Maigret and the Reluctant Witness Page 3

  “I would rather leave it to you.”

  The magistrate stood leaning against the side of the door.

  “Would you mind sitting down, Monsieur Lachaume?” Maigret began.

  It was like groping his way through cotton wool. There was nothing to get hold of, nothing seemed real, except the rain still falling outside.

  “Please tell me what you know.”

  “I know nothing.”

  Even the man’s voice was expressionless, impersonal, and he was avoiding Maigret’s eye.

  “The dead man is your elder brother, is he not?”

  “My brother Léonard, as I already told your colleague.”

  “Is the biscuit factory still going?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Was it he who ran it?”

  “Our father is still chairman of the board of directors.”

  “But who was the actual manager?”

  “My brother.”

  “And you?”

  “I looked after inventory and shipping.”

  “Is it long since your brother lost his wife?”

  “Eight years.”

  “Are you acquainted with his private life?”

  “He has always lived here, with us.”

  “All the same, outside this house he presumably had a life of his own, men and women friends, connections of various kinds?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You told the police superintendent that a wallet had disappeared.”

  He nodded.

  “About how much money might be in the wallet?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “A large sum?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was your brother in the habit, for instance, of keeping several hundred thousand francs in his room?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Was it he who handled the firm’s money?”

  “He and the bookkeeper.”

  “Where is the bookkeeper?”

  “I presume he is downstairs.”

  “And where was the money put when it came in?”

  “In the bank.”

  “Every day?”

  “Money doesn’t come in every day.”

  Maigret was forcing himself to remain calm and courteous, beneath the dispassionate gaze of the young magistrate.

  “But surely there was some money somewhere…”

  “In the safe.”

  “Where is the safe?”

  “On the ground floor, in my brother’s office.”

  “Was it tampered with during the night?”

  “No.”

  “You have made sure of that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think your brother’s murderer came from outside, with theft as his intention?”

  “Yes.”

  “Someone he didn’t know from Adam?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “How many people work in the factory?”

  “At present, about twenty. At one time we employed over a hundred men and women.”

  “You know them all?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you suspect any of them?”

  “No.”

  “You heard nothing last night, although your room is only a few yards away from your brother Leonard’s?”

  “I heard nothing.”

  “You are a heavy sleeper?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You sleep heavily enough not to be disturbed by a shot fired less than ten paces away?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Just then there was a rumbling sound, and the house, despite its thick walls, seemed to shake a little. Maigret’s eye caught that of the examining magistrate.

  “Is that a train?”

  “Yes. The tracks run close by here.”

  “Do many trains go past at night?”

  “I’ve never counted them. About forty, most of them long freight trains.”

  There was a knock on the door. It was Janvier, who signed to Maigret that he had something to tell him.

  “Come in. Tell us.”

  “There’s a ladder in the courtyard, lying on the ground a few yards from the wall. I found the marks of the uprights on the window sill.”

  “Which window?”

  “A window of the landing, next to this room. It looks into the courtyard. The ladder must have been leaned there recently, and a pane of the window has been broken, after having been coated with soap.”

  “You knew this, Monsieur Lachaume?”

  “I had noted the fact.”

  “Why did you say nothing to me about it?”

  “I have had no opportunity of doing so.”

  “Where is this ladder usually?”

  “Against the warehouse, on the left of the courtyard.”

  “Was it there last night?”

  “Normally it should be there.”

  “Excuse me for a moment.”

  Maigret left the room, partly to see for himself and partly to let off steam, and he seized the chance to fill a pipe. The upstairs hall was lit by two windows, one overlooking the quay, the other, opposite it, over the courtyard. This latter had a broken pane, and some fragments of glass lay on the floor.

  Opening the window, he saw that the gray stone bore two lighter marks, as far apart as the uprights of a ladder.

  As Janvier had told him, a ladder was lying on the flagstones of the courtyard. Faint smoke was rising from the tall chimney. In a building on the left, women were bending over a long table.

  He was just going back to the others, when he heard a sound and saw a woman in a blue dressing gown, who had just opened her door.

  “Might I ask you, Madame, to come to the drawing room for a moment?”

  She seemed to hesitate, then tied the belt of her dressing gown and at last came forward.

  She was young. She had not yet made up her face and it was a little shiny.

  “Please come in.” And to Armand Lachaume:

  “I take it this is your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  Husband and wife did not look at each other.

  “Please sit down, Madame.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You, too, heard nothing during the night?”

  “I always take a sleeping pill before going to bed.”

  “When did you hear that your brother-in-law was dead?”

  She stared into space for a moment, as though pondering this.

  “I didn’t look at the time.”

  “Where were you?”

  “In my room.”

