Maigret and the Toy Village

  Maigret and the ToyVillage

  Félicie est là

  the 46th episode in the Maigret Saga

  1944

  Georges Simenon

  translated by Eileen Ellenbogen

  * * *

  3S XHTML edition 1.0

  scan notes and proofing history

  * * *

  Contents

  1 Peg Leg’s Funeral

  2 In the Métro

  3 The Diary

  4 The Taxi

  5 Number 13

  6 Maigret Stays Put

  7 A Lobster Dinner

  8 A Cup of Coffee for Félicie

  * * *

  A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

  New York and London

  Copyright © 1944 by Editions Gallimard

  English translation copyright © 1978 by Georges Simenon

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Simenon, Georges, 1903-1989— Maigret and the toy village.

  Translation of Félicie est là. “A Helen and Kurt Wolff book.”

  I. Title.

  PZ3.S5892Maegwn [PQ2637.I53] 843'.9'12 79-1843

  ISBN 0-15-155554-0

  First American edition 1979

  * * *

  1

  Peg Leg’s Funeral

  It probably did not last more than a second, but the impression it made upon Maigret was quite extraordinary. It was like one of those dreams that, we are told, pass in a flash but seem to go on forever. Years later, Maigret could still have pointed to the exact spot where it happened, the paving stone on which he had been standing, the stone wall on which his shadow had been projected. He would be able to remember not only every detail of the scene, but also the various smells in the air and the feel of the breeze, all of which vividly recalled his childhood.

  It was the first time that year that he had ventured out without his overcoat, his first sight of the countryside at ten o’clock in the morning. Even his pipe, an unusually large one, seemed to taste of spring. There was a lingering nip in the air. Maigret walked along with a heavy tread, his hands in his trouser pockets. Félicie walked beside him, or, rather, a little ahead of him, since in order to keep up with him, she had to take two steps for every one of his.

  Together, they drew level with a brand-new building of pink brick. In the window were displayed a few vegetables, two or three cheeses, and a string of blood sausages on a ceramic plate.

  Félicie quickened her step, stretched out her hand, and pushed open the glass door of the shop. And it was then, evoked, no doubt, by the sound of the bell, that Maigret experienced the sensation that he was never to forget.

  The shop bell was no ordinary bell. A cluster of thin metal tubes was suspended above the door, which, when opened, created a draft that caused the tubes to collide and emit a carillon of tinkling chimes.

  Long ago, in Maigret’s childhood, the pork butcher in his home village had completed the redecoration of his shop by installing just such a carillon.

  And this was why, at this moment, for Maigret the present seemed suddenly in abeyance. How long this feeling lasted it was impossible to tell, but while it did, Maigret was genuinely transported to another time and place. It was as if he no longer inhabited the body of the thickset Chief Superintendent obediently trailing along behind Félicie.

  The long-lost village boy, it seemed, was there on the spot, hiding somewhere, invisible, looking on, with laughter bubbling up inside him.

  Well, really! It was all too ridiculous, wasn’t it? Could anything be more out of place than that solemn, bulky figure of a man in the company of that caricature of a woman out of a children’s book wearing that absurd red hat? And in such surroundings, too, flimsy and insubstantial as a toy village.

  What was he doing there? Conducting an inquiry? Investigating a murder? Here and now, among brick cottages, pink as sugared almonds, with the air full of the twittering of small birds, the fields sprouting tender young green shoots, buds bursting into bloom all over the place, and even the leeks in the shopwindow looking as pretty as flowers?

  Yes, he was often to recall this moment in the years to come, and not always with equanimity. For years and years afterward, one or other of his colleagues at the Quai des Or-fèvres would pick on a brisk spring morning to remark, half seriously, half teasingly:

  “I say, Maigret…”

  “What is it?”

  “Félicie is here!”

  And he could almost imagine her standing there, with her slim figure, her quaint clothes, her big blue eyes, her supercilious nose, and, above all, her hat, that outrageous scarlet confection, perched on the top of her head and trimmed with a stiff, iridescent green feather.

  “Félicie is here!”

  Grrr! It was well known that the name Félicie had only to be spoken for Maigret to growl like a bear. And this was not to be wondered at, since Félicie had given him more trouble than all the hardened criminals brought to justice by the Chief Superintendent in his long career.

  On this particular May morning, Félicie really was there, standing at the door of the little grocer’s shop. The sign, mélanie chochoi, épicière, in yellow lettering, was just legible beneath a couple of transparent stickers advertising a brand of starch and a metal polish. Félicie stood waiting for the Chief Superintendent to be so obliging as to rouse himself from his reverie.

  At long last, he stirred, found himself back in the real world, and gathered up the threads of his inquiry into the murder of Jules Lapie, nicknamed Peg Leg.

  Her sharp features overspread with an expression of mingled hostility and irony, Félicie was braced to meet his questions, as she had been since early that morning. Behind the counter stood Mélanie Chochoi, a pleasant little woman, with hands folded on a bulging stomach, contemplating the Chief Superintendent of the Police Judiciaire and Peg Leg’s servant. And a very odd couple they must have seemed to her.

