‘Is the child yours?’
For something to say, Maigret nodded towards the baby, whose turned-wood cradle stood next to him.
‘My godson.’
She smiled politely, with a lingering trace of fear.
‘You’re Gassin’s daughter, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
She had a child’s voice and the meekness of a good little girl who is answering the questions she is being asked.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you at this time. Since you were here the day before yesterday when the incident occurred, I would like to know if anyone came on board earlier that evening. Such as Émile Ducrau.’
‘Yes.’
Maigret had not been expecting her response at all and wondered if she had understood the question.
‘You’re sure Ducrau came here on the evening he was attacked?’
‘I didn’t open the door to him.’
‘Did he come on board?’
‘Yes. He called. I was about to go to bed.’
Maigret glimpsed a second cabin, narrower than the first, and the fixed bunk in it. As she spoke, the young woman gently eased the child away from her breast, wiped its chin and then buttoned her blouse.
‘What time was that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Was it a long time before your father fell into the canal?’
‘I don’t know.’
She was, for no apparent reason, becoming frightened. She got up to lay the baby in his cradle and as he was opening his mouth and starting to cry, she gave him a red rubber dummy.
‘Do you know Ducrau well?’
‘Yes.’
She stoked the fire in the stove and added salt to a saucepan of potatoes. It was then that for Maigret, as he watched each of her movements closely, the penny dropped. She was not mad perhaps, but there was a veil between her and the external world. Everything about her was insulated, damped down, her actions, her voice, her smile, for she smiled apologetically when she stepped directly in front of her visitor.
‘Do you know what Ducrau came for?’
‘Always the same thing!’
Maigret’s unease deepened, and it made his hands feel clammy. Each of the girl’s words might have serious consequences. With every question he asked, the mystery was becoming less tangled, and yet he was afraid of questioning her. Did she really understand what she was telling him? Would she say yes to every question?
‘Are you talking about Ducrau’s son?’ he said, to test the hypothesis.
‘Jean didn’t come.’
‘So is it his father who’s been coming to … see you?’
For a moment her eyes settled on Maigret’s face. Then she looked away.
He wanted to finish this quickly. He was too close to a possible breakthrough to stop now.
‘When he comes here, that’s what he’s after, isn’t it? He pesters you. He tries to …’
He stopped abruptly, for she was crying, and he did not know what to say next.
‘I’m sorry. Don’t think about it any more.’
She was so close to him that, without thinking, he patted her on her shoulder. But that only made it worse. With a start she recoiled and ran into the second cabin, closing the door behind her. He could still hear her sobbing inside. And the baby who had dropped its dummy started crying too. With an awkward fumble, Maigret replaced the dummy in the child’s mouth.
There was nothing more to be done except leave. The stairs were low, and he banged his head on the top of the hatch. He was expecting to find the old man on deck, but there was no one about except neighbours sitting round a table near the helm, who watched him leave.
There was no sign of Gassin on the quayside either. When he was back up on the pavement, Maigret saw a car pull up outside the tall house. It was an average model, with a medium-sized engine. It had a Seine-et-Oise number plate, and the inspector had only to take one look at the woman who got out to understand what was happening.
It was Ducrau’s daughter. She had her father’s boorish manner and vigour. Her husband, narrow-shouldered in a dark suit, was not in uniform. He closed the car doors and put the key in his pocket.
But they had forgotten something. The woman was already almost over the threshold when she turned. The husband reached for the key again, opened one of the car doors and took out a small packet, which probably contained Spanish grapes, the kind which are bought for invalids.
Eventually the couple entered the house. They were bickering. They were vulgar and without distinction.
Maigret, who was standing at the green tram stop, failed to raise his hand to flag the one that clattered past. His head was full of half-finished thoughts, and he felt as if there was some slight imbalance inside him which he was anxious to correct. The pilots emerged from the bar and shook hands before going their separate ways. One of them, a large man with an open face, walked towards Maigret, who stopped him.
‘Excuse me, may I ask you a question?’
‘I wasn’t there, you know.’
‘It’s not about that. You know Gassin, don’t you? Who is the father of his daughter’s child?’
The pilot burst out laughing.
‘But it’s not hers!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘It was old man Gassin who brought it home one day. He’s been a widower for fifteen years. He must have had the kid up north somewhere, with some woman who runs a bar or keeps a lock.’
‘So his daughter has never had a baby?’
‘Aline? Haven’t you seen her? By the way, go gently with her. She’s not quite like other girls.’
Pedestrians brushed past them. The two men were standing in the full glare of the sun, which was burning the back of Maigret’s neck.
‘They’re decent people. Gassin drinks a bit too much, but you mustn’t think he’s always like he is today. That business the night before last hit him hard. This morning, he thought you were out to get him.’
Still smiling, the big man touched the peak of his cap and walked on. Maigret was going to have lunch too. All round him, there was a change of gear: the stone-crusher had stopped working, the traffic was not as heavy, and it seemed as if even the lock was working at a slower pace.
Obviously, he would have to come back. There was enough to keep him busy for several days in this small world whose distinct character he was only just beginning to get to grips with.
