Maigret and the Wine Merchant Page 12

  At half past nine, he got up again and went over to the window. There was a man standing on the opposite pavement, a man who was looking up and appeared to be staring at the windows of the Maigrets’ apartment.

  Madame Maigret, who was sitting by the table, opened her mouth to ask a question. At the same time her gaze fell on her husband’s broad back. Maigret was standing stock still, tense, appearing more solid than ever.

  There was something mysterious, almost solemn, in his sudden paralysis.

  Maigret looked at the man without daring to move, as if he were afraid of scaring him, while the man gazed at him through the net curtains where all he could probably see was a silhouette.

  One day, in Meung-sur-Loire, when Maigret had been lounging in a deckchair, a squirrel had come down from the plane tree at the bottom of the garden.

  At first, it had kept perfectly still and he could see its heart pounding beneath the silky fur on its chest. Then it crept a few centimetres closer and froze again.

  While Maigret hardly dared breathe, the little red animal stared at him fixedly, seemingly fascinated by him, but its entire body remained taut, ready to flee.

  It all unfolded as if in slow-motion, step by step. The squirrel grew bolder, reducing the distance between them by a good metre. This cautious approach had gone on for more than ten minutes and the squirrel had ended up barely fifty metres from Maigret’s dangling hand.

  Did it want to be stroked? In any case, that wasn’t going to happen this time. It had looked at Maigret’s hand, then his face, then the hand again and scampered nimbly back to the tree.

  This memory came back to Maigret as he stared at the shape of the man on the pavement opposite. Gilbert Pigou too was as if entranced by Maigret, in whose footsteps he’d been following, in a way, throughout the investigation.

  But, just like the squirrel, he was ready to scamper at the slightest warning. There was no point Maigret getting dressed and going downstairs. He would find the pavement deserted. Telephoning the nearest police station would be futile too.

  Was the man trying to summon the courage to cross the road and enter the building? It wasn’t impossible. He had no friends, no one to confide in.

  He had done what he had decided to do: kill Oscar Chabut. Then he’d run away. Why run away? A reflex, most likely. What was he planning to do now? Carry on acting like a hunted man?

  It must have gone on for ten minutes, as with the squirrel. At one point the man took a step forward, but, almost at once, he turned around and, after one last glance up at the window, walked off in the direction of Rue du Chemin-Vert.

  Maigret’s bulky form relaxed. He stayed in front of the window for a moment, as if to get back to his usual self, then he went to take a pipe from the dresser.

  ‘Was it him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think he wants to come and see you?’

  ‘He’s tempted. I think he’s afraid of being disappointed. A man like him is very prickly. He wants to be understood, but at the same time he believes no one can understand him.’

  ‘What is he going to do?’

  ‘Probably walk, go heaven knows where, alone, mulling his thoughts over in his head, maybe muttering out loud.’

  He had barely sat back down in his armchair when the telephone rang, and he picked up the receiver.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Inspector Maigret?’

  ‘Yes, my boy.’

  He recognized Lapointe’s voice.

  ‘We’ve already got a result, chief. Thanks to the squad from the first arrondissement, and especially to one of them, Inspector Lebœuf in particular, who knows Les Halles like the back of his hand. Until a fortnight ago, Pigou occupied a room, if you can call it a room, in Rue de la Grande-Truanderie.’

  Maigret knew that street, which, at night, was like an eighteenth-century slum. All you saw were human wretches who had gathered to drink red wine or broth in sordid bars. Some spent the night there, sitting on their chairs or leaning against the wall. There were as many women as men and they were not the least drunk or the least filthy.

  They were really the lowest of the low, the dregs, and it was more squalid there than under the bridges. In the street with its ancient cobblestones, other women, most of them elderly and shapeless, waited for clients in the doorways of lodging houses.

