‘Did you speak to anyone?’
‘The barman.’
‘Did you mention your problems?’
‘No. He realized, because of the way I was drinking. It’s not my normal style. He said something like: “Everything OK, Monsieur Josset?”
‘I had to reply: “Not so good …”
‘Yes, that’s it. Out of self-respect, so I wouldn’t be taken for a drunk, I said: “I ate something that didn’t agree with me.” ’
‘So you were lucid, at least?’
‘I knew where I was, what I was doing, where I had parked my car. A little while later, I stopped at a red light. Is that what you mean by lucid? It didn’t mean that reality wasn’t all out of kilter. The fact that I was feeling sorry for myself, so maudlin … I’m not normally like that.’
But he was a weak man, his story proved that abundantly, and it was no less visible in his face, his expressions.
‘I kept saying to myself: “Why me?” I felt like I’d walked into a trap. I even suspected Annette of tipping off her father and getting him to come to Paris to provoke a scene and back me into a corner.
‘At other times, I blamed Christine. They will all make out that I owe my success, and the fact I have become an important person, to her … Maybe that’s true. Who knows what my career would have been without her?
‘But she also dragged me into a world that wasn’t mine, where I have never felt at home. It’s only at work that I …’
He shook his head.
‘When I’m less tired I’ll try to be more coherent … Christine taught me a lot. There was both good and bad in her. She isn’t a happy person and never has been … I was about to add that she never will be … You can see I still can’t believe that she is dead. Doesn’t it prove that I didn’t do it?’
It didn’t prove a thing, as Maigret had learned from long experience.
‘When you left the Select, did you head home?’
‘Yes.’
‘To do what?’
‘To talk to Christine, tell her everything, discuss with her what we should do next.’
‘At that moment, did you consider the possibility of a divorce?’
‘It seemed the most obvious solution, but …’
‘But?’
‘I realized it would be difficult to get my wife to accept the idea. You’d need to know her to understand. Even her friends know only superficial things about her. Our relationship was not on the same footing as it was before, that’s true. We were no longer in love, as I’ve told you. We had started to argue and perhaps even despise each other. But I was the only person who understood her, she knew it. She could only be herself with me. I didn’t judge her. Wouldn’t she have missed me? She was so afraid of ending up alone! It’s because of this that she hated growing old so much, because in her mind old age and solitude were synonymous.
‘ “As long as I have money I can pay for company, can’t I?” She would say that as a joke, but it represented what she really thought.
‘Was I just going to come out with it and tell her I was leaving her?’
‘But you made your mind up that you would?’
‘Yes … Not exactly … Not just like that … I would have described the scene in Rue Caulaincourt and I would have asked her advice.’
‘Did you often ask her advice?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even about business?’
‘On important business matters, yes.’
‘Do you think it was purely out of honesty that you felt the need to tell her about your relationship with Annette?’
He thought about this, genuinely surprised by the question.
‘I see what you mean … First of all, there was an age difference between us. When I met her, I was very unfamiliar with Paris and had only seen the bits that are accessible to a penniless student. She taught me everything about a whole way of life, a whole social milieu …’
‘What happened when you got to Rue Lopert?’
‘I wondered if Christine would be home. It was unlikely, and I anticipated having to wait for a while. I was comforted by the thought, as I needed to screw up my courage.’
‘By having another drink?’
‘I guess so. Once you start, it’s easy to believe that one more drink will steady your nerves. I saw the Cadillac parked at the door.’
‘And were the lights on inside the house?’
‘I saw just one – in Carlotta’s room on the top floor. I used my key to go in.’
‘Did you bolt the door after you?’
‘I was expecting that question, since they asked me the same thing this morning. I suppose I must have done it automatically, because I usually do, but I simply can’t recall.’
‘Were you still unaware of the time?’
‘No. I looked at the clock in the hall. It was five past ten.’
‘Were you surprised that your wife was home so soon?’
‘No. She doesn’t live by fixed rules, so it is difficult to know what she might do at any given time.’
He continued to talk about her in the present tense, as if she were still alive.
‘Have you been to our house?’ he asked Maigret in turn.
Maigret had just given it a cursory viewing, as the public prosecutor’s men were at the scene, as well as Doctor Paul, the local chief inspector and seven or eight experts from Criminal Records.
‘I’ll have to go back,’ he muttered.
‘You’ll find a bar on the ground floor.’
The ground floor was in fact a single room, broken up by various partitions and unexpected recesses, which Maigret remembered was as big as the bars you find along the Champs-Élysées.
‘I poured myself a glass of whisky. It’s all my wife will drink. I sank into an armchair. I needed a bit of breathing space.’
‘Did you turn on the lights?’
‘In the hall, when I came in, but I turned them off again straight away. There are no shutters on the windows. There is a streetlamp just ten metres from the house, which casts enough light to see in the room. Besides, it was an almost full moon. I seem to remember spending some time looking at it and I even imagined it witnessing my misfortune …
‘I got up to pour myself another drink. We have very large glasses. Then I returned to my chair, whisky in hand, and carried on pondering.
