‘Is there a phone in the house?’
‘Not here! At home, of course! My father needs it all the time.’
He was starting to dislike her, he didn’t know why. Or more precisely she was starting to get on his nerves! He didn’t like her babyish ways, her deliberately childish way of talking, her expression, which was supposed to be candid.
‘Wait a second! Here he comes …’
And sure enough, there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Joseph Peeters came into the dining room, quite clean, quite neat, his hair still bearing the traces of a wet comb.
‘Been here long, inspector?’
He didn’t dare to hold out his hand. He turned towards Marguerite.
‘And you haven’t offered him anything to drink?’
In the shop, several people were talking Flemish. Anna arrived in turn, peaceful, and bowed as she must have learned at the convent.
‘Is it true, inspector, that there was a scene last night in a café in the town? I know that people always exaggerate … But … sit down! Joseph! Go and get something to drink …’
There was a coal-nut fire in the hearth. The piano was open.
Maigret tried to identify an impression that he had had since he arrived, but every time he thought he was on the point of reaching his destination, his thought became elusive.
Something had changed. But he didn’t know what.
And he was in a bad mood. He had the blank face, the stubborn brow of his bad days. In fact, he wanted to do something incongruous just to disrupt all the harmony that surrounded him.
It was Anna more than anyone who inspired this confused feeling in him. She was still wearing the same grey dress that gave her figure the motionless appearance of a statue.
Had events really taken their toll on her? Her movements didn’t cause a ripple in the folds of her clothes.
She was like a character in a Greek tragedy, lost in the mean everyday life of the little border town.
‘Do you often help out with the … business?’
He hadn’t dared to say: in the shop.
‘Often! I stand in for my mother.’
‘And do you serve drinks as well?’
She didn’t smile. She just looked amazed.
‘Why not?’
‘Sometimes sailors are drunk, aren’t they? They must get very familiar, perhaps bothersome?’
‘Not here!’
And again she was a statue! She was sure of herself!
‘Would you prefer some port or …?’
‘I’d rather have a glass of that Schiedam you offered me the other day.’
‘Go and ask Mother for the bottle of “vieux système”, Joseph.’
And Joseph obeyed.
Did Maigret need to change the hierarchical order he had imagined, which was this: first Joseph, the real god of the family. Then Anna. Then Maria. Then Madame Peeters, devoted to the grocery. And last of all the father, asleep in his armchair?
Anna, smoothly, seemed to be assuming first place.
‘Have you found out anything new, inspector? Did you see that the boats were starting to leave? River traffic has been re-established to Liège, perhaps as far as Maastricht … In two days there will only be three or four barges at a time here …’
Why was she saying this?
‘No, Marguerite! The stemmed glasses.’
For Marguerite was fetching glasses from the dresser.
Maigret was still tormented by his need to break the equilibrium, and he took advantage of the fact that Joseph was in the shop, his cousin busy choosing glasses, to show Anna the portrait of Gérard Piedboeuf.
‘I need to talk to you about it!’ he said under his breath.
He looked at her fervently. But if he hoped to disturb her calm expression, he was to be disappointed. She merely made a sign as if from one accomplice to another. A sign that said: ‘Yes … Later …’
And to her brother as he came in:
‘Are there still a lot of people?’
‘Five people.’
Straight away, Anna displayed a grasp of nuance. The bottle that Joseph brought had a slender tin pipe in it, meaning that the liquid could be poured without wasting a drop.
Before serving him, the girl took out this accessory, indicating that it was unseemly in a drawing room, with guests.
Maigret warmed his glass in the hollow of his hand for a moment.
‘To your good health!’ he said.
‘To your good health!’ repeated Joseph Peeters, who was the only one drinking.
‘We now have proof that Germaine Piedboeuf was murdered.’
Only Marguerite uttered a little startled cry, the sort of girlish cry that one hears in the theatre.
‘That’s terrible!’
‘I heard, but I didn’t want to believe it!’ said Anna. ‘It’s going to make our situation even more difficult, isn’t it?’
‘Or easier! Particularly if I manage to prove that your brother wasn’t in Givet on the third of January.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Germaine Piedboeuf was killed with blows from a hammer.’
‘My God! Don’t say any more!’
It was Marguerite who got up, very pale, on the brink of fainting.
‘I have the hammer in my pocket.’
‘No! Please … Don’t show us …’
But Anna stayed calm. She addressed her brother.
‘Has your friend come back?’ she asked.
‘Yesterday.’
Then she explained to the inspector:
‘It’s the friend he spent the evening of the third with in a café in Nancy … He had set off for Marseille, about ten days ago, after his mother died … He’s just come back …’
‘Your good health!’ replied Maigret, emptying his glass.
And he picked up the bottle and poured himself another drink. Every now and again the bell rang. Or there was the sound of a little shovel pouring sugar into a paper bag and the bump of the scales.
‘Isn’t your sister any better?’
‘They think she’ll be able to get up on Monday or Tuesday. But she probably won’t be back here for a long time.’
