Maigret Hesitates Read online

  ‘This is my home, and I don’t have to give an account of my movements.’

  ‘When there’s a murder, you do. I did warn you when I asked the question.’

  ‘Does this mean you’re going to arrest me?’

  ‘I’m going to ask you to come with me to Quai des Orfèvres.’

  ‘Do you have a warrant?’

  ‘I have a blank summons. I just have to write your name.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then it will no longer depend on me.’

  ‘Who will it depend on?’

  ‘The examining magistrate. Then probably on the doctors.’

  ‘Do you think I’m mad?’

  He could see panic in her eyes.

  ‘Answer me. Do you think I’m mad?’

  ‘It’s not for me to say.’

  ‘I’m not mad, do you hear me? And, even if I did kill someone, which I continue to deny, it wasn’t in a fit of madness.’

  ‘May I ask you to give me your revolver?’

  ‘Take it yourself. It’s in the top drawer of my dressing table.’

  He went into the bedroom, where everything was pale pink. The two rooms, one blue, one pink, were reminiscent of a painting by Marie Laurencin.

  The bed, a big, low Louis XVI-style bed, was still unmade. The furniture was painted pale grey. On the dressing table were pots of cream, bottles, the whole array of products that women use to fight the ravages of time.

  He shrugged. This intimate display saddened him. He thought of Gus writing the first letter.

  Without his intervention, would things have happened in the same way?

  He took the revolver from the drawer, where there were also jewel boxes.

  He didn’t know what answer to give the question. Would Madame Parendon have attacked her husband instead of his secretary? Or would she have waited a few more days? Would she have used a different weapon?

  He frowned as he went back into the boudoir, where Madame Parendon was standing by the window with her back to him. He realized that this back was starting to stoop. The shoulders struck him as narrower and bonier.

  He had the gun in his hand.

  ‘I’ll be quite honest with you,’ he said. ‘I can’t establish anything yet, but I’m convinced that when you walked across the drawing room just after nine thirty, this revolver was in the pocket of your dressing gown. I even wonder if it wasn’t your husband you were intending to kill at that point. The testimony of the invalid in Rue du Cirque may make it possible to prove that. I assume you approached the door. You heard voices, because your husband was conferring with René Tortu. That’s when it occurred to you to perform a kind of substitution. Wouldn’t it affect your husband just as profoundly, if not more profoundly, if you killed Antoinette Vague rather than him? Not to mention the fact that, in doing so, you also made him a suspect.

  ‘After we first spoke yesterday, you prepared the ground. You continued today. On the pretext of looking for a stamp, or writing paper, or whatever, you went into her office. She greeted you distractedly and then bent over her work again. You spotted the scalpel and realized there was no point in using the revolver. It would have been too noisy anyway, and someone might have heard.’

  He fell silent, lit his pipe as if reluctantly and stood there, waiting, having slipped the mother-of-pearl gun into his pocket. Time passed. Madame Parendon’s shoulders had stopped moving. She wasn’t crying. She still had her back to him. When she finally turned to look at him, her face was pale and frozen.

  Nobody, looking at her, could have suspected what had happened that day on Avenue Marigny, let alone what had just happened in the blue boudoir.

  ‘I’m not mad,’ she said emphatically.

  He didn’t reply. What was the point? What did he know anyway?

  8.

  ‘Get dressed, madame,’ he said softly. ‘You can also pack a suitcase with spare underwear and personal objects. Perhaps you’d better call Lise.’

  ‘To be sure I won’t commit suicide? There’s no danger of that, don’t worry, but go ahead, press the button on your right.’

  He waited for Lise to arrive.

  ‘You’re going to help Madame Parendon.’

  Then he walked slowly along the corridor, head bowed towards the carpet. Losing his way after mistaking one corridor for another, he spotted Ferdinand and Madame Vauquin in the kitchen with the glass door. In front of Ferdinand, there was about half a litre bottle of red wine, from which he had just poured himself a glass. He sat with his elbows on the table, reading a newspaper.

  Maigret went in.

  They both jumped, and Ferdinand sprang to his feet.

  ‘Can I have a glass?’

  ‘I brought the other bottle back from the office.’

  What did it matter? At this point, an old Saint-Émilion or a cheap red …

  He didn’t dare say that he would have preferred the cheap red.

  He drank slowly, staring into space. He didn’t protest when Ferdinand refilled his glass.

  ‘Where are my men?’

  ‘By the cloakroom. They didn’t want to sit in the drawing room.’

  Instinctively, they were guarding the exit.

  ‘Lucas, go back to the corridor where you came to see me earlier. Stay outside the door of the boudoir and wait for me.’

  He went back to Ferdinand.

  ‘Is the chauffeur in the house?’

  ‘Do you need him? I’ll call him right away.’

  ‘What I want is for him to have the car ready under the archway in a few minutes. Are there any reporters in the street?’

  ‘Yes, monsieur.’

  ‘Photographers, too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He knocked at the door of Parendon’s office. Parendon was alone, looking through scattered papers and annotating them in red pencil. Seeing Maigret, he sat there motionless and looked at him without daring to ask him any questions. Behind the thick lenses, his blue eyes had an expression that was both gentle and of a sadness that Maigret had seldom encountered.