‘And that, inspector, is how I came to fall asleep.
‘The inspector this morning didn’t believe me. He advised me to change my line of defence, and when I refused he got angry.
‘But it’s the truth. If it all took place while I was asleep, I wouldn’t have heard a thing. I didn’t dream either. I can’t remember anything, except a black hole – I can’t think of another word for it.
‘I gradually woke up with a pain in my side, a sort of cramp.
‘I took a while to gather my wits before getting up.’
‘Did you feel drunk?’
‘I couldn’t honestly say. It all seems a nightmare to me now. I switched on the light, drank a glass of water, unsure about drinking any more spirits. Then I went upstairs.’
‘With the intention of waking your wife and discussing your situation with her?’
He didn’t reply but simply looked at Maigret in astonishment, almost a look of reproach. He seemed to be saying: ‘You are asking me that?’
It made Maigret feel a little embarrassed, and he murmured:
‘Go on.’
‘I went into my room, where I turned on the light and looked at myself in the mirror. I had a headache. My unshaven face and the bags under my eyes disgusted me.
‘Mechanically I opened Christine’s door … That’s when I saw her as you saw her there this morning.’
The body half out of the bed, the head dangling over a fur rug splashed with blood, as were the sheets and the satin coverlet on the bed.
On a cursory examination, Doctor Paul – who was currently conducting a full post-mortem – counted twenty-three wounds inflicted by
what the report called, in standard terminology, a sharp instrument.
So sharp, in fact, and wielded with such ferocity that the head was almost completely severed.
Silence reigned in Maigret’s office. It seemed inconceivable that outside the windows life went on at its usual pace, that the sun was shining and the air felt so warm. Tramps were sleeping under Pont Saint-Michel with newspapers over their faces, oblivious to the noise. And two lovers sat on the stone wall, swinging their legs over the water, which showed their reflection.
‘Try to remember every last detail.’
Josset nodded.
‘Did you turn the light on in your wife’s room?’
‘I wasn’t brave enough.’
‘Did you go up to her?’
‘I kept my distance.’
‘You didn’t check that she was dead?’
‘It was obvious.’
‘What was your first reaction?’
‘To make a call … I went to the telephone and even picked it up …’
‘To call whom?’
‘I didn’t know. I didn’t think about the police straight away. I thought of our doctor first, Doctor Badel, who is a friend.’
‘Why did you not alert him?’
Without missing a beat, he replied:
‘I don’t know.’
He put his head in his hands – either he was pensive or he was a good actor.
‘It was the words, I think, that stopped me phoning … What would I say? “Someone has killed Christine. Come …”?
‘Then they would ask me questions. The police would come into my house. I was in no state to face that. I feared that I would fall apart at the smallest push …’
‘You weren’t alone in the house. The maid was sleeping upstairs.’
‘Yes. Everything I did seems illogical, yet there must be some logic to it because I did what I did and I am not mad.
‘There is also the fact that I had to dash into the bathroom to throw up … That created a sort of interval. As I leaned over the sink I started to think. I told myself that no one would believe me, that I would be arrested and questioned and locked up …
‘And I felt so tired! If only I could have a few hours, a few days … Not to run away, but to be able to take a step back. Maybe it’s what people call panic? Has no one ever said that to you?’
What Josset didn’t know was that many others had passed through this same office before him just as exhausted, just as haggard-looking, and had slowly spun their tissue of lies or of unspeakable truths.
‘I washed my face with cold water and looked at myself in the mirror again. Then I rubbed my hands over my cheeks and started to shave.’
‘Why, exactly, did you have a shave?’
‘I was thinking quickly, and probably not thinking straight, trying to sort out the jumble of thoughts in my head.
‘I decided to go away. Not by car, because there was a risk of being spotted too soon, and besides I didn’t feel strong enough to drive for hours. The simplest way was to catch a plane at Orly, any plane. I often have to travel on business, sometimes at short notice, and my passport always has a number of current visas.
‘I worked out how long it would take me to get to Orly. I had very little money on me, maybe twenty or thirty thousand francs, and there was unlikely to be much more in my wife’s room, as we had got into the habit of paying for everything by cheque. That was a complication.
‘These various preoccupations stopped me thinking about what had happened to Christine. My mind focused on the small details. It was one such detail that led me to have a shave. The customs officers at Orly know me, and know that I am very careful, almost fastidious, about my appearance. They would have been surprised to see me turn up unshaven.
‘I had to pass by the office in Avenue Marceau. There wasn’t exactly a fortune in the safe there, but I knew I would at least find a few hundred thousand.
‘I needed a suitcase too, if only for appearances’ sake, and I packed one with a suit, some underwear, a toilet bag … I thought about taking my watches. I have four altogether, and two of them are quite valuable. I’d be able to sell them if I needed some cash.
