This time Machère said nothing and let his eye drift across the boats that formed a little island a few metres away from the shore.
‘I thought of that. I investigated all the sailors. Most of them are responsible people who live on board with their families and children. The only one that made me pause was the Étoile Polaire. The last boat upstream … The dirtiest one, which looks as if it’s about to sink …’
‘What is it?’
‘A boat skippered by a Belgian from Tilleur, near Liège … An old brute who has been investigated twice for indecent assault … The boat hasn’t been maintained … No one will insure it … There were lots of stories about woman and little girls … But why do you want to …?’
The two men walked towards the bridge again. As they got closer, they entered the light of the town’s street lamps. On their right they saw bistros, French bistros, where mechanical pianos held sway.
‘I’m having him watched … All the same, there’s the witness statement about the motorbike …’
‘Which hotel are you staying at?’
‘The Hôtel de la Gare …’
Maigret held out his hand.
‘I will see you again, old man … Of course, you’re the one leading the inquiry … I’m only here as an amateur …’
‘What do you want me to do? If they don’t find the body, there’s no proof … And if it’s been thrown in the water, we’ll never find it …’
Maigret distractedly shook his hand, and as they reached the bridge he went inside the Hôtel de la Meuse.
As he ate his dinner, Maigret had jotted in his notebook:
Opinions about the Peeters family.
MACHÈRE – They don’t see themselves as a bistro.
THE HOTELIER – They consider themselves a cut above. Would I have my son train as a lawyer, for example?
A SAILOR – In Flanders they’re all like that!
SOMEONE ELSE – They stick together like freemasons!
And it was curious, from the town, from the bridge that constituted the central point of Givet, to look across at the Flemish side. It looked like a French town. Little streets. Cafés filled with people playing billiards or dominoes. The smell of pastis and general familiarity.
Then that stretch of river. The customs building. And last of all, right at the end, on the edge of the countryside, the Flemish house: the grocery crammed to the rafters with goods; the little zinc bar for the genever-drinkers; the kitchen and that senile old husband in his wicker armchair up against the stove; the dining room and the piano, the violin, the comfortable seats, the home-made tart, Anna and Marguerite, the checked tablecloth. Joseph, long, thin and sickly, arriving on his motorbike to an atmosphere of general admiration!
The Hôtel de la Meuse was a hotel for commercial travellers. The landlord knew everyone. They each had their towel.
Joseph Peeters came in as a stranger, shyly, at about nine o’clock, swooped towards the inspector and stammered:
‘Any news?’
However, everyone was looking at them, and Maigret preferred to take the man to his room.
‘What is it?’
‘Do you know about the advertisement? … A motorcyclist has turned up … A car mechanic from Dinant, who drove by that evening, at about half past eight, right opposite the house …’
Maigret’s suitcase hadn’t yet been opened. The inspector was sitting on the side of the bed, leaving the only armchair for his visitor.
‘Do you really love Marguerite?’
‘Yes … that is …’
‘That is …?’
‘She’s my cousin! I wanted to make her my wife … It was decided a long time ago …’
‘You still had a child with Germaine Piedboeuf!’
A silence. Then, with a slight stammer, a faint:
‘Yes …’
‘Did you love her?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘Would you have married her?’
‘I don’t know …’
Maigret saw in the glare of the light, with his thin face, his tired eyes, his weary features, Joseph Peeters didn’t dare to look him in the eye.
‘How did it happen?’
‘We were going out, Germaine and I …’
‘And Marguerite?’
‘No! That was different …’
‘So?’
‘She told me she was going to have a child … I didn’t know what to do …’
‘It was your mother who …’
‘My mother and my sisters … They proved to me that I wasn’t the first, that Germaine had had …’
‘Affairs?’
The window looked out on to the river, at the very spot where it broke against the piers of the bridge. And it was a constant, loud roar.
‘Do you love Marguerite?’
The young man got up, worried and uneasy.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you love Marguerite or Germaine?’
‘I … That is …’
He had beads of sweat on his forehead.
‘How do you expect me to know? … My mother’s already fixed me up with a legal office in Reims …’
‘You and Marguerite?’
‘I don’t know … I met the other one at a dance …’
‘Germaine?’
‘At a ball I’d been forbidden to go to … I drove her home … On the way …’
‘And Marguerite?’
‘It’s not the same thing … I …’
‘You didn’t leave Nancy on the night of the third to the fourth?’
Maigret had heard enough. He walked towards the door. He had got the measure of his man: a tall, bony boy, but with a soft character, whose pride was sustained by the admiration of his sisters and his cousin.
‘What have you been doing since then?’
‘Studying for my exam … It’s the last one … Anna sent me a telegram to come and see you … Did you …’
‘No! I have no further need of you! You can go back to Nancy.’
A face that Maigret would not forget: big, clear eyes, lined red with worry. A waistcoat that was too tight. Trousers with pockets on the knees.
