Lock No. 1

by Georges Simenon

‘You mean he’s asking … if I …’

  ‘Don’t forget that he has a commission in the Army. As it happens, he was reminding me about standing practice in cases like this. When an officer fails in his duty, as he elegantly put it, his best friends leave him alone in a room with a revolver.’

  Ducrau never once took his eyes off Decharme, who was now moving, aimlessly it seemed, to the far end of the room.

  ‘Ah! He said …’

  For one brief moment, it seemed that things might turn nasty. But Ducrau’s face relaxed slowly, perhaps as the result of a heroic effort of self-control. He smiled. His grin grew broader. Then he laughed! He laughed so hard that he slapped his thighs.

  ‘It’s hilarious!’ he managed to say eventually, his eyes streaming with tears of laughter. ‘Oh, Decharme, my boy! What a very charming fellow you are! But come on, you two, we’ll go in to dinner. Officers who … When somebody has failed in his … Decharme, you prize idiot! And to think we’re now about to sit down to eat together!’

  Maigret’s shirt was sticking to his skin, but no one observing him empty his pipe into the ashtray and slip it into its case before putting it back in his pocket would have suspected a thing.

  10.

  The maid brought the tureen of soup just as Ducrau, with a sigh of contentment, was tucking a generous portion of his serviette between his detachable collar and his skin. There was no fire lit, and Madame Ducrau, who felt the cold, had wrapped round her shoulders a black knitted shawl which resembled a large candle-snuffer.

  Berthe’s empty chair was directly opposite Ducrau, who said to the servant:

  ‘Go and tell my daughter to come down.’

  He helped himself to soup and placed an enormous piece of bread next to his plate.

  Because his wife kept sniffing, he frowned two or three times before finally losing patience.

  ‘Have you caught a cold?’

  ‘I think so,’ she stammered, turning her head away so no one would see that she was about to start crying again.

  Meanwhile, Decharme was keeping an ear open for sounds from upstairs as he plied his spoon most elegantly.

  ‘Well, Mélie?’

  ‘Madame Berthe says to say she can’t come down.’

  Ducrau slurped his soup noisily.

  ‘You can go back up and tell her again that I want her to come down whether or not she’s ill. Have you got that?’

  Decharme left the room, and Ducrau seemed to be looking round for someone else to persecute.

  ‘Mélie, open the curtains.’

  He was sitting opposite two windows which gave on to the courtyard, the gate and the Seine. Leaning the full weight of his torso against the table, he ate his bread as he looked out into the blackness of the night. On the floor above, there were urgent sounds, whispers, sobs. When Decharme reappeared it was to say:

  ‘She’s coming.’

  And so she was. His wife walked in just moments later. She had not taken the trouble to cover up the shiny redness of her face with powder.

  ‘Mélie!’ called Ducrau.

  He paid no attention to Maigret or the others. It was if he was leading a separate life and following some prepared plan with detached unconcern.

  ‘Serve the next course!’

  As she leaned across the table to reach the soup tureen he patted her on the rump.

  If their servant at Charenton was young, this one was of indeterminate age and lacking in both spirit and charm.

  ‘By the by, Mélie, when was the last time we slept together?’

  She gave a start, tried vainly to smile, looked apprehensively at her employer and then at his wife. As for Ducrau, he merely shrugged and gave a pitying smile.

  ‘Here’s another woman who thinks all that sort of thing is important. You can go. Actually, it was this morning, when we were down choosing wine in the cellar.’

  He could not stop himself casting a glance at Maigret to gauge the effect he had produced, but the inspector looked as if he was far above such matters.

  Madame Ducrau had not reacted. She had sunk a little further into her knitted candle-snuffer and was staring closely at the tablecloth while her daughter kept dabbing her red nose with her handkerchief.

  ‘Have you noticed?’ Ducrau asked Maigret, motioning with his chin towards the courtyard and the gate.

  There was just one gas lamp, and it cast a small circle of light just by the postern. And inside this circle stood a motionless figure. It was barely ten metres away.