‘The watches reminded me of my wife’s jewellery … I just had no idea what lay ahead. I might take a flight to the far end of Europe or South America … I wasn’t even sure if I’d take Annette or not.’
‘Did you consider taking her?’
‘I believe I did, yes. So as not to be on my own, partly. Out of a sense of duty too.’
‘Not for love?’
‘I don’t think so. I’m being honest. Our love was …’
He corrected himself:
‘Our love is something that exists in a particular context: the office that we share, the daily car journey from Rue Caulaincourt to Avenue Marceau, our dinners in her little apartment … I just couldn’t see Annette with me in Brussels, London or Buenos Aires, for example.’
‘Nevertheless, you planned to take her with you?’
‘Maybe because of the promise I made her father … Then I was afraid that he might have stayed the night at Rue Caulaincourt. What would I say to him if I came face to face with him in the middle of the night?’
‘Did you take your wife’s jewels?’
‘Some of them, the ones she kept in her dressing table, in other words, the ones she had been wearing recently.’
‘Did you do anything else?’
He hesitated, lowered his head.
‘No. I can’t think of anything. I turned out the lights. I went downstairs without making a sound … I even thought about having another drink, since my stomach was churning, but I resisted.’
‘Did you take your car?’
‘I decided that wouldn’t be wise. Carlotta might have heard the engine and come downstairs. Who knows? There is a taxi stand at the Auteuil church, so I walked there.’
He grabbed his empty glass and handed it to Maigret with a timid expression.
‘May I?’
4. What Adrien Josset Did Next That Night
One time, when comparing the Paris police’s famously tough grillings with the equally well-known American ‘third degree’, Maigret had suggested that the suspects most likely to get away with it are the idiots. This nugget was subsequently picked up by a journalist, with the result that it was periodically trotted out in the press, with minor variations.
What he had been trying to say, in fact, was something that he still believed to be true: that a simple-minded man is naturally mistrustful, always on the defensive; he uses the minimum number of words to answer questions, makes no attempt at plausibility and later, when confronted with his self-contradictions, is not knocked off his stride but sticks firmly to his statement.
On the other hand, the intelligent man feels the need to explain himself, to clear up all doubts in the mind of his interrogator. In an effort to sound convincing, he anticipates questions, provides an excess of detail and, by trying hard to construct a watertight story, ends up getting caught out.
And once his contradictions are exposed, he nearly always becomes flustered and, ashamed of himself, decides to own up.
Adrien Josset was one of those who anticipated the questions, anxious to explain facts and actions that at first sight seemed incoherent.
He didn’t just concede this incoherence, he made a point of emphasizing it; he talked about it out loud as if he were trying to uncover the underlying logic.
Guilty or innocent, he was familiar enough with the workings of an investigation to know that, once it had swung into action, sooner or later everything he had done that night would be fed through the mechanism.
He was so keen to say everything that on two or three occasions Maigret had almost called a halt to this sort of confessional flow that, to his mind, was premature.
Maigret usually decided on the moment of truth himself. He preferred to wait until he had a more complete and more personal understanding of a case. That morning he had barely even had
a look at the house in Rue Lopert and he knew nothing of its inhabitants and next to nothing about the crime itself.
He hadn’t questioned anyone: neither the Spanish maid nor Madame Siran, the cook, whose son worked for the Métro and who went home to Javel every evening.
He knew nothing about the neighbours, had never seen Annette Duché or her father, who had come running from Fontenay-le-Comte in response to some mysterious summons. He still hadn’t seen the offices of the pharmaceutical company Josset et Virieu on Avenue Marceau and hadn’t met any of Josset’s friends or any number of other people of varying importance.
Doctor Paul had finished his post-mortem and must have been surprised not to have received the usual telephone call from the inspector, who was rarely patient enough to wait for his written report. Upstairs in Criminal Records too they were examining the evidence found that morning.
Torrence, Lucas and perhaps ten other officers would according to routine be questioning Carlotta and other minor witnesses in various offices around police headquarters.
Maigret could easily have interrupted the interrogation to find out what was going on; Lapointe, for one, sitting hunched over his notepad, was surprised to see him listening so patiently, not trying to steer the conversation, not trying to catch Josset out.
The questions he asked were rarely technical ones, and some seemed to have only a distant relevance to the events of the previous night.
‘Tell me, Monsieur Josset, at your offices in Avenue Marceau or your laboratory at Saint-Mandé you must sometimes have had occasion to sack one of your employees?’
‘That happens in any business.’
‘Do you deal with it personally?’
‘No. I leave all that to Monsieur Jules.’
‘Have you ever had any problems of a business nature?’
‘That’s inevitable too. Three years ago, for example, someone questioned the purity of one of our products and claimed it had had harmful effects.’
‘Who dealt with that?’
‘Monsieur Jules.’
‘The way I understood it, he is the head of personnel rather than a commercial director. It seems that—’
Maigret broke off, then after a moment or two’s thought, went on:
Maigret's Secret Page 5
