Éveline was sixteen at the time, and rumour has it that this was not her first liaison. She received the attentions of a certain Doctor Alain Lemaire, a dentist whose surgery was opposite the post office, who had been married for five years and had two children.
‘It wasn’t to get her teeth seen to that she visited him every day during that winter,’ the old woman told us. ‘She’d wait out on the square until he’d finished seeing his patients. I saw her with my own eyes, pressed against a wall, watching the lights on the first floor. Another time, I saw them together in Doctor Lemaire’s car. She was leaning against him, and I don’t know how he managed to drive the car.
‘Madame Lemaire discovered them in a position that left no room for doubt. She is a proud woman. She started slapping the girl and then threw her out. For at least the next hour you could hear the sound of an argument coming from the apartment.
‘She left and took the children with her. A few weeks later, living with her parents in Rennes, she asked for a divorce.
‘The whole of Concarneau knew about it. The Le Guérecs were aware of this, and it got right up their nose. They put the girl in a convent for six months, I don’t know where, but she managed to come home again in the end.
‘It was the poor dentist who had to leave, because they were accusing him of corrupting girls.
‘And he wasn’t the only one. I can tell you about other married men, respectable, decent men, who she chased after. It was something stronger than her.
‘They tried to marry her off, but no one from round here would have her. There was a young solicitor from Rennes who visited their house quite often for a while, but once he was put in the picture he never came back.
‘You can imagine what a godsend it was when a doctor from Paris became infatuated with her.’
Madame Maigret, sitting next to him, must more or less have been reading about the same events, in different words, because she looked somewhat shocked.
‘Do you believe it?’
He chose not to reply, as he knew his wife didn’t always like to stare reality fully in the face. After all these years living with him, she still subscribed to the image of the world that she had formed in her childhood. Or rather, she clung on to it, without fully believing in it.
‘At sixteen!’ she sighed.
‘It seems that she started even younger.’
‘But you saw her photo.’
Lassagne continued:
Doctor Lemaire, who is the only person who could confirm this story, is now based in Morocco, and his wife, who has remarried by all accounts, is said to be living in the South.
We have tried to trace some of Éveline’s childhood friends and have found three of her former classmates, two of whom are now married and have children. The third, who works in the offices of a ship-owner who is friends with the Le Guérecs, replied sharply:
‘It’s a pack of lies. Besides, it’s none of your business.’
When we interviewed one of the other two, her husband was present, and he wouldn’t allow her to answer our questions.
‘Don’t get involved. You know it can’t lead to anything good. Plus, it’s not the journalists’ job to conduct an investigation – that’s for the police.’
His wife was silent, reluctantly, we thought, as she seemed to have a lot on her mind.
So only one of the three talked to us openly, and she carried on with her housework as she did so.
‘Everyone at primary school and at the lycée knew that Éveline was ill and that she could die at any given moment. She told us herself, and we were warned that we had to take good care of her. She knew this. She said:
‘ “I have to make the most of life. I don’t know if I’ll live until I’m twenty.”
‘She didn’t join in our games. At playtime she would sit on her own in the corner, daydreaming. One day – she must have been fourteen – she told me quite calmly:
‘ “I’m in love.”
‘She gave me the name of a well-known man in town, a man in his forties whom we bumped into almost every afternoon as we left school.
‘ “He doesn’t pay any attention to me, because he thinks I’m just a little girl, but I intend to have him.”
‘She got into the habit of being the last to leave school, so that she could walk through the streets on her own. It was December, if I remember correctly. It got dark early.
‘A month after that she told me:
‘ “I’ve done it.”
‘ “Done what?”
‘ “What I said.”
‘ “You’ve ...?”
‘ “Not the whole way, but almost. I’ve been to his house.”
‘He was a bachelor who was, and still is, something of a lothario. I didn’t believe Éveline. And I told her so.
‘ “Fine. Tomorrow, all you have to do is follow me.”
‘So I did. He was waiting for her at a street corner, and they walked together to a house, into which they disappeared, and I saw lights being turned on and curtains being closed.
‘ “So, was I lying?” she asked me the next day.
‘ “No.”
‘ “Before this week is out, I’ll be a real woman.”
‘She didn’t talk to me about it again, but a month later I saw her leaving that same house.
‘I know there were others. However, she was more discreet about them. It’s not her fault. She’s sick, isn’t she?’
According to Lassagne, there was another school of thought, that of Éveline’s defenders, and some even saw a political slant to all this.
Maître Chapuis’ arrival has raised feelings to a fever pitch. Barely had he settled into his room at the hotel when the phone began ringing off the hook with people wanting to offer their advice, anonymously or otherwise.
What is certain is that, if the information we have gathered and the rumours we have repeated here despite the threats from Le Guérec turn out to be true, then the Boulevard Haussmann affair will take on a whole new complexion.
What Maigret would have liked was the answers to two questions:
Did Éveline Jave know about the affair between her husband and Josépha’s daughter?