  Maigret, puffing gently at his pipe, looked about him. His eyes wandered from the cans of food on the shelves to the unfinished street beyond the glass door, with its newly planted, spindly little trees. Taking his watch from his waistcoat pocket, he finally murmured, with a sigh:

  “You came in here at a quarter past ten, I think you said? That’s right, isn’t it? How can you be so sure about the time?”

  Félicie’s lips twitched in a little patronizing smile.

  “Come over here,” she said.

  He went across to her, and she pointed to the room behind the shop, which served as a kitchen for Mélanie Chochoi. In the dim interior could be seen a cane armchair, on which lay a ginger cat rolled up in a ball on a red cushion, and just above it, on a shelf, an alarm clock with the hands standing at ten-seventeen.

  Félicie had been right. She always was. As for the little shopkeeper, she was wondering what on earth these people had come for.

  “What did you buy?”

  “A pound of butter. Give me a pound of butter, please, Madame Chochoi. The Chief Superintendent wishes me to do exactly as I did the day before yesterday. Now then, demi-sel next, wasn’t it? And then… let me think… A package of pepper, a can of tomatoes, and two cutlets… Put them in my string bag, will you?”

  Everything seemed strange to Maigret that morning. He could not shake off the feeling that he was as out of place in this little world as a giant in a toy village.
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  A few miles from Paris, he had diverged from the route along the Seine. At Poissy, he had climbed the hill, and then suddenly, surrounded by real fields and orchards, there before him was this isolated little community. Its name, proclaimed a signboard beside the newly built road, was jeanneville estate.

  A few years earlier, this must have been an area of fields, meadows, and thickets, like the surrounding countryside, until the advent of a property developer with a wife or mistress named Jeanne, after whom, no doubt, this embryo village had been named.

  Streets had been mapped out, the avenues of the future, and lined with immature trees, their thin trunks packed with straw to protect them from frost.

  Here and there, houses and cottages had been built. It was neither a village nor a town, but something different from either. It was unfinished, with gaps between the houses, a great deal of scaffolding, and patches of empty ground, and, in the streets, useless standard gas lamps, an absurd refinement, since the streets could barely be said to exist apart from the blue plaques inscribed with their names.

  dream house, world’s end, open house—every cottage had its name on a board, surrounded by scrollwork, and down there below was Poissy, the silver ribbon of the Seine dotted with real coal barges, and railroad tracks used by real trains. On the plateau beyond could be seen the farms and bell tower of Orgeval.

  Here, only the little old shopkeeper, Mélanie Chochoi, seemed real. She had been lured away from a nearby market town by the promise of a fine new shop, to supply the needs of the new housing development.

  “Anything else, dear?”

  “Let me think …What else did I buy on Monday? Ah! Yes, hairpins.”

  Mélanie sold everything, from toothbrushes to face powder, from kerosene to postcards.

  “I think that was all, wasn’t it?”

  Maigret noted that neither Peg Leg’s cottage nor the approach to it could be seen from the shop.

  “My milk!” exclaimed Félicie. “I nearly forgot my milk!”

  And, in her usual condescending manner, she explained to Maigret:

  “I was so confused with all your questions that I forgot to bring my milk jug… Anyway, I had it with me on Monday… Today, I left it behind. It’s in the kitchen… A blue jug with white spots… You’ll find it next to the stove… That’s right, isn’t it, Madame Chochoi?”

  She spoke in the manner of a queen bestowing a great boon upon a lowly subject, while at the same time implying that she, like Caesar’s wife, was above suspicion.

  She was most insistent that nothing should be overlooked.

  “What did we talk about on Monday, Madame Chochoi?”

  “I believe you pointed out that my Zouzou must have worms, seeing that he would keep eating his fur.”

  Zouzou, presumably, was the tomcat which lay dozing on the red cushion in the armchair.

  “Let me see… You collected your Ciné-Journal and bought a paperback novel for twenty-five sous.”

  Spread out on the counter was a variety of cheap novels and magazines with garish covers, but Félicie ignored them and shrugged.

  “How much do I owe you? Hurry, please, because the Chief Superintendent wants everything done exactly as it was on Monday, and I wasn’t in here as long as this.”

  “Tell me, Madame Chochoi,” interposed Maigret, “while we’re on the subject of last Monday morning… did you, by any chance, happen to hear a car go by while you were serving Mademoiselle Félicie?”

  The shopkeeper gazed out at the sunlit street beyond the glass door.

  “I don’t know… Let me think… Not that we see many cars around here, though one hears them going past on the main road… Monday, did you say?… I remember seeing a little red car go past the back entrance to the Sébiles’ house… But what day that was, I really couldn’t say…”

  Just to be on the safe side, Maigret wrote in his notebook: Red car, Sébile.

  And he and Félicie went out into the street again. Félicie, with her coat draped over her shoulders and her sleeves flapping, swayed as she walked.

  “This way. I always take the shortcut home.”

  A narrow pathway with vegetable gardens on either side.

