Félicie Page 2

  ‘I’m no scullery maid.’

  ‘When did you take your hat off?’

  ‘When I took the milk pan off the stove. I went up …’

  Everything is brand new and fresh in the house, which the old man christened ‘Cape Horn’. The staircase smells of varnished pine. The treads creak.

  ‘So go up. I’ll follow you.’

  She pushes open the door to her bedroom, where a box-mattress covered with flowered cretonne serves as a divan and photos of film stars grace the walls.

  ‘So, I take off my hat. Then I think, “Drat! I forgot to open the window in Monsieur Jules’ room.”

  ‘I walk across the landing … I open the door and I scream …’

  Maigret is still drawing smoke from his pipe, which he had refilled as he was crossing the garden. He studies a chalked shape on the polished floor, the outline of Pegleg’s body in the position it was in when it was discovered on Monday morning.

  ‘And the revolver?’ he asks.

  ‘There was no revolver. You know that because you’ve read the report by the local police.’

  Above the mantelpiece is a scale model of a three-masted ship, and on the walls are a number of paintings all of sailing vessels. It is like being in the house of an old, retired seafaring man, but the police lieutenant who conducted the original investigation has told Maigret all about Pegleg’s strange adventure.

  Jules Lapie was never a sailor but a book-keeper with a firm of ship’s chandlers at Fécamp supplying nautical equipment – sails, ropes, pulleys – as well as provisions for long sea voyages.

  A thick-set bachelor, meticulous in his habits, maybe obsessively so, with a generally grizzled air and a brother who is a ship’s carpenter.

  One morning. Jules Lapie, then aged about forty, goes aboard the Sainte-Thérèse, a three-master which is sailing that same day for Chile, where it will take on a cargo of phosphates. Lapie is given the humdrum job of ensuring that all the merchandise ordered has been delivered and of collecting payment from the captain.

  What happens next? The Fécamp matelots are all too ready to have a laugh at the fastidious book-keeper’s expense. He always appears so ill at ease whenever his work takes him on board a ship. Glasses are raised, as is the custom. They make him drink. God knows how much they made him drink to get him so drunk.

  However that may be, when with the high tide the Sainte-Thérèse glides between the piers of the Normandy port and heads out into the open sea, Jules Lapie, dead to the world, is snoring in a corner of the hold while everyone believes he has gone ashore – at least that is what everyone will say later.

  The hatches have been battened down. It is only after two days that the book-keeper is found. The captain refuses to put about and be diverted from his course, and that is how Lapie, who at that time still has both legs, finds himself on the way to Cape Horn.

  The adventure will cost him a leg, one day when there’s a sudden squall and he falls through an open hatch.

  Years later, he will be killed by a single shot from a revolver one Monday in springtime, a few minutes after leaving his tomato seedlings to themselves, while Félicie goes shopping in Mélanie Chochoi’s brand-new store.

  ‘Let’s go back downstairs,’ sighs Maigret.

  The house is so quiet, so pleasant because it is as clean as a new pin and filled with nice smells. To the right, the dining room has been turned into a funeral parlour. The inspector opens the door a little into the semi-dark interior, where the shutters are closed and only thin slats of light squeeze into the room. The coffin has been laid on the table, over which a sheet has been spread, and by its side is a hors d’œuvre dish filled with holy water in which a sprig of box tree is soaking.

  Félicie waits in the doorway to the kitchen.

  ‘In short, you know nothing, you saw nothing, you have no thoughts whatsoever about the visitor who might have called on your … employer – let’s just say Jules Lapie – when you were out …’

  She holds his gaze but does not reply.

  ‘And you are sure that when you got back there was only one glass on the table in the garden?’

  ‘I only saw one. Now, if you can see two …’

  ‘Did Lapie get many visitors?’

  Maigret sits down next to the butane gas stove and would not say no to a glass of something, preferably of the rosé Félicie mentioned, the barrel of which he has glimpsed in the cool darkness of the wine store. The sun is rising in the sky and steadily drawing up the morning dampness.

  ‘He didn’t like visitors.’

  A strange man whose life must have been turned inside out by his journey round Cape Horn! Back in Fécamp where, despite his wooden leg, people could not help smiling at his adventure, he keeps more to himself than ever and begins a long legal battle with the owners of the Sainte-Thérèse. A battle which he would win by sheer persistence. He claims the company is at fault, that he was kept on board against his will and that consequently the owners are responsible for his accident. He sets the highest value on the loss of his leg and in court judgement is given in his favour, recognizing his right to sizeable compensation.

  The people of Fécamp find it all amusing. He avoids them; he also moves away from the sea, which he loathes, and is one of the first to be seduced by the glossy prospectus put out by the creators of Jeanneville.

  Needing a servant, he sends for a young woman he knew as a girl in Fécamp.

  ‘How long have you been living here with him?’

  ‘Seven years.’

