“My mother…”
And they all looked most elegant in their mourning clothes. The tea-table had not yet been cleared, and there were the remains of toast and cakes.
“If you’ll kindly sit down…”
“One question, if I may. The lady who is in the mortuary chamber…”
“My husband’s sister,” said Madame Couchet. “She arrived this morning from Saint-Amand…”
Maigret did not smile. But he understood. He was well aware that they were not particularly anxious for members of the Couchet family to turn up looking like peasants or petits-bourgeois.
There were the husband’s relatives and there were the Dormoy relatives.
The Dormoy relatives were all tact and elegance. Everyone was already wearing black.
So far the Couchet relatives were only represented by that homely matron, whose silk bodice was too tight under the arms.
“Might I have a few words with you in private, madame?”
She apologized to her relatives, who were offering to leave the room.
“Please stay here…We can go into the yellow boudoir…”
She had been weeping, quite unmistakably. Then she had powdered her face and one could make out only a slight redness of the eyelids. Her voice was faint with genuine weariness.
“Have you had an unexpected visitor today?”
She raised her head somewhat crossly.
“How did you know? Yes, early this afternoon my stepson came…”
“Did you already know him?”
“Very slightly…He used to see my husband at his office…Once, though, at the theatre, we met him and Raymond introduced us to one another…”
“What was the purpose of his visit?”
She turned her head aside in some embarrassment.
“He wanted to know if a will had been found…He also asked the name of my lawyer, so as to approach him about formalities…”
She sighed, trying to apologize for all these trivialities.
“He’s within his rights. I suppose he’s entitled to half the fortune, and I’ve no intention of trying to deprive him…”
“May I ask you a few indiscreet questions? When you married Couchet, was he already a wealthy man?”
“Yes…Less so than at present, but he was beginning to get on…”
“A love match?”
A veiled smile.
“You might call it that…We met at Dinard…After three weeks, he asked me if I would consent to be his wife…My parents made inquiries…”
“Were you happy?”
He was looking her in the eyes, and he had no need of an answer. He chose rather to murmur himself:
“There was quite a difference in your ages…Couchet had his business…In short, there was no great intimacy between you…Wasn’t that so? You kept house for him…You led your own life and he led his…”
“I never blamed him for it.” she said. “He was a man of tremendous vitality who needed an eventful life…I never tried to hold him back…”
“You weren’t jealous?”
“To begin with…Then I got used to it…I think he was very fond of me…”
She was rather pretty, but in a lifeless, colourless way, with somewhat indeterminate features, a soft body, dressed with sober elegance: she must have been a gracious hostess, dispensing tea to her friends in the warm, comfortable drawing-room.
“Did your husband often talk to you about his first wife?”
Then her eyes hardened. She tried to conceal her anger, but she realized that Maigret was not taken in.
“It’s hardly my business to…” she began.
“I am sorry. Given the circumstances of his death, there can be no question of delicacy…”
“You don’t suspect? ”
“I suspect nobody. I am trying to reconstruct your husband’s life, his circle of acquaintance, his actions during that last evening. Did you know that this woman lives in the very building where Couchet had his office?”
“Yes. He told me…”
“How did he speak of her?”
“He had a grudge against her…Then he would feel ashamed of this feeling and declare that she was really an unhappy creature…”
“Why unhappy?”
“Because nothing could satisfy her…And also…”
“And also? ”
“You can guess what I’m trying to say…She’s a very selfish woman…In short, she left Raymond because he wasn’t making enough money…Then, to meet him again, a rich man…while she herself was the wife of a petty official…”
“She didn’t try to…”
“No. I don’t think she ever asked him for money. It’s true that my husband would never have told me. All I know is that it was agony for him to meet her in the Place des Vosges. I think she used to contrive to run across him. She would never speak at him, but she’d look at him contemptuously…”
The Inspector could not help smiling as he imagined these meetings, under the archway: Couchet getting out of his car, fresh and rosy, and Madame Martin stiff, with her black gloves, her umbrella, and her handbag, her spiteful face…
“That’s all you know?”
“He would have liked to change his premises, but it’s difficult to find laboratories in Paris…”
“You don’t know, of course, if your husband had any enemies?”
“He had none. Everybody loved him. He was too kind, ridiculously kind…He didn’t merely spend money, he threw it away…And when he was reproached for it he would say that having counted his pennies for years he’d earned the right to be extravagant…”
“Did he see much of your family?”
“Very little…They hadn’t the same mentality, you see…nor the same tastes…”
Indeed, Maigret found it hard to imagine Couchet in the drawing-room with the young lawyer, the colonel, and the dignified mama.
It was all easy to understand.
A full-blooded, powerful, vulgar fellow, risen from nothing, who had spent thirty years of his life trying to make his fortune, and having a rough time…
He’d grown rich. At last at Dinard he’d gained access to a world into which he had never been admitted. A real jeune fille, a young lady…a bourgeois family…
Tea and petits fours, tennis parties and picnics…
He got married. To prove to himself that from now on nothing was beyond his reach. To have a home like those he had seen only from outside.