  “That is your husband’s room as well?”

  Again she hesitated.

  “No.”

  “But your room is in the corridor, nearly opposite your brother-in-law’s room?”

  “Yes. There are two rooms on the right of the corridor, my husband’s and mine.”

  “How long have you had separate rooms?”

  Armand Lachaume coughed, turned toward the examining magistrate, who was still standing up, and said in an ill-assured voice, the voice of a timid man who feels obliged to make an effort:

  “I wonder whether the chief inspector is entitled to ask us these questions concerning our private lives. My brother was killed last night by a burglar, and so far it is only our movements that seem to be the subject of inquiry.”

  The ghost of a smile twitched Angelot’s lips.

  “I imagine that when Chief Inspector Maigret puts these questions to you he is regarding you as witnesses.”

  “I don’t want my wife to be pestered, and I’d like her to be left outside all this.”

  It was the anger of a shy man, of one who seldom expressed his feelings, and it had brought a flush to his cheeks.

  Maigret went on again gently:

  “Who had been regarded as the head of the family until now, Monsieur Lachaume? Let us say, of the group of people living in this house.”

  “That is our business. Don’t answer him, Paulette.”

  Maigret noticed that he spoke to his wife with the formal vous, but that is customary in a certain class, often a kind of snobbish affectation.

  “If this kind of thing goes on, you will be annoying my father and mother presently. Then the employees, the staff…”

  “That is my intention.”

  “I do not know your precise rights…”

  The, magistrate volunteered.

  “I can tell you what they are.”

  “No. I prefer our lawyer to be present. I suppose I am allowed to send for him?”

  The examining magistrate hesitated before replying:

  “There is nothing in the regulations to prevent the presence of your lawyer. But I would anyway like to point out once again that you and the members of your family are being questioned as witnesses, and that it is not usual, in such circumstances, to call upon—”

  “We shall say nothing further until he is here.”

  “Just as you like.”

  “I will go and telephone him.”

  “Where is the telephone?”

  “In the dining room.”

  This was the room next door, and they had a glimpse of the two old people who had settled in front of the fireplace where two meager logs were burning. Thinking this was a fresh invasion, they made as if to get up in order to take refuge somewhere else, but Armand Lachaume closed the door behind him.

  “Your husband seems to have been considerably shaken, Madame.”

  She looked stonily at the chief inspector.

  “It’s natural, don’t you think?”

  “Were they twins, he and his brother?”

  “There is seven years’ difference between them.”

  Yet their features were the same, even to the identical thin, droop-tog mustaches. A murmur of voices came from the next room. The Magistrate showed no sign of impatience, no desire to sit down.

  “You have no suspicion, no idea of your own, about—”

  “My husband told you we would not answer questions except in the presence of our lawyer.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Ask my husband.”

  “Are there any other brothers or sisters?”

  She looked at him in silence. And yet she seemed to be of a different breed from the rest of the family. One could feel that in other circumstances she should be pretty, desirable, and she had a muted vitality that she was obliged to hold in check.

  She was an unexpected figure in this house where everything was so far removed from time and real life.

  Armand Lachaume reappeared. There was another glimpse of the two old people, sitting in front of the fireplace like waxen images.

  “He will be here in a few minutes.”

  He gave a start as the footsteps of several men were heard on the stairs. Maigret reassured him.

  “They’ve come for the body,” he explained. “I’m sorry, but as the examining magistrate will tell you, this is a regulation, the body must be taken to the medico-legal institute for a post-mortem to be performed.”

  The curious thing was that there seemed to be no grief here, only a strange dejection, a kind of uneasy stupor.

  Many a time in his career Maigret had been in much the same position, forced to intrude into the life of a family in which a crime had just been committed.

  Never had he received such an impression of unreality.

  And into the bargain, an examining magistrate, belonging to a younger generation, had to complicate things by dogging his heels.

  “I’m going to have a word with those fellows,” he muttered. “I have to give some instructions…”

  They needed neither instruction nor advice. The men with the stretcher knew their job. Maigret simply watched them at it, lifted the sheet that covered the dead man’s face for a moment, to have a final brief glance at him.

  Then, looking around the room, he saw a door at one side, opened it, and found himself in a dusty, untidy room that must have been Léonard Lachaume’s private office.

  Janvier was there, bending over a piece of furniture, and gave a start:

  “Oh, it’s you, Chief.”

  He was opening the drawers of an old desk, one by one.

  “Have you found anything?”

  “No. I don’t like this ladder business.”

  Neither did Maigret. He had not yet had a chance to prowl around the house, or outside it, but all the same that ladder struck him as somehow incongruous.

