The rest, she implied, was of no importance.
‘When did you begin to suspect that your husband was losing his mind? Because you did have that impression, didn’t you?’
‘It wasn’t an impression, it was a certainty. From the beginning, I knew he wasn’t exactly like anyone else. He had periods of exaltation, in which he talked about his work as a genius might have done, and others when he complained of being a failure that everyone laughed at.’
‘Including you.’
‘Of course. I think I know that it was always like that. During that last period he was gloomy and anxious, he observed me with suspicion, before exploding into rebukes when I least expected it. Other times, on the contrary, he operated by insinuation.’
‘Didn’t that make you want to leave him?’
‘I think I was sorry for him. He was unhappy. When my sister arrived from the United States, in full mourning, playing the part of the inconsolable widow, he avoided her at first. She disturbed his habits, and he couldn’t forgive her; he spent whole days not addressing a word to her.
‘I still wonder how she managed to win him over. What did seem to work was making herself look forlorn.
‘So, he suddenly had someone weaker than him in his power. At least that was what he thought. Do you understand? With my sister, he had a sense of being a man, a solid and superior being …’
‘You still didn’t think of divorcing him to give them a free hand?’
‘They would have been miserable together in any case, because my sister isn’t really so weak – quite the contrary.’
‘Do you hate her?’
‘We’ve never liked each other.’
‘In that case, why did you take her in?’
‘Because she imposed herself.’
If Maigret felt a weight on his shoulders, and had a bad taste in his mouth, it was because he sensed it was all true.
The atmosphere in the house on Avenue de Châtillon would indeed have been as described so succinctly by Madame Marton, and he could imagine the almost silent evenings during which each of them remained wrapped up in their hatred.
‘What were you hoping? That it wouldn’t last for long?’
‘I went to see a doctor.’
‘Steiner?’
‘No. Another one. I told him everything.’
‘And he didn’t advise you to have your husband committed?’
‘He advised me to wait, telling me that the symptoms weren’t yet well enough defined, that a more violent crisis would occur in due course …’
‘So you predicted that crisis and stayed on the alert?’
She shrugged very slightly.
‘Have I answered all your questions?’ she asked after a short silence.
Maigret tried to think and couldn’t come up with anything else to ask, because almost everything had been cleared up.
‘When you stopped on the stairs and saw your husband on the floor, you didn’t try to help him?’
‘I didn’t know if he had the strength to pick up the revolver …’
‘You’re sure that your sister was aware of everything you’ve just told me?’
She looked at him without replying.
What was the point of going on? He would have liked to make her contradict herself. He would have liked to accuse her. She didn’t lay herself open. But neither did she hide herself away.
‘I assume,’ he murmured, shooting one last arrow, ‘that you have never had any intention of getting rid of your husband?’
‘By killing him?’
She was marking the distinction between killing him and having him committed. Since he said yes, she announced simply:
‘If I had had to kill him, I would have left nothing to chance and I wouldn’t be here now.’
That was true. If anyone was capable of committing a perfect crime, it was this woman.
Unfortunately she hadn’t killed Marton, and after relighting his pipe and looking at her grudgingly, Maigret rose heavily to his feet, his body and mind numb, and headed towards the door of the inspectors’ office.
‘Have somebody call 17, Avenue de Châtillon … The concierge’s lodge … Janvier is in the house at the end of the courtyard … I’d like to have a word with him …’
He came back to his chair, and while he waited she put a little powder on her face, as she might have done at the theatre during the interval. The telephone had rung at last.
‘Janvier …? I’d like you to go into the house, without hanging up, and carefully examine a tray that must be in the kitchen …’
He turned towards Gisèle Marton.
‘A round or a square tray?’
‘A rectangular tray, made of wood.’
‘A wooden tray, rectangular, big enough to carry three cups and three saucers … What I want to know is whether there’s any kind of mark, a scratch, any sign that would tell us if the tray is set down in one direction or another … You see what I mean …? Just a moment … The experts are still there? … Good! … Ask them to look for a little bottle in the broom cupboard, containing a whitish powder … and take fingerprints …’
Janvier was able to answer the second question straight away.
‘There are no prints. They’ve already checked. The bottle was wiped with a damp and slightly greasy cloth, probably a dishcloth.’
‘Did people from the prosecutor’s office arrive?’
‘Yes. The examining magistrate isn’t happy.’
‘Because I didn’t wait for him?’
‘Mostly because you took away the two women.’
‘Tell him that by the time he gets to his office it will probably be over. Which judge is it?’
‘Coméliau.’
The two men couldn’t stand each other.
‘Go and take a quick look at the tray. I’ll stay on the line.’
He heard the voice of Gisèle Marton, to whom he hadn’t been paying attention.
‘If you’d asked me, I could have told you. There’s a mark. It wasn’t made on purpose. The varnish has formed a blister on one of the short sides of the rectangle.’
