Maigret Hesitates Page 6

  He was waiting, patiently, politely, so patiently and so politely that he couldn’t get over it.

  ‘I imagine you also lead a busy life.’

  ‘You know, madame, I’m just a public servant, nothing more.’

  She laughed, showing all her teeth and the tip of her pink tongue. He was struck by how pointed her tongue was. She was blonde, verging on ginger, with the kind of eyes that are called green but are most often a dull grey.

  Was she forty? A little younger? A little older? Forty-five? The beauty salon had done its work so well, it was impossible to say.

  ‘I’ll have to tell that to Jacqueline. She’s a good friend of mine, the wife of the minister of the interior.’

  Well, now he knew! She hadn’t wasted any time in playing her trump card.

  ‘I may seem to be joking, and I do joke, but please believe me, it’s only a façade. The fact is, Monsieur Maigret, I’m deeply disturbed by what’s happening, although “disturbed” is too weak a word.’

  Then, all at once:

  ‘What do you think of my husband?’

  ‘He’s very pleasant.’

  ‘Of course. That’s what everyone says. What I mean is—’

  ‘He’s highly intelligent, remarkably intelligent in fact, and …’

  She was becoming impatient. She knew where she wanted to get to, and he was cutting her off. Looking at her hands, Maigret observed that they were older than her face.

  ‘I think he’s also very sensitive.’

  ‘If you were being completely honest, wouldn’t you say over-sensitive?’

  He opened his mouth, but this time she was the one who got in first.

  ‘There are times he’s so withdrawn, he scares me. He’s a man who suffers a lot. I’ve always known that. When I married him, there was a certain amount of pity in my love.’

  He feigned stupidity.

  ‘Why?’

  She was thrown for a moment.

  ‘I mean … I mean, you saw him. Even when he was a child, he must have been ashamed of his physical appearance.’

  ‘He isn’t tall. But there are others who—’

  ‘Come now, inspector,’ she said irritably, ‘let’s be fair. I don’t know what his family history has to do with it, or rather, I know only too well. His mother was a young nurse in Laennec, more precisely a ward orderly, and she was only sixteen when Professor Parendon got her pregnant. Why, being a surgeon, didn’t he operate on her? Did she threaten to cause a scandal? I don’t know. What I do know is that Émile was born premature, at seven months.’

  ‘Most premature babies grow up normal children.’

  ‘Do you think he’s normal?’

  ‘In what sense?’

  She nervously extinguished her cigarette and lit another.

  ‘Forgive me. I have the impression that you’re dodging the issue, that you don’t want to understand.’

  ‘Understand what?’

  Unable to hold out any longer, she sprang to her feet and started pacing up and down the Chinese rug.

  ‘Understand why I’m worried sick! For more than twenty years, I’ve worked hard to protect him, to make him happy, to give him a normal life.’

  He sat watching her and smoking his pipe in silence. She was wearing very elegant slippers that must have been made to measure.

  ‘Those letters he told me about. I’ve no idea who wrote them, but they fit in well with my anxiety.’

  ‘How long have you been anxious?’

  ‘Weeks … Months … I don’t dare say years … When we were first married, he did whatever I did, we went out together, went to the theatre, had dinner out.’

  ‘Did it cheer him up?’

  ‘At least it relaxed him. But now I suspect that he doesn’t feel at home anywhere, that he’s ashamed of not being like everybody else and always has been … Look, even the choice of maritime law as a career. Can you tell me why a man like him would choose maritime law? It was an act of defiance. Not being able to plead in court—’

  ‘Why not?’

  She gave him a disappointed look.

  ‘Come, now, Monsieur Maigret, you know as well as I do. Can you see that pale, insubstantial little man pleading for a man’s life in a courtroom?’

  He preferred not to retort that there had been an important lawyer in the last century who was only one metre fifty-five tall.

  ‘He mopes about. As time passes and he gets older, he locks himself in more and more, and, when we give a dinner party, it’s the devil’s own job to get him to take part.’

  Nor did he ask her:

  ‘Who draws up the guest list?’

  He was watching and listening. He was watching and trying not to let it bother him, because the picture that this woman with her fraught nerves and fiery energy was painting of her husband was both true and false.

  But what was true and what was false?

  That was what he would have liked to untangle. The image of Émile Parendon was starting to seem like a blurred photograph. The outlines lacked clarity, and the features kept changing expression depending on the angle from which you looked at them.

  It was true that he had shut himself up in a world of his own — in the world of Article 64, perhaps. Was man responsible for his actions or not? He wasn’t the only one fascinated by this crucial question. In the Middle Ages, there had been councils to discuss it.

  Had this idea become an obsession for Parendon? Maigret remembered walking into the office the day before and the look that Parendon had given him, as if at that moment Maigret represented a kind of embodiment of the famous article or was capable of providing an answer.

  Parendon hadn’t asked him what he had come for, what he wanted. He had talked to him about Article 64, his lips almost quivering with emotion.

