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 Chateau 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 entry.’
‘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 them 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 was wearing his first-ever tailcoat for the first time. It was a little tight under the arms.
THE BEGINNING
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First published in French as Maigret tend un piège by Presses de la Cité 1955
This translation first published 2016
Copyright © Georges Simenon Limited, 1955
Translation copyright © Siân Reynolds, 2016
GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm
MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited
Cover © Maigret Productions Limited and French Detective Limited
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-141-98219-9
Maigret Sets a Trap Page 15
