Maigret on the Riviera Read online

  But that was as far as he could get. He’d have to wait for Gina and her mother. Listening intently, he could just hear the sea hitting the rocks below. He took another look at Brown’s photograph, which was signed by a photographer in Nice.

  “Tactful handling and no trouble!”

  In other words, find out the truth as quickly as possible, to keep it hushed up, and stop the wild rumors of reporters and public.

  There were footsteps on the gravel path, and a bell in the hall rang with a low, musical note. Opening the front door, Maigret saw two women with a man in uniform.

  “Thank you. You can go. I’ll take charge of the ladies… Come in, will you?”

  They might have been his guests. He hadn’t yet seen their features, but his nose immediately caught a strong whiff of musk.

  “I hope that at last they’ve realized…” began the mother, in a croaky, broken voice.

  “Of course, of course. Do make yourselves at home.”

  They entered the lighted room. The mother’s face, wrinkled, was covered with a thick coat of make-up. Standing in the middle of the room, she looked around, as though to assure herself that nothing was missing.

  The other woman, more on the defensive, looked warily at Maigret while arranging the folds of her dress and assuming a smile that was meant to be winning.

  “Is it true they’ve brought you all the way from Paris?”

  “Do take off your coats… Sit down as you would any other evening.”

  They couldn’t quite understand. They were at home; yet at the same time they weren’t. They were afraid of walking into a trap.

  “We’re going to have a little talk, the three of us.”

  “Have you learned anything?”

  It was the daughter who asked the question, and her mother quickly snapped at her:

  “Take care, Gina!”

  Even now that the work was beginning, Maigret found it hard to take his part seriously. The old woman was horrible to look at, in spite of her makeup—or perhaps because of it.

  As for Gina, her ample figure was almost too buxom. In her dark silk dress, she obviously meant to be a femme fatale, but it didn’t quite come off.

  And that perfume… What he had smelled before was nothing. The air in the room now reeked with musk. It was like the smell in certain little theaters.

  There was no drama, no mystery. Just a mother who did embroidery while keeping an eye on her daughter. And a daughter who read about the loves of Rudolph Valentino.

  Maigret, who had resumed his place in Brown’s chair, looked at them without expression and asked himself, with a shade of embarrassment:

  How the devil could Brown put up with these two women?

  Ten years! Long days of ceaseless sunshine laden with the scent of mimosa, and that unbroken stretch of blue sea. And ten years of long evenings, with the radio his only deliverance from the silence of the mother and her needlework and the daughter reading under the pink lampshade.

  Unconsciously, Maigret’s hand felt for the photograph of the dead man who’d had the nerve to look like him!

  * * *

  2

  A TALK ABOUT BROWN

  What did he do with himself in the evening?”

  Maigret, with his legs crossed, was bored. He was bored mainly with the old woman, who kept playing the great lady.

  “We seldom went out… As a rule, my daughter read, while I…”

  “Let’s talk about Brown!”

  At that she was offended, and answered curtly:

  “He did nothing.”

  “He listened to the radio,” sighed Gina, lolling in her chair with assumed nonchalance. “The fonder one is of real music, the more one hates…”

  “Let’s talk about Brown! Was his health good?”

  “If he had taken my advice,” began the mother, “he’d never have been bothered by his liver or his kidneys… When a man’s past forty…”

  Maigret looked like a host listening politely to the prize bore, who laughs so much at his own story he can’t finish it. They were both ridiculous—the mother with her pretentious airs; the daughter posing like an odalisque.

  “You told the police he returned in his car, that evening, walked up the garden path, and then fell on the front steps.”

  “Yes. Like a man dead drunk,” answered Gina. “I shouted to him from the window that he could come into the house when he was sober again.”

  “Did he often come home drunk?”

  The mother answered:

  “If you only knew how patient we’ve been during the last ten years…”

  “Did he often come home drunk?”

  “Whenever he went off—or nearly every time… We called them his bouts.”

  “And these bouts were frequent?”

  Maigret couldn’t help smiling. He felt relieved. So Brown hadn’t, after all, spent every evening of those ten years sitting with these two women!

  “Generally once a month.”

  “How long did they last?”

  “He’d be away three days, four days, or sometimes longer… And when he came back, he’d be dirty and stinking of alcohol.”

  “But you let him go off again the next month?”

  Silence. The mother stiffened and gave the superintendent a sharp look.

  “But surely the two of you had some influence over him?”

  “We couldn’t stop him from going to get the money.”

  “And you couldn’t go with him?”

  Gina stood up.

  “This is all very painful,” she said with a sigh and a look of weariness. “But I must explain the situation, Superintendent. You see, we weren’t married… Of course, William always treated me as his wife, even to the point of having Maman live with us… And I was known to the people here as Madame Brown… Otherwise, I would never have accepted…”

  “Neither would I,” added the other.

  “Still, it was never quite the same thing. I don’t want to speak ill of William… but on one point, one point only, there was a difference: the question of money.”

