Lock No. 1 Page 13

  There was no one in the room. The bed had not been slept in, and the nightshirt provided by Madame Ducrau still lay, arms widespread, on the counterpane.

  ‘Gassin!’

  The window was not open and Maigret couldn’t help giving Lucas a suspicious look. But Ducrau had seen something, a dangling length of curtain cord. Cool and collected, he stepped forwards and drew back the fabric.

  A body, dark and elongated, was hanging against the wall. The cord was not very strong for, at the first touch, it snapped, and the old man collapsed on to the floor, a heavy mass, like a statue, so that it seemed that he might shatter.

  The smell of stale pipe-smoke still lingered in the dining room, where the dirty glasses and ashtrays had not been cleared away. The tablecloth was stained from the night before. The car was waiting just outside the window, which had just been opened.

  Nothing had been said to Madame Ducrau. The young couple, who could be heard moving about upstairs, had yet to come down.

  Ducrau was eating with his elbows on the table. It was amazing how much he ate for breakfast, grimly, as if stalked by the most voracious hunger. He didn’t speak. His jaws made a noise. He made even more as he slurped his café au lait.

  ‘Fetch down my jacket and my collar and tie.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to get dressed in your room?’

  ‘Just do as you’re told.’

  He was looking straight in front of him. He ate quickly. When he finally stood to put on the jacket which his wife was holding for him, he was breathing hard.

  ‘I’ve packed a case for you.’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to wait until Berthe …’

  She pointed to the ceiling, but he did not even bother to respond.

  ‘What about Gassin?’

  ‘Inspector Lucas is taking care of that,’ broke in Maigret.

  Lucas had already phoned both the local police and the public prosecutor’s office.

  Then Ducrau and Maigret left with indecent haste. Ducrau kissed his wife on the forehead, probably without being aware of what he was doing.

  ‘Did you mean it, Émile. Are we to go back to the old tin tub?’

  ‘Yes, yes, sure we are!’

  He was in a hurry. It was as if something was drawing him on. He settled himself heavily into the back of his car, and it was Maigret who said to the driver:

  ‘Charenton!’

  They did not turn and look back. What was the point? They’d gone several kilometres through the forest of Fontainebleau when Ducrau gripped Maigret’s arm and said:

  ‘It’s perfectly true: I don’t even know why I slept with his wife!’

  And, without pausing, he said to the chauffeur:

  ‘Can’t you go any faster?’

  His beard had grown, he had not washed, and his face looked dirty. He felt vainly for his pipe, which he had forgotten, until the chauffeur finally handed him cigarettes in a blue packet.

  ‘You may or may not believe this, but I’ve rarely been as happy as I was last night. It’s hard to explain. Do you know what my old lady did when we were in bed? She snuggled up to me and cried and said I was a good man!’

  His voice sounded congested, as if a whole host of words were clogging his throat.

  ‘Faster, damn you!’ he urged, leaning over the chauffeur’s shoulder.

  They sped through Corbeil, Juvisy, Villejuif, and weaved through all the cars belonging to the owners of villas who returned to Paris every Monday morning. There was as much sun as the previous evening. The rain had merely served to green up the fields and the trees. They stopped at a petrol station, where eight red pumps were lined up in the sunshine. The chauffeur turned to his employer:

  ‘Do you have a hundred francs?’

  Ducrau just handed him his wallet.

  At last they drove into Paris, down Avenue d’Orléans, along the Seine. The windows of the company’s offices were being cleaned when they got to Quai des Célestins. Ducrau leaned against the car door. When they reached a small bar, he stopped the car.

  ‘Is it all right if I buy a pipe and some tobacco?’

  Inside, all he could get was a cherrywood pipe costing two francs. He filled it slowly as the quays slipped by. They passed the stockpiled barrels at Bercy.

  ‘Slow down!’

  They sensed rather than saw the lock, above which reared an empty barge which had been raised to the top in the chamber.

  The stone-crusher was already working. Washing had been hung out to dry on the boats moored at the quayside.

