The Carter of ’La Providence’ Read online

  ‘Phone the police at Épernay … And a doctor …’

  Even Madame Negretti came out, barely decent, with nothing on her feet. But she did not dare leave the bridge of the yacht and called to the colonel:

  ‘Walter! Walter!’

  In the background were people who had arrived unseen: the driver of the little train, a group of navvies and a man with a cow which went ambling along the towpath by itself.

  ‘Take him inside the café … And don’t touch him more than you have to.’

  He was obviously dead. The elegant suit, now no more than a limp rag, trailed along the ground when the body was lifted.

  The colonel followed slowly. His dressing gown, blue slippers and ruddy scalp, across which the wind stirred a few long wisps of hair, made him an absurd but also priestly figure.

  The girl’s sobs came faster when the body passed in front of her. Then she ran off and shut herself away in the kitchen. The landlord was yelling down the phone:

  ‘No, operator! … Police! … Hurry up! … There’s been a murder! … Don’t hang up! … Hello? Hello?’

  Maigret kept most of the onlookers out. But the barge men who had discovered the body and helped to fish it out had all crowded into the café where the tables were still littered with glasses and bottles from the night before. The stove roared. A broom was lying in the middle of the floor.

  The inspector caught a glimpse of Vladimir peering in through one of the windows. He’d had time to put his American sailor’s forage cap on his head. The barge men were talking to him, but he was not responding.

  The colonel was still staring at the body, which had been laid out on the red stone flags of the café floor. Whether he was upset or bored or scared it was impossible to say. Maigret went up to him:

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’ he asked.

  Sir Walter sighed and seemed to look around him for the man he usually relied on to answer for him.

  ‘It’s all so very terrible …’ he said eventually.

  ‘Didn’t he sleep on board last night?’

  With a gesture of the hand, the Englishman pointed to the barge men who were listening to them. It was like a reminder of the conventions. It meant: ‘Do you think it right and proper for these people …’

  Maigret ordered them out.

  ‘It was ten o’clock last night. We had no whisky left on board. Vladimir hadn’t been able to get any at Dizy. I decided to go to Épernay.’

  ‘Did Willy go with you?’

  ‘Not very far. He went off on his own just after the bridge.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We had words …’

  And as the colonel said this, his eyes still drawn to the pinched, pallid, twisted features of the dead man, his own face crumpled.

  Was it because he had not slept enough and that his flesh was puffy that he looked more upset? Perhaps. But Maigret would have sworn that there were tears lurking under those heavy eyelids.

  ‘Did you have a bust-up?’

  The colonel gave a shrug, as if resigning himself to hearing such a vulgar, ugly expression.

  ‘Were you angry with him about something?’

  ‘No! I wanted to know … I kept saying: “Willy, you’re a rotter … But you’ve got to tell me …”’

  He stopped, overcome. He looked around him so that he would not be mesmerized by the dead man.

  ‘Did you accuse him of murdering your wife?’

  He shrugged and sighed:

  ‘He went off by himself. It’s happened before, now and again. Next morning we’d drink the first whisky of the day together and put it out of our minds …’

  ‘Did you walk all the way to Épernay?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you drink a lot?’

  The lingering look which the colonel turned on the inspector was abject.

  ‘I also tried my luck at the tables, at the club … They’d told me at La Bécasse that there was a gambling club … I came back in a cab.’

  ‘At what time?’

  With a motion of the hand he intimated that he had no idea.

  ‘Willy wasn’t in his bunk?’

  ‘No. Vladimir told me as he was helping me undress for bed.’

  A motorcycle and sidecar pulled up outside the door. A police sergeant dismounted, and the passenger, a doctor, climbed out. The café door opened and then closed.

  ‘Police Judiciaire,’ said Maigret, introducing himself to his colleague from Épernay. ‘Could you get these people to keep back and then phone the prosecutor’s office …?’

  The doctor needed only a brief look at the body before saying:

  ‘He was dead before he hit the water. Take a look at these marks.’

  Maigret had already seen them. He knew. He glanced mechanically at the colonel’s right hand. It was muscular, with the nails cut square and prominent veins.

  It would take at least an hour to get the public prosecutor and his people together and ferry them to the crime scene. Policemen on cycles arrived and formed a cordon around the Café de la Marine and the Southern Cross.

  ‘May I get dressed?’ the colonel asked.

  Despite his dressing gown, slippers and bare ankles, he made a surprisingly dignified figure as he passed through the crowd of bystanders. He had no sooner gone into the cabin than he poked his head out again and shouted:

  ‘Vladimir!’

  Then all the hatches on the yacht were shut.

  Maigret was interviewing the lock-keeper, who had been called out to man his gates by a motorboat.

  ‘I imagine that there is no current in a canal? So a body will stay in the place where it was thrown in?’

  ‘In long stretches of the canal, ten or fifteen kilometres, that would be true. But this particular stretch doesn’t go even five. If a boat passes through Lock 13, which is the one above mine, I smell water that’s released arrive here a few minutes later. And if I put a boat going downstream through my lock, I take a lot of water out of the canal, and that creates a short-lived current.’

