‘I’m going over there!’ Maigret suddenly decided, putting his glass down on the bar.
He was so afraid that his courage would fail him that he rushed across the road. From the archway, he saw two men digging in a corner of the garden. To the left, in front of the main door into the hall, a police officer stood guard.
‘I’m from the local police station,’ said Maigret.
‘You’ll have to wait.’
‘Wait for what?’
‘For these gentlemen to finish.’
‘But I’m in charge of this case.’
‘Maybe, but I have my orders.’
Another one from Quai des Orfèvres!
‘If ever I work for the Sûreté,’ Maigret promised himself, already forgetting his firm resolve to leave the police, ‘I swear I’ll never show contempt for the poor fellows from the local police stations.’
‘The prosecutor?’
‘All those gentlemen.’
‘Is the chief with them?’
‘I don’t know him. What does he look like?’
‘He’s wearing a grey tailcoat. He’s tall and thin, with a blond pencil moustache.’
‘Haven’t seen him.’
‘Who’s here from Quai des Orfèvres?’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Barodet.’
His name was forever appearing in the newspapers. In Maigret’s eyes, he was perhaps the most distinguished man in the world, with his clean-shaven face that made him look like a butler, and prying, beady little eyes that always seemed to be looking elsewhere.
‘The body?’
The police officer was reluctant to reply to Maigret’s questions, and did so condescendingly.
‘Is Richard Gendreau in the house?’
‘What does he look like?’
‘Dark hair and a long, crooked nose.’
‘He is.’
So, either Gendreau hadn’t gone to his office as usual, or he had hurried back.
Just then, a cab drew up outside. A young woman alighted and hurried towards the door where the two men stood talking.
She couldn’t have seen Maigret.
‘Mademoiselle Gendreau,’ she said tentatively.
And the officer opened the door to her at once, saying to Maigret:
‘I had orders.’
‘Were they expecting her?’
‘I was simply told to let her in.’
‘Have you seen the butler?’
‘He’s with the gentlemen from Quai des Orfèvres right now. Are you familiar with the case?’
‘A little,’ replied Maigret, swallowing his pride.
‘Apparently he was a nasty piece of work.’
‘Who?’
‘The fellow who was shot by the servant.’
Maigret stared at him, open-mouthed.
‘Are you certain?’
‘Of what?’
‘That Louis …’
‘Look, I don’t even know who Louis is. I just overheard snatches of conversation. What I do know is that it’s best to avoid attracting a crowd.’
One of the men who was digging and who was definitely a police officer entered the porch; the one who remained in the garden must be the manservant. The officer had mud on his hands and on his shoes, and wore an expression of disgust.
‘He’s not a pretty sight!’ he said in passing.
A door opened and he vanished into the house. In the split second the door was ajar, Maigret caught a glimpse of Lise Gendreau and her brother who stood talking in the entrance hall. The men from the prosecutor’s office must be in one of the drawing rooms behind closed doors.
‘Do you have an appointment?’ the police officer asked Maigret, whose impatience was visible.
‘I don’t know.’
It was enough to make him cry. Never had he been so humiliated.
‘I think they’re more afraid of the press than anyone else. That’s why they’re taking so many precautions. The funny thing is that at home we drink Balthazar coffee. I had no idea that one day …’
They must be making a lot of telephone calls in the house, for they could hear frequent clicks and ringing.
‘If your chief inspector sent you, I can go and tell them that you’re out here waiting.’
‘There’s no point.’
The officer shrugged. He didn’t understand what Maigret meant, and watched him take a pill.
‘Are you not well?’
‘Do you have any idea how it all started?’
‘How what started?’
‘Were you at Quai des Orfèvres?’
‘Yes, I was just off on a stake-out in La Villette. Chief Inspector Barodet was giving a guy a roasting.’
‘A short fellow in a check suit?’
‘Yes, a brash fellow.’
‘Did someone telephone the inspector?’
‘No. The chief called him in. While he was gone, he asked me to keep an eye on the fellow. A funny one. He asked me for a cigarette, but I didn’t have any.’
‘Then what?’
‘When Monsieur Barodet came back, he shut himself away with the fellow in the check suit for a moment, after telling us to be at the ready.’
‘Who?’
‘The men in the squad. There are three of us here, plus the chief inspector. The other two are inside. The one who was digging, that’s Barrère. He got a bullet in his body a month ago as he was arresting the Pole of Rue Caulaincourt.’
Every word was loaded. Maigret pictured the inspectors’ office, the amiable authority of Barodet who called them ‘my boys’.
Why had they done this to him? Had he made a mistake? Had he gone about things the wrong way? Had he not been of the utmost discretion?