Did Doctor Jave know about his wife’s relationship with Doctor Négrel?
Had Janvier, in his office back at Quai des Orfèvres, found the answers to these questions?
Maigret remembered another question, which he had asked himself on the first day:
Why had Éveline Jave been naked when she was found in the cupboard, and why had her clothes disappeared?
It was a like a three-handed vaudeville revue, with the difference that one person had lost her life, and another was about to lose his head, or at least his liberty.
‘Do you think it’s necessary to talk about all that?’
It was necessary either to talk about everything or not to mention anything at all.
‘If what the paper says is true, she’s just an unfortunate girl, more to be pitied than blamed.’
He knew already that his wife was going to say that. She continued, after a silence:
‘That’s no reason to kill someone, especially in such a cowardly way.’
She wasn’t wrong, of course. But who had killed her? And why? It was this ‘why’ that intrigued him the most.
It was only by getting to know Éveline better that they would finally understand the motives of her murderer.
In the last few years, two years at least, she had in some way been caught between two men: her husband on one side, Doctor Négrel on the other.
Even assuming that both had loved her at some point, neither of them loved her any more on the Saturday when she died.
Philippe Jave, for reasons Maigret was unaware of, but which he believed he could find out, had gradually drifted apart from her and fallen in love with Antoinette Chauvet.
Gilbert Négrel had become engaged to a young woman who seemed tailor-made for him.
Did Éveline know? Had he told her about it in ord
er to break off with her?
And what indeed was the nature of their relationship?
The information gathered in Concarneau now gave some insight into this. Éveline didn’t wait for a man to court her. It was she who made the first move.
‘I intend to have him!’ she had said while still a teenager to her friend, referring to a forty-year-old man.
And she did have him.
When Négrel started to frequent Boulevard Haussmann, had she also said: ‘I intend to have him!’?
Her husband, who was already in love with Antoinette at this point, probably let her go. He would have gone out on a call in the evening, leaving Éveline and Négrel alone together.
Négrel had not yet met the daughter of Maître Chapuis. Studious and hard-working, he had only ever had casual encounters before this.
This was all entirely plausible. He knew nothing about the past of the young wife, who came across as so well-behaved yet seemed defenceless against what life threw at her.
There was something both ironic and tragic about this situation.
Éveline, who had an urgent desire to live life to the full, to live fast, to absorb everything she could of existence, was alone between two men, both of whom loved someone else.
Her husband had Antoinette – who looked like her!
Négrel had Martine Chapuis, as determined to marry him as Eveline had earlier been to have the older man in Concarneau.
She had nothing left, except her jewels, since her child doesn’t seem to have occupied an important place in her life, and it was mainly the nurse who looked after her.
This accumulation of jewellery that she never wore also cast a strange light on her character.
Did she collect them in this fashion out of avarice, as do certain women who say that it is a nest egg that they can fall back on whatever might happen?
Maigret had seen none of the characters in this drama in the flesh. He had only got to know them through the papers. Nevertheless, he had the impression that he wasn’t far wrong in thinking that these jewels constituted a sort of revenge.
If he could have rung Quai des Orfèvres, he would have asked Janvier:
‘When was it that she started buying or acquiring jewels?’
He would swear that it was around the time that Jave began his adventure with Antoinette, or at least at the moment when Éveline discovered that she was no longer loved.
She was still a Le Guérec in spite of everything. It was her money, Le Guérec money, that had enabled her husband to set up in Boulevard Haussmann and to become a society doctor.
Had she not bought him? Moreover, wasn’t the Le Guérec income the main source of revenue for the household?
He didn’t love her. He had a mistress. He was paying the rent on the apartment in Rue Washington. He kept Josépha’s daughter, who didn’t have a job.
In her mind, wasn’t that also Le Guérec money?
So she started spending money too. And to spend more quickly, to spend in larger quantities, she bought herself jewellery or demanded her husband buy it.
Janvier would be able to verify all this by checking the bank accounts. He would also know whether Éveline’s share of the earnings from the factory was paid directly to her or to her husband.
Regular visitors to Boulevard Haussmann didn’t suspect a thing. Nor did the doctor’s patients. He was treading on thin ice.
Did he have any right to say ‘No’ to his wife’s demands?
He loved Antoinette, sought consolation with her for his broken marriage. Did he regard it as a price worth paying to be left in peace?
Négrel’s situation was scarcely much better than his. He hadn’t rejected Éveline’s advances. She had moved him. He had become her lover.
What had he found out that had estranged him from her in his turn?
He had met Martine, and they had planned a future life together.
Only, as far as could be established, Éveline wouldn’t let him go. She pursued him back to Rue des Saints-Pères. She telephoned him from Cannes. She dashed to the airport to come and see him on Saturday.
What did she want, what did she require from him?
She was becoming a pitiful figure in this quest for an impossible happiness. Even after his divorce, the dentist in Concarneau had left town without a backward glance at her. The others had taken advantage of the pleasure she offered them and then had hastily put an end to the liaison.