  In the bar, men in sailors’ caps recognized the boss and crowded round the window.

  ‘I think it would be best …’ began Ducrau.

  But he overcame a moment of weakness and walked down the stone steps. He did not spare a glance for his house, nor for the open window, through which the maid was visible. He stepped on to the Golden Fleece’s flimsy gangplank. People on the other barges waved to him.

  He bent over the hatch at the same moment as Maigret and, also at the same moment as him, he saw Aline, with one breast bared, holding a baby in her arms, sitting at a table spread with a cloth embroidered with roses. She cradled the child. She was looking straight in front of her. And whenever her breast escaped from the eager little mouth, she restored it with a practised gesture.

  It was hot. The stove had been lit for some time. From a clothes hook hung a heavy jacket belonging to old Gassin, and his shoes, ready-polished, had been placed under it.

  With a slow but firm movement of his arm, Maigret prevented Ducrau from going further, drew him to the tiller and held out a letter which had been written on paper supplied by a bar.

  I’m writing to let you know that I am well and I hope that this finds you likewise …

  Ducrau did not understand. Then slowly it came back to him: the inn, the village in the Haute-Marne and Gassin’s sister, whom he had known, once upon a time.

  ‘She’ll be well looked after there,’ said Maigret.

  The sun was growing warmer. A passing boatman shouted:

  ‘The Albatross has broken down at Meaux!’

  He meant it for Ducrau and was very surprised not to get a reply.

  ‘Shall we go?’

  All around people were staring at them. One of them even came up to them on the quayside and touched his cap:

  ‘Got a minute, boss? It’s about the stone that’s to be unloaded …’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘Thing is …’

  ‘Dammit, Hubert, leave me alone!’

  The brightly coloured livery of a tram unwound over the grey cobbles. The stone-crusher seemed to be pulverizing the whole district, and a fine white dust settled over everything.

  The car had turned round. Ducrau was looking back through the small rear window.

  ‘It’s wonderful!’ he sighed.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Oh nothing.’

  Was it that Maigret really did not understand? Now it was he who wanted the chauffeur to go faster. It felt to him that every minute which ticked by was a danger. Ducrau was sweating profusely. At one point, just as they were overtaking a tram, his hand gripped the handle of the door.

  But no, he behaved himself!

  Then they were driving over the Pont-Neuf. The driver turned and asked:

  ‘Want to stop at the tobacconist’s?’

  For the Henri IV bar-cum-tobacconist’s was still there, red and blue, opposite the equestrian statue.

  ‘Pull up here,’ said Maigret. ‘Then drive back to Samois and wait …’

  Walking was better. They had only a hundred metres to go, still along the bank of the Seine. As they walked, Ducrau was on the parapet side.

  ‘So you can leave for your new place as of now?’ he said abruptly. ‘You’ll be gaining two days.’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Pretty country down that way, is it?’

  ‘It’s quiet.’

  Just twenty metres more, one road to c
ross and they’d be at the sombre buildings of the Palais de Justice, outside the main entrance of the police station, with the gate on the right-hand side.

  For the second time, Ducrau’s hand gripped the inspector’s arm and, as they crossed the road, he gasped:

  ‘I can’t do it!’

  He was talking about the Seine, the tram, the cord, anything that could prevent …

  Reaching the kerb, he turned round. The officer on sentry duty had saluted Maigret. The gate was already opening.

  ‘I can’t!’ Ducrau said again as he stepped into the echoing entrance hall while a nib was already being dipped into a bottle of the purple ink used to write down his name and surname in the station register.

  A tug travelling downstream sounded its hooter twice, the signal that it was taking the second arch, while a Belgian barge going upstream moved across the current and headed for the third.

  1.

  Maigret struggled to open his eyes, frowning, as if distrustful of the voice that had just shouted at him, dragging him out of a deep sleep:

  ‘Uncle!’

  His eyes still closed, he sighed, groped at the sheet and realized that this was no dream, that something was the matter, because his hand had not encountered Madame Maigret’s warm body where it should have been.

