Maigret in Society

  MAIGRET in SOCIETY

  MAIGRET ET LES VIEILLARDS

  THE 84TH EPISODE OF THE MAIGRET SAGA

  Georges Simenon

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  MKM XHTML edition 1.0

  click for scan notes and proofing history

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  CONTENTS

  |1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|

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  First publication as Maigret et les vieillards, 1960, Presses de la Cité, Paris; first English publication 1962, translated by Robert Eglesfield, Hamish Hamilton, London

  This digital edition derived from A Maigret Trio, 1973, Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, New York.

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  I

  IT was one of those exceptional months of May which one experiences only two or three times in one’s life and which have the brilliance, the taste and the scent of childhood memories. Maigret called it a choral May, for it reminded him both of his first communion and of his first springtime in Paris, when everything seemed new and wonderful.

  In the street, in the bus, in the office, he would suddenly come to a halt, struck by a distant sound, by a gust of warm air, by the bright splash of colour of a blouse which took him back twenty or thirty years.

  The day before, just as they were setting out to have dinner with the Pardons, his wife had asked him, almost blushing as she spoke:

  “You don’t think I look too silly, at my age, in a floral dress?”

  That evening their friends the Pardons had staged an innovation. Instead of inviting them to their flat, they had taken the Maigrets to a little restaurant on the Boulevard de Montparnasse where the four of them had dinner on the terrace.

  Maigret and his wife, without saying anything, had exchanged conspiratorial glances, for it was on this terrace that, nearly thirty years before, they had had their first meal together.

  “Is there stewed mutton?”

  The owners of the restaurant had changed, but there were still stewed mutton on the menu, wobbly lamps on the tables, evergreens in tubs, and Chavignol in carafes.

  All four of them were in high spirits. Over coffee, Pardon had taken a magazine with a white cover out of his pocket.

  “You know, Maigret, there’s something about you in the Lancet.”

  The chief-inspector, who knew the famous and austere English medical journal by name, had frowned.

  “I mean there’s something about your profession. It’s in an article by a certain Dr. Richard Fox and this is the passage that concerns you:

  “ ‘A skilled psychiatrist, using his scientific knowledge and the experience gained in his consulting-room, is in a fairly good position to understand his fellow human beings. But it is possible, especially if he allows himself to be influenced by theories, that he will understand them less perfectly than a good schoolmaster, a novelist or a detective.’ ”

  They had talked about this for some time, now jokingly, now more seriously. Then the Maigrets had walked part of the way home through the silent streets.

  The chief-inspector could not know that this remark by the London doctor was going to come back to him several times during the following days, or that the memories awakened to him by this perfect month of May would appear to him almost in the guise of a premonition.

  The next day too, in the bus taking him towards the Châtelet, he found himself looking at people’s faces with the same curiosity as when he had been a newcomer to the capital.

  Climbing the staircase of Police Headquarters as a divisional chief-inspector, and being greeted respectfully on the way, seemed strange to him. Was it so long since the time when, very much over-awed, he had first entered this service whose chiefs still struck him as legendary beings?

  He felt at once gay and melancholy. With his window open, he went through his post, and sent for young Lapointe to give him some instructions.

  In twenty-five years the Seine had not changed, neither the boats passing by, nor the anglers sitting in the same places as if they had never budged.

  Puffing at his pipe, he was doing his housework, as he put it, clearing his desk of the dossiers piling up on it, and dealing with unimportant business, when the telephone rang.

  “Can you come and see me for a moment, Maigret?” asked the Director.

  The chief-inspector made his way unhurriedly to the Director’s office, where he remained standing by the window.

  “I’ve just had a curious phone call from the Quai d’Orsay. Not from the Foreign Minister in person but from his principal private secretary. He asked me to send over there straight away somebody capable of assuming responsibilities. Those are the words he used.

  “ ‘An inspector?’ ” I asked.

  “ ‘Somebody of a higher rank would be preferable. It’s probably something to do with a crime.’ ”

  The two men looked at one another with a hint of malice in their eyes, for neither of them had a high regard for ministries of any sort, least of all a ministry as starchy as the Foreign Office.

  “I thought that you would like to go yourself … ”

  “Perhaps it would be best … ”

  The Director picked up a paper from his desk and held it out to Maigret.

  “You have to ask for a certain Monsieur Cromières. He is expecting you.”

  “Is he the principal private secretary?”

  “No. He is the person who is handling the case.”

  “Shall I take an inspector along with me?”

  “I don’t know anything more about the business than what I have just told you. Those people like being mysterious.”

  Maigret finally picked on Janvier to accompany him and the two of them took a taxi. At the Quai d’Orsay they were not directed towards the great staircase but towards a narrow, unprepossessing staircase at the back of the courtyard, as if they were being shown in by the side-door or the tradesmen’s entrance. They wandered along the corridors for quite a while before finding a waiting-room where an usher wearing a chain, unimpressed by the name of Maigret, made him fill in a form.