  “Was he rich?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And you don’t know where the money came from, either? … That’s why you let him go off every month: to get his money?”

  “I tried to follow him—I admit… But didn’t I have a right to?… He was on his guard, though, and he always took the car.”

  Maigret was relaxed now, and was beginning to be amused. He was reconciled to this joker Brown, who could live for ten years with these two harpies without letting them find out the size or the source of his income.

  “Did he bring back a lot each time?”

  “Hardly enough to keep us going a month. During the last week, we’d have a hard time making ends meet.”

  It was a sore spot. Merely thinking about it made them both furious.

  When funds got low, they would begin to watch William anxiously, for signs of an incipient bout. But they couldn’t very well say to him:

  “Run along now and have your little binge.”

  No doubt they dropped hints. Maigret could easily imagine that.

  “Who did he give the money to?”

  “To Maman,” said Gina.

  “She did the housekeeping.”

  “Of course. And the cooking, too. There wasn’t enough money to keep a servant.”

  Then, the trick was played. Toward the end of the month, the most impossible meals would be served, and if Brown said anything, they had only to answer:

  “It’s all we can manage on the money that’s left.”

  Would it take a lot to get him moving? Or was he only too glad of the excuse to get away?

  “What time of day would he leave?”

  “Any time. He’d be out in the garden or in the garage working on the car, and suddenly we’d hear him start the motor…”

  “And you tried to follow him… in a taxi?”

  “Yes, once. But William lost us in the little streets
of Antibes… I know where he kept the car. In a garage in Cannes… It stayed there all the time he was away.”

  “So he might have gone from there by train to Paris, or anywhere else?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Or he might have stayed in the area?”

  “We’ve never heard of anybody seeing him.”

  “And it was when he returned from a bout that he was killed?”

  “Yes… He was away a whole week.”

  “Did you find the money on him?”

  “The same amount as usual—two thousand francs.”

  “If you ask me,” the old woman said, “I think his monthly income was much larger than that. Four thousand, perhaps, or even five… He preferred, apparently, to squander the rest of it by himself, leaving little for us.”

  Maigret leaned back sanctimoniously in Brown’s easy chair. As questions and answers followed each other, his smile grew broader.

  “Was he selfish?”

  “William? He was the best of men.”

  “Tell me about your everyday habits. Who got up first?”

  “William. More often than not he slept downstairs on a couch, and we’d hear him moving around early. Sometimes it was hardly light… Over and over I said to him…”

  “Excuse me! Did he make the coffee?”

  “Yes. Though it was always cold when we came down at ten.”

  “What would he be doing then?”

  “Puttering… In the garden… or in the garage… Sometimes he went and sat on the beach. And then there was the shopping. He’d take us in the car. And that’s another thing: I could never get him to dress properly first. He would go in his slippers and without even brushing his hair. Anybody could see his nightshirt underneath his jacket. And he’d be like that right in the middle of Antibes, waiting for us outside the shops.”

  “He dressed before lunch?”

  “Sometimes, sometimes not! He’s gone as long as five days without washing.”

  “Where did you eat?”

  “In the kitchen. When you have no help in the house, you can’t have crumbs in all the rooms.”

  “And in the afternoon?”

  In the afternoon, the two women napped. Then, near five o’clock, his slippers could be heard…

  “Quarrels?”

  “Hardly ever. Though I must say William had an aggravating habit of simply ignoring you when you spoke to him.”

  Maigret refrained from laughing. But he was beginning to feel quite friendly toward this damn Brown.

  “Then somebody killed him… Could it have been before he entered the garden?… But then you would have found blood in the car.”

  “We have no reason not to tell the truth.”

  “Of course not. So, he was killed elsewhere. Or, rather, wounded. And instead of going to a doctor or the police, he ended up here… You carried the body inside?”

  “We couldn’t very well leave it outside!”

  “Now, tell me why you didn’t inform the authorities. I’m sure you have an excellent reason.”

  “Yes, monsieur,” answered the old woman, jumping up from her chair, “and I’d like you to know it. In any case, you’ll find out all about Brown sooner or later… You see, he was already married, long ago in Australia… He was Australian. His wife’s still living. For reasons best known to her, she would never divorce him. It’s her fault we do not live in the finest villa on the Côte d’Azur.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “She’s never left Australia… But she managed all right from where she was. She had her husband declared incompetent… These ten years, we’ve been looking after him, trying to make up for all he’s suffered… And thanks to us, there’s a little money put aside… But if…”

  “If Madame Brown heard of her husband’s death, she could seize everything, since she’s still legally his wife.”

  “Exactly. We would have sacrificed ourselves for nothing! And not only that! I’m not by any means penniless myself. My husband was in the army, and I get a small pension. A lot of the things in the house are my property, but it wouldn’t be easy to prove it. She’d have the law on her side if she wanted to take the house and everything in it and put us out on the street.”

  “So you hesitated. For three days you turned it over in your minds, while the body lay there on the couch…”

  “Only two days. Then we buried it.”