  ‘He was at the Hôtel du Cygne. Three francs a day for an iron bedstead and a straw mattress. No running water. Toilets in the yard.’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘It seems that at night he worked unloading the fruit and vegetable lorries. He only came back in the small hours and stayed in bed most of the day.’

  ‘When did he leave the hotel?’

  ‘The owner says he hasn’t seen him for two weeks. His room was rented out to someone else straight away.’

  ‘Are they still searching the neighbourhood?’

  ‘Yes. There are fifteen of them on the case. The officers from the first arrondissement are asking whether they should organize a raid, as they sometimes do.’

  ‘That’s the last thing I want. You did tell them to keep a low profile, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, chief.’

  ‘Any news from the others?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘A few minutes ago, Pigou was here, on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.’

  ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘From my window. He was standing on the pavement opposite.’

  ‘Didn’t you try to talk to him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he leave?’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps he’ll be back. It’s possible that he’ll change his mind at the last minute and walk away again.’

  ‘Do you have any other instructions for me?’

  ‘No. Goodnight, my boy.’

  ‘Goodnight, chief.’

  Maigret felt weighed down and, before sitting down again, he poured himself a little glass of plum brandy.

  ‘Don’t you think that will make you hot?’

  ‘People drink grogs when they have flu, don’t they? Which doesn’t please Pardon, by the way.’

  ‘It’s time we invited them to dinner. We haven’t seen them for over a month.’

  ‘Let me wrap this up. Lapointe has news. We now know where Pigou spent several weeks, if not months. In a hovel in Les Halles poetically called the Hôtel du Cygne.’

  ‘Has he left there?’

  ‘Two weeks ago.’

  Maigret refused to go to bed before a reasonable hour, and the earliest reasonable hour for him was ten o’clock. From time to time, he glanced at the clock, then he tried to read his newspaper. After scanning a few lines, he would have been incapable of saying what they were about.

  ‘You’re dropping with exhaustion.’

  ‘In ten minutes we’ll go to bed.’

  ‘Well, take your temperature.’

  ‘If you like.’

  She brought him the thermometer and he kept it obediently under his tongue for five minutes.

  ‘Thirty-eight.’

  ‘Tomorrow, if you still have a fever, I’m telephoning Pardon, whether you like it or not.’

  ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday.’

  ‘Pardon will still come out.’

  Madame Maigret went to change into her nightdress. She talked to him from the bedroom.

  ‘I don’t like it when your throat starts getting red. In a minute, I’m going to dab it.’

  ‘You know that’s likely to make me vomit.’

  ‘You won’t feel a thing. You said the same thing last time and everything was fine.’

  She’d painted a viscous liquid based on methylene blue on his throat with a brush. It was an old-fashioned remedy, but she had remained faithful to it for more than twenty years.

  ‘Open your mouth.’

  Before going to bed, he couldn’t help going to look out of the window one last time before closing the shutters.

  There was no one on the pavement opposite and the wind was blowing furious
ly, raising the dust along the reservation running down the centre of the boulevard.

  He was sleeping so deeply that it took him a while to surface from his feverish slumber. Something alive was touching his arm insistently, and his reflex was to recoil.

  It was a hand, which seemed to be trying to tell him something, and he pushed it away a second time and attempted to roll over.

  ‘Maigret …’

  His wife’s voice was barely audible.

  ‘He’s here, on the landing. He didn’t dare ring the bell, but he knocked gently. Can you hear me?’

  ‘What?’

  He stretched out his arm to switch on the bedside light and looked about him in surprise. What had he just been dreaming? He’d already forgotten, but he felt as if he were coming back from a very long way away, from another world.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘He’s here. He knocked quietly on the door.’

  Maigret got up and went to fetch his dressing gown from the armchair.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Half past two.’

  He picked up the pipe he hadn’t finished when he went to bed and relit it.

  ‘You’re not afraid of—’

  He turned on the light as he went into the sitting room, headed towards the front door, stood still for a moment and finally opened it.

