The Flemish House

by Georges Simenon

  Until my very last day …

  He nearly smiled, however, because he was looking at the trousers that Anna was still holding.

  It was unexpected, ridiculous or moving, those heroic lines in the dark setting of a student’s room.

  Joseph Peeters, long and thin, badly dressed, with his fair hair that no cream could tame, his disproportionately large nose, his short-sighted eyes …

  O my handsome betrothed …

  And that portrait of a provincial girl, diaphanously pretty!

  It wasn’t the prestigious context of Ibsen’s play. She wasn’t proclaiming her faith to the stars! Like a good middle-class girl she copied out some lines at the bottom of a portrait.

  I wait for you here …

  And she really had waited! In spite of Germaine Piedboeuf! In spite of the child! In spite of the years!

  Maigret felt vaguely awkward. He looked at the table covered with a green blotting pad, with a brass inkwell that must have been a present, and a Galalith pen holder.

  Mechanically, he opened one of the drawers of the side-table and saw, in a cardboard box without a lid, some amateur photographs.

  ‘My brother has a camera.’

  Some young people in students’ caps … Joseph on his motorbike, his hand on the throttle lever ready for a fast start … Anna at the piano … Another girl, thinner and sadder …

  ‘That’s my sister Maria.’

  And suddenly there was a little passport photograph, as gloomy as all portraits of that kind, because of the brutal contrast of black and white.

  A girl, but so frail, so small that she looked like a child. Big eyes took up the whole of her face. She wore a ridiculous hat and seemed to be looking with fear at the camera.

  ‘Germaine, isn’t it?’

  Her son looked like her.

  ‘Was she sick?’

  ‘She had tuberculosis. She wasn’t very healthy.’

  Anna was! Tall and well built, she seemed in a perfect mental and physical equilibrium. At last she set the trousers down on the counterpane.

  ‘I’ve just been to her house …’

  ‘What did they say? They must have …’

  ‘I only saw a midwife … and the little boy …’

  She didn’t ask any questions, as though out of modesty. There was something discreet about her demeanour.

  ‘Is your bedroom next door?’

  ‘Yes … My bedroom, which is also my sister’s …’

  There was a connecting door, which Maigret opened. The other room was brighter, because its windows looked out on to the quay. The bed was already made. It wasn’t untidy in the slightest, not so much as a piece of clothing on the furniture.

  Only two nightdresses neatly folded on the two pillows.

  ‘You’re twenty-five?’

  ‘Twenty-six.’

  Maigret wanted to ask a question. He didn’t know how to do it.

  ‘You’ve never been engaged?’

  ‘Never.’

  But that wasn’t entirely what he had wanted to ask. She impressed him, particularly now that he had seen her room. She impressed him as an enigmatic statue might have done. He wondered if her unappealing flesh had ever trembled, if she was anything but a devoted sister, a model daughter, a mistress of the house, a Peeters, if, in the end, beneath that surface, there was a woman!

  And she didn’t look away. She didn’t hide. She must have felt that he was studying her figure as much as her features but she didn’t so much as blink.

  ‘We never see anyone apart from our cousins, the Van de Weerts …’

  Maigret hesitated, and his voice wasn’t entirely natural when he said:

  ‘I’m going to ask you to do an experiment for me. Will you go down to the dining room and play the piano for me until I call you. For as long as possible, the same piece as on the third of January … Who was playing?’

  ‘Marguerite. She sings and accompanies herself. She’s had singing lessons.’

  ‘Do you remember the piece?’

  ‘It’s always the same. “Solveig’s Song” … But … I … I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s just an experiment …’

  She left the room backwards, and was about to close the door.

  ‘No! Leave it open.’

  A few moments later, some fingers ran carelessly over the keyboard, producing disconnected chords. And Maigret, without wasting any time, opened the cupboards in the girls’ bedroom.

