‘What’s that?’
‘They can’t go to the mussel fields when there’s a neap tide.’
‘In other words, the mussel farmers only work half of the time?’
‘Oh, no! Most of them have land, marshes, livestock …’
Even Méjat received a warm welcome, in spite of his brilliantine and his ridiculously garish green scarf.
‘Sit down. Eat. And tell me what you discovered when you visited that poor old woman.’
He was referring to Marcel’s mother. To be honest, Maigret had been happy to offload this mission on to Méjat.
‘An old rustic house, I suppose? Old furniture that smells of times gone by. A grandfather clock with a brass pendulum that moves slowly …’
‘Nothing like that, chief. The house is repainted every year. The old door has been replaced by a modern door covered in imitation wrought iron. The furniture comes from a department store on Boulevard Barbès.’
‘She started by offering you a drink …’
‘Yes.’
‘And you simply couldn’t refuse …’
Poor Méjat wondered what sin he had committed by accepting a glass of the local plum brandy.
‘Don’t blush. I was thinking of someone else.’
Maybe of himself, when he’d drunk in the judge’s house?
‘There are people who are able to refuse and others who aren’t. You went to see that old lady in order to find out something that could be used against her son, and the first thing you did was drink her plum brandy … I think the judge is a man capable of refusing. Refusing anything! Even himself! … Don’t try to understand … Did she cry?’
‘You know, she’s almost as tall and as strong as her son. She blustered at first, then got indignant. She said that if this went on she’d go and see a lawyer. I asked her if her son had been away recently. I got the impression she hesitated.
‘“I think he went to Niort on business.”
‘“Are you sure it was Niort? Did he spend the night there?”
‘“I can’t remember.”
‘“How is it possible you can’t remember, when you live alone together in the same house? Would you agree to showing me the bedrooms? I haven’t brought a warrant, but if you refuse …”
‘We went up to the first floor. Up there, the house was old, with old furniture, like you said before, huge wardrobes and sideboards, and photographic enlargements.
‘“What suit does your son wear when he goes to town?”
‘She took it out. A blue serge suit. I searched the pockets. I found this bill from a hotel in Nantes. Look at the date.
‘It’s the 5th of January, a few days before Dr Janin arrived in L’Aiguillon.’
‘So you didn’t regret the glass of plum brandy?’ Maigret asked, standing up to greet the telegraph boy.
He came back to the table with several telegrams, which he put down in front of him, although, as usual, he was in no hurry to open them.
‘By the way, do you know why old Didine and her husband hate the judge so much? I looked for a complicated reason, and yet the truth is quite simple, as simple as this village, as simple as that lighthouse you can see over there in the sun … When the Hulots retired and saw the judge had settled in L’Aiguillon, Didine went to see him and reminded him that they’d known each other as children. She offered him their services, herself as cook, her husband as gardener. Forlacroix, who must have known what she was like, refused. That’s all …’
He tore the strip from a telegram, read it, and handed it to Méjat.
Naval volunteer Marcel Airaud served his term on board destroyer Vengeur.
‘But seeing as how the judge has confessed …!’ Méjat exclaimed.
‘Oh, has he confessed?’
‘It’s in all the newspapers.’
‘And you still believe what the newspapers say, do you?’
He was patient enough to wait for ten o’clock, doing virtually nothing, wandering among the moored boats, looking at the house, and the only reason he twice went back to the hotel to have a quick drink was because it was really cold.
He smiled when he saw the two cars arrive one behind the other, because this respect for form was touching, even comical. The two men arriving from La Roche-sur-Yon so early in the morning were old friends, who had known each other since school days. It would have been more pleasant for them to have made the journey in a single car. But one was the examining magistrate dealing with the case in L’Aiguillon, the other the lawyer chosen by Judge Forlacroix. In such circumstances, they had debated for a long time, the previous day, the question of whether or not it was appropriate …
They both shook Maigret’s hand. The lawyer, Maître Courtieux, was a middle-aged man who was considered the best lawyer in the region.