‘Is she getting married?’
‘No! She wants to become a nun. It’s an idea that she’s been toying with for a long time.’
How could Maigret tell that something was happening in the shop? The noises were the same, perhaps less loud. But a moment later, Madame Peeters was talking French.
‘You’ll find them in the drawing room …’
‘What is it, Machère?’
‘The … There are a couple of things in particular that I’d like to say to you …’
‘About what?’
‘About …’
He hesitated to speak, and made gestures of complicity that everyone understood.
‘Don’t be shy.’
‘It’s the bargeman …’
‘Did he come back?’
‘No … he …’
‘He’s made a confession?’
Machère was in torment. He had come to deliver a piece of information that he saw as being of the greatest importance and which he wanted to keep secret and he was having to talk in front of four people!
‘He … They found his cap and his jacket …’
‘The old one or the new one?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Was it his Sunday jacket, the blue woollen cloth one, that they found?’
‘Blue woollen cloth, yes … on the shore …’
Everyone fell silent. Anna, who was standing up, looked at the inspector without so much as a twitch. Joseph Peeters stroked his hands with annoyance.
‘Go on!’
‘He must have thrown himself into the Meuse … His cap was fished out near the barge just behind his … The barge stopped it … You understand?’
‘And then?’
‘His jacket was on the shore … And there was this piece of paper pinned to it …’
He took it carefully out of his wallet. It was a shapeless piece of paper, drenched by the rain. It was still just about possible to read:
I’m a wretch. I’d prefer the river …
Maigret had read under his voice. Joseph Peeters asked in a troubled voice:
‘I don’t understand … What does he mean?’
Machère stayed standing, unsettled, uneasy. Marguerite looked at each of them in turn with big, inexpressive eyes.
‘I think you’re the one who …’ Machère began.
And Maigret got up cordially, with a hearty smile on his lips. He reserved his special attention for Anna.
‘You see! I was talking to you about a hammer a moment ago …’
‘Don’t!’ begged Marguerite.
‘What are you doing tomorrow afternoon?’
‘The same as every Sunday … We spend it with the family … Only Maria will be missing …’
‘Will you let me come and pay my compliments? Perhaps there might be some of that excellent rice tart …?’
And Maigret made for the corridor, where he put on his overcoat, made twice as heavy by the rain.
‘Please excuse me …’ stammered Machère. ‘It was the inspector who wanted …’
‘Come!’
In the shop, Madame Peeters had hoisted herself on to a ladder to take down a packet of starch from the top shelf. A bargeman’s wife was waiting with a gloomy expression, with a string shopping bag on her arm.
8. The Visit to the Ursulines
There was a little group of people near the place where the sailor’s cap had been fished out, but Maigret, dragging Machère with him, walked towards the bridge.
‘You hadn’t told me about this hammer … If you had, I’d have known …’
‘What have you been doing all day?’
And Machère looked like a schoolboy who had been caught out.
‘I went to Namur … I wanted to check that Maria Peeters’ sprain …’
‘Well?’
‘They wouldn’t let me in … I ended up in a convent full of nuns looking at me like a beetle that had fallen into their soup …’
‘Did you insist?’
‘I even used threats.’
Maigret suppressed a smile of amusement. Near the bridge, he went into a garage that hired cars and asked for a car and driver to take him to Namur.
Fifty kilometres there and fifty kilometres back, along the Meuse.
‘Will you come with me?’
‘Do you want me to …? Because I tell you, they won’t let you in … Not to mention that now they’ve found the hammer …’
‘Fine! Do something else. You take a car as well. Go to all the little stations in a twenty-kilometre radius. Check that the bargeman hasn’t taken the train …’
And Maigret’s car set off. Snug in the cushions, the inspector smoked his pipe beatifically; all that he saw of the landscape was the starburst of lights on each side of the car.
He knew that Maria Peeters was a form mistress in a school run by the Ursulines. He also knew that the Ursulines are, in the religious hierarchy, the equivalent of the Jesuits, which is to say that in a sense they form its teaching aristocracy. The cream of the province must have sent their children to the school in Namur.
Given that, it was amusing to imagine Inspector Machère in discussion with the nuns, insisting on getting inside and even using threats!
‘I forgot to ask him what he called them …’ Maigret reflected. ‘He must have said ladies … Or even sister …’
Maigret was big, heavy, wide-shouldered, coarse-featured. And yet, when he rang at the door of the convent, in a little provincial street where grass grew between the cobbles, the lay sister who opened the door to him wasn’t startled in the slightest.
‘I would like to talk to the Mother Superior!’ he said.
‘She’s in chapel. But once benediction is finished …’
And he was brought into a parlour compared to which the Peeters’ dining room was all dirt and chaos. You really could see your face in this parquet floor. You got the sense that not even the slightest thing had changed, that the chairs had stood in the same place for years, that the clock on the mantelpiece had never stopped, had never been fast or slow.
