Maigret's First Case Read online

  ‘Don’t forget that she was born at the Chateau d’Anseval and that there are ties between her family and his.

  ‘Bob was a hothead. He was on a downward spiral. Why would she not have tried to help him back on to the straight and narrow?

  ‘That’s the opinion of my wife, who knows her well.

  ‘Anyway, it’s of little importance. Was he drunk that night, as he often was? Did he behave in a scandalous manner?

  ‘Louis gave few details. He heard screams. When he entered the room, Bob and Richard Gendreau were fighting and he thought he saw the gleam of a knife in the count’s hand.’

  ‘Has the knife been found?’ Maigret asked quietly without looking up.

  He seemed to be gazing obstinately at a little stain on the mahogany desk.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s Barodet who questioned him. The fact remains that there was a pistol on the bedside table and that Louis, fearing for his master’s life, fired it.

  ‘Now, my young friend, tell me who would have benefited from a scandal? The public wouldn’t have accepted the truth. We live in times when certain social classes are constantly being targeted. Mademoiselle Gendreau’s honour was at stake, because it is her reputation that would have suffered.

  ‘In any case, we are dealing with a case of self-defence.’

  ‘Are you certain that it was the butler who fired?’

  ‘We have his confession. Think about it, Maigret. Ask yourself how a certain section of the press would have reacted, and what the repercussions would have been for the young woman who can be accused of nothing other than imprudence.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Mademoiselle Gendreau has left for Switzerland. Her nerves are shattered, and she will probably rest for a few months. Louis has been released and it is likely that the case will be dismissed. His only crime was to have panicked and buried the body in the garden instead of owning up immediately.’

  ‘Did he do it alone?’

  ‘Put yourself in Richard Gendreau’s position. I see that you don’t yet understand, but you will. There are cases where we have no right …’

  And, while he struggled to find the right words, Maigret looked up and said in a neutral, almost naive tone:

  ‘To do as our conscience dictates?’

  Then, abruptly, Le Bret became curt again, loftier than ever.

  ‘My conscience is clear,’ he snapped, ‘and I would claim that it is as sensitive as anyone else’s. You are young, Maigret, very young, and that is the only reason why I can’t hold it against you.’

  It was midday when the telephone rang in the big main office. Inspector Besson, who had picked it up, shouted:

  ‘For you, Maigret. It’s that fellow who’s already called three times. Always at the same time.’

  Maigret grabbed the receiver.

  ‘Hello! Jules?’

  He recognized Dédé’s voice.

  ‘Are you feeling better? Are you back at work? Tell me, are you free for lunch?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A little idea of mine. Ever since the other night, I’ve been wanting to take you to lunch in the country. Don’t be scared. I’ll come and pick you up in the car. Not outside the police station, because I’m not very fond of those places, but on the corner of Rue Fontaine. All right?’

  Poor old Justin Minard was going to be left high and dry once again.

  ‘Tell him that I had to go out on important business, that I’ll see him tonight or tomorrow.’

  A quarter of an hour later, he clambered into the grey De Dion-Bouton. Dédé was alone.

  ‘What do you fancy? Do you like fried gudgeon? First we’re going to stop at Porte Maillot for a quick drink.’

  They went into a bar, and Dédé ordered two stiff ab-sinthes, letting the water to drip on to the sugar lump balanced on the perforated spoon and watching it slowly dissolve.

  He was cheerful, with a hint of earnestness in his expression. He was wearing a check suit, greenish-yellow shoes and a splendid red tie.

  ‘Another? No? As you wish. I have no reason to get you drunk this time.’

  Then it was back on the road, the banks of the Seine, with fishermen in their boats, and finally a little riverside inn with leafy arbours dotted around the garden.

  ‘A slap-up meal, Gustave. For starters, fried fish, only gudgeon.’

  And to Maigret:

  ‘He’s going to net some for us and cook them live.’

  Then to the owner:

  ‘What will you serve us for the main course?’

  ‘A coq au vin made with a Beaujolais rosé?’

  ‘Let’s go for the coq au vin.’

  Dédé was very much at home here. He sniffed around in the kitchen and went down to the cellar, returning with a bottle of white Loire wine.

  ‘It’s better than all the aperitifs in the world. Now, while we’re waiting for our fish, fill your pipe. We can talk.’

  He had an urge to explain:

  ‘I insisted on seeing you because deep down I like you. You’re not corrupt yet, like most of the boys in your outfit.’

  He too embroidered the truth a little, Maigret knew. People of Dédé’s sort are blabbermouths, and that’s often how they get caught. They’re so proud of themselves that they can’t resist the desire to boast.

  ‘Where’s Lucile?’ asked Maigret, who had expected her to be with them.

  ‘She really is ill, believe it or not. That girl really was mad about Bob, you see. She’d have put her head on the block for him. She was completely devastated. First of all, she wouldn’t leave Rue Brey, saying that every step would remind her of him. Yesterday, I persuaded her to go away to the country. I drove her there and I’ll go and pick her up again. But enough! Maybe we’ll talk about her later.’

