‘Is Monsieur Gendreau-Balthazar at home?’
‘Which one, the father or the son?’
‘The father.’
‘Monsieur Félicien has not come home yet, and Monsieur Richard, the son, probably retired hours ago. Now, about half an hour ago, this drunkard …’
Louis was tall and burly. He must have been around forty-five, his shaved chin had a five o’clock shadow, his eyes were very dark, his eyebrows black and unusually bushy.
With the feeling that he was jumping in at the deep end, Maigret took a big breath and said:
‘I should like to speak to Monsieur Richard.’
‘Do you want me to wake him up?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Would you show me your police ID?’
Maigret held out his Préfecture card.
‘Have you been in this neighbourhood long?’
‘Ten months.’
‘And you are based at Saint-Georges?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then you must know Monsieur Le Bret?’
‘He’s my boss.’
Then Louis said, with a casual air that barely concealed a threat:
‘I know him too. I have the honour of waiting on him each time he comes here to lunch or dinner.’
He let a few seconds tick by, his gaze elsewhere.
‘Do you still want me to wake Monsieur Richard?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have a warrant?’
‘No.’
‘Very good. Please wait here.’
Before leaving the room, he took from a cupboard a starched shirt-front, a collar and a black tie. Then he put on his morning coat which was hanging up.
There was only one chair in the butler’s pantry. Neither Maigret nor Justin Minard sat down. They were enveloped by silence. The entire house was in semi-darkness. It was all very solemn, very daunting.
Twice, Maigret took out his fob watch. Twenty minutes went by before Louis reappeared, still as frosty.
‘If you would be so good as to step this way …’
Minard attempted to follow Maigret, but the butler turned to him.
‘Not you. Unless you are also a police officer.’
Maigret had a ridiculous thought. It seemed cowardly to leave the pallid flautist behind. The butler’s pantry with dark wood panelling fleetingly made him think of a sort of dungeon, and he had a vision of the butler with his stubble-covered chin coming back to beat up his victim.
He followed Louis across the colonnaded hall and up the red-carpeted stairs.
A few solitary lamps with yellowish filaments gave out a wan glow, leaving vast areas of darkness. A door on to the first-floor landing was open. A man in a dressing gown stood framed in the light.
‘I understand you wish to speak to me? Do come in. That will be all, Louis.’
The room was a sitting room-cum-study with leather-covered walls. A smell of Havana cigar and a fragrance that Maigret could not identify hung in the air. A half-open door led into a bedroom where there was a rumpled four-poster bed.
Richard Gendreau-Balthazar was wearing pyjamas beneath his dressing gown, and on his feet were Russian leather slippers.
He appeared to be around thirty years old. He was dark-haired and his face would have been quite ordinary were it not for his crooked nose.
‘Louis tells me you are from the local police station?’
He opened a carved cigarette box and pushed it towards his visitor, who refused.
‘You don’t smoke?’
‘Only a pipe.’
‘I shan’t invite you to smoke in here as I can’t stand the smell of pipe tobacco. I presume you telephoned my friend Le Bret before coming here?’
‘No.’
‘Ah! Forgive me if I’m not familiar with the ways of the police. Le Bret is a regular visitor to our house − not, I must emphasize, in a professional capacity. One would never guess he’s a police chief! He really is a very charming man and his wife is delightful. Now, let’s get to the point. What time is it?’
He made a show of looking for his watch, and it was Maigret who pulled his fat silver turnip watch out of his pocket.
‘Twenty-five past two.’
‘And it gets light at around five o’clock at this time of year, doesn’t it? I know because I often go riding in the Bois de Boulogne very early. I thought that during the hours between sunset and sunrise a citizen’s privacy was sacrosanct.’
‘That is correct, but—’
He interrupted Maigret.
‘Mind you, I only mention it by way of a reminder. You are young and probably new in the job. You’re lucky to have come across a friend of your chief’s. I imagine you have good reason to enter this house as you have done. Louis told me about it. No doubt the individual he threw out is dangerous? Even so, young man, you could have waited until morning, don’t you think? Do please sit down.’
He himself remained on his feet, pacing up and down and exhaling the smoke from his gold-tipped Egyptian cigarette.
‘Now that I’ve taught you the little lesson you deserved, tell me what it is you wanted to know.’
‘Whose is the bedroom upstairs?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m sorry. I know you are under no obligation to reply, at least for the time being.’
‘Obligation to …?’ echoed Richard in utter amazement.
And Maigret, his ears beetroot:
‘A short while ago, a shot was fired in the bedroom.’
‘What? … What … You are in your right mind, I hope? …’
‘Even though it’s been a night of street celebrations, I assume you haven’t been drinking excessively?’