In the sumptuously tiled corridors, sliding footsteps, sometimes whispers. At last, very soft and far away, the sound of an organ playing.
The people at the Quai des Orfèvres would probably have been surprised to see a Maigret very much at his ease. When the Mother Superior came in, he greeted her discreetly, calling her by the name that one must give to the Ursulines, namely:
‘Reverend Mother …’
She waited, hands on her hips.
‘Sorry to disturb you, but I’d like to ask your permission to visit one of your teachers … I know the rules forbid it … None the less a person’s life – or at least their liberty – depends on it …’
‘Are you from the police as well?’
‘I think you received a visit from an inspector?’
‘A gentleman who said he was from the police, who made some noise and left shouting that we’d be hearing from him again …’
Maigret apologized for him, remained calm, polite and deferential. He uttered a few deft phrases, and a short time later a lay sister was instructed to tell Maria Peeters that there was someone to see her.
‘A girl of great merit, I think, Reverend Mother?’
‘I have only the very best things to say of her. At first the chaplain and I didn’t want to take her because of her parents’ trade … Not the grocery … But the fact that they serve drink … We passed over that, and we can only congratulate ourselves … Yesterday, coming down the stairs, she twisted her ankle, and since then she’s been in bed, very downcast, because she knows it’s causing us trouble …’
The lay sister came back at last. Maigret followed her along endless corridors. He met several groups of pupils all dressed in the same way: black dress with little pleats and blue silk ribbon around their necks.
At last, on the second floor, a door opened. The lay sister asked if she should stay or go.
‘Leave us, sister …’
A very simple little room. Oil-painted walls, decorated with religious lithographs in black frames and a big crucifix.
An iron bed. A thin figure barely visible under the covers.
Maigret couldn’t see a face. No one said anything to him. Once the door had closed he stayed motionless for a while, embarrassed by his wet hat, his thick coat.
At last he heard a muffled sob. But Maria Peeters still hid her face in the blankets, and stayed turned towards the wall.
‘Don’t be upset …’ he murmured mechanically. ‘Your sister Anna must have told you that I come as a friend …’
But that did nothing to calm the girl. On the contrary! Her body was agitated now by real nervous spasms.
‘What did the doctor say? Are you to stay in bed for a long time?’
It was awkward, talking to an invisible person like that. Particularly given that Maigret didn’t even know her!
The sobs came less quickly. She must have been regaining her composure. She sniffed, and her hand looked for a handkerchief under the pillow.
‘Why are you so nervous? The Mother Superior was just telling me how highly she thinks of you!’
‘Leave me alone!’ she pleaded.
And at that moment there was a knock on the door, and the Mother Superior came in as if she had been waiting for the moment to intervene.
‘Sorry! I know that our poor, sensitive Maria …’
‘Has she always been like this?’
‘She is a delicate character … When she knew that her sprain was going to immobilize her, and that she wouldn’t be able to take a class for at least a week, she fell into despair … Show us your face, Maria …’
And the girl shook her head in vehement denial.
‘We know, of course,’ the Mother Superior continued, ‘about t
he accusations that people are making about her family. I have held three masses that the truth may soon emerge … I’ve just been praying for you again at benediction, Maria …’
At last she showed her face. A thin little face, very pale, with red marks produced by fever and tears.
She didn’t look at all like Anna, but more like her mother, having inherited her features, fine but unfortunately so irregular that she could not pass for pretty. Her nose was too long and pointed, her lips wide and thin.
‘Please forgive me!’ she said, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘I’m too nervous … To think I’ve been lying here while … Are you Detective Chief Inspector Maigret? Have you seen my brother?’
‘I left him less than an hour ago. He was at your house, with Anna and your cousin Marguerite …’
‘How is he?’
‘Very calm … He’s confident …’
Was she going to start crying again? The Mother Superior encouraged Maigret with a look. She was happy to see him talking like that, with a calm authority that could only make a favourable impression on an invalid.
‘Anna told me you had decided to take the veil …’
Maria was crying again. She didn’t even try to hide it. She took no interest in her appearance and showed her face, glistening and swollen.
‘It’s a decision we’ve been waiting for her to take for a long time,’ the Mother Superior murmured. ‘Maria belongs more to religion than to the world …’
Her fit began again, the sobbing burst painfully from her slender throat. And her body was still agitated, her hands clutching the covers.
‘You see that I did the right thing, earlier, not to let that gentleman up!’ the nun said in a low voice.
Maigret was still standing up, in his overcoat, which made him even bulkier. He looked at the bed and that girl in such a state.
‘Has the doctor seen her?’
‘Yes … He says the sprain is nothing … The most serious thing is the fit of nerves that came after it … Do you think we should leave her alone? Calm down, Maria … I’m going to send Mother Julienne, who will stay close to you …’
The last image that Maigret caught was the whiteness of the bed, the sparse hair on the pillow and an eye that stared at him as he walked backwards towards the door.
In the corridor, the Mother Superior spoke quietly as she slipped along the waxed floor.
The Flemish House Page 8