‘My client told me he’s given you all the keys.’
Maigret jangled them in his pocket, and all three headed for the house, which was still guarded by a gendarme. The examining magistrate remarked casually, although clearly concerned to show that nothing escaped him:
‘Strictly speaking, the seals should have been put on … Anyway! Since it’s Monsieur Forlacroix himself who gave the inspector the keys and asked him to …’
The surprising thing was seeing Maigret go in and make himself at home, hang his coat on the stand, knowing exactly where it was, and walk into the library.
‘As we’re going to be a while, I think I’ll light the fire …’
It wasn’t without a certain emotion that he saw again the two armchairs by the fire, the pipe ash that hadn’t been swept away, the cigarette ends.
‘Please make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen.’
‘My client told me,’ the lawyer began, a little upset: “Ask the inspector …”
‘So it’s you, inspector, who will tell us what he did after killing that man and walling him up, so to speak, in his well …’
‘You go first, your honour,’ Maigret said to the examining magistrate, as if he were the master of the house. ‘Please note that I’m not hoping to find anything remarkable. The reason I’ve asked for this search is rather to help me reconstruct the life of Judge Forlacroix over the last few years …
‘See with what sure taste all this furniture has been chosen and how each item, each knick-knack, too, is in its place.’
Forlacroix hadn’t left Versailles immediately. He had written his wife quite a large cheque and thrown her out, simply, coldly.
Maigret could imagine him very well: small, thin, icy, with his halo of hair and his precise, nervous fingers. He wasn’t, as the inspector had said that morning, the kind of person who accepts anything he doesn’t want to accept. Didine knew about that: despite the years that had passed, she hadn’t forgotten how calmly and coldly her proposition had been rejected. Not even rejected – ignored!
‘She didn’t try to stay with you and her children?’ Maigret had insisted when they were both sitting by the fire.
Of course she had! There had been ugly scenes! She had grovelled to him. Then, for months, she had written. She had begged, threatened.
‘I never replied. One day, I found out she was living on the Côte d’Azur with a Dutchman.’
He had sold the house in Versailles. He had moved to L’Aiguillon. And then …
‘Can you feel the atmosphere of this house, where everything exudes comfort and easy living?’ Maigret sighed. ‘For years, a man spent his days here, watching his two children and wondering if they were his … For his part, the boy, as he grew up, tried to understand the mystery surrounding him, asked questions about his mother, about his birth …’
He had just opened the door of a room, where toys of all kinds were still in their place, with, in a corner, a pupil’s desk in light-coloured oak.
Further on, there was Albert’s old room, still with clothes in the wardrobe. Elsewhere, a cupboard was full of Lise Forlacroix’s dolls.
‘At the age of seventeen or eighteen,’ Maigret went on, ‘Albert st
arted, God knows why, to hate his father. He couldn’t understand why his father kept his sister locked up. That was when Lise had just had her first attack.
‘It was about this time also that Albert discovered one of his mother’s old letters, a letter written soon after the drama … Here … It must be in this writing desk … I have the key …’
It wasn’t only the key to the Louis XIV desk that he seemed to have, but the key to all these characters who had clashed with each other throughout the years. He was smoking his pipe. The magistrate and the lawyer followed him. To touch certain things, to tackle certain subjects, he drew on the kind of tact that might not have been expected from this big man with his thick hands.
‘You can add it to the file,’ he said without reading it. ‘I know what it says. She threatens her husband with prison. Albert demanded to know what had happened. Forlacroix refused to tell him. From that point on, they lived like strangers. After his military service, Albert wanted to live as he pleased, but a strange kind of curiosity kept him in L’Aiguillon, and he settled down here as a mussel farmer. You’ve seen him. Despite his physique, he’s a restless, violent man, who could easily become a rebel. As for the girl …’
The doorbell rang. Maigret went to open it. It was Méjat with a telegram; he would have liked to come in, but his chief didn’t even suggest it. When Maigret came back upstairs, he announced:
‘She’s replied to my telegram. She’s coming.’