In the same clothes, adding only a raincoat, Joseph Peeters would go back to Nancy, on his motorbike, without exceeding the speed limit …
A little student’s bedsit, in the home of some poor old lady … Classes that he must never miss … The café at lunchtime … Billiards in the evening …
‘If it was useful to me to see you, I would let you know!’
And Maigret, on his own now, leaned on the window-sill, receiving the wind from the valley, seeing the Meuse hurrying towards the plain, seeing in the distance a small, veiled light: the Flemish house.
In the shadow, a jumbled collection of boats, masts, funnels, the rounded sterns of barges.
The Étoile Polaire at its head.
He went outside, filling his pipe, turning up the collar of his overcoat, and the wind was so strong that in spite of his bulk he had to brace himself to stand up to it.
3. The Midwife
As usual, Maigret had got up at eight o’clock in the morning. With his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, his pipe between his teeth, he stood motionless facing the bridge for a long while, now watching the river in its madness, now letting his gaze drift over the passersby.
The wind was as violent as it had been the previous day. It was much colder than in Paris.
But how exactly could you tell that you were at the border? Was it the transition to Belgian-style houses with their ugly brown brickwork, their freestone doorsteps and their windows decorated with copper pots?
The harder, more chiselled features of the Walloons? The khaki uniforms of the Belgian customs officers? Or was it that the currency of both countries was used in the shops?
In any case, it was unmistakable: you were at the border. Two peoples lived side by side.
Maigret felt better than ever as he stepped into a waterside bistro for
a hot rum. A French bistro, with the whole range of multicoloured aperitifs. Mirrors on pale walls. And people standing drinking their morning glass of white wine.
There were about ten sailors around the owners of two tugs. They were talking about the possibility of going down the river in spite of everything.
‘There’s no chance of getting beyond the Dinant bridge! Even if you could, we’d be forced to take fifteen French francs per ton. It’s too expensive. At that price it’s better to wait.’
And they looked at Maigret. One man nudged another with his elbow. The inspector had been spotted.
‘There’s a Fleming who’s talking about leaving tomorrow, without an engine, and just letting himself be carried along by the current …’
There were no Flemings in the café. They preferred the Peeters’ shop, all in dark wood, with its smells of coffee, chicory, cinnamon and genever. They must have stayed there with their elbows on the counter for hours at a time, stretching out an idle conversation, looking with their pale eyes at the stickers on the door.
Maigret listened to what was being said around him. He learned that the Flemish sailors were not liked, not so much personally, but because, with their boats and their powerful engines, maintained like kitchen utensils, they were in competition with the French and accepted freight at derisory prices.
‘And what if they’re involved in killing girls?’
They were speaking for Maigret’s benefit, looking at him out of the corners of their eyes.
‘I wonder what’s keeping the police from arresting the Peeters family! Maybe they’ve got too much money so they’re in two minds about it …’
Maigret left the bistro and wandered along the quayside for another few minutes, looking at the brown water, which was sweeping tree branches along. In the little street on the left he spotted the house that Anna had pointed out to him.
The light that morning was sad, the sky a uniform grey. The people, who were cold, didn’t linger in the streets.
The inspector walked to the door and pulled on the bell cord. It was just after a quarter past eight. The woman who opened the door must have been busy with some big cleaning project, because she wiped her hands on her wet apron.
‘Who do you want?’
At the end of the corridor a kitchen could be seen, with a bucket and a brush in the middle of it.
‘Is Monsieur Piedboeuf at home?’
She looked him suspiciously up and down.
‘The father or the son?’
‘The father.’
‘I suppose you’re from the police? Then you should know that at this time of day he’s in bed, given that he’s a night watchman and never comes home before seven in the morning … Now, if you’d like to go upstairs …’
‘There’s no point. And the son?’
‘He left for the office ten minutes ago.’
The sound of a spoon falling came from the kitchen. Maigret saw a bit of a child’s head.
‘That wouldn’t by any chance be …’ he began.
‘It’s the son of poor Mademoiselle Germaine, yes! Come in or go out! You’re freezing the whole house …’
The inspector came in. The walls of the corridor were painted to look like marble. The kitchen was in chaos, and the woman muttered vaguely as she picked up her brush and bucket.
On the table there were dirty cups and plates. A two-and-a-half-year-old boy was sitting all by himself, eating a boiled egg, clumsily, smearing himself with yolk.
The woman must have been about forty. She was thin, with an ascetic face.
‘Are you bringing him up?’
‘Since they killed his mother, I’ve been looking after him most of the time, yes! His grandfather has to sleep half the day. There’s no one else in the house. And when I have clients to go and see, I have to leave him with a neighbour.’
‘Clients?’
‘I’m a qualified midwife.’
She had taken off her checked apron, as if it stripped her of her dignity.
‘Don’t be scared, my little Jojo!’ she said to the child, who was looking at the visitor and had stopped eating.