  “You see,” went on Janvier, “there’s a glass-paneled door just below the window with the broken pane. It opens into the entry, and anyone can come up here from there with nothing to stop them. Coming in that way it wouldn’t even have been necessary to break a pane in the door, for there was already that broken one that’s filled in with cardboard. So why carry a very heavy ladder across the courtyard and—”

  “I know.”

  “Is he going to hang around till the bitter end?”

  He, of course, was the examining magistrate.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  This time both of them jumped, for there was someone standing in the doorway, a little old woman, almost a hunchback, who was glaring at them with dark, indignant eyes.

  It was the servant to whom the police superintendent had referred. Her glance traveled from the two men to the open drawers, the scattered papers, and at last she muttered, with a visible effort to keep from reviling them:

  “Would Chief Inspector Maigret come to the drawing room, please.”

  Janvier inquired in a low voice:

  “Shall I go on, Chief?”

  “At the present stage I really don’t know. Do as you like.”

  He followed the waiting hunchback, who opened the door for him into the drawing room, where there was a newcomer. He introduced himself:

  “Maître Radel…”

  Was he going to refer to himself in the third person?

  “Pleased to meet you, Maître.”

  Another young fellow, though not so young as the magistrate. In this house, this survival from another age, Maigret would have expected some old, dirty, pettifogging lawyer.

  Radel could hardly be over thirty-five and he was almost as well turned out as the examining magistrate.

  “Gentlemen, I only know what Monsieur Armand Lachaume thought fit to tell me on the telephone, and I would like first of all to apologize for my client’s reactions. Try to put yourselves in his place, and you will perhaps understand him. I have come here as a friend rather than as a lawyer, and in order to clear up any misunderstanding. Armand Lachaume is a sick man. The death of his brother, who was the life and soul of this house, has been a great shock to him, and it is not surprising that, in his ignorance of police methods, he should have been riled by certain questions.”

  Maigret sighed in resignation to the inevitable, and relit his pipe, which had gone out.

  “Since he has asked me to be present at any interrogations you may decide to hold, I will do so, but I must emphasize that my presence is not to be regarded as implying any defensive attitude on the part of the family…”

  He turned to the examining magistrate, then to the chief inspector.

  “Whom do you wish to question?”

  “Madame Lachaume,” said Maigret, indicating the young woman.

  “I will only ask you to bear in mind that Madame Lachaume is just as distressed as her husband.”

  “I would like,” went on Maigret, “to question each person separately.”

  The husband scowled. Maître Radel spoke to him quietly and persuaded him to leave the room.

  “To your knowledge, Madame, had your brother-in-law received any threatening letters recently?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “He would have told you?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “Told you, or the rest of the family?”

  “He would have told us all.”

  “Including his parents?”

  “Perhaps not, in view of their age.”

  “So he would have told your husband and yourself.”

  “That would have been natural, I think.”

  “The brothers were on close, confiding terms?”

  “Very close and very confiding.”

  “And with you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “On what terms were you, exactly, with your brother-in-law?”

  “I apologize for interrupting,” put in Maître Radel, “but expressed in those words, that might seem to be a leading question. I take, Monsieur Maigret, that it is not your intention to insinuate—”

  “I am not insinuating anything at all. I am merely asking whether Madame Lachaume and her brother were on friendly terms.”

  “Certainly we were,” she replied.

  “On affectionate terms?”

  “The same as in any other family, I suppose.”

  “When did you see him for the last time?”

  “Well … this morning…”

  “You mean that this morning you saw him dead in his room?”

  She nodded.

  “When did you last see him alive?”

  “Last night.”

  “At what time?”

  She could not restrain a quick glance at the lawyer.

  “It must have been about half-past eleven.”

  “Where were you?”

  “In the corridor.”

  “The one that goes past your room and his?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were coming from this drawing room?”

  “No.”

  “You were with your husband?”

  “No. I had been out by myself.”

  “Your husband had remained at home?”

  “Yes. He seldom goes out. Especially since he nearly died of pleurisy. He has always been delicate and—”

  “What time did you go out?”

  She asked the lawyer:

  “Do I have to answer that?”

  “I advise you to, although these questions relate only to your private life and obviously have no connection whatever with the tragedy.”

  “I went out about six o’clock.”

  “In the evening?”

  “Certainly not at six in the morning.”

  “Your lawyer will perhaps allow you to tell us what you did up to half-past eleven?”

  “I had dinner out.”

  “Alone?”

  “That’s my affair.”

  “And then?”

  “I went to the movies.”

  “A local one?”

  “No, on Champs-Elysées. When I got back the house was in darkness, at least on the side that overlooks the quay. I went upstairs, into the corridor, and I saw my brother-in-law’s door opening.”