The Late Monsieur Gallet Read online

  ‘I’m sure you know that it is my job to find whoever killed your father.’

  ‘Yes, which is why I’m surprised to see you here, at a time when it would be more proper to leave my mother and me alone!’

  And Henry put his glasses back on, pulling up a double cuff that had slipped down over a hand covered with the same reddish hairs as the chest of the dead man in Sancerre. There was not so much as a twitch on his bony and rather horsy face, with its strong features and gloomy expression. He was leaning his elbow on the piano, which had been moved sideways, showing its green baize back.

  ‘I’d like to ask you for some information about both your father and the whole family.’

  Henry did not open his mouth or move a muscle but stood in the same place, icy and funereal.

  ‘Please would you tell me where you were on Saturday 25 June, around four in the afternoon?’

  ‘Before that I’d like to ask you a question. Am I obliged to see you and reply to you at a time like this?’ He spoke in the same neutral voice suggesting boredom, as if every syllable tired him.

  ‘You’re at liberty not to answer. However, let me point out that …’

  ‘At what point in your inquiries did you find out who I was?’

  Maigret did not reply to that, and to tell the truth he was stunned by this unexpected turning of the tables. It was all the more unexpected because it was impossible to detect the least subtlety on the young man’s features. Henry let several seconds pass, and the maid could be heard downstairs replying to a summons from the first floor. ‘Just coming, madame!’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Since you know it already, I was there.’

  ‘In Sancerre?’

  Henry still did not move a muscle.

  ‘And you were having a discussion with your father on the lane leading to the old chateau.’ Maigret was the more nervous of the two of them, since he felt that his remarks were getting nowhere. His voice sounded flat, there was no echo of response to his suspicions. But the most unnerving thing about it was Henry Gallet’s silence; he was not trying to explain himself, just waiting.

  ‘Can you tell me what you were doing in Sancerre?’

  ‘Going to visit my mistress, Éléonore Boursang, who is on holiday and staying at the Pension Germain on the road from Sancerre to Saint-Thibaut.’ He almost imperceptibly raised his eyebrows, which were as thick as Émile Gallet’s.

  ‘You didn’t know your father was in Sancerre?’

  ‘If I’d known I’d have avoided meeting him.’ Still the minimum of explanation, forcing the inspector to repeat his questions.

  ‘Did your parents know you were having an affair?’

  ‘My father suspected. He was against it.’

  ‘What was the subject of your conversation?’

  ‘Are you making inquiries about the murderer or his victim?’ asked the young man deliberately slowly.

  ‘I’ll know who the murderer was when I know enough about the victim. Was your father angry with you?’

  ‘Sorry … I was the angry one – I was angry with him for spying on me.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then nothing! He treated me like a disrespectful son. How kind of you to remind me of that today.’

  To his relief, Maigret heard footsteps on the stairs. Madame Gallet appeared, as dignified as ever, her neck adorned by a triple necklace of heavy dark stones.

  ‘What is going on?’ she asked, looking at Maigret and her son in turn. ‘Why didn’t you call me, Henry?’

  There was a knock, and the maid came in. ‘The upholsterers have come to take the draperies away.’

  ‘Keep an eye on them,’ said Madame Gallet.

  ‘I came in search of information which I consider indispensable for finding out who the murderer is,’ said Maigret, in a voice that was becoming rather too dry. ‘I recognize that this is not the ideal moment, as your son has pointed out. But every hour that passes will make it more difficult to arrest the man who killed your husband.’ His eyes moved to Henry, who was still looking gloomy.

  ‘When you married Émile Gallet, madame, did you have a fortune of your own?’

  She stiffened slightly, and then, with a tremor of pride in her voice, announced, ‘I am the daughter of Auguste Préjean!’

  ‘Forgive me, but I …’

  ‘The former secretary to the last Bourbon prince and editor of the legitimist journal Le Soleil. My father spent all he had on publishing that journal, which went on fighting the good fight.’

  ‘Do you still have any family?’

  ‘I must have, but I haven’t seen them since my marriage.’

  ‘You were advised against marrying Monsieur Gallet?’

  ‘What I’ve just told you ought to help you to understand. All my family are royalists. All my uncles occupied prominent positions, and some of them still do. They did not like it when I married a commercial traveller.’

  ‘Then you were penniless on your father’s death?’

  ‘My father died a year after my marriage. At the time when we married my husband had some 30,000 francs …’

  ‘What about his family?’

  ‘I never knew them. He avoided mentioning them … all I know is that he had an unhappy childhood and that he spent several years in Indochina.’

  There was the suggestion of a scornful smile on her son’s lips.

  ‘I am asking you these questions, madame, because for one thing I have just heard that your husband has not in fact worked for the firm of Niel for the last eighteen years.’

  She looked at the inspector, and then Henry, and protested emphatically, ‘Monsieur …’

  ‘I have the information from Monsieur Niel himself.’

  ‘Perhaps, monsieur, it would be better …’ began the young man, moving towards Maigret.

