Félicie Read online

  ‘Of course, he was very near …’

  And when one Norman says of another Norman that he is near …

  The weather is mild. The sky is changing perceptibly to purple. Cool breezes blow in from the fields, and Maigret catches himself, pipe in mouth, standing there with a slight stoop, the way Lapie used to stand. It even gets to the point where, as he makes his way to the wine store, he drags his left leg. He turns the spigot on the barrel of rosé, rinses the glass and fills it … At this time of day, Félicie would normally be in the kitchen and probably the smell of her ragout would have floated out into the garden. It is watering time too. People can be seen watering in the gardens round about. Dusk invades the Cape Horn, where, when the old man was alive, the lights would not be turned on until the very last minute.

  Why was he killed? Maigret cannot help thinking that one day he will himself be retired. He too will have a small house in the country, a garden, a large straw hat …

  Pegleg would not have been killed in the course of a burglary because, according to his brother, he had virtually no assets outside his famous settlement. A savings pass-book had been found, plus two thousand francs in notes in an envelope and a few municipal bonds issued by the City of Paris. They had also found his gold watch.

  Right, that means looking elsewhere. Maigret will have to dig himself deeper under the man’s skin. He is surly, churlish, taciturn and finicky. He is a loner. The slightest disturbance to his routine certainly makes him angry. He has never thought of marriage, of children, and there is no evidence that he was a philanderer.

  What was Félicie trying to imply? It was out of the question! Félicie was lying! Lying comes as easily to her as breathing! Or rather, she makes up truths to suit her purposes. It would be too simple, too banal for her to be just a servant in the old man’s house. She would rather let it be thought that if he had sent for her …

  Maigret turns and looks at the kitchen window. What had been the relationship between these two people living in such isolation? He has a feeling, no, he is sure that they must have squabbled like cat and dog.

  Suddenly, Maigret gives a start. He has just emerged from the wine store, where he has drunk a second glass of wine. He is standing there in the twilight with the straw hat on his head and wonders for a moment if he is not dreaming. An electric light bulb has just been switched on behind the kitchen’s lacy curtains. He can see gleaming saucepans hanging on the gloss-painted walls, he hears the ‘pfft’ as the gas stove is lit. By the inspector’s watch it is ten minutes to eight.

  He opens the door and sees Félicie, who has already hung her hat and the veil on a peg on the hallstand and has just put a pan of water on to boil.

  ‘Hello! You’ve come back then?’

  She is not startled, she just looks at him all the way from his feet to his head, and her eyes settle on the straw hat, which Maigret has completely forgotten.

  He sits down. He must automatically have chosen the old man’s chair by the window and now, as he stretches out his legs, Félicie comes and goes as if he is not there, lays the table for her dinner and fetches the butter, bread and cured sausage from the cupboard.

  ‘Tell me, my girl …’

  ‘I’m not your girl.’

  ‘Tell me, Félicie …’

  ‘Say mademoiselle!’

  Good God! What an unpleasant creature the girl is! Maigret feels the same annoyance that you feel when you try to pick up a small animal which keeps slipping through your fingers, a lizard for example, or a snake. He is uneasy about taking her seriously but he has no choice for he senses that it is from her and her alone that he will learn the truth.

  ‘I asked you not to leave.’

  She breaks into a smug smile, as if to say: ‘But I left anyway! So there!’

  ‘May I ask why you went to Paris?’

  ‘For the ride!’

  ‘Really? Bear in mind that I shall soon know every last detail of where you went and what you did.’

  ‘I know. A moron followed me everywhere.’

  ‘What moron?’

  ‘A tall red-headed moron who dogged my footsteps on six separate trains on the Métro.’

  Inspector Janvier most likely, who must have been sent to tail her from the moment the mechanic’s van arrived at Porte Maillot.

  ‘Whom did you go to see?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  She sits down to eat, then goes one better. She props up one of her cheap novels in front of her. She has kept her page with a knife and calmly begins to read.

  ‘Tell me, Félicie …’

  The obstinacy of a goat, that’s what struck the inspector the moment he saw her again. It is only now that he realizes it. Head held high and stubborn as a goat, she is grimly ready to charge anything that looks like an obstacle.

  ‘Do you intend to spend tonight alone in this house?’

  ‘What about you? Are you thinking of staying here?’

  She eats, she reads. He hides his irritation under a veil of irony that he hopes will sound paternal.

  ‘You told me this morning that you were certain you would inherit …’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I just did!’

  She has made coffee for herself and pours herself a cup. It is clear she likes coffee; she savours it but doesn’t offer any to the inspector. At this point, Maigret gets to his feet with a sigh:

  ‘I will come and see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Please yourself.’

  ‘I hope you will have thought it all over.’

  She defies him with a look from those pale eyes, in which he can read nothing. Then, with a shrug of her shoulders, she says casually:

  ‘Thought all what over?’

  Outside the front door of Cape Horn, Maigret discovers Inspector Janvier, who has continued shadowing the girl all the way back to Jeanneville. The end of his cigarette glows in the dark. There is no wind. Stars above. The croaking of frogs.