  It was true that …

  Yes, he led an almost solitary existence in this apartment that was too large for him, like a giant’s jacket.

  How, with his puny body, with all the thoughts running round and round in his head, could he deal every day with a woman so full of nervous energy that she transmitted that energy to everything around her?

  It was true that he was a runt! Yes, even a gnome.

  But every now and again, when the adjoining rooms seemed empty, when the opportunity presented itself, he and Mademoiselle Vague made love.

  What was true? What was false? Wasn’t Bambi protecting herself from her mother by taking refuge in archaeology?

  ‘Listen to me, Monsieur Maigret. I’m not the frivolous woman others may have described to you. I’m a woman with responsibilities, a woman who tries her best to make herself useful. That’s how our father raised my sisters and me. He was a man who believed in duty.’

  Oh, dear! Maigret wasn’t at all keen on these words: the upright magistrate, a credit to the profession, teaching his daughters the meaning of duty …

  And yet, coming from her, it didn’t sound all that false. She didn’t give her mind time to linger on any one sentence because her face kept moving, her whole body kept moving, and one word followed another, one idea followed another, one image followed another, in rapid succession.

  ‘There is fear in this house, it’s true. And I’m the one who feels it most. Oh, don’t go thinking I wrote you those letters! I’m too direct to go about things in such a roundabout way. If I’d wanted to see you, I’d have telephoned as I did this morning … I’m afraid. Not so much for myself as for him. What he can do, I don’t know, but I sense that he’ll do something, that he’s at the end of his tether, that some kind of demon inside him is urging him to do something dramatic.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you?’

  ‘He struck me as very calm and level-headed, and I even thought he had quite a sophisticated sense of humour.’

  ‘Oh, he has a sense of humour, but it’s dark, even macabre. The man is sick with worry. His business takes up no more than two or three days a week. René Tortu doe
s most of his research for him. He reads reviews and sends letters all over the world to people he doesn’t know whose articles he’s read. He sometimes doesn’t set foot outside for days on end, just watches the world through the window. The same chestnut trees, the same wall around the garden of the Élysée, I was going to add the same people passing in the street … You came twice and didn’t ask to see me. But unfortunately, I’m the one who’s most involved. I’m his wife, don’t forget that, even though he sometimes seems to forget it. We have two children who still need guidance.’

  She paused for breath and lit a cigarette. It was the fourth one. She smoked greedily, while still talking just as fast, and the boudoir was already filled with clouds of smoke.

  ‘I don’t think you can predict what he’ll do, any more than I can. Is it himself he’ll harm? It’s possible, and I’d be terribly upset, having tried for so many years to make him happy. Is it my fault I haven’t succeeded? Or perhaps I’ll be the victim, yes, that’s more likely, because he’s gradually started to hate me. Can you understand that? His brother, who’s a neurologist, might be able to explain it. He needs to project his disappointment, his resentment, his humiliation on to someone.’

  ‘Forgive me if—’

  ‘Please let me finish. Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or whenever, you may be called here to look at a corpse, and that corpse will be me. I forgive him in advance, because I know he isn’t responsible and that in spite of the progress that medicine has made—’

  ‘Do you consider your husband a medical case?’

  She looked at him with a kind of defiance.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A mental case?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Have you spoken to doctors?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Doctors who know him?’

  ‘We have several doctors among our friends.’

  ‘What exactly did they tell you?’

  ‘To be careful.’

  ‘Careful about what?’

  ‘We didn’t go into details. These weren’t consultations, but conversations during social occasions.’

  ‘Did they all say the same thing?’

  ‘Several of them, yes.’

  ‘Can you give me any names?’

  Maigret deliberately took his black notebook from his pocket. That was enough for her to beat a retreat.

  ‘It wouldn’t be right for me to give you their names, but if you want to have him examined by an expert …’

  Maigret had lost his patient, good-humoured air. His features were tense, too, because things were starting to go too far.

  ‘When you called my office to ask me to come and see you, did you already have that idea in your mind?’

  ‘What idea?’

  ‘To ask me more or less directly to have your husband examined by a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Did I say that? I didn’t even use that word.’

  ‘But it’s implied in everything you’ve said.’

  ‘If that’s the case, you’ve misunderstood me, or else I haven’t expressed myself well. Perhaps I’m too frank, too spontaneous. I don’t choose my words carefully. What I said, and I repeat it now, is that I’m afraid, that there’s a sense of fear in this household.’

  ‘And I repeat: fear of what?’

  She sat down, as if exhausted, and looked at him with disappointment.

  ‘I don’t know what else to tell you, inspector. I thought you would understand without my needing to make it too clear. I’m afraid for him, for me.’

  ‘In other words, afraid he’ll kill you or commit suicide?’

  ‘Put like that, it seems ridiculous, I know, when everything seems so peaceful here.’