He got married because he was, furthermore, impressed by this virtuous and well-brought-up young lady…
And then came the flat in the Boulevard Haussmann, with all the traditional trimmings…
Only he felt the need to bestir himself elsewhere, to see different people, to talk to them without self-consciousness…in brasseries, in bars…
And other women, too.
He was very fond of his wife. He admired her, he respected her, he was in awe of her.
But just because he was in awe of her he needed a common girl like Nine to relax with.
Madame Couchet had a question on the tip of her tongue. She seemed reluctant to ask it. Nevertheless she forced herself to, looking away as she spoke.
“I’d like to ask you if…It’s rather delicate…Excuse me…He had women friends, I know…He scarcely made any secret of it, and that only out of delicacy…I must know if there’s likely to be any trouble in that direction, any scandal…”
She obviously imagined her husband’s mistresses as novelettish tarts or film vamps.
“You’ve nothing to be afraid of.” smiled Maigret, remembering little Nine, with her piquant features and the handful of jewels she had taken that very afternoon to the municipal pawn-office.
“It won’t be necessary to…?”
“No. No compensation.”
She was quite amazed at this. Perhaps a trifle hurt, for surely if these women demanded nothing, they must have had a certain fondness for her husband, and he for them…
“Have you fixed the da
te of the funeral?”
“My brother has seen to that…It’s to be on Thursday, at St Philippe-du-Roule…”
There was a clatter of plates in the dining-room next door. Presumably the table was being laid for dinner.
“It only remains now for me to thank you and take my leave, with renewed apologies…”
And as he walked down the Boulevard Haussmann he caught himself muttering, while he filled his pipe:
“You old rascal, Couchet.”
The words had sprung to his lips as if Couchet had been an old friend. And he felt this impression so strongly that he could not realize he had only seen him dead.
He felt he knew Couchet from every possible angle.
Perhaps because of the three women?
The first wife, to begin with, the confectioner’s daughter in the Nanterre lodgings, in despair at the thought that her husband would never have a respectable job.
Then the young lady from Dinard, and the flattering experience for a man like Couchet of becoming nephew to a Colonel…
Nine…The meetings at the Select…The Hôtel Pigalle…
And the son coming to sponge on him. And Madame Martin contriving to run across him in the entrance-way, hoping perhaps to torture him with remorse…
A queer end to things. All alone, in that office to which he came as seldom as he could. Leaning against the half-open safe, with his hands on the table…
Nobody had noticed anything…As she passed through the courtyard, the concierge had seen him still in the same place behind the frosted window…But she had been chiefly concerned about Madame de Saint-Marc, who was having her baby.
The madwoman had called out, upstairs. In other words, old Mathilde, in her felt slippers, was hiding behind one of the doors in the passage…
Monsieur Martin, in his buff-coloured overcoat, had gone down to hunt for his glove among the dustbins.
One thing was certain: somebody, now, was in possession of the three hundred and sixty thousand stolen francs.
And somebody had committed a murder.
“All men are selfish.” sad-faced Madame Martin had commented bitterly.
Was it she who had the three hundred and sixty brand-new notes handed out by the Crédit Lyonnais? She who at last had money in her possession, plenty of money, a whole bundle of big notes representing years of comfort, free from worry about the morrow or about what pension she would get at Martin’s death?
Was it Roger, with his limp body, sapped by ether, and that Céline he had picked up to get stupefied together in a stuffy hotel bedroom?
Was it Nine, or Madame Couchet?
In any case, there was one spot from which it was possible to have seen everything: the Martins’ flat.
And there was a certain woman who prowled about the house, gluing her ear to every door, creeping in slippered feet along the passages.
“I shall have to pay a call on old Mathilde.” Maigret said to himself.
But, next morning, when he reached the Place des Vosges, the concierge, who was sorting the mail (a great pile for the Serum laboratory and a mere handful of letters for the other tenants), stopped him.
“Are you going up to the Martins? I don’t know if you’d better…Madame Martin was taken horribly ill last night…They had to send for the doctor…Her husband’s nearly out of his mind…”
The employees were crossing the courtyard, going to start their work in the laboratories and offices. The manservant was shaking carpets out of a first-floor window.
There was the sound of a baby wailing and a monotonous lullaby chanted by a nurse.
6
A Raging Temperature
“Hush…She’s fallen asleep…Come in all the same…”
Monsieur Martin shrank back, looking resigned. Resigned to letting the untidiness of his home be seen. Resigned to showing himself in a state of undress, with his moustache drooping and greenish, which indicated that it was usually dyed.
He had stayed up all night. He was exhausted, incapable of any further response.
He went on tiptoe to close the bedroom door, which had disclosed the end of the bed and a basin standing on the floor.
“Did the concierge tell you?”
He was whispering, casting anxious glances at the door. At the same time he turned off the gas, on which he had been heating up some coffee.
“A small cup?”