Footsteps could be heard on the stairs. The door had remained ajar, and Maigret glimpsed a new figure on the landing, a silhouette straight off the cover of La Vie Parisienne. The man was wearing a tailcoat, a cape and an opera hat. He was bony and elderly, and his thin moustache curling up at the ends was visibly dyed.
He hovered in the doorway, hesitant, surprised, perhaps afraid.
‘Come in, father. Listen to this, it will make you laugh. Monsieur, here, is one of Le Bret’s men …’
It was strange; Félicien Gendreau-Balthazar, the father, couldn’t have been drunk, and yet there was something vague about him, something insubstantial, fluttery.
‘Have you seen Louis?’ his son continued.
‘He’s downstairs with someone.’
‘Exactly. Earlier, a drunkard − unless he’s a madman escaped from Villejuif − practically kicked the door down. Louis went down and had a terrible job keeping him out. And now, Monsieur—’
He paused with an inquiring look.
‘Maigret.’
‘Monsieur Maigret, who is the secretary to our friend Le Bret, is here to ask me … What was it exactly that you wanted to know?’
‘Whose bedroom is above us, the one that has the second window on the left?’
He sensed that the father was worried, but it was a strange disquiet. For example, since his arrival the old man had been gazing at his son with a sort of fear, almost submissiveness. He didn’t dare open his mouth. It was as if he were waiting for Richard’s permission.
‘It’s my sister’s,’ Richard said at length. ‘Now you know.’
‘Is she in the house at the moment?’
And Maigret looked not at the son, but at the father. But once again, it was the son who replied
.
‘No. She is at Anseval.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Our chateau, the Château d’Anseval, near Pouilly-sur-Loire, in the Nièvre.’
‘So the room is empty?’
‘I have every reason to believe so.’
He added sarcastically:
‘I imagine you would like to see for yourself. I’ll show you up. Then tomorrow I shall be able to congratulate our friend Le Bret on the zeal of his subordinate. Please come this way.’
To Maigret’s surprise, the father followed too, somewhat timorously.
‘This is the room you mentioned. Fortunately it’s not locked.’
He switched on the light. The furniture was of white lacquered wood, the walls covered in blue silk. A side door opened into a boudoir, and everything was in order, each object seemed to be in its rightful place.
‘Carry out your search, I beg you. My sister will be delighted to know that the police have been poking their noses into her things.’
Unfazed, Maigret walked over to the window. The heavy silk curtains were of a darker blue than the walls. He opened them to find net curtains designed to soften daylight, and noticed that a corner of the netting was caught in the window.
‘I don’t suppose anyone has been in here this evening?’ he asked.
‘Unless one of the maids …’
‘Are there several in the house?’
‘Naturally!’ sneered Richard. ‘There are two, Germaine and Marie. There’s also Louis’ wife, who is our cook, and there’s even a laundress, but she’s married and only comes in during the day.’
Félicien Gendreau, the father, kept glancing from one to the other.
‘What is this about?’ he asked eventually, after clearing his throat.
‘I don’t know exactly. Ask Monsieur Maigret.’
‘Someone who was walking past the house just before one thirty heard this window opening. He looked up and saw a distraught woman who was shouting for help.’
Maigret noticed the father clench the gilt knob of his cane.
‘And then what?’ asked Richard.
‘The woman was pulled backwards, and a gunshot rang out.’
‘Really?’
The younger Gendreau looked about him with an expression of mock concern, pretending to try to find traces of a bullet on the silk walls.
‘What I find surprising, Monsieur Maigret − it is Maigret, isn’t it? − is that, given the seriousness of the accusation, you didn’t take the elementary precaution of informing your superiors. You rushed straight here rather rashly, it seems to me. Did you take the trouble to find out anything about this passer-by who has such a fertile imagination?’
‘He’s downstairs.’
‘I’m happy to hear that he is under my roof. In short, not only did you come in here in the middle of the night, in defiance of the law protecting civil liberties, but you have brought with you an individual whom I consider somewhat dubious, to say the least. But now you are here, please proceed with your routine search so that you can make a full report to our friend Le Bret tomorrow. I presume you want to ascertain that the bed hasn’t been slept in tonight?’
He pulled back the satin bedspread to reveal sheets without a single crease, a pristine pillow.
‘Take your time, please. Search every nook and cranny. I presume you have a magnifying glass?’
‘I don’t need one.’
‘I’m sorry. Apart from Le Bret, my only acquaintance with the police is through novels. A shot was fired, you say? Maybe there’s a body somewhere? Follow me. Let’s hunt for it together! In this wardrobe perhaps? Who knows?’
He flung open the doors, but it contained nothing but dresses on hangers.
‘In here? These are Lise’s shoes. She’s crazy about shoes, as you can see. Let’s go into her boudoir …’
He was tense, becoming more and more sarcastic.
