What was it that prompted him to go behind the scenes? Nothing. He could, like everyone else, have gone out via the sunlit dining room, which Germaine, the plump maid with incredible breasts, was busy polishing.
But no. He pushed open the door to the staff dining room and then that of the kitchen. At that moment, the bespectacled Madame Léonard was discussing the menu with the chef. Monsieur Léonard would invariably emerge from the wine cellar. At any hour of the day, he could be seen coming up from the cellar, and yet he was fairly sober.
‘Beautiful day, inspector …’
Monsieur Léonard was in slippers and shirt-sleeves. There were peas, freshly grated carrots, leeks and potatoes in bowls. Blood from the meats ran on to the deal table, while sole and turbot lay waiting to be scaled.
‘A little glass of white wine, inspector?’
The first of the day. A little drink with the owner. It was in fact an excellent local wine with a greenish tinge.
Maigret could hardly go and sit on the beach among all the mothers. He strolled along the promenade, Le Remblai, pausing from time to time. He gazed at the sea, at the swelling number of brightly clad figures playing in the waves close to the shore. Then, when he reached the town centre, he turned right into a narrow street which led to the covered market.
He wandered from stall to stall as slowly and methodically as if he had forty people to feed. He stopped in front of the fish, which were still quivering, then he lingered in front of the shellfish and proffered a matchstick to a lobster which snatched it with its pincer.
Second glass of white wine. Because just opposite was a little café where you went down one step and it was like an extension of the market, filled with mouth-watering smells.
Then he walked past Notre-Dame to go and buy his newspaper. Could he go back up to his room to read it?
He went back to the promenade and sat at the terrace of a café, always in the same place. He always dithered too, keeping the waiter standing there ready to take his order. As if he were going to drink anything else!
‘A white wine.’
It had come about by chance. He would sometimes go for months without drinking white wine.
At eleven o’clock, he went inside the café to telephone the hospital, to hear Sister Aurélie say in her syrupy voice:
‘Our dear patient had an excellent night.’
He had organized a series of little halts where he would sit at set times. In the hotel dining room too, he had his special corner, by the window, opposite the table of his two elderly neighbours.
On the first day, after his coffee, he had ordered a glass of Calvados. Since then Germaine invariably asked him:
‘Calvados, inspector?’
He didn’t dare refuse. He felt drowsy. The sun was scorching. At times the asphalt on the promenade melted underfoot and car tyres left their imprint on it.
He went up to his room for a nap, not in the bed but in the armchair which he had dragged on to the balcony, where he sat with a newspaper spread over his face.
For pity’s sake, ask to see the patient in room 15 …
Anyone seeing him ensconced in his various favourite spots at different times of day would think he had been there for years, like the afternoon card players. But it was only nine days since he and his wife had arrived. On the first evening, they had eaten mussels. It was a treat they had been promising themselves since Paris: to eat a huge dish of freshly caught mussels.
They had both been ill. They had kept their neighbours awake. The next day, Maigret felt better, but on the beach Madame Maigret complained of vague pains. The second night, she had a fever. They still thought it was nothing serious.
‘It was silly of me. I’ve never been able to eat mussels …’
Then, the following day, she was in so much pain that they had had to call Doctor Bertrand and he had sent her straight to hospital. Those few hours had been difficult, chaotic, to-ing and fro-ing, new faces, X-rays, tests.
‘I assure you, doctor, it was the mussels,’ repeated Madame Maigret with a wan smile.
But the doctors were not smiling. They took Maigret to one side. Acute appendicitis with the risk of peritonitis. His wife needed emergency surgery.
He paced up and down the long corridor during the operation, at the same time as a young man waiting for his wife to give birth, who had bitten his nails until his fingers bled.
That was how he had become ‘Monsieur 6’.
In six days, a man develops new habits, learns to walk quietly, to smile sweetly at Sister Aurélie, and then at Sister Marie des Anges. He even learns to give a forced smile to the loathsome Mademoiselle Rinquet.
After which someone takes advantage of the situation to slip a stupid note into his pocket.
And first of all, who was the patient in room 15? Madame Maigret would know, for sure. They all knew one another other even though they didn’t meet. They all knew one another’s business. She sometimes told her husband the gossip, discreetly, in a low voice, like in church.
‘Apparently the lady in room 11 who’s so kind and so gentle … poor thing … Come closer …’
She stammered under her breath:
‘Breast cancer …’
Then she glanced over at Mademoiselle Rinquet’s bed and fluttered her eyelashes, indicating that her fellow patient had cancer too.