  The first was the linen cupboard. Regular piles of shirts, trousers and well-ironed skirts …

  The chords followed on from one another. The tune became recognizable. And Maigret’s fat fingers came and went among the white cloth underwear.

  An onlooker would probably have taken him for a lover, or even for a man satisfying some hidden passion.

  Coarse underwear, solid, hard-wearing, inelegant. The underwear of the two sisters must have been mixed together.

  Then it was the turn of a drawer: stockings, suspenders, boxes of hairpins … No powder … No perfume, except a bottle of Russian eau de Cologne that must only have been used on important occasions.

  The sound grew louder … The house was filled with music … And gradually a voice accompanied the piano, and came to the fore.

  I wait for you here,

  Oh my handsome betrothed …

  It wasn’t Marguerite who was singing – it was Anna Peeters! She clearly enunciated each syllable, and lingered wistfully on certain phrases.

  Maigret’s fingers were still working fast, probing around in the fabric.

  In a pile of linen there was a rustle that was not of cloth, but of paper.

  Another portrait. An amateur portrait, in sepia. A young man with curly hair and fine features, his upper lip jutting forward in a confident and slightly ironic smile.

  Maigret didn’t know who the man reminded him of. But he reminded him of something.

  Until my very last day …

  A serious voice, almost a masculine voice fading slowly away. Then a call:

  ‘Should I go on, inspector?’

  He closed the doors of the cupboards, put the photograph into his waistcoat pocket and darted into Joseph Peeters’ room.

  ‘Don’t bother.’

  He noticed that Anna was paler when she came back. Had she been putting too much soul into her singing? Her eyes scoured the room but found nothing unusual.

  ‘I don’t understand … I would like to ask you something, inspector. You saw Joseph last night … What did you think of him? … Do you think he’s capable …’

  Probably downstairs, she had taken off the headscarf that covered her head. Maigret even had a sense that she had washed her hands.

  ‘Everyone, you understand, everyone,’ she went on, ‘must acknowledge his innocence! He has to be happy!’

  ‘With Marguerite Van de Weert?’

  She said nothing. She sighed.

  ‘How old is your sister Maria?’

  ‘Twenty-eight … Everyone agrees that she’s going to be headmistress of the school in Namur.’

  Maigret touched the portrait in his pocket.

  ‘No lovers?’

  And she replied, straight away:

  ‘Maria?’

  It meant, ‘Maria, a lover? You don’t know her!’

  ‘I’m going to pursue my inquiry!’ said Maigret, moving towards the landing.

  ‘Have you had any results so far?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She followed him down the stairs. As they passed through the kitchen, he noticed old Peeters, who had taken up his place in his armchair and plainly couldn’t see him.

  ‘He isn’t aware of anything any more,’ Anna sighed.

  In the grocery, there were three or four people. Madame Peeters was pouring genever into glasses. She greeted him with a slight bow, without setting down her bottle, then went on talking Flemish.

  She must have explained that the visitor was the police inspector who had come from Paris, b
ecause the sailors turned respectfully towards Maigret.

  Outside, Inspector Machère was busy studying a spot of ground where the soil was less firm than elsewhere.

  ‘Anything new?’ Maigret asked.

  ‘I don’t know! I’m still looking for the corpse. Because until we get our hands on it, it will be impossible to get these people.’

  And he turned towards the Meuse as if to say that that wasn’t the way the body had gone.

  4. The Portrait

  It was just after midday. Maigret, perhaps for the fourth time since that morning, was walking along the riverbank. On the other side of the Meuse there was a big whitewashed factory wall, a gate and dozens of workmen and women coming out of it, on foot or by bicycle.

  The encounter took place a hundred metres before the bridge. The inspector passed someone, looking at him straight on, and when he turned round he saw the other man turning round as well.

  He was the original of the portrait found among Anna’s clothes.

  A brief hesitation. It was the young man who took a step towards Maigret.

  ‘Are you the policeman from Paris?’