A few moments later, Janvier, slightly out of breath, said to him:
‘There’s a swelling in the varnish.’
‘Thank you. Nothing else?’
‘In Marton’s pocket they found a bit of crumpled paper that had contained zinc phosphide.’
‘I know.’
Not that the paper would be in the dead man’s pocket, but that they would find it somewhere in the room.
He hung up.
‘When you saw your husband going into the kitchen, you suspected what he was going to do, didn’t you? That’s why you swapped the cups around?’
‘I swapped them around whenever I could.’
‘Did he sometimes swap them as well?’
‘He certainly did. Except yesterday evening he couldn’t, because I didn’t take my eyes off the tray.’
At Boulevard Richard-Lenoir as well there was a tray, not made of wood, but of silver plate, a wedding present. Maigret’s cup and his wife’s were the same, except that his had a barely visible crack.
And yet they never got them muddled. When Madame Maigret put the tray down on the table, near her husband’s armchair, he would know that his own cup was on his side, within hand’s reach.
He had got up once more. Madame Marton watched him, curious but not anxious.
‘Will you come here for a moment, Lucas? Find an empty office, any one will do, and go there with her. Stay there until I call you. On the way, tell them to bring in the sister-in-law.’
Madame Marton followed Lucas without asking Maigret a single question. Once he was on his own, he opened his cupboard, took out the bottle of cognac that he kept there, less for himself than for some of his clients who sometimes needed it, and poured some into the water glass.
When there was a knock at the door, he closed the cupboard door and only just had time to wipe his lips.
‘Come in!’
Jenny was brought in, her face pale and swollen, with the red marks of someone who has been crying.
‘Take a seat.’
The chair where her sister had been sitting was still warm. Jenny looked around, disconcerted to find herself on her own with the inspector.
He remained standing, pacing back and forth, uncertain how to attack, and at last, standing in front of her, he said:
‘Which lawyer are you going to choose?’
She lifted her head abruptly, her eyes wide and moist. Her lips were moving, but she couldn’t speak.
‘I would rather question you in the presence of your lawyer, so that you don’t feel that I’m setting traps for you.’
‘I don’t know any lawyers.’
He took down a directory from the bookshelf and held it out to her.
‘Choose from this list.’
She shook her head.
‘What’s the point?’
How he wished it had been the other one!
‘You confess?’
She nodded, rummaged in her handbag for her handkerchief and blew her nose inelegantly, making it even redder.
‘You admit that you planned to poison your sister?’
Then she burst into a fit of sobs.
‘I don’t know any more … Don’t torture me … I just want it all to be over …’
She was shaken by hiccups. It didn’t occur to her to hide her wet face.
‘Did you love your brother-in-law?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know any more. I suppose so …’
Her eyes were pleading.
‘Please get it over with, inspector! I can’t bear it any more …’
And now that he knew, he made it as quick as possible. He even, in passing, touched the young woman’s shoulder, as if he knew that she needed human contact.
‘You realized that Xavier wasn’t like other people?’
She nodded. She shook her head. She was battling with problems that were too complicated for her, and at last she exclaimed:
‘She was the one who didn’t understand him, and who was driving him mad …’
‘On purpose?’
‘I don’t know. He needed …’
The words struggled to come.
‘I tried …’
‘To reassure him?’
‘You can’t know what an atmosphere we were living in … It was only when we were alone, he and I … Because with me he felt at ease, confident …’
‘When he joined you by the river, yesterday evening, did he tell you that he was to come and take a test this morning?’
Surprised that Maigret knew about it, she sat there for a moment, looking at him open-mouthed.
‘Give me an answer … I’m trying to deliver you as quickly as possible as well …’
She understood the word. She didn’t imagine that he was talking about giving her back her freedom, but rather that he was talking about delivering her from herself in some sense.
‘He told me,’ she admitted reluctantly.
‘He was frightened about it?’
She said yes, sniffing, and added, again on the point of tears:
‘He imagined that she had won …’
The choice of words betrayed the chaos in her thoughts.
‘Because she was the one who drove him to all that. She had made sure that he would find the poison, that he would get ideas …’
‘Did he hate her?’
She stared at him fearfully, without daring to reply.
‘And so did you, isn’t that right? You began to hate your sister?’
She shook her head. It didn’t mean either yes or no. She was in fact trying to dispel the nightmare.
‘Last night, when you left here,’ Maigret went on, ‘Marton imagined that after his medical examination he wouldn’t be freed … So he only had one evening … That was his last chance …’
The behaviour of the toy salesman might have appeared incoherent, but it did contain a certain logic, and Maigret was beginning to understand certain passages in the psychiatric textbook. Except that what the author of the book expressed in difficult language and complicated phrases was in the end merely human.
‘When he went to the kitchen while you were there …’
She shivered, wanting him to be quiet.