‘If you could have seen the pretty little girl they brought into the ward …’
She meant the public ward, for in fact there were three classes, as for trains: the public ward, which was like the third class, then the two-bed rooms and finally, the first-class private rooms.
What was the point of worrying about it? All this was childish. There was really something infantile about the atmosphere in the hospital. Weren’t the nuns rather childlike?
The patients too, with their petty jealousies and their whispered secrets, the sweets they hoarded like misers and the way they lay listening out for footsteps in the corridors.
For pity’s sake …
Those three words suggested that the note could only come from a woman. Why would the patient in room 15 need him? He did not intend to take the note seriously or ask Sister Aurélie’s permission to visit someone whose name he did not even know.
On the beach and in town, the sunshine was overpowering. At certain times, the air literally quivered with the heat and when you suddenly stepped into a puddle of shade, for a moment you could only see red.
Right! His siesta was over; it was time for him to fold up his newspaper, put on his jacket, light a pipe and go downstairs.
‘See you later, inspector!’
And so it went on, hellos and goodbyes like benedictions, all day long. Everyone was pleasant, smiling. He was the only one to become disgruntled. A nice downpour or an argument with someone cantankerous would have made him feel better.
The green door and the three o’clock chimes. He wasn’t even capable of not taking his watch out of his pocket!
‘Good afternoon, Sister …’
Why didn’t he genuflect, while he was about it? And now the other one – there was Sister Marie des Anges waiting for him on the stairs.
‘Good afternoon, Sister …’
And Monsieur 6 tiptoed into Madame Maigret’s room.
‘How are you?’
She forced herself to sound cheerful but only managed a half-smile.
‘You shouldn’t have brought me oranges. I still have some left.’
‘Now, you who know all the patients …’
Why was she signalling to
him? He turned towards Mademoiselle Rinquet’s bed. The old spinster lay there facing the wall, her head buried in her pillow.
He asked quietly:
‘Is something wrong?’
‘It’s not her … Shh … Come closer …’
She was being very secretive. It was like being in a girls’ boarding school.
‘Someone died last night …’
She was keeping one eye on Mademoiselle Rinquet, whose blanket twitched.
‘It was terrible, we could hear the screams … Then the family arrived … It went on for more than three hours. There were comings and goings … Several patients panicked … Especially when the chaplain administered the extreme unction … They turned the lights out in the corridor, but everyone knew …’
In a whisper, Madame Maigret added, jerking her head in the direction of her fellow patient:
‘She thinks it’s her turn next.’
Maigret didn’t know what to say. He sat there, heavy and clumsy, in a foreign world.
‘She was a young woman … A very pretty young thing, apparently … in room 15 …’
She wondered why he knitted his bushy eyebrows and automatically took a pipe out of his pocket which he didn’t actually fill.
‘Are you sure it was 15?’
‘Of course … Why? …’
‘No reason.’
He went and sat in his chair. There was no point telling Madame Maigret about the note, she would immediately become alarmed.
‘What have you had to eat today?’
Mademoiselle Rinquet began to cry. Her face was hidden, only her sparse hair could be seen on the pillow, but the blanket was heaving fitfully.
‘You shouldn’t stay too long.’
In his robust state of health, he was visibly out of place among the sick and the silent, gliding nuns.
Before leaving, he asked:
‘Do you know her name?’
‘Who?’
‘The girl … In number 15 …’
‘Hélène Godreau …’
Only then did he notice that Sister Marie des Anges was red-eyed and seemed resentful towards him. Was she the person who had slipped the note in his pocket?
He felt unable to ask her. All this was so far removed from his normal world, from the dusty corridors of the Police Judiciaire, from the people he questioned in his office, sitting them down in front of him, his eyes boring into theirs at length and then bombarding them with harsh questions.
What was more, this was none of his business. A girl was dead. And then what? Someone had slipped a meaningless message into his pocket …
He continued on his path, like a circus horse. In short, his days were spent going round in circles exactly like a circus horse. Now, for example, it was time for the Brasserie du Remblai. He went there as if going to an important meeting, whereas in fact he had absolutely no business there.
The café was vast and bright. By the bay windows overlooking the beach and the sea sat most of the customers whom he did not even bother to glance at, strangers, holidaymakers, who had no routine, whom one did not expect to see at the same table every day.