  ‘Gérard Piedboeuf, I presume?’

  The policeman from Paris. It was the fifth or sixth time since that morning that Maigret had heard himself referred to in those terms. And he understood the nuance very clearly. His colleague Machère, from Nancy, was there to carry out inquiries, nothing else. They watched him coming and going and when they thought they knew something they ran to tell him.

  As for Maigret, he was ‘the policeman from Paris’, summoned by the Flemings, who had come specially to wash them of all suspicion. And, in the street, people who knew him already watched after him without the slightest sympathy.

  ‘Have you come from my house?’

  ‘I went there, but early this morning, and I only saw your nephew …’

  Gérard was no longer quite the same age as he had been in the portrait. If his figure was still very young, and his hair and clothes were young as well, close up it was clear that he had turned twenty-five some time ago.

  ‘Did you want to speak to me?’

  In any case, shyness was not one of his faults. He didn’t once look away. His eyes were brown and very shining, eyes that women were bound to like, particularly since his complexion was dark and his lips well formed.

  ‘Bah! I’ve only just begun my inquiries …’

  ‘On behalf of the Peeters, I know! The whole town knows! We knew even before you got here. You’re a friend of the family and you’re going out of your way to …’

  ‘I’m doing no such thing! Ah, your father’s getting up …’

  They could see the little house. On the first floor the shutter rose, and they made out the form of a man with a big grey moustache looking through the glass.

  ‘He’s seen us!’ said Gérard. ‘He’s going to get dressed …’

  ‘Did you now the Peeters personally?’

  They walked along the quayside, turning around every time they reached a mooring post a hundred metres from the grocery. The air was sharp. Gérard was wearing an overcoat that was too thin, but whose very slim fit must have appealed to him.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your sister has been Joseph Peeters’ mistress for three years. Didn’t she used to go to his house?’

  Gérard shrugged.

  ‘If we go through all that again in detail! First of all, shortly before the child was born, Joseph swore that he would marry her. Then Dr Van de Weert came, on behalf of the Peeters, to offer 10,000 francs for my sister to leave the country and never come back. Germaine’s first outing after she had recovered from the birth was to go and show the child to the Peeters. A terrible scene, because they wouldn’t let her in, and the old woman treated her as a loose woman … In the end things settled down … Joseph still promised to get married … But first he wanted to finish his studies …’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘Me?’

  He began by pretending not to understand. But almost immediately he changed his mind and assumed a smile that was both vain and ironic.

  ‘Have they told you something?’

  Maigret, while walking along the quay, took the little portrait from his pocket and showed it to his companion.

  ‘Good heavens! I had no idea that still existed!’

  He tried to take it, but Maigret put it back in his wallet.

  ‘Was she the one who …? No! It’s not possible. She’s too proud for that. At least she is now!’

  And throughout the entire conversation Maigret didn’t take his eyes off his companion. Was he tubercular, like his sister and probably like Joseph’s son? It wasn’t certain! But he had the charm of certain consumptives: fine features, transparent skin, lips that were sensual and mocking at the same time.

  His elegance was that of an office clerk, and he had thought it necessary to put a crêpe armband on his beige overcoat.

  ‘Did you woo her?’

  ‘It was a long time ago … It goes back to the time when my sister didn’t yet have a child. At least four years.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘My father’s just taken a look at the corner of the street …’

  ‘Go on anyway.’

  ‘It was Sunday. Germaine was supposed to be going to visit the Rochefort caves with Joseph Peeters. At the last moment they asked me to go, because one of his sisters was coming along. The caves are twenty-five kilometres from here. We had a picnic. I was in very high spirits. Afterwards the two couples parted to go walking the woods …’

  Maigret’s eyes were still on him, without expressing his thoughts in any way.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Well? Yes …’

  And Gérard gave a fatuous, sly smile.