  ‘You are twenty-four now. So you were seventeen when …’

  He allows his thoughts to wander, then suddenly asks:

  ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

  She looks at him without replying.

  ‘I asked if you have a boyfriend.’

  ‘My private life is my business.’

  ‘Does he come here?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer that.’

  Dammit, he could box her ears for her! There are moments when Maigret feels like swatting her or taking her by the shoulders and giving her a good shake.

  ‘No matter, I’ll find out in the end …’

  ‘You won’t find out anything.’

  ‘Oh, so I won’t find out anything …’

  He stops himself. This is too silly for words! Is he going to stand here arguing with this girl?

  ‘You’re sure there isn’t anything you want to tell me? Think hard, while there’s still time.’

  ‘I’ve thought about it.’

  ‘You’re not hiding anything?’

  ‘I’d be surprised if I had anything left to hide. They say you’re very clever at making people talk!’

  ‘Well, we’ll see.’

  ‘You’ve seen everything!’

  ‘What do you think you’ll do when the family comes and Jules Lapie has been laid to rest?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Would you want to stay on here?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll be left anything?’

  ‘Very possibly.’

  Maigret does not entirely succeed in keeping his temper.

  ‘Be that as it may, my girl, there’s one thing I must ask you to remember. As long as the investigation remains ongoing, you are not to leave without first informing the police.’

  ‘So I am not allowed to move out of the house?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘What if I wanted to go away somewhere else?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask for my auth
orization.’

  ‘Do you think I killed him?’

  ‘I’ll think whatever I like, and that is none of your business!’

  He has had enough. He is furious. He is angry with himself for allowing himself to be reduced to such a state by a kid named Félicie. Twenty-four years old? Come off it! She’s a kid of twelve or thirteen who is playing God only knows what sort of games and takes herself very seriously.

  ‘Goodbye!’

  ‘Goodbye!’

  ‘By the way, how will you manage for food?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about me! I won’t let myself starve to death.’

  He is sure she won’t. He can imagine her, after he’s gone, sitting down at the table in the kitchen and slowly eating whatever there is while she reads one of those cheap novels she buys from Madame Chochoi.

  Maigret is incandescent. He has been taken for a ride, in front of everybody, and worse, taken for a ride by that poisonous creature, Félicie.

  It is now Thursday. Lapie’s family have arrived: his brother Ernest, the ship’s carpenter from Fécamp, a rough sort of man with hair cropped short and a face pitted with scars left by small-pox; his wife, who is very fat and has a moustache; their two children, whom she herds before her the way geese are driven in fields; then a nephew, a young man of nineteen, Jacques Pétillon by name, who has come from Paris, feverish and rather sickly, and is regarded with suspicion by the Lapie tribe.

  There is as yet no cemetery at Jeanneville. The funeral cortege winds its way to Orgeval, in whose parish the new development lies. The great talking point of the day is the crepe veil worn by Félicie. Where on earth did she find it? It is only later that Maigret learns that she borrowed it from Madame Chochoi.

  Félicie does not wait to be shown to her place but takes it, at the head of the procession. She walks in front of the family, ramrod straight, a perfect image of grief, dabbing her eyes with a black-edged handkerchief, also probably on loan from Mélanie, which she has sprinkled liberally with cheap perfume.

  Sergeant Lucas, who has spent the night at Jeanneville, is present alongside Maigret. Both follow the cortege along a dusty lane. Larks sing in the clear air.

  ‘She knows something, it’s obvious. No matter how clever she thinks she is, she’ll trip herself up in the end.’

  Lucas agrees. The doors of the small church remain open during the prayer of absolution, so that the atmosphere inside smells more of spring than of incense. It is not very far to the graveside.

  After the service is over, the family has to return to the house for the reading of the will.

  ‘Why would my brother have made a will?’ says an astonished Ernest Lapie. ‘It’s not the custom in our family.’

  ‘According to Félicie …’

  ‘Félicie! Félicie! It’s always Félicie …’

  Shoulders are shrugged helplessly.

  She brazenly edges to the front and manages to be first to throw a shovelful of earth down on to the coffin. Then she turns away tearfully and walks off so quickly that it seems inevitable that she will trip over.

  ‘Don’t let her out of your sight, Lucas.’

  She walks on, without stopping, through the streets and back lanes of Orgeval. Then suddenly Lucas, who is barely fifty metres behind her, emerges too late into an almost completely empty road, at the end of which a van is vanishing around a corner.

  He opens the door of an inn.

  ‘Tell me … That van which has just driven off …’

  ‘Van? It belongs to Louvet, the garage mechanic. He was here a minute ago, having a drink.’

  ‘Did he give anyone a lift?’

  ‘Don’t know … Don’t think so … I haven’t been outside …’

  ‘Do you know where he’d be going?’

  ‘Paris, like he does every Thursday.’

  Lucas hurries off to the post office, which, fortunately for him, is just across the road.

  ‘Hello? … Yes … It’s Lucas … Hurry … A van, pretty beat up … Wait a second …’

  He turns to the woman behind the counter.