  At last they were shown into a room where an official, very young and dapper, was standing silent and motionless opposite an old woman as impassive as himself. One had the impression that they had been waiting like that for a long time, probably since the telephone call from the Quai d’Orsay to Police Headquarters.

  “Chief-Inspector Maigret?”

  The latter introduced Janvier, to whom the young man granted only a distant glance.

  “Not knowing what the trouble was, I took the precaution of bringing along one of my inspectors … ”

  “Take a seat.”

  Young Cromières was trying hard to look important and there was something very ‘Foreign Office’ about his condescending manner of speaking.

  “If the Quai got in touch straight away with Police Headquarters … ”

  He pronounced the word ‘Quai’ as if he were talking about some sacrosanct institution.

  “ … it was because, Chief-Inspector, we are faced with a somewhat exceptional situation … ”

  While looking at him, Maigret also kept an eye on the old woman, who was apparently deaf in one ear, for she bent forward to hear better, cocking her head to one side and watching the movements of the men’s lips.

  “Mademoiselle … ”

  Cromières consulted a form on his desk.

  “Mademoiselle Larrieu is the maidservant, or the housekeeper, of one of the most distinguished of our former ambassadors, the Comte de Saint-Hilaire, of whom you must have heard … ”

  Maigret remembered having seen the name in the papers, but that struck him as going back a very long time.

  “Since he retired about twelve years ago, the Comte de Saint-Hilaire had been living in Paris, in his flat in the Rue Sain
t-Dominique. This morning Mademoiselle Larrieu came here at half past eight and had to wait some time before being shown into the presence of a responsible official.”

  Maigret pictured to himself the deserted offices at half past eight in the morning, and the old woman sitting motionless in the ante-room, her eyes fixed on the door.

  “Mademoiselle Larrieu has been in the Comte de Saint-Hilaire’s service for over forty years.”

  “Forty-two,” she specified.

  “Forty-two years. She accompanied him on his various missions and she looked after his house. During the past twelve years, she was the only person living with the ambassador in the Rue Saint-Dominique flat. It was there, this morning, that after finding the bedroom empty when she took in her master’s breakfast, she discovered him in his study, dead.”

  The old woman looked at each of them in turn, with sharp, searching, suspicious eyes.

  “From what she says, Saint-Hilaire would appear to have been hit by one or more bullets.”

  “She didn’t call the police?”

  The fair-haired young man assumed a conceited expression.

  “I can understand your surprise. But do not forget that Mademoiselle Larrieu has spent a large part of her life in the diplomatic world. For all that the Comte de Saint-Hilaire was no longer on the active list, she considered that in the Service there are certain rules of discretion … ”

  Maigret winked at Janvier.

  “She didn’t think of sending for a doctor either?”

  “It seems there can be no doubt about the question of death.”

  “Who is over there in the Rue Saint-Dominique now?”

  “Nobody. Mademoiselle Larrieu came straight here. To avoid any misunderstanding and waste of time, I am authorized to inform you that the Comte de Saint-Hilaire was not in possession of any state secrets and that you must not look for a political reason for his death. However, extreme prudence is none the less indispensable. When a well-known man is involved in something of this sort, especially if he has been in the Service, the newspapers are only too apt to give enormous prominence to the affair and to put forward the most improbable hypotheses … ”

  The young man stood up.

  “If you will be good enough to come with me, we will go over there now.”

  “You too?” Maigret asked with an innocent air.

  “Oh, have no fear. I have no intention of interfering with your inquiries. If I accompany you, it is simply to make sure that there is nothing there which might cause us any embarrassment.”

  The old woman stood up too. All four went downstairs.

  “We had better take a taxi. That would be less conspicuous than one of the Quai limousines … ”

  The journey was ludicrously short. The car drew up in front of an imposing late eighteenth-century building outside which there was no crowd, no inquisitive onlookers. Under the archway, once they had gone through the main entrance, it felt suddenly cool, and in what looked more like a drawing-room than a lodge they could see a uniformed concierge as impressive as the usher at the Ministry.

  They went up four steps on the left. The lift was standing motionless in a hall of dark marble. The old woman took a key out of her handbag and opened a walnut door.

  “This way … ”

  She led them along a corridor to a room which obviously overlooked the courtyard but where the shutters and the curtains were closed. It was Mademoiselle Larrieu who turned on the electric light, and beside a mahogany desk they saw a body lying on the red carpet.

  The three men removed their hats in a single movement, while the old servant looked at them with an almost defiant air.

  “What did I tell you?” she seemed to be muttering.

  Sure enough, there was no need to bend over the body to see that the Comte de Saint-Hilaire was well and truly dead. One bullet had entered by way of the right eye, blowing open the skull, and judging by the tears in the black velvet dressing-gown and by the bloodstains, other bullets had struck the body in several places.