  Did he need to speak? Parendon had understood. While waiting for Maigret, he had clung to his papers as if to a piece of flotsam.

  ‘I think you’re going to have the opportunity to study Article 64 a little more, Monsieur Parendon.’

  ‘Has she confessed?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Do you think she will?’

  ‘The time will come, tonight, in ten days, in a month, when she’ll crack, and I prefer not to be there when it happens.’

  Parendon took his handkerchief from his pocket and started cleaning the lenses of his glasses as if it were an operation of major importance. As he did so, his pupils seemed to melt into the whites of his eyes. Only his mouth was left to express an almost childlike emotion.

  ‘Are you taking her away?’

  The voice was barely audible.

  ‘To avoid comments from the reporters and for her departure to be at least slightly dignified, she’ll take her car. I’ll give instructions to the chauffeur, and we’ll get to Quai des Orfèvres at the same time.’

  Parendon looked at him gratefully.

  ‘Don’t you want to see her?’ Maigret asked, although he suspected the answer.

  ‘To say what?’

  ‘I know. You’re right. Are the children here?’

  ‘Gus is at school. I don’t know if Bambi’s in her room or if she has a class this afternoon.’

  Maigret thought both of the one who was about to leave and those who were staying. Life was going to be difficult for them, too, at least for a while.

  ‘Did she say anything about me?’

  He asked the question shyly, almost timidly.

  ‘She said a lot about you.’

  Maigret realized now that it wasn’t in books that Madame Parendon had found the words that seemed to accuse her husband. It was in herself. She had performed a kind of transfer, projecting her own disturbance on to him.

  He glanced at the clock.


  ‘I’m giving her time to get dressed and pack a suitcase,’ he explained. ‘Lise is with her.’

  … if the accused was in a state of insanity at the time of the act, or if he was compelled by a force he was unable to …

  Men he had arrested because it was his job had been acquitted in court, others sentenced. Some, especially early in his career, had been condemned to death, and two of them had asked him to be there at the last moment.

  He had started by studying medicine. He had always regretted having to give up his studies because of circumstances. If he had been able to continue, wouldn’t he have chosen psychiatry?

  Then he would have been the one to answer the question:

  … if the accused was in a state of insanity at the time of the act, or if he was compelled by a force he was unable to …

  Perhaps he didn’t regret the interruption of his studies so much. He wouldn’t have to decide.

  Parendon stood up, came towards him hesitantly, awkwardly, and held out his little hand.

  ‘I …’

  But he couldn’t speak. They merely shook hands in silence, looking each other in the eyes. Then Maigret walked to the door and closed it behind him without turning round.

  He was surprised to see Lucas with Torrence by the exit. A glance from Lucas in the direction of the drawing room made it clear why he had left his post in the corridor.

  Madame Parendon was standing there in the middle of the vast room, dressed in a light-coloured tailored suit, a white hat and white gloves. Behind her stood Lise, holding a suitcase.

  ‘Go to the car, both of you, and wait for me.’

  He felt like a master of ceremonies, and he knew that he was always going to hate the moment he was living through now.

  He advanced towards Madame Parendon and bowed slightly. It was she who spoke, in a calm, natural voice.

  ‘I’ll follow you.’

  Lise went down with them in the lift. The chauffeur rushed to open the door and was surprised when Maigret didn’t get in the car behind his mistress.

  He went and put the suitcase in the boot.

  ‘I want you to take Madame Parendon straight to 36 Quai des Orfèvres, drive through the archway and turn left in the courtyard.’

  ‘Very well, inspector.’

  Maigret gave the car time to get through the line of reporters and photographers, who couldn’t figure out what was going on. Then, as they bombarded him with questions, he joined Lucas and Torrence in the little black police car.

  ‘Will you be making an arrest, Monsieur Maigret?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you identified the guilty party?’

  ‘I don’t know, boys.’

  He was being honest. The words of Article 64 came back into his mind, one by one, terrifying in their lack of precision.

  The sun was still shining, the chestnut trees were still turning green, and he recognized the same figures prowling around the president’s palace.

  1.

  ‘Do you know them?’ Madame Maigret asked in an undertone as her husband turned around to look at a couple they had just passed.

  The man had also turned around and was smiling. He even gave the impression he was about to retrace his steps to shake Maigret’s hand.

  ‘No … I don’t think so … I don’t know …’

  The man was short and stout, his wife barely taller than him and podgy. Why did Maigret have the feeling that she was Belgian? Because of her fair complexion, her almost yellow hair and her bulging blue eyes?

  This was the fifth time at least that their paths had crossed. The first time, the man had stopped dead and his face had lit up as if in delight. Hesitant, he had half-opened his mouth, while Maigret frowned and racked his brains in vain.

  The man’s physique and face looked familiar. But who the devil could he be? Where had he met this cheerful little fellow and his marzipan wife before?

