Félicie Read online

  ‘Incidentally, Madame Chochoi, did Monsieur Lapie’s housekeeper have many boyfriends?’

  ‘I expect she had some.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘At least she used to talk about one. Always the same one. But that’s her business. She was often down in the dumps, poor thing.’

  ‘A married man?’

  ‘Could have been. That was probably why she was always talking about setbacks. She never said much to me. If she ever told anyone about it, it would have been Léontine, the girl who cleans for Monsieur Forrentin.’

  A man has been murdered and here’s Maigret, a serious man, a man in the prime of life, worrying his head about the love-life of a girl with a head full of romantic notions! Romantic to the point where there are whole pages in her diary like:

  17 June – Feeling down.

  18 June – Feeling blue.

  21 June – The world is a false paradise in which there isn’t enough happiness to go round.

  22 June – I love him.

  23 June – I love him.

  Maigret moves on to Forrentin’s house and rings the bell. Léontine, the estate manager’s housemaid, is a girl of about twenty, with a large moon face. She immediately takes fright. She is afraid of getting her friend into trouble.

  ‘Of course she used to tell me everything. Or at least everything she wanted to tell me. She used to come round often, rush in she would …’

  He pictures the two of them so clearly, one open-mouthed in admiration, and Félicie with her coat worn carelessly over her shoulders.

  ‘Anyone else here? Oh Léontine, if you only knew …’

  She talks and talks the way young women talk among themselves.

  ‘I saw him … Oh, I’m so happy!’

  Poor Léontine does not know how to answer Maigret’s questions.

  ‘I’ll never say a bad word about her. Félicie has been so unhappy!’

  ‘On account of a man?’

  ‘Several times she said she wished she was dead.’

  ‘Didn’t he love her?’

  ‘I don’t know. Stop tormenting me.’

  ‘Do you know his name?’

  ‘She never told me.’

  ‘Did you ever see him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where did she used to meet him?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Was she his mistress?’

  Léontine blushes and stammers:

  ‘Once, she told me that if she ever had a baby …’

  What has any of this to do with the murder of the old man? But Maigret ploughs on and the further he goes the more he feels plagued by that uneasy feeling he has whenever he is about to make a blunder.

  It can’t be helped! Here he is, back again on the terrace of the Anneau d’Or. The woman who operates the post office switchboard is waving.

  ‘There have already been two calls from Paris. They’ll be calling you back any minute now …’

  Janvier again? No, it’s not his voice, it is a voice unfamiliar to the inspector.

  ‘Hello? Monsieur Maigret?’

  So it’s not anybody from Quai des Orfèvres.

  ‘I’m a waiter in the buffet at Saint-Lazare station … A customer asked me to phone you and say … Wait a moment … I’ve gone and forgotten his name … A name like one of the months … Février? …’

  ‘Janvier.’

  ‘That’s it! … He got on the Rouen train. He couldn’t hang about … He thinks you could maybe get to Rouen to meet the train … He said if you get a car …’

  ‘Anything else?

  ‘No, monsieur … I’ve done what he asked … That’s the lot …’

  What does this mean? If Janvier has suddenly got on a train to Rouen, then it can only be because Pétillon is on his way there. He hesitates for a moment. Stepping out of the phone booth, which is stiflingly hot, he wipes his face under the inquisitive gaze of the woman on the switchboard. A car, he should be able to find a car …

  ‘But the hell with it!’ he growls. ‘Just let Janvier handle it himself.’

  His search of the three rooms has yielded nothing except Félicie’s diary. Lucas is still bored with kicking his heels outside Cape Horn, and the people in the houses close by peep out at him through their curtains from time to time.

  So instead of launching himself on the trail of the strange nephew, Maigret has a snack on the terrace of the inn, savours his coffee, tops it off with a glass of old marc and, heaving a sigh, gets back on his bike. As he passes, he hands Lucas a packet of sandwiches and rides down the slope into Poissy.

  It doesn’t take him long to track down the bar where Félicie goes dancing on Sundays. It is a wooden structure on the Seine. At this time of day, there’s no one there. It’s the owner himself, a muscle man wearing a sweater, who asks what he wants. The two men recognize each other, and five minutes later they are sitting at a table in front of a couple of liqueur glasses. It’s a small world. The man, who spends Sundays collecting the money before each dance starts, used to be a small-time fairground wrestler who has had a few run-ins with the police. He was first to recognize the inspector.

  ‘I’m guessing you’re not here on my account? I’m straight these days and doing well, you know!’

  ‘Of course … Of course,’ says Maigret with a smile.

  ‘As for the customers … No, inspector, I don’t think there’s anything here for you … Errand girls, kitchen-maids, a crowd of harmless kids who …’

  ‘Do you know Félicie?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A strange girl thin as a rake, with a pointed nose, a stubborn look on her face, always dressed like a flag or a rainbow …’

  ‘The Parakeet!’