  The man was leaning on the gate and could not have missed anything that happened in the brightly lit dining room.

  ‘It’s him!’ said Ducrau.

  Maigret, whose eyesight was very good, could just make out a second figure a little further back, on the bank of the Seine. The maid, tense with fear, brought in the meat and mashed potato while the inspector, who had taken a notebook from his pocket, tore a page from it, on which he scribbled a few words.

  ‘Would you mind if I make use of your maid? Thanks. Mélie, I want you to go across the courtyard. On the other side of the gate, the first thing you’ll see is an old man. Ignore him. A few metres further on you’ll find somebody else, a man about thirty years old. Give him this note and wait for an answer.’

  The maid hardly dared move. Ducrau went on carving the leg of mutton. Madame Ducrau, who was awkwardly placed, was twisting and turning so that she could see outside.

  ‘Rare, inspector?’

  His hand was steady and the look in his eye unconcerned, and yet there was something in his bearing, some note of pathos that didn’t belong in this everyday scene of a group of people sitting around a dinner table.

  ‘Got any money put by?’ Ducrau suddenly barked at his son-in-law.

  ‘Me?’ was all a stunned Decharme could find to say.

  ‘Now look here …’ began his daughter who was shaking with exasperation or anger.

  ‘I advise you to keep your mouth shut. And I request that you remain seated. I have my reasons for asking your husband if he has any savings. Well, what’s the answer?’

  ‘Of course I don’t have any.’

  ‘Too bad! This mutton is disgusting. Was it you who cooked it, Jeanne?’

  ‘It was Mélie.’

  His eyes reverted to the window, but he was unable to see much in the dark and only just made out the white fleck of the maid’s apron as she walked back; soon after, she was handing Maigret a piece of paper. There were drops of water in her hair.

  ‘Is it raining?’

  ‘Yes. Drizzling. It’s just started.’

  Lucas had replied using the same scrap of paper on which Maigret had written: ‘Is he armed?’ Diagonally across it was a single word: ‘No’.

  As if he could see through the paper, Ducrau asked:

  ‘Armed?’

  Maigret hesitated and then nodded a yes. Everyone had heard. Everyone had seen. Madame Ducrau swallowed a piece of meat whole, without chewing it.

  Even Ducrau, so full of swagger, throwing out his chest, eating with simulated appetite, gave a little start.

  ‘We were talking about your savings …’

  Maigret realized that he was launched. He had hit his stride. Nothing now could stop him and he started by pushing his plate away to make more room for his elbows.

  ‘Too bad! Suppose that sometime soon, maybe tomorrow or some other time, I were to die. You’re thinking that you’ll be rich because even if I wanted to I don’t have the right to disinherit my wife and my daughter.’

  His chair was now tilted on its back legs, and he looked like a guest telling stories at the end of a dinner.

  ‘Well, I can tell you now that none of you will get a penny!’

  His daughter watched him coldly, trying to understand, while her husband seemed to be concentrating entirely on eating. Maigret, who now had his back to the window, was thinking that from where Gassin was, in the drizzling rain, the brightly lit dining room must seem a haven of family peace.

  Meanwhile
, Ducrau went on, his eyes switching from one face to another:

  ‘You won’t get a penny because, to make sure you don’t, I have signed a contract which will come into force only at my death, which will transfer all my business interests to the General Canal Company. Forty million, in round figures! Only the forty million won’t be payable for twenty years!’

  He laughed, though he did not in the least feel like laughing, and then turned to his wife:

  ‘You, old girl, will be well dead by then!’

  ‘Please, Émile!’

  Although she was sitting up straight and dignified, it was clear that she was at the end of her tether, that at any moment she might start swaying and fall off her chair.

  Maigret watched Ducrau, looking for some sign of emotion or hesitation, but on the contrary he grew even harder, maybe because he had made up his mind that he wouldn’t show his feelings.

  ‘Still think I should go quietly by taking the honourable way out?’ he asked his son-in-law, whose jaw started to tremble.