At the back, in a spacious corner behind the billiard table, it was a different matter, with two tables around which sat a group of earnest, taciturn men, under the eye of a waiter attentive to the slightest signal from them.
They were important men, the rich, the elders. Some of them had seen the café being built and others had known Les Sables d’Olonne before the construction of Le Remblai.
Each afternoon, they gathered to play bridge. Each afternoon, they shook hands in silence, or exchanged a few short, ritual words.
They had already grown accustomed to the presence of Maigret, who did not play cards but straddled a chair and watched them play, smoking his pipe and sipping a white wine.
They usually waved to him by way of a greeting. Only Monsieur Mansuy, the chief inspector of police, who had introduced him to these men, stirred himself to get up and shake his hand.
‘Is your wife continuing to improve?’
He answered yes, without thinking. He also added, without thinking:
‘A girl died last night, at the hospital …’
He had spoken softly, but even so his voice boomed, especially in the silence that reigned over the two tables.
He realized from the gentlemen’s reaction that he had committed a blunder. Chief Inspector Mansuy signalled to him not to say any more.
Although he had been watching them play for six days, he still hadn’t managed to understand the game. This time, he contented himself with watching their faces.
Monsieur Lourceau, the ship-owner, was very old, but tall, still strong, with a ruddy face beneath a crown of white hair. He was the best bridge player of all of them and, when his partner made a mistake, he had a way of glaring at him that did not make one want to play with him.
Depaty, the estate agent, who handled mainly private homes and housing developments, was livelier, with mischievous eyes that belied his seventy years.
Then there was a building contractor, a judge, a boat-builder and the deputy mayor.
The youngest player must have been between forty-five and fifty. He was just finishing a game. He was thin and wiry, with sharp eyes and lustrous brown hair, and he dressed with studied elegance, if not with affectation.
When he had played his last card, he stood up, as he usually did, and went over to the telephone booth. Maigret glanced up at the clock. It was four thirty. Each day, at the same time, that player made a telephone call.
Chief Inspector Mansuy, who changed places with his neighbour for the next game, leaned towards his colleague and murmured:
‘It’s his sister-in-law who died …’
The man who telephoned his wife every day during the game was Doctor Bellamy. He lived less than three hundred metres away, the big white house after the casino, exactly halfway between the casino and the pier, in one of town’s most beautiful residences. It could be seen from the bay window. With its calm dignity, the even façade, immaculate, with big, high windows, was reminiscent of the convent hospital.
Doctor Bellamy was walking back, impassive, to the table where the others were waiting for him and the cards had already been dealt. Monsieur Lourceau, who did not like futile questions to interrupt the solemnity of bridge, gave a shrug. Things had probably gone on like this for years.
The doctor was not a man to allow himself to be intimidated. Not a muscle in his face moved. He scanned his hand at a glance, and called:
‘Two clubs …’
Then, during the game, he began for the first time to examine Maigret covertly. It was barely noticeable. His glances were so fleeting that Maigret only just intercepted them in passing.
For pity’s sake …
Why were words forming unconsciously in Maigret’s mind that would then nag away at him during the rest of the game? In any case, there is one man who won’t have any pity …
He had rarely seen eyes that were so hard and at the same time blazing, a man so in control of himself, so capable of betraying nothing of his feelings.
On previous days, Maigret had not waited for the game of bridge to end. Other ‘corners’ awaited him. He was horrified at the thought of the slightest change to his routine.
‘Will you still be here at six o’clock?’ he asked Chief Inspector Mansuy.
The latter looked at his watch, a pointless action, before replying that he would.
Le Remblai, right to the end of the promenade this time, past Do
ctor Bellamy’s house, which was typical of those residences that passers-by gaze at with envy, saying:
‘It must be so lovely to live there …’
Then the port, the yacht builder’s yard with its sails spread over the pavement, the ferryman, the boats coming in and mooring alongside each other opposite the fish market.
Here, there was a little café painted green, with four steps, a dark bar, two or three tables covered with brown oilcloth and nothing but men wearing blue, their high rubber waders turned down over their thighs.
‘A small glass of white wine …’
…Which did not taste the same as the wine at the Hôtel Bel Air, or that of the covered market, or the white wine at the Brasserie du Remblai.
Now all he had to do was to walk to the end of the quayside, then turn right and make his way back through the narrow streets where the single-storey houses were teeming with life, noise and smells.
When, at six o’clock, he reached the Brasserie du Remblai, Chief Inspector Mansuy, who had just emerged, stood winding up his watch as he waited for Maigret.
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