  ‘No, Henry! I want to prove that what he says is false, it’s an odious lie! Come with me, inspector. Come along, follow me!’

  And, showing some liveliness for the first time, she made for the corridor, where she came up against the piles of black draperies being rolled up by the upholsterers. She took the inspector up to the first floor, through a bedroom with polished walnut furniture, where Émile Gallet’s straw hat still hung on a hook, as well as a cotton drill outfit that he must have worn for fishing. Next came a small room furnished as a study.

  ‘Look at that! Here are his samples. And those place settings, for instance, in that dreadful Art Deco style, you wouldn’t say they were eighteen years old, would you? Here’s the book of orders that my husband wrote up at the end of every month. Here are some letters that he received regularly, on the Niel letterhead …’

  Maigret was paying very little attention to this. He felt sure that he would have to come back to this room and just now he preferred to let its atmosphere sink in. He tried to imagine Émile Gallet sitting here in the swivel chair at his desk. On the desk itself there was a white metal inkwell and a glass globe acting as a paperweight. Through the window you could see the central avenue and the red roof of another uninhabited villa.

  The letters on the Niel letterhead were typed in an almost regular typeface:

  Dear sir,

  We have received your letter of the 15th inst., as well as the statement of orders for January. We shall expect you at the end of the month to settle our account, as usual, and we will then give you some information about the expansion of your sphere of activity.

  With good wishes,

  Signed: Jean Niel

  Maigret picked up some of the letters and put them into his wallet.

  ‘So what do you think now?’ asked Madame Gallet, with a touch of defiance.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Oh, nothing … my husband liked to do things with his hands. Here
’s an old watch that he took apart … and out in the shed there are all kinds of things that he made himself, including fishing gear. Every month he had a full week to spend here, and writing up his accounts and so forth took him only an hour or two in the morning …’

  Maigret was opening drawers at random. He saw a large pink file in one of them, with the word ‘Soleil’ written on it.

  ‘Some of my father’s papers,’ explained Madame Gallet. ‘I don’t know why we kept them. There are copies of all the numbers of the journal in that cupboard, right up to the last one. My father sold his bonds to bring that out.’

  ‘May I take this file away?’

  She turned to the door as if to consult her son, but Henry had not followed them. ‘But what can it possibly tell you? It’s a kind of relic … Still, if you think. … Oh, but listen, inspector, it surely must be impossible that Monsieur Niel said … I mean, it’s like those postcards! I had another one yesterday, and in his writing, I’m sure of it. Sent from Rouen, like the other card. Read it! All going well. Will be home on Thursday …’ Once again some emotion broke through, but with difficulty. ‘I shall almost be expecting him. Thursday is tomorrow.’ And she suddenly burst into a fit of tears, but an extraordinarily brief one, just two or three hiccups. She raised her black-bordered handkerchief to her mouth and said in a muted voice, ‘Well, let’s not stay here.’

  They had to go through the bedroom again with its walnut furniture – ordinary but of good quality: a wardrobe with a full-length mirror on it, two bedside tables and an imitation Persian carpet.

  Down in the ground-floor corridor, Henry was watching the upholsterers loading the draperies into a van without seeming to see them. He did not even turn his head when Maigret and his mother descended the polished staircase, causing the stairs to creak.

  There was an untidy look to the house. The maid came into the sitting room, carrying a litre of red wine and glasses. Two men in overalls were dragging the piano back into it.

  ‘Won’t do us any harm!’ one of the men was saying indifferently.

  Maigret had an impression that he had never had before, and it unnerved him. It seemed to him that the whole truth was here, scattered round him, and everything he saw had its meaning. But to understand it, he would have had to see it clearly, not through a sort of fog that distorted the view. And the fog persisted, created by this woman who resisted her emotions, by Henry whose long face was as impregnable as a safe, by the black draperies now on their way out, in fact by everything and most of all by Maigret’s own discomfort, out of place as he was in this house.

  He felt ashamed of the pink file that he was taking away like a thief, and he would have had difficulty in explaining why it might come in useful. He would have liked to stay upstairs for some time, alone in the dead man’s study, and wander round the shed where Émile Gallet worked on perfecting his fishing equipment.

  There was a moment of wavering, with everyone coming and going in the corridor at once. It was lunchtime, and it was obvious that the Gallets were only waiting for the police officer to leave. A smell of fried onions came from the kitchen. The maid was as distraught as the others. All anyone could do was watch the upholsterers restoring the sitting room to its usual state. One of them found the photo of Gallet underneath a tray of liqueurs.

  ‘May I take that with me?’ Maigret intervened, turning to the widow. ‘I may need it.’

  He sensed that Henry’s eyes were following him with more scorn than ever.

  ‘If you must … I don’t have many photographs of him.’

  ‘I promise to let you have it back.’

  He could not bring himself to leave. At the moment when the workmen were unceremoniously carrying in an enormous fake Sèvres vase, Madame Gallet hurried forwards.

