the shops in the Faubourg Saint-Martin which sell those kind
of books had made him think of Paris…Groult-Cotelle had gone to Paris…and Geneviève Naud must have been there at the same time…
Maigret could remember the look on Geneviève’s face when Alban had produced his alibi in so unpleasant a manner. It had contained more than mere scorn. This time, a naked woman, not a young girl, stood before Alban…A mistress, suddenly aware of the baseness of…
He had just got to this point in his thoughts when an inkling of something else had flashed through his mind only to vanish again, leaving a vague memory of something rather nasty.
Yes, the whole affair was very different from what Maigret had initially envisaged. Up until now, he had only seen the bourgeois view of things, had witnessed a thoroughly bourgeois family’s indignation upon discovering that a penniless youth with no prospects was making love to their daughter.
Had Naud shot him in a fit of anger? It was possible. Maigret almost pitied Naud, and especially his wife, who knew what had happened. She was desperately trying to control herself and overcome her terror. For her, every minute spent alone with the superintendent was a terrible ordeal.
But now, Etienne Naud and his wife ceased to be foremost in his mind.
What was the missing link between these thoughts? The dull, balding Alban had an alibi. Was this really just a fluke? Was it also just a fluke that he had suddenly come across that bill from the HÔtel de l’Europe?
No doubt he really had spent the night there. The superintendent was convinced of this, although he decided to check the fact all the same.
But why had he gone to La Roche-sur-Yon on that particular night? Had the préfet’s private secretary been expecting him?
“I must find out!” grumbled Maigret to himself.
He went on looking at the dim light in the house next door to the post office; he still had his tobacco pouch in one hand and his pipe, which he was too preoccupied to fill, in the other.
Albert Retailleau was angry…
Who had said that? None other but his young companion Louis, Albert’s friend.
“Was he really angry?” the superintendent suddenly asked.
Inspector Cadaver Page 10