  “But you thought things over for another twenty-four hours, and finally gathered up whatever valuables you could and… Incidentally, where were you going?”

  “Anywhere. Brussels, London…”

  “Had you ever driven the car before?” Maigret asked Gina.

  “Never! But I once started it in the garage.”

  Real heroism. What a scene—the departure, the body in the garden, the three heavy suitcases, and the lurching car…

  Maigret had had about enough: the atmosphere of the house, the smell of musk, and the rose-colored light shed by the pink lampshade.

  “You don’t mind my having a look through the house?”

  They had recovered their self-possession and dignity, though they were puzzled and perhaps a little disconcerted by this superintendent who took it all so calmly, who seemed, in fact, to regard the whole business as natural.

  “You’ll excuse the disorder?”

  Indeed, it was untidy, though that was hardly the right word. Sordid would be better. There was something of the pigsty about it, mixed with bourgeois pretention.

  An old coat of Brown’s hung on the stand in the hall. Maigret, going through the pockets, discovered a worn pair of gloves, a key, and a box of cachous.

  “He ate cachous?”

  “When he’d been drinking—so that we wouldn’t smell it on his breath… We were always telling him not to drink whiskey. We often hid the bottle.”

  Above the stand was a stag’s head with large antlers. To one side of it was a bamboo table with a silver salver for visiting cards.

  “Was he wearing that coat?”

  “No. His raincoat.”

  The dining-room shutters were closed. The room was evidently used only for storage. Brown had apparently been a fisherman, judging by the lobster pots on the floor.

  Then the kitchen, where the main stove was never lit. All the cooking had been done on an alcohol burner. On the floor beside it were several dozen empty mineral-water bottles.

  “You see, the water here is so full of chalk…”

  The stair carpet was worn, the brass stair rods tarnished. Gina’s room could be found with eyes shut, merely by following the trail of musk! Dresses had been thrown on the unmade bed. Gina had hurriedly gone through them to pick out the best.

  There was no bathroom; not even a dressing room.

  Maigret preferred not to go into the mother’s room.

  “We left in such a rush… I’m ashamed to show you the house in such a state.”

  “I’ll come see you again.”

  “Does that mean we’re free?”

  “Well, you won’t go back to the jail… at least for the moment… But if you try to leave Antibes…”

  “We wouldn’t dream of it!”

  They accompanied him to the front door.

  “A cigar, Superintendent?” said the old woman in her most ladylike voice.

  But Gina went further. She couldn’t go wrong in trying to win the sympathy of so influential a man.

  “Take the whole box. William will never smoke them.”

  They were too good to be true, the pair of them! When he got outside, Maigret almost felt drunk. He did not know whether to laugh or grind his teeth.

  From the garden gate, the villa presented another aspect altogether—so restfully white against the trees and bushes. The moon had reached one corner of the roof. To the right were the glittering sea and the quivering mimosas.

  With his raincoat over his arm, he walked back to the Hotel Bacon, pensive but not really thinking. A host of vague impressions drifted through his
mind, some of them disagreeable, others comic.

  What a character, that William!

  It was getting late. There was nobody in the dining room except one of the maids, who was reading a newspaper. And suddenly Maigret noticed that it wasn’t his raincoat over his arm, but Brown’s, a filthy thing covered with grease spots.

  In the left pocket was a wrench, in the other a handful of small change and some square brass counters marked with a number, the kind used in slot machines found in common little bars.

  Maigret counted them. There were ten.

  “Hello. This is Inspector Boutigues. Would you like me to pick you up at your hotel?”

  It was nine in the morning. From six o’clock on, Maigret had been dozing luxuriously, conscious of the Mediterranean spread out before his window.

  “What for?”

  “Don’t you want to see the body?”

  “Yes… No… This afternoon perhaps. Call me at lunchtime, all right?”

  The first thing to do was to wake up. He was in that delicious state of morning sleepiness in which the events of the day before seem hardly real. The two women, for instance. Vague as a dream, or, rather, a nightmare.

  They wouldn’t be getting up yet. And if Brown were alive, he’d be puttering around in the garage or the garden. All by himself. Unshaved and unwashed. And the coffee, getting colder and colder in the kitchen.

  As he dressed, Maigret caught sight of the brass counters. They were in a little heap on the mantelpiece. He had to make an effort to remember where they fit in.

  Brown had gone on one of his periodic bouts and was stabbed just before driving home, during the drive, or while walking up to the house, or inside it.

  When his right cheek was shaved clean, Maigret started muttering.

  “Brown certainly didn’t frequent the little bars in Antibes. If he had, Boutigues would have told me.”

  And hadn’t Gina discovered that he kept the car in Cannes?

  A quarter of an hour later, he was telephoning the Cannes police.

  “Superintendent Maigret, of the Police Judiciaire… Can you give me a list of all the bars that have those slot machines?”

  “They’ve all been done away with. An order came out a couple of months ago, and they’re illegal now. You won’t find one left on the Côte d’Azur.”