  ‘Forgive me for asking a personal question. Do you and your husband still have sexual relations?’

  ‘Up until a year ago.’

  ‘What happened a year ago to change things?’

  ‘I caught him with that girl.’

  ‘Mademoiselle Vague?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the office?’

  ‘It was horrible.’

  ‘And since then you’ve shut your door to him? Has he ever tried to get through?’

  ‘Only once. I gave him a piece of my mind, and he understood.’

  ‘He didn’t insist?’

  ‘He didn’t even apologize. He slunk away like someone who’s stepped out on the wrong floor.’

  ‘Have you had lovers?’

  ‘What?’

  Her eyes had grown hard, her gaze sharp and malicious.

  ‘I asked you,’ he repeated calmly, ‘if you’ve had lovers. These things happen, don’t they?’

  ‘Not in our family, inspector, and if my father were here—’

  ‘As a magistrate, your father would understand that it’s my duty to ask you the question. You’ve just told me about a general fear, a threat hanging over you or your husband. You imply that I should have him examined by a psychiatrist. Therefore it’s only natural that—’

  ‘I’m sorry. I got carried away. No, I haven’t had lovers, and I never will have.’

  ‘Do you own a gun?’

  She stood up, walked briskly to the next room, came back and handed Maigret a little mother-of-pearl revolver.

  ‘Careful. It’s loaded.’

  ‘Have you had it a long time?’

  ‘A friend who really did have a dark sense of humour gave it to me when I got married.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid that the children, as a game—’

  ‘They don’t often come into my room, and when they were younger this weapon used to be in a locked drawer.’

  ‘What about your rifles?’

  ‘They’re in a case, and the case is in the shed, with our trunks, our suitcases and our golf bags.’

  ‘Does your husband play golf?’

  ‘I’ve tried to get him interested, but by the time he gets to the third hole, he’s out of breath.’

  ‘Is he often ill?’

  ‘He hasn’t had many serious illnesses. The worst, if I remember, was pleurisy. On the other hand, he’s constantly getting sore throats, bouts of laryngitis and flu, head colds.’

  ‘Does he call his doctor?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Is he a friend of yours?’

  ‘No. He’s a local doctor, Dr Martin, who lives in Rue du Cirque, just behind here.’

  ‘Has Dr Martin ever taken you aside?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t, but I’ve sometimes waited for him when he came out to ask him if there’s anything seriously wrong with my husband.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said no. He said it’s men like him who live the longest. He mentioned Voltaire, who—’

  ‘I know all about Voltaire … Did he ever suggest your husband consult a specialist?’

  ‘No. Only …’

  ‘Only …?’

  ‘What’s the point? You’re going to misinterpret my words again.’

  ‘Try anyway.’

  ‘I sense from your attitude that my husband made a very good impression on you, as I was sure he would. I won’t say that he’s knowingly playing a role. With strangers, he’s cheerful and appears very well-balanced. With Dr Martin, he talks and behaves as he does with you.’

  ‘And with the staff?’

  ‘He’s not responsible for the work of the servants.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘That it’s not up to him to reprimand them. He leaves that to me, with the result that I look like the bad one.’

  Maigret was stifling in his overly snug armchair, in this boudoir where all the blue was starting to be unbearable to him. Getting to his feet, he almost stretched as he would have done in his office.

  ‘Do you have anything more to tell me?’

  Also now standing up, she looked him up and down as if they were equals.

  ‘There would be no point.’

  ‘Would you like me to send an inspector to keep guard in the apartment?’


  ‘That’s a perfectly absurd idea.’

  ‘Not if I’m to believe your premonitions.’

  ‘They aren’t premonitions.’

  ‘They aren’t facts either.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Let’s sum up. For some time now, your husband has been giving signs of mental disorder.’

  ‘You will insist, won’t you?’

  ‘He’s become increasingly withdrawn and his behaviour worries you.’

  ‘That’s closer to the truth.’

  ‘You fear for his life or for yours.’

  ‘Yes, I admit that.’

  ‘Which do you think is more likely?’

  ‘If I knew that, it would be some kind of relief.’

  ‘Someone who lives in this apartment or has ready access to it has sent us two letters announcing an imminent crime. I should tell you that there was also a telephone call in my absence.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that before?’

  ‘Because I was listening to you … This call, which was very brief, simply confirmed what was in the letters. What the caller said was basically: “Tell Inspector Maigret it’ll happen soon.”’

  He saw her turn pale. She wasn’t play-acting. Her face suddenly became colourless, apart from a few patches of make-up, and the corners of her lips drooped.

  ‘Oh!’

  She lowered her head, and her thin body seemed to have lost its prodigious energy.

  At that moment, he forgot his irritation and felt sorry for her.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to send someone?’

  ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If something is meant to happen, a policeman being somewhere in the apartment won’t prevent it.’

  ‘Did you know that your husband owns an automatic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And does he know that you own this revolver?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What about your children?’