‘Who?’
‘Madame Forlacroix. She left Nice at midday yesterday by car.’
It was impressive to observe Maigret. In fact, a curious phenomenon was taking place. As he came and went in this house that wasn’t his, as he evoked lives he hadn’t lived, he was no longer entirely the heavy, placid, rough-hewn Maigret. Without his realizing it, there was a little of Forlacroix in the way he moved, the way he spoke. The two men could not have been more dissimilar and yet, at certain moments, it was so striking that the lawyer was quite bothered by it.
‘When I visited the house the first time, Lise was in bed … Look. This bedside lamp was on … Forlacroix loved his daughter. He loved her, and that made him suffer because, in spite of everything, he still had his doubts. What proved that she was his child and not the child of some passing lover like the singer with the greasy hair?
‘He also loved her because she wasn’t like anyone else, because she needed him, because she was a tender and impulsive young animal.
‘Outside her attacks, I imagine she was like a six-year-old, her whims, her charms …
‘Her father consulted specialists from all over. I can tell you this, gentlemen: young girls like Lise don’t usually live beyond the age of sixteen or seventeen. When they survive, the attacks become more frequent, leaving them depressed and distrustful.
‘The locals may have exaggerated, but we can be sure that several men, two at least, took advantage of her before Marcel Airaud.
‘When Marcel came along …’
‘Excuse me!’ the examining magistrate said. ‘I haven’t yet questioned the prisoner. Is he claiming that he knew nothing about Marcel Airaud’s nocturnal visits to his daughter?’
Maigret looked for a moment through the window, then turned.
‘No.’
An embarrassed silence.
‘So he …’ the magistrate resumed.
And the lawyer was wondering already how he would present such a monstrous thing to a jury in La Roche-sur-Yon.
‘He knew …’ Maigret retorted. ‘The doctors he’d consulted were all of the same opinion: “Marry her off! It’s the only chance to …”’
‘Between marrying her off and allowing an individual like Airaud …’
‘Do you think, your honour, that a girl suffering from such a condition is easy to marry off? Forlacroix preferred to turn a blind eye. He made inquiries about Airaud. He was able to discover that he was quite a decent young man, in spite of his affair with Thérèse … I’ll tell you about that another time … I’ll tell you then that he also had his doubts as to whether Thérèse’s child was his. Since then she’s been plaguing him. Airaud was really in love with Lise. So in love that he was ready to marry her in spite of everything …’
He paused, tapped the bowl of his pipe against his heel and announced in a soft voice:
‘They were due to be married soon …’
‘What did you say?’
‘That Marcel and Lise were due to be married in two months’ time … If you knew Forlacroix better, you’d understand. A man who has the patience to live for years and years as he has lived. He watched Marcel for a long time. One day, as Airaud was passing the house, the door opened …
‘Forlacroix stood in the doorway and said to the scared young man: “Wouldn’t you like to come in for a moment?”’
Mechanically, Maigret proceeded to rewind a clock that had stopped.
‘I know that’s what happened because I’ve also sat next to him by the fire. He must have spoken very calmly. He poured the port carefully into the crystal glasses and said … He said what he needed to say … The truth about Lise …
‘Airaud was flabbergasted and didn’t know what to reply. He asked for a few days to think it over. It was yes, without any doubt. Do you know any simple, solid people like him, your honour? Have you ever watched them at the fair? Have you heard them negotiating a deal?
‘What I think is that Airaud remembered the former doctor on the Vengeur, with whom he may once have been friendly … He went to Nantes …’
A car horn. Long, unexpected sounds. Through the window, they saw a luxury car, driven by a liveried chauffeur, who got out and went to open the rear door.
Maigret and his companions were in a room which was something like Lise’s boudoir, the room where the piano was. All three followed the scene through the window.