  Well, well! Old Lapie used to call Félicie a cockatoo.

  ‘What’s she done?’

  ‘Nothing. I’d just like to know who she used to meet when she came here.’

  ‘Nobody, or near enough … My wife – don’t beat your brains, you don’t know her, she’s the genuine article – my wife, as I was saying, called her the Princess on account of the airs she gave herself. What exactly was eating the chick? I never knew. She really did show up like she actually was a princess. When she danced she was as stiff as a board. If you asked her anything, she sort of gave the impression that she wasn’t what people thought she was, that she came here incognito. All nonsense, of course! Oh, and she always sat at this table, by herself. She’d sip her drink with her little finger sticking out. Her ladyship didn’t dance with just anybody … Sunday … Ah! that reminds me …’

  Maigret pictures the crowd on the dance-floor which shakes, the racket of the accordion, the owner standing hands on hips waiting to pass among the couples to collect the dance money.

  ‘She was dancing with a guy I’ve seen around some place. But where, I’m damned if I can recollect. Short, muscular, nose a bit crooked … Anyway. All I know is that he was holding her pretty close … Then all at once, in the middle of a dance, she slaps his face with the flat of her hand! I thought there was going to be trouble. I went up to them. But no bother. The guy just left, he’d had enough, and the Princess went snootily back to her seat and started powdering her nose …’

  Janvier must have got to Rouen ages ago. Maigret leaves his bike on the terrace of the Anneau d’Or, then goes for a word with the woman working the switchboard in the cool interior of the post office.

  ‘No calls for me?’

  ‘Just a message. You’re to contact the Rouen central police s
tation. Want me to put you through?’

  It’s not Janvier he gets at the other end of the line, but the station head.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret? … This is what we’ve been asked to pass on to you. The young man got to Rouen after traipsing round a dozen bars in Montmartre. Apparently, he did not speak to anyone. Each time, he seemed to be waiting for somebody. When he got to Rouen, he headed straight for the garrison district. He went into a brasserie I’m sure you know of, the Tivoli, where working girls hang out. He stayed for maybe half an hour, then he wandered through the streets and turned up back at the station. He was looking more tired than ever, even desperate. At present, he’s waiting for the Paris train, and Inspector Janvier is staying on his tail …’

  Maigret gives the standard orders: question the madam who runs the bar, find out which woman Pétillon came to see, what he was after, etc. He is still in the booth when he hears a muffled rumble, like a passing bus, but when he comes out into the post office he realizes that it is the distant herald of an approaching storm.

  ‘Will you be expecting any more calls?’ asks the telephone operator, who has never known such thrills in all her days.

  ‘Possibly. I’ll send you my sergeant.’

  ‘It’s ever so exciting being in the police! Whereas we in our small corner never see anything!’

  He gives a mechanical smile instead of shrugging his shoulders as he would like to do and then he sets off once more along the short stretch of road which separates him from the village.

  ‘She’s got to start talking!’ he keeps telling himself all the way there.

  The storm is building. The horizon has turned a threatening purple, and the slanting rays of the sun seem more sharply angled. The flies are biting.

  ‘Go back to the Anneau d’Or, Lucas. Answer the phone calls, if there are any.’

  When he opens the door of Cape Horn, his face wears the determined expression of a man who has allowed himself to be walked over for too long. That’s all over now! He’s going to face up to Félicie, confound her! He’ll shake her as hard as it takes to knock her off her high horse!

  ‘That’s it, girl! We’ve finished playing games!’

  He knows she’s in. He saw a curtain twitch on the ground floor when he was sending Lucas back to Orgeval. He goes in. Silence. In the kitchen, the coffee is percolating. No one in the garden, He scowls.

  ‘Félicie!’ he calls softly. ‘Félicie!’

  He starts to lose patience and he shouts angrily:

  ‘Félicie!’

  For a moment he wonders if she hasn’t taken him for a ride once again, and whether she hasn’t just slipped through his fingers. But no. He hears a faint sound upstairs, something resembling the sobbing of a very small child. He climbs the stairs two at a time and comes to a stop at the door to Félicie’s bedroom and then sees her lying full length on her divan.

  She is crying, her face buried in the pillow. Just as large tears start to flow, a draught slams a door shut somewhere in the house.

  ‘Well?’ he growls.

  She does not move. Her back jerks with each sob. He puts a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Well, Félicie?’

  ‘Leave me alone … Please, let me be!’

  A thought enters his head, but he does not linger over it: this is all just play-acting. Félicie has picked her moment. She has even chosen her posture carefully, and who knows if it’s by accident that her dress has ridden up well above her restless knees?

  ‘Come on, up you get.’

  Surprise! She does what she’s told! Félicie does what she’s told without arguing, which is unexpected to say the least. Now she is sitting on her bed, eyes swimming with tears and face mottled with red, and she stares at him, cutting such a dismal, weary figure that he feels as if he is behaving like a brute.