  ‘Honestly, I can’t think …’

  It wasn’t important. Besides, the people here were not the same as in normal life. Any moment now, the music would strike up. On the bandstand with its spindly columns and ornate decorations, the uniformed musicians were raising their brass instruments to their lips, their eyes on the conductor. Was it the firemen’s band or the municipal workers? They had as many decorations and stripes as South American generals, blood-red shoulder straps and white baldrics.

  Hundreds of yellow iron chairs were arranged around the bandstand, in ever-widening circles as far as the eye could see, and nearly all of them were occupied by men and women waiting in solemn silence.

  In a couple of minutes’ time, at nine o’clock, under the spreading trees in the park, the concert would begin. After a muggy day, the evening air was almost chilly, and the breeze made the leaves rustle softly while the light from the rows of lamp posts with milky globes made pools of a paler green on the dark grass.

  ‘Don’t you want to sit down?’

  There were a few free chairs, but they never sat down. They walked at a leisurely pace. Other visitors were strolling around aimlessly like them vaguely listening to the music, couples, but also many on their own, men and women who were nearly all past middle-age.

  It was a little unreal. The casino was lit up, white and sumptuous with over-elaborate 1900s-style mouldings. At certain moments, time seemed to have stood still, until a car horn sounded on Rue Georges-Clemenceau.

  ‘She’s here …’ whispered Madame Maigret, jerking her chin.

  It had turned into a game. She’d got into the habit of following her husband’s gaze and she could tell when he was surprised or intrigued.

  What else did they have to do with their days? They ambled around casually. From time to time, they paused, not because they were out of breath but to admire a tree, a house, the play of light and shadow, or a face.

  They could have sworn they’d been in Vichy for an eternity, whereas this was only their fifth day. They had already created a schedule for themselves which they followed meticulously as if it were of utmost importance, and their days were measured out by various rituals which they adhered to religiously.

  Was Maigret really being serious? His wife sometimes wondered, darting furtive glances at him. He was different from when they were in Paris. His step was more languid, his expression less intense. Most of the time, his vague smile expressed satisfaction, certainly, but also a sort of gloomy irony.

  ‘She’s wearing her white stole …’

  From roaming the park and the banks of the Allier, the boulevards lined with plane trees and the teeming or deserted streets at the same time every day, they had come to recognize a number of faces and figures that were already part of their world.

  Did not everyone here replicate the same actions at the same time of day, and not only at the springs where they drank their hallowed beakers of water?

  Maigret’s gaze picked out someone in the crowd and became more focused. That of his wife followed.

  ‘Do you think she’s a widow?’

  They could have nicknamed her the lady in mauve, or rather the lady in lilac, because she always wore something lilac-coloured. That evening, she must have arrived late and had only managed to find at seat at the back.

  The previous day, she had afforded a sight that was both unexpected and moving. The Maigrets had walked past the bandstand at eight o’clock in the evening, one hour before the concert. The little yellow chairs were arranged in circles so regular that they could have been drawn with a compass.

  All the chairs were empty, except one in the front row, where the lady in lilac was sitting. She was not reading by the light of the nearest lamp. She was not knitting. She was doing nothing, showing no impatience. Sitting upright, with both hands resting flat on her knees, she remained absolutely still, staring straight ahead, cutting a distinguished figure.

  She looked as if she had come straight out of a picture book. She wore a white hat, whereas most of the women here were bareheaded. The stole around h
er shoulders was white too, and her dress the lilac colour of which she seemed fond.

  Her face was very long and narrow, her lips thin.

  ‘She must be a spinster, don’t you think?’

  Maigret avoided saying anything. He wasn’t on a case, wasn’t following any leads. Nothing was forcing him to watch people to try and discover their inner truth.

  He couldn’t help doing so, now and then, because it had become a reflex. For no reason, he sometimes took an interest in a person out for a stroll, and tried to guess their profession, their family circumstances and the kind of life they led when they weren’t taking the waters.

  It was difficult. After a few days or a few hours, everyone became part of the little circle … Most eyes had the same slightly vacant serenity, apart from those of the very sick, who were recognizable by their deformities, their gait, but especially from a mixture of anxiety and hope.

  The lady in lilac was among those who could have been called Maigret’s inner circle, the people he’d noticed from the start and who intrigued him.

  It was hard to fathom her age. She could just as easily have been forty-five or fifty-five and the years had passed her by without leaving any particular scars.

  One could guess she was used to living in silence, as with nuns, accustomed to solitude. Perhaps she even preferred that solitude. Whether walking or sitting, as she was at present, she paid no attention to promenaders or to her neighbours, and she would probably have been most surprised to learn that outside of any professional obligation, Detective Chief Inspector Maigret was trying to gauge her personality.

  ‘I don’t think she’s ever lived with a man …’ he said as the music struck up on the bandstand.

  ‘Or with children. Perhaps with a very elderly person needing care, an elderly mother, for example?’

  In that case, she couldn’t be a very good nurse because she lacked gentleness and the gift of communication. If her gaze did not light on people but slid over them without seeing them, it was because it was turned inwards. It was herself, and only herself, that she looked at, and she probably derived a secret satisfaction from doing so.