When Chief Inspector Le Bret had visited Maigret’s apartment on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, he seemed to be giving him carte blanche. But then Le Bret had raced over to Quai des Orfèvres! Then perhaps he’d come here?
‘So the butler admits he did it?’
‘That’s my understanding. He looks like a thug, at any rate.’
‘I’m at a loss to understand.’
‘Because you like to think you can understand?’
It was perhaps Maigret’s first true lesson in modesty. The police officer was older than him. He was over thirty. He had the calm air, the sort of indifference of those who have seen many things. He puffed gently on his pipe without craning to hear what was being said inside.
‘It’s still better than hiding out for hours on end in some alley in La Villette.’
Now a car was pulling up outside the house. A young doctor with a dark beard jumped out clutching his bag, and Maigret recognized him from the photographs in the newspapers. He was Doctor Paul, the coroner, who was already quite famous.
‘Where are the gentlemen from headquarters?’
‘This way, doctor. The body is in the garden, but I presume you would like to see the prosecutor first?’
They all went into the inner sanctum, apart from Maigret, who was left to champ at the bit under the arch.
‘You’ll see,’ said the officer, ‘there will only be three lines in the papers about it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because!’
And true enough, that evening, there was a paragraph in La Presse saying:
During the night of the 15th of this month, a burglar broke into the private residence of the Gendreau-Balthazar family in Rue Chaptal. The
butler, Louis Viaud, aged fifty-six, born in Anseval, Nièvre, killed him with a bullet to the chest.
That night, Maigret was lying in bed with a temperature of thirty-nine, while Madame Maigret wondered how to get rid of the flautist, who refused to leave the room and seemed more like a lost dog than ever.
9.
Lunch in the Country
It lasted three days. At first he’d hoped that he would really be ill, and that would infuriate them. But on the first morning, when he cautiously opened his eyes, the only thing wrong with him seemed to be a nasty cold in the head.
So he was shamming, trying to fool even his wife. It was ridiculous to have nothing more serious than a cold in the head, so he groaned, coughed and complained of chest pains.
‘I’m going to give you a mustard poultice, Jules. That will stop you getting bronchitis.’
Madame Maigret was as cheerful as ever. She nursed him tenderly. You could say she pampered him. And yet he had the feeling that she wasn’t taken in.
‘Come in, Monsieur Minard,’ he heard her saying in the adjacent room. ‘No, he’s no worse. Only please don’t tire him out.’
That meant that she was playing along.
‘His temperature?’ asked the flautist anxiously.
‘No cause for concern.’
And she took care not to say what it was, because if anything it was subnormal.
She loved concocting herbal teas and poultices and making broth or egg custard. She also liked to draw the curtains gently and walk around on tiptoe, half-open the door sometimes and peek in to make sure he was asleep.
Poor Minard had already become a nuisance! Maigret was annoyed with himself. He was fond of the flautist and wished he could be kind to him.
He would turn up at around nine or ten in the morning. He didn’t ring the bell but discreetly scratched at the door in case Maigret had fallen asleep. Then he would whisper, come into the room brushing the doorpost, and walk over to the bed.
‘No, don’t move. I’ve simply come to find out how you are. Do you need me to do anything? I’d be so happy to help you out!’
It was no longer a matter of playing detective. Anything to help. He also offered Madame Maigret his services.
‘Why don’t you let me go to the market for you? I’m very good at shopping, you know.’
He ended up perching by the window for a moment, on one buttock, and would stay for hours. If they asked after his wife, he answered sharply:
‘It doesn’t matter.’
He came back in the late afternoon, in evening dress on his way to work. Now he was playing in a dance hall on Boulevard Saint-Michel, no longer the double bass but the cornet, which must be hard for him. It left a pink ring in the centre of his lips.
Every morning Le Bret also sent over an orderly from the police station for news. The concierge had been disappointed. She knew that her tenant was an official, but he had never told her that he was a police officer.
‘The chief inspector says to take good care of yourself, and not to worry. Everything’s fine.’
He snuggled under the covers of his damp bed, which smelled strongly of sweat. It was a way of withdrawing into himself. He didn’t know yet that this would become a quirk, that he would often resort to this behaviour in his moments of despondency or confusion.
The shift happened almost to order. Instead of his ideas becoming clear, they became scrambled, as they do when a person is feverish. He slipped gently into a half-sleep, and reality took on new forms, merging with childhood memories; the light and shadows of the room also played a part, and even the flowers on the wallpaper, the aromas from the kitchen and Madame Maigret’s muffled footsteps.
He always went back to the same point, picking up his characters like chess pieces, old Balthazar, the Gendreaus, the father, Lise and Richard, the Chateau d’Anseval, Louis, Germaine, the little maid, Marie.
