Maigret in Vichy (Harvest Book) Page 3

  They had always been attracted to markets, their stalls laden with sides of beef, fish, and live lobsters, and their all-pervading smell of fresh fruit and vegetables.

  “Well, Rian did advise me to walk four miles a day,” he remarked with heavy irony, adding:

  “Little does he know that, on the average, we cover the best part of twelve!”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Work it out. We spend at least five hours a day walking… We may not be striding out like a couple of athletes, but all the same we can’t be doing much less than three miles an hour.”

  “I’d never have thought it!”

  The glass of water. Sitting on one of the yellow chairs, reading the papers that had just come from Paris. Lunch in the white dining room, where the only touch of color was an opened bottle of wine on a table here and there, labeled with the name of the resident who had ordered it. There was no wine on the Maigrets’ table.

  “Did he say no wine?”

  “Not in so many words. But while I’m about it…”

  She could not get over the fact that, while scrupulously keeping to his diet, he was, at the same time, perfectly good-tempered about it.

  They permitted themselves a short rest after lunch, before setting off again, this time for the opposite end of the town. Here, where most of the shops were, the pavements were so crowded that they were seldom able to walk abreast.

  “Was there ever a town with so many osteopaths and chiropodists?”

  “It’s no wonder, if everyone walks as much as we do!”

  That evening the bandstand in the park was deserted. Instead, there was a concert in the gardens of the Grand Casino. Here, in place of the brass band, a string orchestra played. The music was of a more serious kind, matched by the expressions on the faces of the audience.

  They did not see the lady in lilac. They had not seen her in the park either, though they had caught a glimpse of “the happy pair,” who tonight were more formally dressed than usual, and seemed to be going to the casino theater, where a light comedy was playing.

  The brass bedstead. It was astonishing how quickly the days went by, even when one was doing absolutely nothing. Croissants, coffee, cubes of sugar in greaseproof wrappings, the Journal de Clermont-Ferrand.

  Maigret, in pajamas, was sitting in an armchair next to the window, smoking his first pipe of the day. His coffee cup was still half full. He enjoyed lingering over it as long as possible.

  His sudden exclamation brought Madame Maigret from the bathroom, in a blue flower-printed dressing gown, with her toothbrush still in her hand.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Look at this.”

  There, on the first page devoted to Vichy, was a photograph, a photograph of the lady in lilac. It was not a very recent one. She looked several years younger in it and, for the occasion, had managed to produce a tight-lipped semblance of a smile.

  “What’s happened to her?”

  “She’s been murdered.”

  “Last night?”

  “If it had happened last night, it wouldn’t be in this morning’s paper. No, it was the night before.”

  “But we saw her at the band concert.”

  “Yes, at nine o’clock… She lived only a couple of streets from here, Rue du Bourbonnais… I had a feeling that we were almost neighbors… She went home… She had time to take off her shawl and hat and go into the sitting room, which leads off to the left from the hall…”

  “How was she killed?”

  “She was strangled. Yesterday morning, the lodgers were surprised not to hear her moving about downstairs as usual.”

  “She wasn’t just here for the cure, then?”

  “No, she lived in Vichy… She owned the house, and let furnished rooms on the upper floor…”

  Maigret was still in his armchair, and his wife well knew just how much self-control was needed to keep him there.

  “Was it a sex maniac?”

  “The place was ransacked from top to bottom, but nothing seems to have been taken… In one of the drawers that had been broken into, they found jewelry and quite a lot of money…”

  “She wasn’t… ?”

  “Raped? No.”

  He stared out of the window in silence.

  “Who’s in charge of the case, do you know?”

  “Of course I don’t! How could I?

  “The Chief C.I.D. Officer at Clermont-Ferrand is Lecoeur, who used to work under me… He’s here… Naturally, he has no idea that I’m here too…”

  “Will you be going to see him?”

  To this he made no immediate answer.