  Finally he opened his eyes. It was a clear night. Madame Maigret, standing by the leaded window, was pulling back the curtain while downstairs someone was banging on the door and the noise reverberated throughout the house.

  ‘Uncle! It’s me!’

  Madame Maigret was still looking out. Her hair wound in curling pins gave her a strange halo.

  ‘It’s Philippe,’ she said, knowing full well that Maigret was awake and that he was turned towards her, waiting. ‘Are you going to get up?’

  Maigret went downstairs first, barefoot in his felt slippers. He had hastily pulled on a pair of trousers and shrugged on his jacket as he descended the staircase. At the eighth stair, he had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the beam. He usually did so automatically, but this time he forgot and banged his forehead. He groaned and swore as he reached the freezing hall. He went into the kitchen, which was a little warmer.

  There were iron bars across the door. On the other side, Philippe was saying to someone:

  ‘I won’t be long. We’ll be in Paris before daylight.’

  Madame Maigret could be heard padding around upstairs. Maigret pulled open the door, surly from the knock he had just given himself.

  ‘It’s you!’ he muttered, seeing his nephew standing in the road.

  A huge moon floated above the leafless poplars, making the sky so light that the tiniest branches were silhouetted against it while, beyond the bend, the Loire was a glittering swarm of silvery spangles.

  ‘East wind!’ thought Maigret mechanically, as would any local on seeing the surface of the river whipped up.

  It is one of those country habits, as is standing in the doorway without saying anything, looking at the intruder and waiting for him to speak.

  ‘I hope I haven’t woken Aunt up, at least?’

  Philippe’s face was frozen stiff. Behind him the shape of a G7 taxi stood out incongruously against the white-frosted landscape.

  ‘Are you leaving the driver outside?’

  ‘I need to talk to you right away.’

  ‘Come inside quickly, both of you,’ called Madame Maigret from the kitchen where she was lighting an oil lamp.

  She added to her nephew:

  ‘We haven’t got electricity yet. The house has been wired, but we’re waiting to be connected to the power supply.’

  A lightbulb was dangling from a flex. People notice little details like that for no reason. And when they are already on edge, it is the sort of thing that can irritate them. During the minutes that followed, Philippe’s eyes kept returning to that bulb, which served no purpose other than to emphasize everything that was antiquated about this rustic house, or rather everything that is precarious about modern comforts.

  ‘Have you come from Paris?’

  Maigret was leaning against the chimney breast, not properly awake yet. The presence of the taxi on the road made the question as redundant as the lightbulb, but sometimes people speak for the sake of saying something.

  ‘I’m going to tell you everything, Uncle. I’m in big trouble. If you don’t help me, if you don’t come to Paris with me, I don’t know what will become of me. I’m going out of my mind. I’m in such a state I even forgot to give my aunt a kiss.’

  Madame Maigret stood there, having slipped a dressing gown over her nightdress. Philippe’s lips brushed her cheek three times, performing the ritual like a child. Then he sat down at the table, clutching his head in his hands.

  Maigret filled his pipe as he watched him, while his wife stacked twigs in the fireplace. There was something strange in the air, something threatening. Since Maigret had retired, he had lost the habit of getting up in the middle of the night and he couldn’t help being reminded of nights spent beside a sick person or a dead body.

  ‘I don’t know how I could have been so stupid!’ Philippe suddenly sobbed.

  He poured out his tale of woe in a sudden rush, punctuated by hiccups. He looked about him like a person seeking to pin his agitation on something, while, in contrast to this outburst of emotion, Maigret turned up the wick of the oil lamp and the first flames leapt up from the fireplace.

  ‘First of all, you’re going to drink something.’

  The uncle took a bottle of brandy and two glasses from a cupboard that contained some leftover food and smelled of cold meat. Madame Maigret put on her clogs to go and fetch some logs from the woodshed.

  ‘To your good health! Now try to calm down.’

  The smell of burning twigs mingled with that of the brandy. Philippe, dazed, watched his aunt loom silently out of the darkness, her arms filled with logs.