  ‘What time do you start work?’

  ‘Officially at dawn but actually a lot earlier. The horse-drawn boats, which move pretty slowly, set off at about three in the morning. More often than not, they put themselves through the lock without me hearing a thing … Nobody says anything because we know them all …’

  ‘So this morning …?’

  ‘The Frédéric, which spent the night here, must have left around half past three and went through the lock at Ay at five.’

  Maigret turned and retraced his steps. Outside the Café de la Marine and along the towpath, a few groups of men had gathered. As the inspector passed them on his way to the stone bridge, an old pilot with a grog-blossom nose came up to him:

  ‘Want me to show you the spot where that young feller was thrown into the water?’

  And looking very proud of himself, he glanced round at his comrades, who hesitated a moment before falling into step behind him.

  The man was right. Fifty metres from the stone bridge, the reeds had been trampled over an area of several metres. They hadn’t simply been walked on. A heavy object had been dragged across the ground. The tracks were wide where the reeds had been flattened.

  ‘See that? I live half a kilometre from here, in one of the first houses you come to in Dizy. When I was coming in this morning, to check if there were any boats going down the Marne that needed me, it struck me as unusual. And then I found this on the towpath just by it.’

  The man was tiresome, for he kept pulling funny faces and looking back at his companions, who were following at a distance.

  But the object he produced from his pocket was of the greatest interest. It was a finely worked enamel badge. On it was a kedge anchor and the initials ‘YCF’.

 
; ‘Yachting Club de France,’ said the pilot. ‘They all wear them in their lapels.’

  Maigret turned to look at the yacht, which was clearly visible some two kilometres away. Under the words Southern Cross he could just make out the same initials: YCF.

  Paying no further attention to the man who had given him the badge, he walked slowly to the bridge. On his right, the Épernay road stretched away in a straight line, still glistening with last night’s rain. Traffic drove along it at high speeds.

  To the left, the road formed a bend as it entered the village of Dizy. On the canal beyond, several barges were lying up, undergoing repairs, just by the yards owned by the Compagnie Générale de Navigation.

  Maigret walked back the way he’d come, feeling the tension mounting. The public prosecutor’s officials would be arriving soon, and for an hour or two there would be the usual chaos, questions, comings and goings and a spate of wild theories.

  When he was level with the yacht, everything was still all closed up. A uniformed officer was pacing up and down a little distance away, telling bystanders to move along, but failing to prevent two journalists from Épernay taking pictures.

  The weather was neither fine nor foul. A luminous grey morning sky, unbroken, like a frosted glass ceiling.

  Maigret walked across the gangplank and knocked on the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ came the colonel’s voice.

  He went in. He was in no mood to argue. He saw the Negretti woman, wearing no more clothes than before, hair hanging down over her face and neck, wiping away her tears and snivelling.

  Sir Walter was sitting on the bench seat, holding out his feet to Vladimir, who was helping him on with a pair of chestnut-brown shoes.

  Water had to be boiling somewhere on a stove because there was the hiss of escaping steam.

  The two bunks slept in by the colonel and Gloria were still unmade. Playing cards were scattered on the table beside a map of France’s navigable waterways.

  And still there was that elusive, spicy smell which evoked bar, boudoir and secret amours. A white canvas yachting cap hung from the hat stand next to a riding crop with an ivory handle.

  ‘Was Willy a member of the Yacht Club de France?’ asked Maigret in as neutral a tone as he could manage.

  The way the colonel shrugged his shoulders told him his question was absurd. And so it was. The YCF is one of the most exclusive clubs.

  ‘But I am,’ Sir Walter said casually. ‘And of the Royal Yacht Club in England.’

  ‘Would you mind showing me the jacket you were wearing last night?’

  ‘Vladimir …’

  He now had his shoes on. He stood up, bent down and opened a small cupboard, which had been turned into a liquor cabinet. There was no whisky in sight. But there were other bottles of spirits, over which he hesitated.

  Finally he brought out a bottle of liqueur brandy and murmured offhandedly:

  ‘What will you have?’

  ‘Not for me, thanks.’

  He filled a silver goblet which he took from a rack above the table, looked for the siphon, and frowned darkly like a man all of whose habits have been turned upside down and who feels hard done by.

  Vladimir emerged from the bathroom with a black tweed suit. A nod from his master instructed him to hand it to Maigret.

  ‘The YCF badge was usually pinned to the lapel of this jacket?’

  ‘Yes. How long are they going to be over there? Is Willy still on the floor of that café?’

  He had emptied his glass while still standing, a sip at a time, and hesitated about whether he’d pour himself another.

  He glanced out of the porthole, saw legs and grunted indistinctly.

  ‘Will you listen to me for a moment, colonel?’

  The colonel indicated that he was listening. Maigret took the enamel badge from his pocket.

  ‘This was found this morning at the spot where Willy’s body was dragged through a bank of reeds and dumped in the canal.’

  Madame Negretti uttered a cry, threw herself on the plum-coloured plush of the bench seat and there, holding her head in her hands, she began to sob convulsively.