  * * *

  2

  « ^ »

  It was five minutes to nine, and Maigret had not yet answered his wife’s question. It seemed as though he had put himself on his honor to behave exactly as he would have done any other morning, to adhere, without the smallest deviation, to their established Vichy routine.

  He had read the paper from beginning to end, while finishing his coffee. He had shaved and bathed, as usual, listening meanwhile to the news on the radio. At five minutes to nine he was ready, and together they went down the staircase, with its red carpet held in place by the triangular brass clips.

  The proprietor, in white coat and chef’s hat, was waiting for them below.

  “Well, Monsieur Maigret, you can’t say we don’t look after you in Vichy, even to the extent of handing you a splendid murder on a platter…”

  He managed to force a noncommittal smile.

  “You will be attending to it, I trust?”

  “This is not Paris. I have no authority here…”

  Madame Maigret was watching him. She thought he was unaware of this, but she was wrong. When they came to Rue d’Auvergne, he composed his features in an expression of guileless innocence and, instead of going down it toward the Allier and the children’s playground, turned right.

  Admittedly, they did occasionally take a different route, but, up to now, only on the way back. Her husband’s unerring sense of direction never failed to astonish Madame Maigret. He never looked at a map, and would wander off, apparently at random, into a maze of little side streets. Often, just when it seemed to Madame Maigret that they must be lost, she would suddenly realize, with a start, that there in front of them was the door of their hotel, flanked on either side by the flowering shrubs in their green-painted urns.

  On this occasion, he turned right again, and then again, until they came to a house where a small crowd was gathered, hoping to catch a glimpse inside.

  There was a twinkle in Madame Maigret’s eye. The Chief Superintendent, after a moment’s hesitation, crossed the road, stopped, gave his pipe a sharp tap against his heel to knock out the ash, and then slowly filled it with fresh tobacco. At times like these, he seemed to her just a great baby, and a wave of tenderness swept over her.

  He was having a struggle with himself. At last, trying to look as though he had no idea where he was, he joined the group of spectators, and stood gaping like the rest at the house across the street, where a policeman was standing guard and, nearby, a car was parked.

  It was an attractive house, like most of the others in the street. It had recently had a fresh coat of warm-white paint, and the shutters and balcony were almond green.

  On a marble plaque, in Gothic lettering, was inscribed the name: Les Iris.

  Madame Maigret had been following every move in this little private drama, from his decision not to call at the Police Station to his present determination not to cross the road, make himself known to the policeman on duty, and gain admission to the house.

  There was no cloud in the sky. The air was fresh, clear, invigorating, here in this clean little street. A few doors along, a woman, standing at her window shaking the dust out of her rugs, looked with disapproval at the people down below. But had she not herself been among the first, yesterday, when the murder was discovered and the police arrived in force, to join with her neighbors in gaping at a house that she had seen every day of her life for years?

  Someone in the crowd remarked:

  “They say it was a crime passionel.”

  This suggestion was received with derision:

  “Oh, come! She can’t have been a day under fifty.”

  A face could be dimly seen at one of the upstairs windows, a pointed nose, dark hair, and from time to time, behind it, the shadowy figure of a youngish man.

  The door was painted white. A milk cart was moving slowly along the street, leaving bottles on doorsteps behind it. The milkman, with a bottle of milk in his hand, went up to the white door. The policeman spoke to him, no doubt telling him that there was no point in leaving it, but the milkman shrugged and left the bottle just the same.

  Wasn’t anyone going to notice that Maigret… ? He couldn’t hang about here indefinitely…

  He was just about to move off when there appeared in the doorway a tall young man with an unruly mop of hair. He crossed the road, making straight for the Chief Superintendent.

  “The Divisional Superintendent would very much like to see you, sir.”

  His wife, repressing a smile, asked:

  “Where shall I wait for you?”