  Monsieur Cromières was the first to go up to the desk.

  “You see this? It would appear that he was busy correcting proofs … ”

  “He was writing a book?”

  “His memoirs. Two volumes have already appeared. But it would be absurd to look for the reason for his death there, because Saint-Hilaire was the most discreet of men and his memoirs were more literary and picturesque than political in character.”

  Cromières was talking in flowery language, listening to himself talk, and Maigret began to feel irritated. There they were, the four of them, in a room with the shutters closed, at ten o’clock in the morning, while the sun was shining outside, looking at an old man’s disjointed, blood-spattered body.

  “I suppose,” muttered the chief-inspector, not without a certain irony, “that in spite of everything this is still a matter for the Public Prosecutor?”

  There was a telephone on the desk, but he preferred not to touch it.

  “Janvier, go and phone from the lodge. Get the Prosecutor and the local police inspector … ”

  The old woman kept looking at them, one after another, as if it were her job to watch them. Her eyes were hard, with no sympathy, no human warmth in them.

  “What are you doing?” asked Maigret, seeing the man from the Quai d’Orsay opening the doors of a bookcase.

  “I am just having a look … ”

  He added, with a self-assurance that was unpleasant in a young fellow of his age:

  “It is my duty to make quite sure that there aren’t any papers here the divulgation of which would be inopportune … ”

  Was he as young as he looked? To what service did he belong in fact? Without waiting for the chief-inspector’s permission, he examined the contents of the bookcase, opening files and putting them back one after another.

  In the meantime, Maigret walked up and down, impatient, out of temper.

  Cromières started on the other pieces of furniture, rummaging in the drawers, and the old woman remained standing by the door with her hat on and her bag in her hand.

  “Will you take me to his bedroom?”

  She went in front of the man from the Quai, while Maigret stayed in the study where Janvier soon joined him.

  “Where are they?”

  “In the bedroom … ”

  “What are we doing?”

  “For the moment, nothing. I’m waiting for the young gentleman to be good enough to leave the place to us.”

  It was not just Cromières who irritated the chief-inspector. It was also the way in which the case presented itself, and perhaps, above all else, the unfamiliar atmosphere into which he had suddenly been plunged.

  “The local inspector will be here in a minute.”

  “You’ve phoned the Criminal Records Office?”

  “Moers is on the way with his men.”

  “And the Public Prosecutor?”

  “I’ve phoned them too.”

  The study was roomy and comfortable. Though there was nothing solemn about it, the place had an air of distinction which had struck the chief-inspector as soon as he had come in. Every piece of furniture, every object was beautiful in itself. And the old man on the floor, with his head practically blown off, retained, in this setting, a certain grandeur.

  Cromières returned, followed by the old housekeeper.

  “I don’t think there is anything more for me to do here. Once again, I recommend prudence and discretion to you. It cannot be a case of suicide, seeing that there is no weapon in the room. We are agreed on that point, I presume? As to whether a theft has been committed, I leave that to you to discover. In any case, it would be regrettable if the Press were to give undue prominence to this affair … ”

  Maigret looked at him in silence.

  “I shall ring you up, if you don’t mind, to find out what news you have,” the young man went on. “It is possible that you may need certain information, in which case you can always apply to me.”

&n
bsp; “Thank you.”

  “In a chest of drawers in the bedroom, you will find a number of letters which will probably surprise you. It is an old story which everybody knows at the Quai d’Orsay and which has nothing to do with this affair.”

  He retired regretfully.

  “I count on you … ”

  The old woman followed him to shut the door behind him, and returned a little later without either hat or handbag. She had not come back to put herself at the chief-inspector’s disposal, but rather to keep an eye on the two men.

  “Do you sleep in the flat?”

  When Maigret spoke to her, she was not looking at him, and she did not seem to have heard him. He repeated his question in a louder voice. This time she cocked her head, turning her good ear towards him.

  “Yes. I have a little room behind the kitchen.”

  “There aren’t any other servants?”

  “Not here, no.”

  “You do the housework and the cooking here?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventy.”

  “And the Comte de Saint-Hilaire?”

  “Seventy-seven.”

  “When did you leave him last night?”

  “About ten o’clock.”

  “He was in his study?”

  “Yes.”

  “He wasn’t expecting anybody?”

  “He didn’t say so.”

  “Did anybody ever come to see him in the evening?”

  “His nephew.”

  “Where does his nephew live?”

  “In the Rue Jacob. He is an antique-dealer.”

  “Is he called Saint-Hilaire too?”

  “No, he is the son of Monsieur’s sister. His name is Mazeron.”

  “You’ve got that, Janvier? … This morning, when you found the body … Because it was this morning you found it, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. At eight o’clock.”

  “You didn’t think of ringing Monsieur Mazeron?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She did not answer. She had the fixed stare of certain birds and, like certain birds too, she sometimes remained perched on one leg.