  The landing light on a time switch had long gone out and the man emerged from the shadows, illuminated by the lights from the apartment. He cast around for something to say. He must have prepared a lengthy speech, but, confronted by Maigret in a dressing gown, his hair tousled, just a couple of feet away, he was so overawed that all he could do was stammer:

  ‘I’m disturbing you, aren’t I?’

  ‘Come in, Pigou.’

  He could still dive down the stairs and flee, because he was younger and more agile than Maigret. Once inside the apartment, it would be too late, and Maigret was careful to stay still, as with the squirrel.

  Pigou wavered for what was probably only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. He stepped inside. Maigret thought briefly of locking the door and putting the key in his pocket, but he ended up shrugging.

  ‘Aren’t you cold?’

  ‘The night isn’t warm. The icy wind’s the worst.’

  ‘Sit down there. When you’ve warmed up you can take off your raincoat.’

  He went to the bedroom door, and called from the passage to his wife, who was getting dressed:

  ‘Make us two grogs.’

  After which, relaxed, he sat down facing his visitor. At last he was seeing him close up. He had rarely been as curious about anyone as he was about this man.

  What surprised him most was Pigou’s youthful age. His round, slightly chubby face had something unfinished about it, something childlike.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Forty-four.’

  ‘You don’t look it.’

  ‘Did you ask for a grog for me?’

  ‘For myself too. I’ve got flu, perhaps a throat infection, and it will do me good.’

  ‘I don’t normally drink, apart from a glass of wine with each meal. You find me dirty, don’t you? I haven’t been able to wash my clothes for a long time. The last time I had a wash in hot water was a week ago, in a public bathhouse in Rue Saint-Martin.’

  They eyed each other while talking cagily.

  ‘I was expecting you to come earlier.’

  ‘Did you see me?’

  ‘I even sensed that you were hesitating. You took a step forward, and then you went off in the direction of Rue du Chemin-Vert.’

  ‘I could see your shape at the window. As I was in the dark, I didn’t know whether you could see me, or, more importantly, recognize me.’

  He started on hearing a noise, again like the squirrel. It was Madame Maigret bringing the grogs. She tactfully avoided staring at the visitor.

  ‘A lot of sugar?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Lemon?’

  She prepared his drink and put the glass on the pedestal table in front of him. Then she served her husband.

  ‘Call me if you need anything.’

  ‘Who knows? Maybe another grog, later.’

  It was obvious that Pigou was well-mannered and determined to behave properly. Glass in hand, he waited until Maigret took the first sip before drinking.

  ‘It’s scalding hot, but it does you good, doesn’t it?

  ‘In any case, it will warm you up. Now you can take off your raincoat.’

  He did so. His suit, which was not badly cut, was crumpled and had a few stains, including quite a large white paint stain.

  Now, they couldn’t think of anything to say. They both knew that when they spoke again, it would be to broach serious matters, and they were both reluctant to do so, for different reasons.

  The silence lasted for a long time. They each took another sip of grog. Maigret got up to go and fill another pipe.

  ‘Do you smoke?’

  ‘I don’t have any cigarettes left.’

  There were some in the dresser drawer and Maigret offered them to his visitor. Flustered, Pigou looked at him as if he couldn’t believe his eyes as Maigret brought a lighted match close to the cigarette.

  They were both sitting down again and then Pigou said:

  ‘Firstly, I must apologize for disturbing you at home, in the middle of the night to boot … I was afraid to come to Quai des Orfèvres. And I couldn’t carry on walking alone through the streets of Paris.’

  Maigret didn’t miss a single expression on his face. In the privacy of the apartment, a grog within reach, his pipe in his mouth, he looked like a kind old man you could confide in.

  7.

  ‘What do you think of me?’

  These were almost the first words he’d spoken and Maigret could tell that, for him, this question was capital. He must have been seeking the reply in people’s eyes all his life.

  How should he answer?