He moved them around, distorted them. Then came the turn of Le Bret leaving the Maigrets’ apartment on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, getting into his gig and saying to his coachman: ‘Quai des Orfèvres.’
Was he on first-name terms with the big chief, Xavier Guichard? This was where it became harrowing. What was Le Bret saying to him, in the vast office which Maigret had been inside twice and which he thought was the most awe-inspiring place in the world?
‘My secretary, that young man you recommended to me, is handling a case. I had no alternative but to give it to him. But I fear he’s going to put his foot in it.’
Was that what he was saying? Possibly. Above all, Le Bret was a man of the world. He fenced every morning at the Hoche club, frequented the salons, attended all the premières and appeared at the races in a light grey top hat.
But what about Xavier Guichard? He’d been a friend of Maigret’s father and was from the same social class. He didn’t live in the exclusive Monceau district but in a little apartment in the Latin Quarter surrounded by his books rather than by beautiful women.
No, he wasn’t capable of playing a dirty trick or of compromise!
And yet, he had called Barodet. What orders had he given him?
And if that were true, did that mean that Maigret was wrong? He hadn’t concluded his investigation, granted. He didn’t know who had shot the count. Nor did he know why. But he would have got to the bottom of it.
He was conscious of having done a good job in a very short time. As was proved by the fact that Le Bret had been alarmed.
So why had he been?
There was no more mention of the case in the newspapers. It had been hushed up. Bob’s body must have been taken to the morgue for the autopsy.
He saw himself back in the courtyard in Rue Chaptal, behind the others, the high-ups who ignored him. Barodet, who didn’t know him personally, must have taken him for one of the servants. The prosecutor, the examining magistrate and the clerk of the court thought he was one of Barodet’s men.
Only Louis had shot him a smug look. He had probably been told of Maigret’s activities by Germaine.
All that was humiliating, discouraging. There were moments when, his eyes closed, his body clammy, he formed a plan for the perfect investigation.
‘Next time, I’ll go about it like this …’
Then, abruptly, on the fourth morning, he’d had enough of being ill and, before the arrival of the flautist, he got up, had a thorough wash, carefully shaved, and removed the dressing from his head.
‘Are you going to the office?’
He wanted to get back to the smell of the police station, his black desk and the seedy-looking customers on their bench against the white wall.
‘What should I tell Justin?’
Now they called him Justin, like a family friend or kinsman.
‘If he wants to come and meet me at one o’clock, we can have lunch together.’
He hadn’t slept with his moustache net on and he had to straighten the tips with a hot curling iron. He walked most of the way, to soak up the atmosphere of the boulevards, and his resentment melted away in the spring sunshine.
‘What’s the point of my worrying about those people?’
The Gendreaus in their stronghold. The old man’s character that was passed on through the female line. Their battles over the will. The question of who would inherit the Balthazar Coffee empire …
Because it dawned on him that this wasn’t just about money. Once people have a considerable fortune, it is no longer money that matters but power.
It was about deciding wh
o would have the biggest pile of shares, who would be chairman of the board. Lise or Richard?
It had to be deeply ingrained for a young woman to forget her twenty-one years and only think of taking up the director’s role, as her mother had done before her.
To be the big boss!
‘Let them fight it out between them!’
That was it! That was exactly what they had done. And a man had been killed, who nobody grieved for except for a girl who walked the streets around Avenue de Wagram.
He went into the police station and shook hands with his colleagues.
‘Bertrand has gone over to your place to find out how you are.’
He didn’t let Le Bret know he was there but went and sat at his desk without a word. It wasn’t until ten thirty that on half-opening the baize door his boss spotted him.
‘Are you here, Maigret? Come in and see me.’
He was trying to sound offhand.
‘Have a seat. I wonder whether you’re doing the right thing in coming back to work so soon. I was planning to offer you convalescence leave. Don’t you think that a few days in the country would do you good?’
‘I feel perfectly fit.’
‘Good! Good! By the way, as you’ll have seen, this whole business is resolved now. And I congratulate you, for actually you weren’t so far from the truth. On the same day that I visited you, Louis telephoned the police.’
‘Of his own accord?’
‘I really have no idea. Besides, it makes no difference. The main thing is that he confessed to the crime. He must have got wind of your investigation and realized that you would uncover the truth.’
Maigret stared fixedly at the desk, and his face showed no emotion. Ill at ease, Le Bret continued:
‘He went over our heads and contacted the Préfecture directly. Have you read the papers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Naturally the truth has been slightly rearranged. Sometimes it’s a necessity, as you will understand one day. There are cases where there’s no point creating a scandal, where the harsh truth does more harm than good. Let me explain. We both know that the count didn’t break into the house as a burglar. Perhaps he was expected? Lise Gendreau was very nice to him. I use the word in the best sense.
Maigret's First Case Page 14