“No, thank you…I’m not going to bother you for long…I wanted to ask after Madame Martin…”
“It’s too kind of you.” Martin said with conviction.
He was really quite unsuspecting. He was so upset that he must have lost his critical sense. And indeed, had he ever had it?
“They’re terrible, these attacks of hers…You don’t mind if I drink my coffee? ”
He became confused on discovering that his braces were dangling about his legs, hastily put his clothes to rights, and cleared the table of several medicine bottles.
“Does Madame Martin have them often?”
“No…Specially not such violent ones…She’s very highly strung…When she was a girl, I gather she used to have fits of hysteria every week…”
“Does she still now?”
Martin gave him a hangdog look, and scarcely dared confess:
“I have to be very tactful with her…The slightest contradiction sets her all in a flutter…”
With his buff-coloured overcoat, his well-waxed moustache, his leather gloves, he had chiefly looked ridiculous. The caricature of a pretentious little jack-in-office.
But now his whiskers were faded and there were bags under his eyes. He had not had time to wash. He was still wearing his nightshirt under an old jacket. And he was a pathetic figure. One realized with amazement that he was at least fifty-five years old.
“Did anything upset her, last night?”
“No…no…”
He was panic-stricken, darting terrified glances all around him.
“She had no visitors? Her son, for instance? ”
“No…You came…Then we had dinner…Then…”
“What?”
“Nothing…I don’t know…It came on without warning…She’s very sensitive…She’s had so much unhappiness in her life.”
Did he really believe what he was saying? Maigret had the impression that Martin was talking in order to convince himself.
“In short, you’ve no personal opinion about this crime?”
And Martin dropped the cup he was holding. Could he, too, be suffering from over-sensitive nerves?
“Why should I have an opinion? I give you my word…If I had one, I’d…”
“You would?”
“I don’t know…It’s terrible…And just when we’ve most work on at the office…I haven’t even had time to let my boss know this morning…”
He passed his lean hand across his forehead, then set about picking up the pieces of china. He spent a long time hunting for a cloth to wipe the floor.
“If she’d listened to me, we’d never have stayed on in this house…”
He was frightened, that was obvious. He was convulsed with fear. But fear of what, fear of whom?
“You’re a good fellow, aren’t you, Monsieur Martin? And an honest fellow…”
“I’ve been in the service thirty-two years and…”
“So, if you knew something that might help the law to discover the criminal, you’d make it your duty to tell me…”
Weren’t his teeth beginning to chatter?
“I’d certainly tell you…But I don’t know anything…And I should like to know, myself…This is no sort of life…”
“What do you think of your stepson?”
Martin looked at Maigret in astonishment.
“Roger? He’s…”
“He’s misguided, I think.”
“But he’s not a bad boy, I give you my word…It’s all his father’s fault…As my wife always says, young men ought not to be given so much money…She’s quite right. And I agree with
her that Couchet didn’t do it out of kindness nor out of love for his son, who meant nothing to him…He did it to clear his own conscience…”
“His conscience? ”
Martin blushed, more embarrassed than ever.
“He’d behaved badly towards Juliette, hadn’t he?” he said in a low voice.
“Juliette?”
“My wife…His first wife…What did he ever do for her? Not a thing…He treated her like a servant…And yet it was she who helped him through difficult times…And later on…”
“He gave her nothing, that’s quite true…But she’d married again…”
Martin’s face was crimson. Maigret was looking at him with amazement and pity. For he realized that the poor fellow was in no way responsible for this extraordinary theory. He was merely repeating what he must have heard his wife say a hundred times.
Couchet was rich, she was poor…And so…
But the little official had pricked up his ears.
“Didn’t you hear something?”
They kept quiet for a moment. A faint call could be heard from the next room. Martin went to open the door.
“What are you telling him?” Madame Martin demanded.
“Well…I…”
“It’s the Inspector, isn’t it? What does he want this time? ”
Maigret could not see her. The voice was that of somebody lying down, very weary, but none the less completely self-possessed.
“The Inspector called to ask after you…”
“Tell him to come in…Wait a minute. Give me a damp face-cloth and the mirror. And my comb…”
“You’re going to upset yourself again…”
“Hold the mirror straight, can’t you…No. Leave go of it…You’re incapable of…Take away that basin…Oh, men…When a woman’s not around, the place looks like a pigsty…Bring him in now.”
The bedroom was like the dining-room, drab and dreary, badly furnished, with a lot of old curtains, old covers, faded carpets. As soon as he set foot in the doorway, Maigret felt Madame Martin’s gaze fixed on him, calm and extraordinarily lucid.
He saw a sickly invalid’s smile appear on her haggard face.
“Don’t take any notice,” she said. “Everything’s in a frightful mess. It’s because of this attack…”
And she stared sadly in front of her.
“But I’m getting better…I’ve got to be well tomorrow, for the funeral…It is tomorrow, isn’t it? ”
Maigret: The Shadow in the Courtyard (1987) Page 6