Had Gassin gone back on board? Was he at that moment in that varnished cabin, sitting at the table in front of a white cloth with pink roses on it?
In any case, in the Ducrau household they would surely be arguing, and the Spanish grapes had probably not been enough to restore the invalid’s good humour.
Maigret went back into the bar, though he wasn’t really sure why. There were no customers. The landlord and his wife, a small, prettyish brunette who had not got round to making herself presentable, were standing at the bar, eating stew. Light was reflected in the tumblers of red wine.
‘Back already?’ exclaimed Fernand, wiping his mouth.
Maigret had been adopted. He hadn’t even needed to say who he was.
‘I hope at least you haven’t been tormenting that little girl. Beer again? Irma go and fetch up a cold beer.’
He looked out of the window, not on the canal side, but in the direction of the bar across the road.
‘Poor old Gassin’s going to make himself ill over this business. Mind you, it’s no joke falling in the water in the dark and suddenly feeling somebody dragging you down to the bottom …’
‘Has he gone back on board?’
‘No, he’s over there.’
And the landlord nodded to the other bar, where, in the midst of four men who were still drinking, Gassin was clearly visible, waving his arms about, completely drunk.
‘That’s what he does, goes from one bar to the other.’
‘It looks like he’s crying.’
‘Yes, he is. He must be on at least his fifteenth aperi
tif this morning, not counting the tots of rum.’
The landlord’s wife brought the ice-cold beer. Maigret sipped it slowly.
‘Does his daughter have boyfriends?’
‘Aline? No, not her!’
Fernand spoke as if the very idea that Aline could wander off the straight and narrow was the most absurd thing in the whole world. All the same, the fact was that Maigret had seen her feeding a baby, her own or another, but either way she was no less a young mother who had been frightened by his fatherly gesture and had locked herself in the small cabin.
He felt uneasy at the thought of the old man, dead drunk, crying into his glass, and of the baby lying in its cradle.
‘Do they travel around much?’
‘Twelve months of the year.’
‘Don’t they have any paid hands?’
‘It’s just them. Aline handles the helm as well as any man.’
Maigret had seen those northern canals: straight, verdant banks, poplars lining long lanes of flat water, locks in the middle of nowhere, their crank handles rusting, the poky lock buildings bright with hollyhocks and ducks splashing in the eddies created by the sluices.
He imagined the Golden Fleece slowly champing at the ribbon of water hour after hour until it reached some distant unloading quay, with Aline steering, the baby in its cradle, more likely than not out on the deck, near the helm, and the old man on the towpath driving his horses.
An old drunk, a crazy girl and a babe in arms.
4.
When, at six the next morning, Maigret got off the number 13 tram and headed for the lock, Émile Ducrau was already on the unloading wharf, a sailor’s cap on his head and a heavy cane in his hand.
As on previous days, thanks to the joys of spring, there was in the air, in the early-morning life of Paris, a child-like playfulness. Certain objects, certain people, the milk bottles on doorsteps, the woman in her white apron setting out her dairy stall, the lorry returning from Les Halles, scattering its last remaining cabbage leaves in its wake, were so many emblems of peace and exuberance.
Could not the same have been said of the Ducraus’ maid, framed in a window of the tall house, its façade now gilded by the sun, as she shook out dusters into empty space? Behind her, in the semi-darkness of the living room, the barely perceptible figure of Madame Ducrau came and went, a cotton scarf tied round her head.
On the second floor, the blinds remained closed, and the mind’s eye could imagine, striped with bands of sunlight, the bed occupied by Rose, the languid mistress, asleep with arms folded and armpits damp.
Ducrau, already solidly ensconced in the new day, shouted some final exhortation to the master of a barge which was emerging from the lock chamber and beginning to slip down the current of the Seine.
‘I was right. You’re like me.’
Did he mean that the inspector was also made of the same stuff as those who get up early to organize the work of other men.
‘Have you a moment?’
His shoulders were so broad that he looked almost square-shaped. Of course, he was very probably wearing a bandage around his chest. But he moved briskly, and Maigret saw him jump down from the wall of the lock on to the deck of a barge which was more than a metre below him.
‘Morning, Maurice. Did you run across Eagle IV above Chalifert? Did they get those seals fixed?’
But he was scarcely listening. Once he had been given the information he’d asked for, he dismissed people with a grunt and turned his attention elsewhere.
‘Hear any more about the accident in Revin culvert?’
Aline was sitting on the deck of the Golden Fleece near the helm, grinding coffee and looking vaguely around her. No sooner had Maigret spotted her than Ducrau was at his elbow, with a short-stemmed pipe clenched between his teeth.
‘Are you beginning to make any sense of it?’
A jerk of his chin indicated that he was talking about all the activity in the canal port and the lock, not about the attack on him. He was much more jovial than on the previous evening, and less guarded.