  ‘I swear I …’

  ‘Don’t swear! You know very well that you’re a rat, a well-bred, dirty little rat, which is the worst sort. But what I’m wondering is: which of you is the more worthless, my daughter or you? Would you like a little bet? For some weeks now you’ve been making a great hoo-ha about this baby that’s on the way. Well, if you fancy a flutter, why don’t I call a doctor? I’ll give you a hundred thousand francs if Berthe is really pregnant!’

  Madame Ducrau’s eyes opened wide, for they were suddenly seeing the truth, but her daughter continued to stare at Ducrau with hate-filled calm.

  ‘Well lookee here!’ he said getting to his feet with his pipe clenched between his teeth. ‘One, two, three! An old woman, a daughter and a son-in-law! Hardly enough to fit round a small table, and yet it’s all I have, or rather should have, that’s mine and at my side …’

  Dispassionately, Maigret moved his chair back a little and started filling his pipe.

  ‘Now I’d like to say something, in the presence of the inspector, because his word wouldn’t count: there are no other witnesses, since a man’s relatives cannot testify against him, that’s the situation! … I am a murderer! With these two hands, I …’

  His daughter jumped. His son-in-law stood up stammering:

  ‘Oh really!’

  His wife did not move. Perhaps she had stopped hearing what was being said. She wasn’t crying. Her head was resting on her clasped hands.

  Ducrau was pacing around heavily. He crossed from one wall to another, smoking his large pipe.

  ‘Want to know why and how I did away with him?’

  Nobody asked to be told. But clearly he needed to tell it, though without dropping his threatening manner. Suddenly he sat down opposite Maigret and held out one hand across the table.

  ‘I’m bigger than you, aren’t I? Anyone would say so if they saw the two of us together. In twenty years I’ve never come across anyone who could beat me at arm wrestling. Hold out your hand!’

  He grabbed it with such frenzy that Maigret felt the force of the man’s feverish intensity. And did this contact not trigger a corresponding release of Ducrau’s own feelings and did his voice not become warmer?

  ‘Know how to play this? The winner is whoever wrestles his opponent’s arm down on the table. You mustn’t move your elbow.’

  The veins on his head stood out, his cheeks turned crimson, and Madame Ducrau watched him as if all she was thinking about were his chances of getting a seizure.

  ‘You’re not using all your strength!’

  It was true. But when Maigret turned up the power he was amazed to find his opponent’s resistance crumble, for his muscles slackened under the slightest pressure. His hand touched the table and Ducrau remained in that position for a moment, his arm limp.

  ‘That’s how the whole thing started …’

  He walked to the window and opened it. The damp breath of the river flooded into the room.

  ‘Gassin! Hey! Gassin!’

  Something moved near the gas lamp, but no crunch of footsteps was heard on the courtyard gravel.

  ‘I wonder what he’s waiting for. Deep down, he is the only one who ever liked me.’

  As he said the words, he looked directly at Maigret as if to say:

  ‘Because you couldn’t bring yourself to …!’

  There was only red wine on the table. He poured himself two glassfuls in quick succession.

  ‘Listen to me: it doesn’t matter if I spell it all out because tomorrow, if I want, I’ll deny everything. One evening, I was on Gassin’s boat—’

  ‘Going to see your mistress,’ broke in his daughter.

  He merely gave a shrug and intoned in an indefinable cadence:

  ‘Stupid girl! … I was saying, Maigret, that one evening I turned up at Gassin’s boat, feeling sickened because the squalid pair you see here had tried yet again to fleece me. I was surprised not to see the full circle of light in the porthole. I went closer, and what did I see but some bastard lying flat on the deck watching my daughter undressing …’

  As he said my daughter he looked around at them defiantly, but neither word produced a reaction.

  ‘I bent down quietly. I grabbed him by the wrist and squeezed and turned it and forced him to twist like an eel until half his body was hanging over the side of the boat …’

  He had resumed his station by the window and was talking into the rainy night, so that it required an effort to hear what he was saying.