‘Horace Van Usschen!’ Maigret announced, pointing to an old man who was the first passenger to get out, with abrupt, automatic movements, as if his joints had not been oiled.
Some villagers had gathered at the corner of the street. Van Usschen was indeed a sight for sore eyes, with his light flannel suit, his white shoes, his vast check overcoat and his white cloth cap. Dressed like that, he would have caused no surprise on the Côte d’Azur, but was a somewhat unusual sight in L’Aiguillon, where the only tourists you saw during the summer months were people on very modest incomes.
He was as thin and wrinkled as Rockefeller, whom he somewhat resembled. He reached his hand inside the car. And it was then that a huge woman appeared, clad in furs, who looked the house up and down. She spoke to the chauffeur, who came and rang the doorbell.
‘If you agree with me, gentlemen, we’ll leave the Dutchman outside. At least for the moment …’
He went to open the door and saw at first glance that the judge had not lied, that Valentine Forlacroix, née Constantinesco, had been beautiful, that she still had wonderful eyes and sensual lips which, in spite of the sagging at the corners, recalled Lise’s.
‘Well, I’m here,’ she announced. ‘Come, Horace.’
‘I’m sorry, madame, but for the moment I’d like you to come in on your own. That may be best for you, too, don’t you think?’
Irritably, Horace got back in the car, wrapped himself in a blanket and sat there motionless, ignoring the children staring at him through the windows.
‘You know the house. If you like, we can go in the library. There’s a fire there …’
‘I wonder in what way that man’s crime is any concern of mine!’ she protested as she entered the room. ‘He may be my husband, but we haven’t lived together for many years, and what he gets up to these days doesn’t interest me.’
The magistrate and the lawyer had now also come downstairs.
‘The examining magistrate here will tell you that we’re not concerned about what he gets up to these days, but what you both got up to when you were still living together …’
A strong perfume gradually permeated the room
. With a heavily ringed hand, the nails blood red, Valentine Forlacroix opened a cigarette box that was on the table and looked for matches.
Maigret reached an already lighted one to her.
The examining magistrate thought it time to intervene and play his role.
‘I am sure you are not unaware, madame, that the law may pursue as an accessory not just a person who has participated in a crime, but also one who has witnessed a crime without reporting it to the authorities …’
She was strong! Forlacroix hadn’t lied! She took the time to puff at her cigarette. Her mink coat open over a black silk dress adorned with a diamond brooch, she walked up and down the vast room, stopped by the fire, bent down, seized the tongs and straightened one of the logs.
When she turned, she was no longer playacting. She was ready for a fight. Her eyes had lost their brightness but had gained in sharpness. Her lips were tense.
‘Very well!’ she said, sitting down on a chair and placing one elbow on the table. ‘I’m ready to listen to you … As for you, inspector, I shan’t congratulate you on the trap you set me.’
‘What trap?’ the examining magistrate said in surprise, turning to Maigret.
‘It wasn’t a trap,’ Maigret grunted, putting his pipe out with his thumb. ‘I telegraphed Madame and asked her to come here and explain the visit she paid her husband about a month ago … In fact, your honour, that’s the question I’d like you to ask first, if you don’t mind …’
‘Did you hear that, madame? I must inform you that in the absence of my clerk, this interview is not official and that Maître Courtieux here is your husband’s lawyer.’
She blew out smoke with a scornful air and shrugged. ‘I came to ask him for a divorce!’ she said.
‘Why now and not before?’
The phenomenon that Forlacroix had talked of now came about. In an instant, this diamond-bedecked woman became embarrassingly vulgar.
‘Because Van Usschen is seventy-eight, don’t you see?’ she admitted crudely.
‘And you’d like to get married?’
‘He’s been wanting to for the past six months, ever since his nephew came to scrounge money from him after losing hundreds of thousands of francs at roulette …’
The Judge's House Page 8