  ‘I recognized her straight away, sir, from the description Lucas phoned through. When the van arrived at the toll point, she was sitting next to the mechanic, and they both seemed to be getting on like a house on fire. She got out. She walked up Avenue de la Grande-Armée, looking in the shop windows. At the corner of Rue Villaret-de-Joyeuse, she went into a cake shop, where she ate half a dozen cream cakes and drank a glass of port.’

  ‘Did she spot you?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well I do.’

  Janvier looks embarrassed.

  ‘From there she headed for the Métro. She bought a second-class ticket, and we changed first at Concorde, then again at Saint-Lazare. The carriages were almost empty. She sat and read a novelette which she had in her handbag. In all, we changed trains five times …’

  ‘Did she talk to anyone?’

  ‘No. Gradually more and more passengers got on. At six o’clock, when the shops and offices closed, it was the rush hour. You know what it’s like …’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘At the Les Ternes station, we were wedged in the crowd less than a metre apart. It was then, I admit, that I realized she knew she was being followed. She stared at me. I had the impression, sir … How can I put it … For a brief moment, her face was completely different. It was as if she was afraid. I’m certain that for a moment she was afraid of me, or of something … It only lasted a few seconds then suddenly she was elbowing her way out and on to the platform …’

  ‘Are you quite sure she didn’t speak to anybody?’

  �
��Certain. On the platform she waited until the train began to move off and kept her eyes fixed on the crowded carriage.’

  ‘Did she seem to be looking for anyone in particular?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. What I can tell you is that her face relaxed, and when the train had disappeared into the dark tunnel she was unable to prevent herself flashing me a look of triumph. Then she went up to street level. She didn’t seem to know where she was. She drank an aperitif in the bar on the corner of Avenue des Ternes, then she consulted a rail timetable and took a taxi to Saint-Lazare station … That’s everything … I got the same train as her to Poissy, and we both walked up the hill, one behind the other.’

  ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘I managed to snatch a sandwich at the station.’

  ‘Stay here and wait till Lucas comes.’

  Maigret turns away and walks out of the peaceful village of Jeanneville, where all that can be seen are a few pink lights in windows. He soon reaches Orgeval and locates Lucas in the Anneau d’Or. Lucas is not alone. The man he is with, who wears blue overalls, can only be Louvet, the mechanic, who is in high spirits; the four or five coasters already on the table in front of him show why.

  ‘My boss, Detective Chief Inspector Maigret …’ says Lucas by way of introduction. He too smells of alcohol.

  ‘As I was saying to the sergeant, sir, I never suspected a thing when I got into the van. I go to Paris every Thursday afternoon to get whatever I haven’t got here …’

  ‘At the same time?’

  ‘Give or take …’

  ‘Did Félicie know?’

  ‘To be honest, I hardly knew her, and then only by sight, because I’d never spoken to her. On the other hand, I knew Pegleg, who came in here every evening to play cards with Forrentin and Lepape. Sometimes it was the landlord, sometimes me or somebody else who made the fourth hand … Look … That’s Forrentin and Lepape over there, in the corner on the left, with the mayor and the builder.’

  ‘When did you realize there was someone in your vehicle?’

  ‘Just before I got to Saint-Germain. I heard a sort of moaning just behind me. I thought it was the wind, because it was a bit blowy, and it kept lifting the tarpaulin. Then suddenly I hear this voice saying: “Have you got a light?”

  ‘I turn round and I see her. She’d lifted her veil and had a cigarette in her mouth.

  ‘She wasn’t laughing, that’s for sure. She was dead pale, and the cigarette between her lips was trembling …

  ‘“What are you doing there?” I asked.

  ‘Then she started talking, she talked non-stop … She said it was absolutely vital for her to get to Paris as soon as possible, how it was a matter of life and death, how the men who killed Pegleg were now after her, that the police didn’t have a clue about what was going on.

  ‘I pulled over for a moment so she could sit next to me in front, on the bench-seat, because she’d been squatting on an old box which was none too clean …

  ‘“Later … later …” she kept saying, “when I’ve done what I have to do maybe I’ll tell you all about it. But whatever happens I’ll always be grateful to you for saving me.”

  ‘Then as soon as we got to the toll-point she thanks me and gets out, very graceful, like a princess.’

  Lucas and Maigret exchange glances.

  ‘And now, if it’s all right with you, we’ll have a last one for the road – no no, my round! – and then I’m going to get something to eat … I hope I’ll not get into any trouble on account of all this, will I? Cheers …’

  Ten in the evening. Lucas has gone off to keep Cape Horn under surveillance, replacing Janvier, who has gone back to Paris. The bar of the Anneau d’Or is blue with smoke. Maigret has eaten too much and is now on his third or fourth glass of the local marc-brandy.

  As he straddles a straw-bottomed chair, elbows leaning on its back, there are moments when it seems he is nodding off. His eyes are half-closed, and a faint tendril of smoke rises straight up from the bowl of his pipe, while four men play cards on the table in front of him.