  ‘I couldn’t even tell you how it went. I don’t tend to drag things out. She didn’t expect it and …’

  Maigret put a hand on his shoulder and asked him slowly:

  ‘Is this true?’

  And he knew that it was. Anna, at that moment then, had been twenty-one …

  ‘Afterwards?’

  ‘Nothing! She’s too ugly. Coming back on the train, she stared into my eyes, and I worked out that the best thing to do was to dump her …’

  ‘She didn’t try …?’

  ‘Nothing at all! I made sure to avoid her. She felt that there was no point insisting. Except when we pass in the street I have a sense that if looks could kill …’

  They walked towards Piedboeuf senior, who, without a false collar and with his feet in cloth slippers, was waiting for the two men.

  ‘They tell me you came to see us this morning. Please come in … Have you told the inspector, Gérard?’

  Maigret went up the narrow staircase, whose white wooden steps didn’t look very solid. The same room acted as kitchen, dining room and drawing room. It was poor and ugly. The table was covered by a waxed cloth with a blue pattern.

  ‘Who would have killed her?’ said Piedboeuf abruptly; he seemed to be a man of mediocre intelligence. ‘She left that evening, telling me that she hadn’t had her monthly, or even any news from Joseph.’

  ‘Her monthly?’

  ‘Yes! He paid a hundred francs a month for the care of the child … That’s the least he could do and …’

  Gérard, who felt that his father was about to launch off on a familiar jeremiad, interrupted him.

  ‘The inspector isn’t interested in that! What he wants are facts, proof! Well, at the very least I have proof that Joseph Peeters, who claims not to have come to Givet that day, was there … He came on his motorbike and …’

  ‘Are you talking about the witness? It’s worthless now. Another motorcyclist has turned up to say he was the one who drove along the quay just after eight o’clock …’

  ‘Ah!’

  And, aggressively:

  ‘Are you against us?’

  ‘I’m not with anyone! I’m not against anyone! I’m just looking for the truth.�
��

  But Gérard chuckled and said loudly to his father:

  ‘The inspector didn’t come here to try and catch us out … You’ll forgive me, inspector … But I need to eat … I have to earn a living, and my office opens at two o’clock!’

  What was the point of talking? Maigret cast one last glance around him, spotted the child’s cot in the next room and headed towards the door.

  Machère was waiting for him at the Hôtel de la Meuse. The travelling salesmen were having their lunch in a little room separated from the café by a glass door.

  But in the café itself you could have a snack, without a tablecloth, and there were some people eating like that.

  Machère wasn’t alone. A little man with monstrously wide shoulders and the long arms of a hunchback was having an aperitif at his table, and got up when he saw Maigret coming in.

  ‘The owner of the Étoile Polaire!’ announced Machère, who was very animated. ‘Gustave Cassin …’

  Maigret sat down. A glance at the saucers told him that his companions were already on their third aperitif.

  ‘Cassin has something to tell you …’

  That was exactly what the man was waiting for! As soon as Machère fell silent, he started off, leaning importantly on the chief inspector’s shoulder:

  ‘You have to say what you have to say, am I right? … Except there’s no need to say it when people are asking you not to say it … As my late father used to say: don’t overdo it!’

  ‘A beer!’ said Maigret to the approaching waiter.

  And he pushed back his bowler hat and unbuttoned his overcoat. Then, as the sailor stumbled for words, he muttered:

  ‘If I’m not mistaken, on the evening of the third of January you were completely drunk …’

  ‘Completely, that’s not true! … I’d had a few glasses, but I was still walking straight … And I clearly saw what I saw …’

  ‘You saw a motorbike turning up and stopping outside the Flemish house?’

  ‘Me? … Never in my life! …’

  Machère gestured to Maigret not to interrupt the man and encouraged him to continue with a wave of his hand.

  ‘I saw a woman on the quay … I’ll tell you who it was … The one of the two sisters who’s never in the shop and takes the train every day …’