  ‘Until then, I’d always got the better of the strongest men. This time, it didn’t work. I’d got soft! The swine stopped wriggling and squirming. He took something out of his pocket and suddenly I felt a blow in the back. It took him a moment to regain his balance, and then with a nudge of the shoulder he tipped me into the water …’

  What was most staggering of all was the utter stillness of his wife. It was cold in the room. Through the open window, it was no longer just cool air which seeped in but shadows, spine-tingling chills, the thrill of danger, of menace.

  ‘Gassin! Are you there, old friend?’

  Maigret turned and saw Gassin leaning on the gate, which had not been locked.

  ‘Isn’t he something?’ muttered Ducrau as he returned to the table and poured himself more wine. ‘He’s had plenty of time to shoot. He can come as close as he likes …’

  Drops of sweat showed that during the preceding minutes he had never stopped being afraid! Maybe it was because he was afraid that he had opened the window and stood in front of it.

  ‘Mélie! … Mélie! … For God’s sake …’

  Eventually she appeared. She had taken off her apron and had her hat on.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m leaving.’

  ‘Before you leave, go out and bring the old man by the gate to me. Have you got that? Say I must talk to him.’

  Mélie did not move.

  ‘Go on, then!’

  ‘No, monsieur.’

  ‘Are you not going to do what I tell you?’

  ‘I won’t go, monsieur.’

  White-faced, she gave no ground and, thin, flat-chested, unfeminine and without charm, she finally stood up to Ducrau.

  ‘Are you refusing?’

  He bore down on her, one hand raised.

  ‘Are you refusing?’

  ‘Yes! … Yes! … Yes! …’

  He did not hit her. Deflated, he walked past her as if she was not there, opened the front door and was heard walking across the courtyard.

  His daughter had not moved. His son-in-law craned forwards to watch. But his wife had slowly got to her feet and was making slowly for the window. Meanwhile, Maigret, taking advantage of the moment when their attention was elsewhere, poured himself a glass of wine and moved to the window only when he heard the gate creak.

  The two men were standing together. They were clearly visible, so different in build, a metre apart. What they were saying was inaudible. A querulous voice at
Maigret’s elbow, as high-pitched as a child’s, said:

  ‘Please! Can’t you …?’

  It was Madame Ducrau, her eyes locked on to the gate, who had uttered this vague, half-choked plea.

  They weren’t fighting. They were talking. They came into the courtyard. Ducrau had one hand on his companion’s shoulder and seemed to be propelling him on. Before they reached the house, Decharme had enough time to ask Maigret:

  ‘What have you decided?’

  The inspector was tempted to take a leaf out of Ducrau’s book and answer:

  ‘Dammit!’

  The old man screwed up his eyes because of the light. His wet shoulders gleamed, and he held his cap in one hand, perhaps out of an instinctive respect because he was in a dining room.

  ‘Sit down!’

  He sat on the edge of a chair. He kept his cap on his knees and avoided looking around him.

  ‘Will you have a glass of red with me? Don’t say anything. You know what I told you. You’ll have your chance to do whatever you want later. Isn’t that so, inspector? Because I never go back on my word.’

  He touched his glass against Gassin’s and emptied it in one swallow and grinned.

  ‘Shame you missed the start.’

  He was now talking only to the boatman, with odd glances at Maigret out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘Is it true that in the old days I could floor any man with one punch? Come on, out with it!’

  ‘It’s true.’

  It was staggering to hear the old man’s voice like this, so soft, so surprisingly gentle.

  ‘Do you remember that time in Châlons when we got into a fight with those Belgians? Well the other night it was my opponent that got me, though he wasn’t fighting fair, because he used a knife. You haven’t heard about that, but no matter. I turned up on your boat, just happened to be passing, and I found him lying flat on the deck peeping through the porthole watching your kid getting undressed.’

  He liked saying it again, because it fuelled his anger.

  ‘Now have you got it?’

  Gassin shrugged, intimating that it was something he had known for a long time.

  ‘Listen to me … no, have a drink first. You too, inspector. It doesn’t matter if the others are here.’