  “At the usual place, the spring…”

  Had they seen and recognized him from the window? With dignity, he crossed the road, assuming a grumpy expression to hide his gratification. It was cool in the entrance. There was a hatrack on the right, with two hats hanging from its branches. He added his own, a straw hat which his wife had made him buy at the same time as the mohair jacket, and in which he felt slightly foolish.

  “Come on in, Chief.”

  A voice full of warm pleasure, a face and figure Maigret instantly recognized.

  “L
ecoeur!”

  They had not met for fifteen years, not since the days when Désiré Lecoeur had been an inspector on Maigret’s staff at the Quai des Orfèvres.

  “Oh, yes, Chief, here I am, longer in the tooth, wider in girth, and higher up the ladder. Here I am, as I say, Divisional Superintendent at Clermont-Ferrand, which is why I’m stuck with this ghastly business… Come on in.”

  He led him into a little parlor painted a bluish-gray, and sat at a table covered with papers, which he was using as an improvised desk.

  Maigret lowered himself cautiously into a fragile, reproduction Louis XVI chair. Lecoeur must have noticed his puzzled expression, because he said at once:

  “I daresay you’re wondering how I knew you were here. In the first place, Moinet—you haven’t met him, he’s the head of the Vichy police—noticed the name on your registration form… Naturally, he didn’t want to intrude, but his men have seen you out and about every day. It seems, in fact, that the fellows doing duty on the beach have been laying bets as to when you would make up your mind to try your hand at bowls. Your interest in the game, according to them, was visibly growing, day by day. So much so that…”

  “Have you been here since yesterday?”

  “Yes, of course, with two of my men from Clermont-Ferrand. One of them is the young fellow, Dicelle, whom I sent out to fetch you when I saw you out there in the street. I was reluctant to send you a message at your hotel. I reckoned you were here for the cure, not for the purpose of giving us a helping hand. Besides, I knew that, in the end, if you were interested, you would…”

  By now, Maigret really was looking grumpy.

  “A sex maniac?” he mumbled.

  “No, that’s one thing we can say for sure.”

  “A jealous lover?”

  “Unlikely. Mind you, I could be wrong. I’ve been at it for twenty-four hours, but I’m not much wiser than when I got here yesterday morning.”

  Referring from time to time to the papers on his desk, he went on:

  “The murdered woman’s name was Hélène Lange. She was forty-eight years old, born at Marsilly, about ten miles from La Rochelle. I telephoned the town hall at Marsilly and was told that her mother, who was widowed very young, had for many years kept a small dry goods store in the Place de l’Eglise.

  “There were two daughters. Hélène, the elder, took a course in shorthand and typing at La Rochelle. After that she worked for a time in a shipping office, and later went to Paris, after which nothing more was heard of her.

  “No request for a copy of her birth certificate was ever received, from which one must infer that she never married, besides which her identity card is made out in her maiden name.

  “There was a sister, six or seven years younger, who also began her working life in La Rochelle, as a manicurist.

  “Like her elder sister, she subsequently migrated to Paris, but returned home about ten years ago.

  “She must have had substantial savings, because she bought a hairdressing establishment in the Place des Armes, which she still owns. I tried to get her on the phone but was told by the assistant in charge that she was on holiday in Majorca. I cabled to her hotel, asking her to return immediately, and she should be here sometime today.

  “This sister—her name is Francine—is also unmarried… The mother has been dead eight years… There’s no other family, as far as anyone knows.”

  Quite unwittingly, Maigret had slipped back into his familiar professional role. To all appearances, he was in charge of the case, and Lecoeur was a subordinate reporting to him in his office.

  But there was no pipe rack for him to fidget with as he listened, no sturdy armchair for him to lean back in, and no view of the Seine from the window.

  As Lecoeur talked, Maigret was struck by one or two unusual features of this little parlor, which had obviously been used as a living room, in particular the fact that there were no photographs of anyone but Hélène Lange herself. There she was on a little bow-fronted chest, aged about six, in a dress that was too long for her, with tight braids hanging down on either side of her face.