  “Did you meet anyone on the way?”

  “You’ll see in a minute.”

  And she was right. He did see. As they emerged into another street, the postman, who had just ridden up the hill, passed by on his bicycle and, turning toward them, called out:

  “Nothing for you, Mademoiselle Félicie.”

  She looked at Maigret.

  “He saw me here on Monday at this same time, as he does almost every morning.”

  The path they were on skirted a hideous pale-blue roughcast cottage, surrounded by a tiny garden in which there stood, beneath the hedge, a row of clay animal sculptures. Félicie went through the gate, her trailing coat brushing against a row of gooseberry bushes as she did so.

  “Here we are. This, as you see, is the garden. In a minute, you’ll see the summerhouse.”

  It had been a few minutes short of ten o’clock when they had set out from the cottage, using the front door, which opened onto an avenue. In going to the grocer’s and back, they had described a more or less complete circle. They walked beside a border of carnations which would shortly be coming into flower, and then past several beds of tender young green lettuce.

  “This is where I expected him to be,” stated Félicie, pointing to a length of string stretched taut above a shallow trench. “He’d just started pricking out his tomatoes. As you see, this row is half done. When I saw that he wasn’t here, I assumed he must have gone indoors for a drop of vin rosé. ”

  “Did he drink a lot?”

  “Only when he was thirsty… As you will see, he always kept a glass standing bottom up on the barrel in the cellar.”

  The carefully tended garden of a man of modest means, a cottage such as almost anyone in straitened circumstances might dream of building for his retirement. They passed from the sunlit garden into the bluish shade of the adjoining terrace. There was the little summerhouse on the right, furnished with a table, on which stood a half-bottle of brandy and a little glass with a very thick base.

  “You saw the bottle and the glass. Now you told me this morning that your employer never drank alcohol, especially that particular kind, except when he had company.”

  She looked at him defiantly, meeting his eyes with her own clear blue gaze, as if to proclaim emphatically that she had absolutely nothing to hide.

  Yet she could not resist retorting:

  “He was not my employer.”

  “I know… You told me…”

  Heavens above! People like Félicie really were maddening to have to deal with. What else was it she had said in that shrill voice of hers that so irritated Maigret? Ah, yes. She had said:

  “It would be a breach of trust on my part to reveal secrets that concern others besides myself. Some people, no doubt, look upon me as a servant… But the time will come, I daresay, when they will see things in a different light, when they will discover…”

  “What will they discover?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you insinuating that you were Peg Leg’s mistress?”

  “What do you take me for?”

  “His daughter, then?” Maigret had ventured to suggest.

  “I refuse to answer. One day, perhaps…”

  This was the cross he had to bear. Félicie! Stubborn as a mule, acid-tongued, full of strange fancies, her sharp-featured face clumsily daubed with powder and rouge, a little servant girl, given to putting on queenly airs in the local dance hall. And, every now and then, that disturbing, fixed gaze, and at other times that odd, fleeting smile, tinged with irony, if not contempt.

  “What if he did take a nip by himself? That’s no concern of mine.”

  But old Jules Lapie, nicknamed Peg Leg, had not been alone; Maigret was convinced of it. A man at work in his garden, wearing clogs and a straw hat, does not sudden
ly put down his tools to go indoors and fetch a bottle of old brandy from the sideboard, and bring it out to the summerhouse to drink it.

  At some stage, there must have been another glass on that green-painted garden table. Someone had removed it. Was it Félicie?

  “You say you expected to find Lapie at work in the garden. When you saw that he was not there, what did you do?”

  “Nothing. I went into the kitchen, lit the gas to heat the milk, and went to the pump to get some water to wash the vegetables.”

  “And then?”

  “I climbed up on the old chair I keep for the purpose and changed the flypaper.”

  “Still wearing your hat? You always wear a hat to go shopping, don’t you?”

  “I’m not a slattern.”

  “When did you take your hat off?”

  “When the milk was ready. I went upstairs…”

  Everything in the house, to which the old man had given the name Cape Horn, was fresh and new. The pine staircase smelled of varnish. The stairs creaked.

  “Go on up. I’ll follow you.”

  She opened the door of her bedroom, with its chintz-covered mattress that served as a couch and its walls covered with photographs of film stars.

  “Here we are. I took off my hat… I thought:

  “Oh! I forgot to open Monsieur Jules’s bedroom window…

  “I crossed the landing… I opened the door, and I cried out…”

  Maigret, who had refilled his pipe in the garden, was still puffing at it. He was looking down at the polished floor, gazing at the chalk outline of Peg Leg’s body as it had been found lying there on Monday morning.

  “And the revolver?” he asked.

  “There was no revolver. You know very well there wasn’t. It was all in the police report. And don’t tell me you haven’t read it!”

  On the mantelpiece stood a scale model of a three-masted schooner, and the walls were covered with pictures, all of sailing ships, for all the world as if the dead man had been a retired seaman. But the head of the local police, who had handled the case in its early stages, had told Maigret of Peg Leg’s one extraordinary adventure.