  ‘Do you know the registration number of the van belonging to Monsieur Louvet, the mechanic?’

  ‘Sorry … All I can remember is that it ends with an eight …’

  ‘Are you still there?. … Registration number ends in eight … A young woman wearing mourning clothes … Hello? … Don’t cut us off … No … I don’t think there’s any need to arrest her … Just put a tail on her … Got that? … The chief will phone you himself.’

  He rejoins Maigret, who is walking by himself behind the family along the lane which leads from Orgeval to Jeanneville.

  ‘She’s gone …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She must have got into the van as it was setting off. I just had time to see it disappear round the corner. I phoned Quai des Orfèvres. They are alerting all divisions. They’ll watch the main roads into Paris.’

  So, Félicie has gone! Simply, in the full light of day, under the eyes and noses so to speak of Maigret and his best sergeant! Vanished, despite that enormous mourning veil which would make her recognizable from a kilometre away!

  Members of the family who turn round from time to time to look back at the two policemen are amazed to see no trace of Félicie. She has taken the front-door key with her. They have to get into the house by going through the garden. Maigret raises the blinds in the dining room, where the bed sheet and the sprig of box are still on the table and an after-smell of candle hangs in the air.

  ‘I could do with a drink,’ sighs Ernest Lapie. ‘Étienne! Julie! Stop running across those flower beds! There must be some wine here somewhere.’

  ‘In the wine store,’ Maigret tells him.

  Lapie’s wife walks round to Mélanie’s to buy cakes for the children and, since she’s there, decides to bring some back for everybody.

  ‘There’s no reason, inspector, why my brother should have made a will. I know he was a strange character. He kept himself to himself and we didn’t have much to do with him any more. But that doesn’t mean …’

  Maigret rummages through the drawers of a small desk in one corner of the room. From it he takes out bundles of old bills, carefully classified, and then an old note-case with a grey bloom on it which contains a single brown envelope.

  To be opened after my death

  ‘Well, gentlemen, I think this is what we’re looking for.’

  I, the undersigned, Jules Lapie, being of sound mind and body, in the presence of Ernest Forrentin and François Lepape, both residing in Jeanneville in the commune of Orgeval …

  Maigret reads in a voice which grows increasingly solemn.

  ‘So Félicie was right!’ he said finally. ‘She inherits the house and all its contents.’

  The family are all dumbstruck. The will contains one brief phrase which they are unlikely to forget:

  Given the attitude which my brother and his wife chose to adopt after my accident …

  ‘I only told him that it was ridiculous to go stirring heaven and earth just because …’ comments Ernest Lapie.

  Given the conduct of my nephew, Jacques Pétillon …

  The young man who has come from Paris looks like the class dunce on speech-day.

  None of it matters. Félicie has inherited everything. And Félicie, God only know why, has disappeared.

  2. Six O’Clock on the Métro

  Maigret, his hands thrust in his trouser pockets, has halted in the hall in front of the bamboo coat stand in the middle
of which is a mirror shaped like a diamond. He peers into it and sees a face that would normally make most people laugh, for it looks like the face of a child who wants something but is too shy to ask for it. But Maigret is not laughing. He reaches out, takes the broad-brimmed straw hat which is hanging on one of the hooks and puts it on.

  Well! Old Pegleg’s head was even bigger than that of the inspector, who regularly has to trail round several hat shops before finding one to fit him. It sets him thinking. With the straw hat still on his head, he returns to the dining room to take another look at the photo of Jules Lapie that was found in the drawer.

  Once, when a foreign criminologist was asking the commissioner of the Police Judiciaire about Maigret’s working methods, he replied with an enigmatic smile:

  ‘Maigret? What can I say? He just settles into an investigation the way a man gets into a pair of slippers.’

  Today, it is almost the case that the inspector gets into, if not the victim’s slippers, then at least his clogs. For there they are, just by the door, on the right, in a place which is quite clearly theirs. In fact everything is in its place. If it wasn’t for the fact that Félicie was not there, Maigret might well think that life in the house is going on just as it did in the past, that he is Lapie, that he will now walk at his own slow pace towards the vegetable patch to finish pricking out the row of tomato seedlings.

  The sun is setting in splendour behind the light-coloured houses that can be seen from the garden. Ernest Lapie, the dead man’s brother, has declared that he intends to spend the night at Poissy and has sent the rest of the family back to Fécamp. The others – the neighbours and a few farm-workers from Orgeval who followed the hearse – must either have gone home or else are in the Anneau d’Or, having a drink.

  Sergeant Lucas is there too, because Maigret has told him to take his travel bag there and stay in touch with Paris by phone.

  Pegleg had a large head, a square face, grey eyebrows and grey whiskers all over his face which he shaved just once a week. He was mean with money. You only had to cast an eye over his accounts. It was obvious that for him every sou counted. Had his brother not admitted it?