She was like someone who, having fallen into a fast-flowing river, was clinging in vain to disintegrating pieces of flotsam.
Love eluded her. Happiness eluded her. But, haunted by her own mortality, she doggedly continued to pursue them.
It had ended with a body bent double and stuffed into a cupboard.
According to the pathologist she had been struck, or else thrown against a piece of furniture or the corner of a wall. The bruising pointed to a violent altercation.
Was it to do with jealousy?
Since the previous day, Philippe Jave had had an alibi, but it was a dubious one, as it had been furnished by Antoinette and Josépha.
Négrel had spent Saturday afternoon at Boulevard Haussmann, and for most of that time Josépha had been in the apartment opposite.
Had Éveline been undressed before or after her death?
If it was before, then it was a fair assumption that Négrel had succumbed and that the couple had gone into the bedroom that is located behind the consulting room.
Had they had a row? Had Éveline threatened to prevent him marrying his fiancée? Had he hit her and then, frightened, given her an injection? In that case, did he pick out the wrong phial or did he knowingly choose a drug that he was aware would kill her?
Both versions were possible. Both were explicable. And also that he should have hidden the body in the cupboard, tidied up the room and then at the last moment spotted the clothes on the floor or over the back of a chair and taken them away to destroy them.
It was harder to imagine that Jave would have arrived from Cannes, gone to see his mistress, then made his way to Boulevard Haussmann, where he had undressed her in order to make love.
If he was the one who had killed her, the circumstances must have been different. But in what way? Had he planned all this in advance in a cynical, even scientific fashion? For example, had Jave, who had long wished to get rid of Éveline in order to gain both his liberty and her fortune, followed her to Paris, swung by Rue Washington to establish an alibi, turned up at Boulevard Haussmann after his locum had left and then executed his plan?
One thing was clear, unless what the newspapers had printed about the keys was not the whole truth. According to them, there were only four keys to the apartment, which worked on both the doors that opened on to the landing. Josépha had one, Jave had another, the concierge a third, and Madame Jave’s key had been given to Doctor Négrel for the duration of his tenure.
So unless the concierge had lied, and it is difficult to see why she would, someone had opened the door to Éveline.
Josépha maintained that it wasn’t her.
Négrel swore that he hadn’t seen the young woman.
Négrel, it was true, already had two lies to his name, but both could be attributed to a certain masculine discretion.
Firstly, he had denied having relations with Madame Jave.
Secondly, he had claimed that the latter had never visited him at his lodgings in Rue des Saints-Pères.
‘Wish he’d sort it out!’ Maigret suddenly mumbled as he signalled to the waiter to bring him another beer.
‘Do you mean Janvier?’
It was indeed Janvier that he was thinking of. It irritated him that he was in the dark, and to think that at headquarters they had information in hand that would allow him to see things more clearly.
‘Do you think he isn’t doing a good job?’
‘On the contrary, he is doing an excellent job. It’s not his fault that Coméliau insisted on arresting Négrel at any cost.’
/> ‘Is he innocent?’
‘I don’t know. But in any case it is a mistake to arrest him without having more information. Especially since Noël Chapuis will now make sure to muddy the waters. He didn’t go to Concarneau for no reason.’
‘What is he hoping for?’
‘He wants to prove that Jave had every reason to want to get rid of his wife.’
‘And did he?’
‘Yes. But his client did too.’
‘Are you sure you’d rather not go into your office?’
‘Quite sure. Especially since Janvier is using it. It’s a good thing he smokes only cigarettes, or he might be tempted to use my pipes.’
Having got that off his chest, he poked gentle fun at himself:
‘Don’t worry. I’m not jealous of good old Janvier. It’s just a little pang, that’s all. Let’s go ...!’
‘Where?’
‘Anywhere. We can walk along the river if you like, towards Bercy.’
And Madame Maigret, thinking about her feet and the length of the walk, suppressed a sigh.
7. The Little Bar on Quai de Charenton
Maigret had finally sat down on a bench and stayed there for a whole half-hour without feeling the need to get up. His wife, sitting next to him, couldn’t believe how peaceful he looked and kept glancing at him in surprise, as if she expected him to snap out of it at any moment and announce:
‘Let’s go!’
They were on Quai de Bercy, where the shade of the trees was as soft and restful that afternoon as in an avenue in a small town. The bench, God knows why, was facing away from the Seine, so the view before the Maigrets was of a strange town carefully guarded and surrounded by railings, where the houses were not proper houses but rather wine depots, and the names on the signs were the names they were used to seeing on wine bottles and, in larger letters, on the gable-ends of farmhouses along the road.
There were streets, as in a real town, crossroads, squares and avenues, but instead of cars they were full of casks of all sizes.
‘Do you know what we in the police force call a drunk who we pick up off the street?’
‘You’ve told me, but I’ve forgotten.’
Maigret Enjoys Himself Page 10