‘You see, there is a three-way junction of waterways connected to the Seine. Here, we are on the Marne canal. Over that way is the River Marne itself – it isn’t used for navigation hereabouts. Finally there is the Upper Seine. The Upper Seine will take you to Burgundy, the Loire, Lyons and Marseilles. Le Havre and Rouen are the most significant towns on the Lower Seine. Two companies share all the freight business: the General and the Centre Canal Company. But from this lock and as far as Belgium, Holland and the Saar, it’s Ducrau’s.’
His eyes were blue and his skin fair in the early-morning sunlight, which bathed the landscape in a rosy glow.
‘The entire block of houses all around mine belongs to me, including the bar, the detached villas and the small dance hall. Also those three cranes over there and the stone-crusher too. And the boat-repair yards on the other side of that footbridge.’
He drank it all in, savouring his delight.
‘They say that altogether the whole lot is worth forty million,’ observed Maigret.
‘You seem rather well informed, give or take five million. Did your men come up with anything yesterday?’
Even saying this gave him delight. In the event, Maigret had sent three inspectors to make detailed inquiries, at Charenton and elsewhere, about Ducrau, his family and everyone who had any connection with what had happened.
The trawl hadn’t netted much. The brothel at Charenton confirmed that the canal magnate had been there on the evening the crime was committed. He was often there. He paid for drinks, kidded around with the girls, yarned and frequently went home without asking anything more of them.
As for his son, Jean, people living in the area knew almost nothing about him. He worked at his books. He did not go out often. He seemed like a young man from a good home and his health was delicate.
‘Incidentally,’ said Maigret, pointing to the Golden Fleece, ‘I believe it was on that barge that your son spent three months last year?’
Ducrau did not flinch, though he perhaps became a shade more solemn.
‘Yes.’
‘Was he convalescing?’
‘He’d been overdoing it. The doctor prescribed calm and fresh air. The Golden Fleece was leaving for Alsace …’
Aline, holding her coffee-grinder, went inside the cabin, and Ducrau turned away for a moment to give orders to the crane-driver. He did not go far, and Maigret could hear every word they said.
On the daughter and son-in-law, there were only routine details. Captain Decharme was from Le Mans, the son of an accountant. The couple lived in a nice brand-new house on the outskirts of Versailles, and every morning one orderly brought the officer his horse and another cleaned the house.
‘Are you going back to Paris?’ asked Ducrau as he returned. ‘It’s as the fancy takes you, but for me, this is always my morning walk, all along the quays.’
He glanced up at his house. The skylights on the sixth floor were still shut, and the curtains had not been opened. The trams were all full, and small carts loaded with vegetables were scurrying into Paris, for the market.
‘Can I count on you?’ Ducrau called to the lock-keeper.
‘All in hand, boss.’
Ducrau winked at Maigret to draw attention to the word ‘boss’, which was the name by which a public servant called him.
The two men were now strolling along the Seine, where convoys of boats were lining up, using the full width of the river to go about and, propellers thrashing, moving off either upstream or down, with the current.
‘Know what made me my money? I realized that when my boats were lying idle they could be working for me instead. So I bought sand pits and chalk quarries, further north, and then anything that came up for sale, even brick-works, as long as it was next to a waterway!’
He shook the hand of a passing boatman, who merely said:
‘Morning, Mimile.’
The port at Bercy was piled high with barrels
, and the arms of the wine town they came from were stamped on all of them.
‘Anything classed as champagne among that lot was carried by me. Hey, Pierrot, is it true that Murier’s old tin tub snagged a pier of the bridge at Château-Thierry?’
‘It’s true enough, boss.’
‘If you see him, tell him it serves him right!’
He walked on, still laughing. On the opposite bank of the river, the enormous concrete buildings of the Magasins Généraux reached into the sky, all straight lines and right angles, while two cargo boats, one from London and the other from Amsterdam, brought a whiff of the high seas into the very heart of Paris.
‘I don’t want to be nosy, but how are you going to proceed with your investigations?’
It was now Maigret’s turn to smile, for this walk clearly had no other purpose than to lead up to this question. Ducrau was aware of it. He sensed that his companion could read his thoughts and he smiled again, faintly, as though he were mocking his own simple-mindedness.
‘As you see, just like this,’ replied Maigret, playing the role of a man out for a relaxed stroll.
They walked on in silence for perhaps another four hundred metres, their eyes trained on the Pont d’Austerlitz, a pyrotechnic display of metal fretwork, from which the architecture of Notre-Dame could be just made out against a blaze of blue and pink.
‘Hey, Vachet! Your brother has broken down at Larzicourt. He said to tell you the christening has been postponed.’
Ducrau went on walking steadily. After a sideways glance at Maigret, he framed a question with the bluntness of a man who likes to put his foot in it on purpose.
‘How much does a man like you earn?’
‘Not much.’
‘Sixty thousand francs?’
‘A lot less than that.’
Ducrau frowned, gave his companion another look, this time with as much admiration as curiosity.
‘What do you make of my wife? Do you think I make her unhappy?’
‘No, not really. If it wasn’t you it would be somebody else. She’s one of those women who are perpetually self-effacing and dreary, whatever fate does to them.’
Lock No. 1 Page 4