  ‘What’s the matter? Come on, tell me …’

  She shakes her head. She can’t speak. She intimates that she would like to tell him everything, but that she can’t, and again she buries her head in her hands.

  Standing in that room, he feels he looms too large and pulls a chair towards him, sits by the side of the bed and hesitates about whether he should take one of her hands and ease it away from her tear-stained face. For he is not yet convinced by her. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if, behind those clenched fists, he were to find a sarcastic expression on her face.

  She is crying genuinely. She cries like a child and is not looking for effect or for sympathy. So it is in a child’s voice that at last she stammers:

  ‘You’re not being very nice …’

  ‘Me, not nice? Oh come on, my girl. Just calm down. Don’t you realize that it’s for your own good?’

  She says no with a shake of her head.

  ‘But damn it all, don’t you understand that there’s been a murder, that you are the only person who knew the house well enough to … I’m not saying you killed the man you lived with here …’

  ‘I didn’t “live” with him …’

  ‘I know. You already told me … So let’s say he was your father. Because that’s what you’ve been hinting at, isn’t it? And let’s say that a long time ago old Lapie did something stupid and that later he brought you here, to his house … So you stand to inherit everything. You’re the one who has gained most from his death.’

  He has moved too quickly. She gets to her feet, stands in front of him straight and stiff, the very picture of indignation.

  ‘But it’s true, Félicie! … Sit down … Logically I should have arrested you already.’

  ‘I’m ready …’

  Good God, it’s difficult! How much more would Maigret have preferred to be faced with the wiliest of rogues, the most vicious old reprobates! Deciding when she’s play-acting and when she is being serious is impossible. Is she actually ever sincere? He senses that she is observing him, that she never stops watching him with quite frightening lucidity.

  ‘That’s not the issue. The issue is that you must start helping us. The man who took advantage of your absence at the grocer’s to kill your … let’s just say, to kill Jules Lapie, was sufficiently familiar with the domestic routine here to …’

  She sits down wearily on the edge of the bed and murmurs:

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Anyway, why would Lapie take someone he didn’t know to his bedroom? He was killed in his room. He had no reason to go upstairs at that time of day. He was busy in the garden. He offered his visitor a drink, though he was pretty near …’

  At times Maigret has almost to shout to make himself heard above the noise of the storm, and when one clap of thunder comes, louder than the rest, Félicie instinctively reaches out her hand and grabs his wrist.

  ‘I’m scared.’

  She is shaking. No pretence. She really is shaking.

  ‘There’s no need to be frightened. I’m here …’

  It’s a stupid thing to say, and he knows it. She immediately takes advantage of his temporary distraction to put on a more pained face and she moans:

  ‘Why are you tormenting me like this? The way you’re going on, you’ll only make it even more hurtful! I’m so unhappy! Oh God! How unhappy I am! And you … you …’

  She stares at him with eyes that are wide open, beseeching.

  ‘You’re picking on me because I’m weak, because I’ve got nobody to defend me … There’s been a man outside the house all last night and all today and he’ll be there again tonight …’

  ‘What’s the name of the man whose face you slapped w
hen you were out dancing last Sunday?’

  For a moment she is wrong-footed but then with an unpleasant laugh she says:

  ‘You see!’

  ‘What do I see?’

  ‘I’m the one you’re after. It’s me you’re picking on as if … as if you hated me! What did I do to you? I’m begging you! Tell me, what did I ever do to you?’

  This would be the moment for Maigret to stand up, put an end to this charade and start talking seriously. That is exactly what he intends to do. The very last thing he wants at this moment would be someone outside, on the landing, watching what he was doing. But it’s too late! He has been too slow getting into the driving seat, and Félicie, becoming more intense, uses a roll of thunder as a pretext for clinging on to him, talking into his ear: he feels her warm breath on his cheek and sees her face almost touching his.

  ‘Is it because I am a woman? Are you like Forrentin?’

  ‘What has Forrentin …?’

  ‘He wants me. He follows me around. He told me he would have me sooner or later, that in the end I’d …’

  It could be true. Maigret remembers the estate manager’s face, his rather disconcerting smile and those large, sensual hands …

  ‘If that’s what you want, say so! I’d much prefer …’

  ‘No, girl, no.’

  This time, he gets up and pushes her off him.

  ‘Come downstairs, please. There is nothing for us in this room.’

  ‘You’re the one who came up here.’

  ‘That’s no reason for staying here and especially not so that you can put such ideas in my head. Come downstairs. Please …’

  ‘Give me a moment to make myself presentable.’

  She powders her nose quickly in the mirror. She sniffles.

  ‘You’re going to make something awful happen, see if you don’t!’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. But if I’m found dead …’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Come …’

  He stands back and lets her go first. The storm has so darkened the sky that he has to switch on the light in the kitchen. The coffee on the stove is boiling away.