  He was short-sighted and, seen from a certain angle, his eyes looked enormous behind his spectacle lenses, giving him the appearance of a frightened child.

  ‘It happened last night. I was supposed to be on a stakeout in Rue Fontaine—’

  ‘Just a moment,’ interrupted Maigret, sitting astride a straw-bottomed chair and lighting his pipe. ‘Who are you working with?’

  ‘With Chief Inspector Amadieu.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Drawing gently on his pipe, Maigret narrowed his eyes and stared at the lime-plastered wall and the shelf with copper saucepans, caressing the images that were so familiar to him. At Quai des Orfèvres, Amadieu’s office was the last one on the left at the end of the corridor. Amadieu himself was a skinny, sad man who had been promoted to divisional chief when Maigret had retired.

  ‘Does he still have a drooping moustache?’

  ‘Yes. Yesterday we had a summons for Pepito Palestrino, the owner of the Floria, in Rue Fontaine.’

  ‘What number?’

  ‘Fifty-three, next to the optician.’

  ‘In my day, that was the Toréador. Cocaine dealing?’

  ‘Cocaine initially. Then something else too. The chief had heard rumours that Pepito was mixed up in the Barnabé job, the guy who was shot in Place Blanche a fortnight ago. You must have read about it in the papers.’

  ‘Make us some coffee!’ said Maigret to his wife.

  And, with the relieved sigh of a dog who finally settles down after chasing its tail, he leaned his elbows on the back of his chair and rested his chin on his folded hands. From time to time, Philippe removed his glasses to wipe the lenses and, for a few moments, he appeared to be blind. He was a tall, plump, auburn-haired boy with baby-pink skin.

  ‘You know that we can no longer do as we please. In your day, no one would have batted an eyelid at arresting Pepito in the middle of the night. But now, we have to keep to the letter of the law. That’s why the chief decided to carry out the arrest at eight o’clock in the morning. In the meantime, it was my job to keep an eye on the fellow …’

  He wa
s getting bogged down in the dense quiet of the room, then, with a start, he remembered his predicament and cast around helplessly.

  For Maigret, the few words spoken by his nephew exuded the whiff of Paris. He could picture the Floria’s neon sign, the doorman on the alert for cars arriving, and his nephew turning up in the neighbourhood that night.

  ‘Take off your overcoat, Philippe,’ interrupted Madame Maigret. ‘You’ll catch cold when you go outside.’

  He was wearing a dinner-jacket. It looked quite incongruous in the low-ceilinged kitchen with its heavy beams and red-tiled floor.

  ‘Have another drink—’

  But in a fresh outburst of anger Philippe jumped up, wringing his hands violently enough to crush his bones.

  ‘If only you knew, Uncle—’

  He was on the verge of tears, his eyes stayed dry. His gaze fell on the electric lightbulb again. He stamped his foot.

  ‘I bet I’ll be arrested later!’

  Madame Maigret, who was pouring boiling water over the coffee, turned around, saucepan in hand.

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  And Maigret, still puffing on his pipe, opened his night-shirt collar with its delicate red embroidery.

  ‘So you were on a stakeout opposite the Floria—’

  ‘Not opposite. I went inside,’ said Philippe, still on his feet. ‘At the back of the club there’s a little office where Pepito has set up a camp bed. That’s where he usually sleeps after closing up the joint.’

  A cart rumbled past on the road. The clock had stopped. Maigret glanced at his watch hanging from a nail above the fireplace. The hands showed half past four. In the cowsheds, milking had begun and carts were trundling to Orléans market. The taxi was still waiting outside the house.

  ‘I wanted to be clever,’ confessed Philippe. ‘Last week the chief yelled at me and told me—’

  He turned red and trailed off, trying to fix his gaze on something.

  ‘He told you—?’

  ‘I can’t remember—’

  ‘Well I can! If it’s Amadieu, he probably came out with something along the lines of: “You’re a maverick, young man, a maverick like your uncle!”’

  Philippe said neither yes nor no.