‘This door? It has been boarded up since Mother’s death. But we can enter the apartment from the corridor. Come. Oh yes, I insist …’
Maigret spent a nightmare half-hour. He had no option but to obey. For Richard was literally ordering him about. There was something spooky about the whole scene as they combed through the house followed closely by old Gendreau-Balthazar, who still had his opera hat on his head, his cape around his shoulders and his cane with its gilt knob in his hand.
‘Oh no! We’re not going downstairs yet. You’re forgetting that there’s a floor above us, an attic floor, where the servants sleep.’
The lightbulbs in the corridor were bare and the ceiling was slanted. Richard knocked on each door.
‘Open the door, Germaine. Yes please! It doesn’t matter if you’re in your nightdress. It’s the police.’
A plumpish girl who was half-asleep and gave off a musty smell, a damp bed, a comb clotted with hair on a dressing table.
‘Did you hear a gunshot?’
‘A what?’
‘What time did you go to bed?’
‘I came upstairs at ten o’clock.’
‘And you didn’t hear anything?’
Richard was asking all the questions.
‘Next! … Open up, Marie … No, no, dear, it’s not important …’
A girl of sixteen who had slipped a coat over her nightdress and was trembling from head to toe.
‘Did you hear a gunshot?’
She stared at Richard and Maigret with a sort of terror.
‘Have you been asleep long?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you hear anything?’
‘No. Why? What’s going on?’
‘Any questions, Monsieur Maigret?’
‘I’d like to ask her where she comes from.’
‘Where do you come from, Marie?’
‘From Anseval.’
‘What about Germaine?’
‘Also from Anseval.’
‘And Louis?’
‘From Anseval, Monsieur Maigret,’ replied Richard with disdain. ‘You are clearly unaware of the fact that people who own a chateau tend to hire their servants from the village.’
‘The next door?’
‘Madame Louis’ room.’
‘Does her husband sleep there too?’
‘He sleeps downstairs, in the lodge.’
It took Madame Louis longer to open the door. She was short, swarthy and very fat, and had wary eyes.
‘Have you finished making a racket? Where’s Louis?’
‘Downstairs. Tell me, did you hear a gunshot?’
She almost threw them out, muttering furiously. And Richard carried on opening more doors, into empty rooms, junk closets, garret rooms. Maigret wasn’t spared the attic, and then he had to go down to the first floor and visit the apartments of the father and the son.
‘There are still the drawing rooms. Oh yes, I absolutely insist.’
Richard switched on the great chandelier with tinkling crystal droplets.
‘No dead body? No one wounded? Have you seen the whole house? Don’t you want to go down into the cellar? You’ll note that it is now a quarter past three.’
He opened the pantry door and they saw Justin Minard sitting on a chair, with Louis standing in a corner guarding him as if he were a prisoner.
‘Is this the young man who heard the shot? Delighted to have seen his interesting face. I presume, now, Monsieur Maigret, that I am entitled to file a complaint for slander and attempted forced e
ntry.’
‘You are indeed within your rights to do so.’
‘I wish you good night. Louis, show these gentlemen out.’
Old Gendreau opened his mouth but said nothing. As for Maigret, he managed to say:
‘Thank you very much.’
Louis walked close behind and shut the heavy door after them.
Disconcerted and slightly anxious, they were all alone on the left-hand pavement of Rue Chaptal. Maigret turned round automatically towards the patch of oil on the wooden paving, as if to grasp at something tangible in spite of everything.
‘I swear I hadn’t been drinking.’
‘I believe you.’
‘And I’m not mad.’
‘Most certainly not.’
‘Do you think this is going to get you into trouble? I vaguely heard …’
That night, Maigret’s brand-new tailcoat was a little tight under the arms.
2.
Richard’s Lie
At 9.50 a smiling Madame Maigret smelling fragrant and fresh drew back the bedroom curtains to let in the bright sunlight. Newly married, she was not yet used to seeing a man asleep, with the tips of his reddish moustache quivering, his forehead creasing when a fly landed on it and his thick hair tousled. She laughed. She always laughed when she brought him a cup of coffee in the morning and he looked at her with hazy, slightly childlike eyes.
She was a plump, cheerful young woman, bursting with energy − the kind you see in bakeries or behind the marble counter of a dairy. He could leave her alone for days on end in their little apartment on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir and she wouldn’t be bored for a second.
‘What are you thinking about, Jules?’
In those days, she didn’t call him Maigret, but she already had for him the sort of respect that he automatically inspired, the same respect she must have had for her father, the same she would have for her son, were she to have one.
‘I’m thinking …’
And he recited the words that had come into his head on opening his eyes, after only two hours’ sleep. They were extracts from the police manual:
Maigret's First Case Page 2