  As they deal and flip the greasy cards on the garnet-red cloth, they talk, answer questions and sometimes tell an anecdote. The landlord, Monsieur Joseph, is sitting in for old Lapie, and the mechanic has come back after eating his dinner.

  ‘In a word, then,’ murmurs Maigret, ‘he was on to a good thing. A bit like some respectable country priest with his housekeeper. He probably made sure he got his home comforts and …’

  Lepape, who is deputy mayor of Orgeval, winks at the others. His partner, Forrentin, is manager of the Jeanneville development and lives in the best house, on the main road, just by the hoarding which informs all who pass by that there are still plots for sale in Jeanneville.

  ‘A priest and his housekeeper, eh?’ grins the deputy mayor.

  Forrentin just gives a sardonic smile.

  ‘Get on with you! It’s obvious you didn’t know him,’ explains the landlord, declaring belote with three cards of the same suit. ‘Dead he may be, but you can’t deny he was the sorest bear’s head you ever did see …’

  ‘What do you mean, sorest bear’s head?’

  ‘Well, he was always moaning about something or nothing from morning to night. He was never satisfied. Take that business with the glasses …’

  He turns to the others to back him up.

  ‘First, he said the bottoms of my liqueur glasses were too thick, and he managed to spot an odd glass on the top shelf that suited him better. Then one day as he was decanting from one glass to another, he saw that both contained exactly the same amount and he was hopping mad …

  ‘“But you chose that glass yourself,” I told him.

  ‘Well! He went into town, bought a glass and brought it back to me. It held a third as much as the ones I use.

  ‘“It doesn’t make any difference,” I told him. “You’ll just have to pay five sous extra.”

  ‘After that, he didn’t come in here for a week. Then one night I spot him standing in the frame of the door.

  ‘“What about my glass?”

  ‘“Five sous extra,” I say.

  ‘Away he goes again. It lasted a month, and in the end I was the one who blinked because we were short of a fourth for cards.

  ‘So can’t a man say, yes or no, that he was like a bear with a sore head? He was like that, as near as dammit, with his housekeeper. They were at each other’s throats morning to night. You could hear them arguing from miles away. They’d stop talking to each other for weeks on end. I think that actually she always had the last word because, no offence intended, she was even more Norman than he was … Anyway, I’d be interested to know who killed the old boy. There was no harm in him really. It’s just the way he was. I never saw a game of cards when he didn’t reckon at some point that people were trying to cheat him.’

  ‘Did he often go to Paris?’ Maigret asks after a moment.

  ‘Next to never. Once a quarter, to collect his pension. He’d go off in the morning and come back the same evening.’

  ‘How about Félicie?’

  ‘Hey, you boys, did Félicie used to go to Paris?’

  The others don’t really know. On the other hand she was often seen on a Sunday, dancing in a bar which had a band on the river, at Poissy.

  ‘Do you know what old Lapie called her? When he talked about her, he used to say “my cockatoo” on account of her fancy ways of dressing. You see, inspector – our friend Forrentin here is going to be vexed again, but I’m only saying what I think – the people who live in Jeanneville are all m
ore or less crazy. This is not a land where good Christian folk live. They are poor devils who have slaved all their lives and dreamed of retiring to the country one day. Well, the great day arrives! They get taken in by Forrentin’s pretty brochures … Don’t deny it, Forrentin, everybody knows you’re good at putting sugar all over the pill … Anyway, they settle into their paradise on earth and then they realize they are bored rigid … and it’s costing them a hundred francs an hour …

  ‘But it’s too late. They’ve invested their nest-egg in it and now they’re going to have to enjoy it as best they can or at least fool themselves into thinking they’re enjoying it. Some go to law over the branch of a tree that overhangs their garden or a dog that comes and piddles on their begonias. Then there are others …’

  Maigret is not asleep; if proof be needed, he reaches out with his hand to raise his glass to his lips. But the heat makes him sluggish, and it is very gradually that he slips back into the real world, which he reconstructs step by step, and once more he sees the unfinished streets of Jeanneville, the infant trees, the houses which look like sets of cubes, the over-tended gardens, the pottery animals and the glass globes.

  ‘Didn’t anyone ever come to see him?’

  It’s impossible! It is all too calm, too tidy, too neat. If life here is really as it is portrayed to him, it is not possible that one fine morning, no longer ago than last Monday, Félicie should go off to do her shopping in Madame Chochoi’s grocery store, that Pegleg should suddenly abandon his tomato seedlings to fetch the decanter and one glass from the sideboard in the dining room, go to the arbour, where, alone, he drinks brandy kept for special occasions, and then …

  He was wearing his gardening hat when he went up to his room with the highly polished wooden floor. What was he going to do in his bedroom?

  No one had heard the shot and yet a gun has been fired, at very close range, less than two metres from his chest, according to the experts.

  If only the revolver had been recovered, it might have been thought that Pegleg, having become neurasthenic …