  He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly through his nostrils. The wine sparkled in the glasses, the breeze made the young leaves of the bower quiver. They could see the owner standing in his skiff, peering into the water before casting his net.

  ‘I presume you were curious enough to have a look at my file and that you will have seen that I never take risks. Little jobs, yes. Twice I copped six months and I swore that that was enough.’

  He drank to keep up his spirits.

  ‘Have you read the papers?’

  And when Maigret nodded:

  ‘Clever, very clever, that lot. You should have seen Lucile! She turned as white as a ghost. She was determined to go and find them and squawk. I calmed her down. I kept saying to her: “What would be the point?”

  ‘They sullied his name all right, didn’t they? I swear to you, if I could get the guy with the broken nose − Richard, his name is − in a corner where there are no cops, I’d happily smash his face in.

  ‘He coughed up fifty grand and he thinks that’s the end of it. Well! Between you and me − even though you’re a cop − I tell you that’s not the end of it. We’ll meet again one day, sooner or later. There are bastards and bastards. That type of bastard, I can’t stand.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I was taken off the case,’ mumbled Maigret.

  ‘I know. I’m paid to know.’

  ‘Did they order you to keep quiet?’

  ‘They told me that all I needed to do was keep mum and I’d have my “deal”.’

  Which meant that the police would turn a blind eye to Dédé’s peccadilloes, they’d forget the blow to Maigret’s head and they wouldn’t investigate where the 4
9,000 francs found in his wallet had come from.

  ‘What bowled me over was the butler’s story. Do you believe that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right! Otherwise you’d have gone down in my esteem. Since someone had to have pulled the trigger, it might as well be the servant. Who do you reckon fired the shot? We can talk here, can’t we? Mind you, if you try and use what I’ve told you, I’ll swear I kept my mouth shut. I think it was the girl.’

  ‘So do I …’

  ‘The difference being that I have good reason to believe so. I’d also add that if she shot Bob, it was by mistake. It was the brother she was trying to kill. Because those two loathe each other the way people in those families do.

  ‘It’s a pity you never met Bob. He was the most decent fellow on earth. Boy, he could drive them all round the bend!

  ‘But not out of spite. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body. It was something else. He despised them so much that he found them laughable.

  ‘When the girl started hanging around him—’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘It was last autumn. I don’t know who told her. Everyone knew that after the races, at around five thirty, you could always find Bob in a bar in Avenue de Wagram.’

  ‘She went there.’

  ‘She did too! And without a veil. She told him who she was, that she lived at the Chateau d’Anseval, that she was interested in him and he’d be welcome to visit her at her house.’

  ‘Did he sleep with her?’

  ‘You can say that again! He even took her to the hotel in Rue Brey that you’ve been to. To see how far she’d go, you know? He was a good-looking kid. But she wasn’t the kind of doll to go into a hotel like that just for the pleasure of being screwed.

  ‘Besides, she had no more feelings than a brick wall. He didn’t keep it secret for Lucile’s sake. If she was going to be jealous of all the girls that passed through his hands! Ah, here’s the fish. Tell me how you find it.’

  He could eat and talk at the same time and he continued to indulge in both, caressing the second bottle that had been placed in front of them.

  ‘Don’t try to understand. It took Bob himself a while to see clearly and − no offence − he was cleverer than the two of us put together. What surprised him the most was that she wanted to marry him.

  ‘She offered him a deal. He would no longer need to work and would receive an allowance every month for his day-to-day expenses and everything. He strung her along. He said to himself that she was desperate to be called the Countess d’Anseval. There are people like that. They buy themselves a chateau, then they want a title, to buy a set of ancestors. That’s what Bob explained to me.’

  He looked Maigret in the eye and announced, pleased at catching him off-balance:

  ‘Well, that wasn’t it.’

  He crunched the crisp gudgeon, glancing from time to time at the Seine, where barges glided slowly past, sounding their sirens as they approached the lock.

  ‘Don’t try, you’ll never guess. When Bob found out, he was staggered. And yet he knew the family history inside out. Do you know whose idea the marriage was? The old man’s!’

  He was triumphant.

  ‘Admit that it was worth coming out to Bougival for lunch. You’ve heard about the shrivelled-up old boy who wanted to leave his house and his paintings to the state to be turned into a museum? If you want a laugh, listen to what comes next. I don’t know the full story, mind you. Neither did Bob. Apparently, the old boy, who had started out as a country pedlar, dreamed of having grandchildren of true noble blood.

  ‘Do you want to know what I think? That for him it was a sort of revenge. Because it appears that the Ansevals weren’t very nice to him. They sold him the chateau and the farms. Then they discreetly withdrew. They wouldn’t once invite him to dinner, or even to lunch.

  ‘So he put clauses in his will that riled the entire family.