  ‘Careful! You’re going to collide with the mantelpiece.’

  And the same mixture of grief and the grotesque, the dramatic and the petty, was still weighing down on Maigret’s shoulders in this desolate house, where he felt as if he could see Émile Gallet, whom he had not known alive, wandering in silence, his eyes ashen with his liver trouble, his chest hollow, wearing his poorly cut jacket.

  He had slipped the portrait photo into the pink file. He hesitated.

  ‘Please forgive me again, madame … I’m leaving, but I’d be glad if your son would come a little way with me.’

  Madame Gallet looked at Henry with an anxiety that she could not repress. For all her dignified manner, her measured gestures, her triple necklace of black stones, she too must be feeling something in the air.

  But the young man himself, indifferent to anything of the kind, went to collect his hat with its crape hatband from a hook.

  Their departure seemed more like an escape. The file was heavy. It was only a cardboard folder, and the papers threatened to fall out.

  ‘Would you like some newspaper to wrap that in?’ asked Madame Gallet.

  But Maigret was already out of the house, and the maid was making for the dining room with a tablecloth and some knives. Henry was walking towards the station, tall and silent, his expression inscrutable.

  When the two men were 300 metres away from the house, and the upholsterers were starting the engine of their van, the inspector said, ‘I only want to ask you for two things: first Éléonore Boursang’s address in Paris, and second your own, and the address of the bank where you work.’

  He found a pencil in his pocket and wrote on the pink cover of the file he was holding:

  Éléonore Boursang, 27 Rue de Turenne. Banque Sovrinos, 117 Boulevard Beaumarchais. Henry Gallet, Hôtel Bellevue, 19 Rue de la Roquette.

  ‘Is that all?’ asked the young man.

  ‘Thank you, yes.’

  ‘In that case I hope you’ll be putting your mind to the murderer now.’

  He did not try to judge the effect of this remark, but touched the brim of his hat and set off back up the central avenue.

  The van passed Maigret just before he reached the station.

  The last fact he picked up that day was by sheer chance. Maigret arrived at the station an hour before the train was due in and found himself alone in the deserted waiting room, in the middle of a swarm of flies. Then he saw a postman with the purple neck of an apoplectic arrive on a bicycle and put his bags down on the table for luggage.

  ‘Do you call at Les Marguerites?’ asked the inspector.

  The postman, who had not noticed him, swung round. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Police! Do you get a lot of mail to be delivered to Monsieur Gallet?’

  ‘A lot, no. Letters from the firm the poor gentleman worked for. They always came on a certain day. And then there were newspapers …’

  ‘What newspapers?’

  ‘Provincial papers, mostly from the Berry and Cher regions. And magazines: Country Lifestyles, Hunting and Fishing, Country Homes …’

  The inspector noticed that the postman was avoiding his eyes.

  ‘Is there a poste restante office in Saint-Fargeau?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Didn’t Monsieur Gallet get any other letters?’

  The postman suddenly seemed flustered. ‘Well, seeing as you know, and seeing as he’s dead,’ he stammered. ‘And anyway it’s not like I was even breaking the rules … he just asked me not to put some letters into the box but keep them until he was back, when he went away …’

  ‘What letters?’

  ‘Oh, not many … hardly one every two or three months. Blue envelopes, the cheap sort, with the address typed.’

  ‘They didn’t have the sender’s address on them?’

  ‘Not the address, no. But I couldn’t go wrong because it said on the back, and that was typed too, From: Monsieur Jacob. Did I do wrong?’

  ‘Where did these letters come from?’
r />   ‘Paris.’

  ‘I suppose you didn’t notice the arrondissement?’

  ‘I did look … but it changed every time.’

  ‘When did the last one arrive?’

  ‘Let’s see … today is the 29th, right? Wednesday. Well, it was Thursday evening, but I didn’t see Monsieur Gallet until Friday morning, when he was going fishing …’

  ‘So he went fishing?’

  ‘No, he went home after he gave me five francs, same as usual. I came over all funny when I heard he’d been killed … do you think that letter …?’

  ‘Did he leave that same day?’

  ‘Yes … hey, is it the train from Melun you’re waiting for? They just rang the bell at the level crossing … Will you have to mention this to anyone?’

  Maigret had no time to do anything but run to the platform and jump into the only first-class carriage.

  4. The Crook among the Legitimists

  Arriving for the second time at the Hôtel de la Loire, Maigret responded without warmth to Monsieur Tardivon, who received him with a confidential air, took him to his room and showed him some large yellow envelopes that had arrived for him. They contained the coroner’s report and the reports of the gendarmerie and the Nevers municipal police. The Rouen police had sent further information about the cashier Irma Strauss.

  ‘And that’s not all!’ said the hotel manager exultantly. ‘The sergeant from the gendarmerie came to see you. He wants you to phone him as soon as you arrive. And then there’s a woman who’s already turned up three times, no doubt because of the town crier and his sales pitch.’