  Vladimir, however, did not move. He waited for the jacket to be returned to him so that he could hang it back up in its place.

  The colonel gave an odd sort of laugh and repeated four or five times:

  ‘Yes! Yes!’

  As he did so, he poured himself another drink.

  ‘Where I come from, the police ask questions differently. They have to say that everything you say may be used as evidence against you. I’ll say it once … Shouldn’t you be writing this down? I won’t say it again …

  ‘I was with Willy. We had words. I asked … It doesn’t matter what I asked.

  ‘He wasn’t a rotter like the rest of them. Some rotters are decent fellows.

  ‘I spoke too harshly. He grabbed my jacket just here …’

  He indicated the lapels and looked out irritably at the feet encased in clogs or heavy shoes which were still visible through the portholes.

  ‘That’s all. I don’t know, maybe the badge fell off then … It happened on the other side of the bridge.’

  ‘Yet the badge was found on this side.’

  Vladimir hardly seemed to be listening. He gathered up things that were lying about, went forward and returned unhurriedly.

  In a very strong Russian accent, he asked Gloria, who wasn’t crying any more but was lying flat on her back without moving, clutching her head with both hands:

  ‘You want anything?’

  Steps were heard on the gangplank. There was a knock on the door, and the sergeant said:

  ‘Are you in there, inspector? It’s the prosecutor’s office …’

  ‘I’m coming!’

  The sergeant did not move, an unseen presence behind the mahogany door with brass handles.

  ‘One more thing, colonel. When is the funeral?’

  ‘Three o’clock.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘Yes! I have no reason to stay on here.’

  When he had drunk his third glass of three-star cognac, his eyes looked more clouded. Maigret had seen those eyes before.

  Then, just as the inspector was about to leave, he asked, cool, casual, every inch the master of all he surveyed:

  ‘Am I under arrest?’

  At once, Madame Negretti looked up. She was deathly pale.

  6. The American Sailor’s Cap

  The conclusion of the interview between the magistrate and the colonel was almost a solemn moment. Maigret, who stood slightly apart, was not the only one to notice it.

  He caught the eye of the deputy public prosecutor and saw that he too had picked up on it.

  The public prosecutor’s team had gathered in the bar room of the Café de la Marine. One door led to the kitchen, from which came the clatter of saucepans. The other door, glass-panelled, was covered with stuck-on transparent adverts for pasta and rock soap through which the sacks and boxes in the shop could be seen.

  The peaked cap of a policeman in uniform marched to and fro outside the window. Onlookers, silent but determined, had grouped a little further away.

  A half-litre glass, with a small amount of liquid in it, was still standing beside a pool of wine on one of the tables.

  The clerk of the court, seated on a backless bench, was writing. There was a peevish look on his face.

  Once the statements had all been taken, the body had been placed as far from the stove as possible and temporarily covered with one of the brown oilcloths taken from a tabletop, leaving its disjointed boards exposed.

  The smell had not gone away: spices, stables, tar and wine lees.

  The magistrate, who was reckoned to be one of the most unpleasant in Épernay – he was a Clairfontaine de Lagny and proud of t
he aristocratic ‘de’ in the name – stood with his back to the fire and wiped his pince-nez.

  At the start of the proceedings, he had said in English:

  ‘I imagine you’d prefer us to use your language?’

  He himself spoke it quite well with, perhaps, a hint of affectation, a slight screw of the lips standard among those who try – and fail – to reproduce the correct accent.

  Sir Walter had accepted the offer. He had responded to every question slowly, his face turned to the clerk, who was writing, pausing from time to time to allow him to catch up.

  He had repeated, without adding anything new, what he had told Maigret during their two interviews.

  For the occasion, he had chosen a dark-blue double-breasted suit of almost military cut. To one lapel was pinned a single medal: the Order of Merit.

  In one hand he held a peaked cap. On it was a broad gilt crest bearing the insignia of the Yachting Club de France.

  It was very simple. One man asked questions and the other man invariably gave a slight, deferential nod before answering.

  Even so, Maigret looked on admiringly but could not help feeling mortified as he remembered his own intrusive probings on board the Southern Cross.

  His English was not good enough for him to grasp all the finer points. But he at least understood the broad meaning of the concluding exchanges.

  ‘Sir Walter,’ said the magistrate, ‘I must ask you to remain available until we have got to the bottom of both these appalling crimes. I am afraid, moreover, that I have no choice but to withhold permission for the burial of Lady Lampson.’

  Another slight bow of the head.

  ‘Do I have your authorization to leave Dizy in my boat?’

  With one hand the colonel gestured towards the onlookers who had gathered outside, the scenery, even the sky.

  ‘My home is on Porquerolles … it will take me a week just to reach the Saône.’

  This time it was the turn of the magistrate to offer a respectful nod.

  They did not shake hands, though they almost did. The colonel looked around him, appeared not to see either the doctor, who seemed bored, or Maigret, who avoided his eye, but he did acknowledge the deputy prosecutor.