  A larger photograph, obviously taken by a skilled photographer, hung on the wall. In this she was older, about twenty, and her pose was romantic, her expression ethereal.

  A third photograph showed her on a beach, wearing not a bathing suit but a white dress, the wide skirt of which, blown to one side by the breeze, streamed out like a flag, and holding in both hands a light, wide-brimmed hat.

  “Do you know how and when the murder was committed?”

  “We’re having difficulty in finding out what exactly did happen that evening… We’ve been working on it since yesterday morning, but we haven’t made much headway.

  “The night before last—Monday night, that is—Hélène Lange had supper alone in her kitchen. She washed up— or at any rate we didn’t find any dirty dishes in the sink— got dressed, switched off all the lights, and went out. If you want to know, she ate two boiled eggs. She wore a mauve dress, a white woolen shawl, and a hat, also white…”

  Maigret, after an internal struggle, couldn’t in the end resist saying:

  “I know.”

  “Have you been making inquiries, then?”

  “No, but I saw her on Monday evening, sitting near the bandstand, listening to the concert.”

  “Do you know what time she left?”

  “She was still there just before half past nine, when my wife and I went for our walk, as we do every evening.”

  “Was she alone?”

  “She was always alone.”

  Lecoeur made no attempt to hide his astonishment.

  “So you’d noticed her on other occasions?”

  Maigret, now looking much more good-humored, nodded.

  “What was it about her?”

  “Nothing in particular. One spends one’s time here just walking about, and, almost unconsciously, one registers a face here and there in the crowd. You know how it is… one is always running into the same people in the same places at certain times of day…”

  “Have you any ideas?”

  “What about?”

  “What sort of woman she was.”

  “She was no ordinary woman, I’m sure of that, but that’s all I can say.”

  “Well, to proceed… Two of the three bedrooms on the upper floor are let, the largest to the Maleskis, a couple from Grenoble. He’s an engineer. They were out at the cinema. They left the house a few minutes after Mademoiselle Lange and didn’t get back till half past eleven. All the shutters were closed as usual, but they could see through the slats that the lights were still on downstairs. When they got inside, they noticed strips of light under the doors of Mademoiselle Lange’s living room and bedroom. That’s the room on the right…”

  “Did they hear anything?”

  “Maleski heard nothing, but his wife said, with some hesitation, that she thought she had heard a murmur of voices… They went straight up to bed, and slept undisturbed until morning…

  “The other lodger is a Madame Vireveau, a widow from Paris, Rue Lamarck. She’s rather an overbearing woman, aged about sixty. She comes to Vichy every year to lose weight… This is the first time she’s taken a room in Mademoiselle Lange’s house. In former years she always stayed at a hotel.

  “She’s seen better days, apparently. Her husband was a rich man, but extravagant, and when he died she found herself in financial difficulties… To put it briefly, she’s loaded with imitation jewelry, and she booms like a dowager in a bad play… She left the house at nine. She saw no one, and claims that, when she went out, the house was in total darkness.”

  “Do the lodgers have their own keys?”

  “Yes. Madame Vireveau spent the evening at the Carlton Bridge Club, and left just before midnight. She hasn’t a car. The Maleskis have a mini, but they seldom use it in Vichy. Most of the time it’s left in a garage nearby…”

  “Were the lights still on?”

  “I’m coming to that, Chief. Naturally, I saw the old girl only after the crime had been discovered, and by then the whole street was in a turmoil… Maybe all that fancy jewelry goes with a vivid imagination… I really can’t say… Anyway, according to her story, she almost bumped into a man as she turned the corner, the corner of Boulevard de LaSalle and Rue du Bourbonnais, that is. He couldn’t possibly have seen her coming, and she swears that he was visibly startled, and shielded his face with his hand to avoid being recognized.”