‘The herbal tea was already in the cups?’
He was sure of it and didn’t need an answer.
‘Did you see him pouring in the powder?’
‘I had my back to him. He opened the cutlery drawer and took out a knife. I heard him rummaging among the knives …’
‘And you thought he didn’t have the courage to pour in the poison?’
Maigret saw the knife again, with its dark wood handle, beside the radio, which had a catalogue lying on top of it.
Beneath Maigret’s serious gaze, Jenny wrestled with herself a little before groaning:
‘I felt sorry …’
He could have replied:
‘Not for your sister, at any rate?’
And she went on:
‘I was sure he was going to be committed, that Gisèle had won the game … So …’
‘So you picked up the bottle of phosphide and poured a good dose into your sister’s cup. You had the presence of mind to wipe the bottle.’
‘I was holding a wet towel.’
‘You checked that the cup meant for your sister was on the right side of the tray.’
‘Please, inspector …! If you knew the night I’ve had …’
‘You heard everything?’
‘How could I not have done?’
‘And you didn’t come downstairs?’
‘I was too frightened.’
She was shivering in retrospect, and it was for her that he opened the cupboard again.
‘Drink this.’
She obeyed, choked and almost spat out the cognac, which stung her throat.
It seemed that she had reached the point where she wanted to get down on the floor and lie there motionless without hearing another word.
‘If only your brother-in-law had told you everything …’
Having collected herself, she wondered what she was going to hear now.
And Maigret, who remembered the words that Xavier Marton had uttered in this very office, explained:
‘He didn’t plan to get rid of his wife or take his revenge on her with poison, but with his revolver.’
Hadn’t he almost succeeded? Don’t psychiatrists talk about the rigorous logic of certain lunatics?
It was into his cup, his own cup, that he had poured the phosphide while moving the knives about, so quickly that his sister-in-law, who had her back to him, had thought that he had given up at the last moment.
He had measured the dose so as to be ill enough to explain what he was going to do next, but not enough to die of it. Not for no reason he had been haunting public libraries for months, immersing himself in medical and chemical textbooks.
That was the dose that Gisèle Marton had had when she swapped the cups around on the tray, and she had only been slightly indisposed.
And had Jenny worked all of that out during the endless night that she had spent in her room, listening to the noises of the house?
The proof that she knew was that she hunched herself more and more on her chair, head lowered, and stammered as if she no longer had the strength to articulate:
‘I was the one who killed him …’
He left her to her discomfort, avoiding making a noise, for fear of seeing her rolling on the floor, and then, on tiptoes, he went into the inspectors’ office.
‘Have her taken down … Be gentle … First to the infirmary …’ he said.
He preferred not to do it himself. Standing in front of the window, he wasn’t even concerned about which inspectors were heading towards his office.
It wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t have taken Marton to the psychiatrist the first time he came to see him. And the psychiatrist probably would
n’t have assumed responsibility for a committal.
There is a vague zone between responsibility and irresponsibility, a domain of shadows into which it is dangerous to venture.
Two people at least had struggled there, while a third …
‘What will we do with the other one, chief?’
He gave a start, turned around, looking at the vast inspectors’ office like a man who has just returned from a long journey.
‘Let her go.’
He had nearly said:
‘Throw her the hell outside.’
He waited for his own office to be free. Then he went back into it, and finding a residue of strange smells, opened the window.
He was deeply inhaling the damp air when Lucas said behind him:
‘I don’t know if I did the right thing. Before she left, Madame Marton asked permission to make a phone call. I said yes, thinking that it might tell us something.’
‘What did she say to him?’
‘You know who she talked to?’
‘Harris.’
‘She calls him Maurice. She apologized for not having been there for the opening of the shop. She didn’t give any details. She just said: “I’ll tell you shortly …” ’
Maigret closed the window and turned his back to it, and Lucas, after observing him for a moment, said anxiously:
‘What is it, chief?’
‘Nothing. What could there be? That’s what she said, and she isn’t a woman who makes mistakes. Right now, she’s in a taxi, holding a little mirror in front of her nose and adjusting her make-up …’
He emptied his pipe into the ashtray.
‘Call the prosecutor’s office and, if Coméliau is back, tell him I’m coming to see him straight away.’
It was over for him. The rest was a matter for the judges, and he had no wish to be in their place.
1.
‘You haven’t forgotten your umbrella, have you?’
‘No.’
The door was about to shut, and Maigret was already turning towards the stairs.
‘You’d better wear your scarf.’
His wife ran to get it, unaware that this little remark would leave him out of sorts for some time, melancholy thoughts churning through his brain.
It was only November – 3 November – and it wasn’t especially cold. It was just raining, one of those insistent showers out of a low, monotonous sky that, especially early in the morning, seem wetter and somehow more treacherous than other types of rain.
Maigret's Doubts Page 13