  ‘His daughter was still alive when he died, but those people with their millions plan a long way ahead.

  ‘On the death of the daughter, the shares were to be split between two parties: 51 per cent for the young lady and 49 per cent for crooked-nose. Apparently, it was very important that the majority vote as they call it went to the young lady.

  ‘Me, I don’t know much about these things. Anyway. It was to happen when she turned twenty-one.’

  ‘Next month,’ said Maigret.

  ‘I’ll have some more. Too bad if I’m too full for the coq au vin. Where were we? Right! Only there was another little problem. If the young lady married an Anseval, then she would receive all the shares, and it would be left to her discretion to give her brother an allowance equivalent to his holding.

  ‘That means that he would no longer have had anything to do with the coffee company, the chateau, etc. The Balthazars and the Gendreaus would have become Ansevals, their lineage going back to the Crusades.

  ‘Bob was well up on these things, and you have no idea how it made him laugh.’

  ‘Did he agree to the deal?’

  ‘What do you take him for?’

  ‘How did he find out?’

  ‘Through the brother. And you’ll see how a man can stupidly lose his life. The Gendreau with a broken nose is no fool. He doesn’t want to end up like his father, spending all his time in clubs and chasing errand girls in Rue de la Paix. He wants to be the boss too.’

  ‘I’m beginning to see.’

  ‘No, you can’t possibly see, because Bob didn’t see at first. Richard asked him to come to his office. Apparently it’s like a sacristy, with carved wood on the walls, gothic furniture, a floor-to-ceiling portrait of the old man who seems to be laughing at you.

  ‘To be honest, out of the lot of them, that old man is still the one I’d find easiest to get on with. Bob used to say that he was the most mischievous devil he’d ever come across. So to speak, because he was dead. Anyhow …

  ‘So the brother comes out with his spiel. He asks Bob if he’s decided whether to marry his sister. Bob replies that he never had any intention of doing so.

  ‘The brother tells him that he’s making a mistake, that it would be a good deal for everyone.

  ‘And why would it be a good deal? Because he, Richard Gendreau, would hand over a pile of dough to his sister’s husband. As much dough as he wanted. On the sole condition that he promise to show his sister a good time, entertain her, and get her to give up her love of business.

  ‘Do you see now?

  ‘Bob replied that he didn’t feel cut out for that job.

  ‘So the bastard with the crooked nose declared that that was just too bad for him, that he would end up paying a high price.

  ‘When I think that you’d have had me thrown in jail for having got that fellow to cough up fifty thousand! I don’t hold it against you. You couldn’t have known.’

  Now they basked in a wonderful aroma of coq au vin and despite what Dédé had said earlier, he still had a healthy appetite.

  ‘Try this Beaujolais and admit that it would have been a pity to deprive me of such a feast and put me on a diet of beans.

  ‘Do you know what he had in his bag, that idiot? I said that Bob was a decent guy but I didn’t claim he was a saint. It happened − as it does to everyone − that he found himself a bit short. All his life he’d known loads of swanky people. So sometimes, for a laugh, he’d imitate their signature on banker’s drafts or other bank forms.

  ‘He didn’t mean any harm. The proof is that no one ever
filed a complaint, and things always worked out in the end.

  ‘Well, Jules, the idiot had got hold of a whole pile of those forms from God knows where.

  ‘“If you don’t marry my sister, I’ll have you locked up. If, when you have married her, you don’t toe the line, I’ll have you locked up.”

  ‘Harsh! Even harsher than the old man!

  ‘I swear Bob was sorry he got mixed up with the girl and that whole business.

  ‘Meanwhile, the young lady was in a hurry. She wanted the wedding right away, before she turned twenty-one. She sent him letters by pneumatic tube, dispatches. She arranged to meet him time and time again.

  ‘Sometimes he came, sometimes he didn’t, and she’d turn up in Rue Brey looking for him. She’d wait on the corner of the avenue not caring whether she was mistaken for something else.

  ‘Lucile knew her well.’

  ‘When you drove Bob to Rue Chaptal, on the night of the 15th—’

  ‘He’d decided to finish it, to come clean and tell her that he would not be bought, either by her or by her brother.’

  ‘Did he ask you to wait for him?’

  ‘Not exactly, but he didn’t expect to be long. Breast or leg? You should have more mushrooms. Gustave picks them himself and preserves them.’

  Maigret felt perfectly relaxed, possibly thanks to the Beaujolais on top of the dry white wine.

  ‘You’re wondering why I’m telling you all this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Or at least he intuited it. Dédé needed to get it off his chest − or spit it out, as he would have said − and could no longer keep quiet. Here there was no danger. Besides, he had his ‘deal’.

  But he wasn’t proud of that. This lunch was a way for him to salve his conscience. Revealing others’ dirty doings made him appear in a relatively virtuous light.

  Maigret would remember that lunch at Bougival for a long time to come, and that memory possibly helped him avoid making rash judgements.