  ‘I don’t know you yet,’ mumbled Maigret with a smile.

  ‘Are you this kind to all criminals?’

  ‘I can be very nasty too.’

  ‘With what kind of people, for example?’

  ‘Men like Oscar Chabut.’

  All of a sudden, Pigou’s eyes lit up, as if he’d just found an ally.

  ‘You know, it’s true that I stole a little money from him. Barely what he spent each month on tips. But he was the real thief. He stole my dignity and my manly pride. He humiliated me to the point where I was almost ashamed to be alive.’

  ‘What gave you the idea of helping yourself from petty cash?’

  ‘I have to tell you everything, don’t I?’

  ‘Otherwise there would be no point in your coming here.’

  ‘You’ve seen my wife. What do you think of her?’

  ‘I don’t know her very well. She got married so that she could give up her job and I’m surprised she carried on working for three years.’

  ‘Two and a half years.’

  ‘She is one of those women who want to live a nice, cosy little life.’

  ‘You guessed that?’

  ‘It’s very obvious.’

  ‘Often, in the evenings, I was the one who had to do the housework. If I’d listened to her, we’d have eaten out every night to save her the effort of cooking. I don’t think it’s her fault. She’s lethargic. Her sisters are like her.’

  ‘Do they live in Paris?’

  ‘One is in Algiers, married to a petroleum engineer. Another lives in Marseille and has three children.’

  ‘Why don’t you have children?’

  ‘I would have liked to, but Liliane categorically refused to have any.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘She has a third sister and a brother who—’

  He shook his head.

  ‘What’s the use of talking about all that. It sounds as if I’m trying to avoid taking full responsibility.’

  He took a sip of rum and lit a sec
ond cigarette.

  ‘I’m keeping you up, at this hour—’

  ‘Go on. Your wife also humiliated you.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She reprimanded you for not earning enough, didn’t she?’

  ‘She was forever saying that she wondered how she could have married me.

  ‘Then she’d sigh:

  ‘“To spend my entire life in a one-bedroom apartment and with no cleaning woman!”’

  He seemed to be talking to himself. He didn’t look at Maigret but stared at a corner of the rug.

  ‘Was she unfaithful?’

  ‘Yes. From the first year of our marriage. I only found out two or three years later. One day, I’d had to leave the office early to go to the dentist, and I saw her on the arm of a man, near the Madeleine church, and the pair of them went into a hotel.’

  ‘Did you speak to her about it?’

  ‘Yes. But she was the one who heaped abuse on me. I wasn’t providing the sort of life a young woman could expect. In the evenings, I was sleepy and she almost had to drag me by force to the cinema. Home truths like that. Including that I didn’t satisfy her sexually …’

  He had blushed at those last words and that accusation must have been the most painful of all.

  ‘One day, on her birthday, three years ago, I dipped into the till just for the money to pay for a good dinner, and I took her to a restaurant on the Grands Boulevards.

  ‘“I think I’m about to get a rise,” I told her.

  ‘“About time too. Your boss ought to be ashamed to be paying you so little. If I were to go and see him, I’d give him a piece of my mind.”’

  ‘You only took small amounts?’

  ‘Yes. At first, I said I’d received an increase of fifty francs a month. She soon found that wasn’t enough and I gave myself a rise, so to speak, of a hundred francs.’

  ‘Weren’t you afraid of being found out?’

  ‘It had become a habit. No one audited my books. It was such a small thing amid all the machinery of the company’s finances!’

  ‘Once, you took a five-hundred-franc note.’

  ‘It was for Christmas. I said I’d been given a bonus. I almost ended up believing it myself. It boosted my self-respect.

  ‘You see, I’ve never had a high opinion of myself. My father would have liked me to work at the Crédit Lyonnais like him, but I’d have had to suffer the comparison with people who are much cleverer than me. At Quai de Charenton, I worked quietly in my corner and no one ever really took any notice of me.’