Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses Read online

  ‘Was she the one who patched things up?’

  ‘Her or me. Either one of us might ask for forgiveness. We really did love each other, inspector.’

  ‘Who first raised the question of marriage?’

  ‘I can’t recall. To be honest, it’s impossible to say. We reached the point where we were hurting each other deliberately. Sometimes she’d turn up at three in the morning, half drunk, and knock on the door of my room. If I was in a sulk and didn’t answer straight away the neighbours would be up in arms about the racket. I don’t know how many times she threatened to kick me out. They did at the chemist’s too, because some mornings I’d turn up late, still half asleep.’

  ‘Did she drink a lot?’

  ‘We both drank. I don’t really know why. We just did it without thinking. It made us even more exhilarated. In the end we realized that I couldn’t do without her, and she couldn’t do without me.’

  ‘Where was she living at this time?’

  ‘In the house you saw, in Rue Lopert. It was around two or three in the morning one night, we were sitting in a cabaret bar when we looked each other in the eye and, suddenly sobered up, asked ourselves in earnest where we were going.’

  ‘You don’t know who first raised it?’

  ‘No, in all honesty. It was the first time the word “marriage” was mentioned, and on that occasion it was just a throwaway remark, more or less. It’s hard to say after all this time.’

  ‘She was five years older than you?’

  ‘Yes, and a few million francs better off than me. Once we were married I couldn’t go on working behind the counter in a chemist’s. She knew someone called Virieu, who had inherited a modest pharmaceutical concern from his parents. Virieu wasn’t a pharmacist. He was thirty-five but had spent most of his adult life in Fouquet’s, Maxim’s and the casino in Deauville. Christine invested some money in his company, and I became the managing director.’

  ‘So in fact you finally achieved your ambition?’

  ‘It appears that way, I admit. When you look at the sequence of events, it’s as if I carefully planned each stage. However, I assure you that was very far from the case.

  ‘I married Christine because I loved her passionately and because if I’d had to do without her I’d probably have killed myself. For her part, she begged me to make our union legal.

  ‘For a long time afterwards she had no more affairs and began to be jealous herself; she came to hate my customers and would drop by to check up on me.’

  ‘An opportunity came along to provide me with a position in keeping with her lifestyle. The money she invested in the business was in her name, and the marriage followed the convention of separate assets.

  ‘Some people saw me as a gigolo, and I wasn’t always accepted with open arms in this new milieu in which I was to lead my life.’

  ‘Were you happy together?’

  ‘I suppose so. I worked hard. I took on this relatively obscure laboratory and turned it into one of the four major centres in Paris. We socialized a lot too, so you could say I didn’t have a spare moment, day or night.’

  ‘Don’t you want to eat?’

  ‘I’m not hungry. If you don’t mind, I’ll have another glass of beer.’

  ‘Were you drunk last night?’

  ‘That’s what they asked me this morning. Doubtless I was at one point, but I still remember everything.’

  ‘I didn’t want to read the statement you made at Auteuil, which I have here.’

  Maigret idly flicked through the pages.

  ‘Is there anything there you would like to change?’

  ‘I told the truth. Maybe I overdid it, because of the inspector’s attitude. From his opening questions I realized that he regarded me as a murderer. Later on, when the prosecutor’s men turned up in Rue Lopert, I got the impression that the magistrate shared that opinion.’

  He was silent for a few moments.

  ‘I can understand that. I was wrong to get worked up about it.’

  Maigret asked blandly:

  ‘So you didn’t kill your wife?’

  And Josset shook his head. He was no longer protesting vehemently. He looked weary, deflated.

  ‘I know it will be difficult to explain …’

  ‘Would you like to take a break?’

  The man hesitated. He rocked gently on his chair.

  ‘I think it would be better to go on. But would you allow me to get up and walk around a bit?’

  He too wanted to go to the window, to see the city outside going about its everyday business in the sunlight.

  The previous evening he was still part of it. Maigret followed him with his eyes, lost in thought. Lapointe sat with his pencil poised in his hand.

  Back in the peaceful living room in Boulevard Voltaire – a little too peaceful, in fact, almost oppressively calm – where the women were still knitting and chatting, Doctor Pardon listened carefully to Maigret’s every word.

  Maigret, however, could sense that there was still an invisible link between his listener and the telephone on the console table, between the doctor and the Polish tailor who was fighting his last battle alongside his five children and his hysterical wife.

  A bus went by, stopped and then set off again, having deposited two dark figures, and a drunk bumped along the walls without ever interrupting the tune he was humming.

  THE BEGINNING

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  First published in French as Maigret et les Témoins récalcitrants by Presses de la Cité 1959

  This translation first published 2018

  Copyright © Georges Simenon Limited, 1959

  Translation copyright © William Hobson, 2018

  GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm

  MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited

  All rights reserved

  The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted

  Cover photograph (detail) © Harry Gruyaert /Magnum Photos

  Front cover design by Alceu Chiesorin Nunes

  ISBN: 978-0-241-30386-3