Did he look like Joseph Peeters? It was hard to say. At any rate, he was a feeble child. His features were irregular, his head was too big, his neck was thin, and above all he had a thin, wide mouth that looked as if it belonged to a child of at least ten.
He didn’t take his eyes off Maigret but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t express any more emotion when the midwife felt the need to kiss him, in what was perhaps a rather theatrical way, exclaiming:
‘The poor love! Eat your egg, my darling!’
She hadn’t invited Maigret to sit down. There was water on the floor and a soup cooking on the stove.
‘So it must have been you they went to fetch from Paris?’
The voice was not quite aggressive, but it was far from amiable.
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s no point being mysterious here! We know everything!’
‘Explain yourself.’
‘Because you know as well as I do! A nice job you’ve accepted here! … But aren’t the police always on the side of the rich?’
Maigret had frowned, not because of the gratuitous accusation, but because of what the midwife’s words revealed.
‘It was the Flemings themselves who told everyone that we might worry them for now, but that it wouldn’t last, and that things would change when some sort of detective chief inspector arrived from Paris!’
She smiled meanly.
‘My goodness! We gave them plenty of time to prepare their lies! They know very well that the body of Mademoiselle Germaine will never be found! Eat, my little one. Don’t fret …’
And tears came to her eyes as she looked at the boy holding his spoon in the air, without taking his eyes off Maigret.
‘Do you have anything in particular to tell me?’ the inspector asked her.
‘Nothing at all! The Peeters must have given you all the information you wanted, and they must even have told you that the child isn’t their Joseph’s!’
Was it worth pressing the point? Maigret was the enemy. There was a feeling of hate floating in the air of this poor house.
‘Now, if you want to see Monsieur Piedboeuf, you only need to come back at about midday … That’s when he gets up and Monsieur Gérard comes back from the office …’
She led him back along the corridor and closed the door behind him. The first-floor shutters were down.
Maigret found Inspector Machère near the Flemish house, in conversation with two sailors, whom he left as he spotted Maigret.
‘What are they saying?’
‘I was talking to them about the Étoile Polaire … They think they remember that on the third of January the owner left the Café des Mariniers at about eight o’clock, and that he was drunk, as he was every evening … At this time of day he’s still asleep … I’ve just been on his boat, and he didn’t even hear me …’
Behind the windows of the grocery shop the white head of Madame Peeters could be seen, observing the policemen.
The conversation was disjointed. The two men looked around without examining anything in particular.
On one side, the river with the overturned barriers, dragging flotsam along at a speed of nine kilometres an hour.
On the other, the house.
‘There are two entrances!’ said Machère. ‘The one we can see, and another one, behind the building … In the courtyard there’s a well …’
He hastened to add:
‘I’ve searched it … I think I’ve searched everything … And yet, I don’t know why, I have a sense that the corpse wasn’t thrown into the Meuse … What was that woman’s handkerchief doing on the roof?’
‘You know they’ve found the motorcyclist?’
‘I heard. But that doesn’t prove that Joseph Peeters wasn’t here that evening.’
Of course! There was no proof either for or against! There wasn’t even
any serious evidence!
Germaine Piedboeuf had come into the shop at about eight o’clock. The Flemings claimed she had gone out again a few minutes later, but no one else had seen her.
That was all!
The Piedboeufs had levelled accusations and were demanding 300,000 francs in damages.
Two boatmen’s wives came into the grocery, and the bell rang.
‘Do you still believe, sir …’
‘I don’t believe anything at all, old man! See you later …’
He went into the shop in turn. The two customers shifted up to make room for him. Madame Peeters called out:
‘Anna!’
And she came hurrying, opening the glass kitchen door.
‘Come in, inspector … Anna will be here very shortly … She’s tidying the bedrooms …’
She turned her attention back to her customers, and Maigret, crossing the kitchen, turned into the corridor and slowly climbed the stairs. Anna mustn’t have heard. There were noises coming from a room whose door was open, and Maigret suddenly saw the girl, with a handkerchief knotted around her head, busy brushing a pair of men’s trousers.
She saw the visitor in the mirror, turned swiftly and dropped the brush.
‘How long have you been there?’
She seemed much the same, although casually dressed for the morning. She still had the air of a well-brought-up, slightly distant girl.
‘Excuse me … I was told you were upstairs … Is this your brother’s room?’
‘Yes … He left first thing this morning … The exam is very hard … He wants to pass it with the best possible distinction, like the other ones …’
On a sideboard there was a big portrait of Marguerite Van de Weert, in a light-coloured dress, wearing an Italian straw hat.
And the girl had written, in long, pointed handwriting, the beginning of ‘Solveig’s Song’:
Winter may pass
Beloved spring
May pass …
Maigret was holding the portrait. Anna looked at him insistently, even with a hint of suspicion, as if she feared a smile.
‘Those are lines from Ibsen,’ she said.
‘I know …’
And Maigret recited the end of the poem:
I wait for you here,
O my handsome betrothed,
The Flemish House Page 3
