The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien Read online

  There were a few caricatures signed Jef, some of them touched up with watercolours, some cut from a local paper.

  What struck Maigret, though, was how many of the drawings were all variations on one particular theme. The drawing paper had yellowed with age, and a few dates indicated that these sketches had been done about ten years earlier.

  They were executed in a different style as well, with a more darkly Romantic sensibility, and seemed like the efforts of a young art student imitating the work of Gustave Doré.

  A first ink drawing showed a hanged man swinging from a gallows on which perched an enormous crow. And there were at least twenty other etchings and pen or pencil sketches that had the same leitmotif of hanging.

  On the edge of a forest: a man hanging from every branch.

  A church steeple: beneath the weathercock, a human body dangling from each arm of the cross.

  There were hanged men of all kinds. Some were dressed in the fashions of the sixteenth century and formed a kind of Court of Miracles, where everybody was swinging a few feet above the ground.

  There was one crazy hanged man in a top hat and tails, cane in hand, whose gallows was a lamp post.

  Below another sketch were written four lines from François Villon’s Ballad of the Hanged Men.

  There were dates, always from around the same time, and all these macabre pictures from ten years earlier were now displayed along with captioned sketches for comic papers, drawings for calendars and almanacs, landscapes of the surrounding Ardennes and advertising posters.

  Another recurrent theme was the steeple – in fact, so was the whole church, depicted from the front, from the sides, from below. The church portal, on its own. The gargoyles. The parvis, with its six steps looming large in perspective …

  Always the same church! And as Maigret moved from one wall to another, he could sense Van Damme’s growing agitation, an uneasiness fuelled, perhaps, by the same temptation that had overwhelmed him by the dam at Luzancy.

  A quarter of an hour passed like this, and then Jef Lombard returned, his eyes moist with emotion, wiping his hand across his forehead and brushing away a stray lock of hair.

  ‘Please forgive me,’ he said. ‘My wife has just given birth. A girl!’

  There was a hint of pride in his voice, but, as he spoke, he was looking anxiously back and forth between Maigret and Van Damme.

  ‘Our third child. But I’m still as excited as I was the first time! You saw my mother-in-law, well – she had eleven and she’s sobbing with joy, she’s gone to give the workmen the good news and wants them to see our baby girl.’

  His eyes followed Maigret’s gaze, now fixed upon the two men hanging from the church-steeple cross, and he became even more nervous.

  ‘The sins of my youth,’ he murmured, clearly uncomfortable. ‘Terrible stuff. But at the time I thought I was going to be a great artist …’

  ‘It’s a church in Liège?’

  Jef didn’t answer right away. And when he finally did, it was almost with regret.

  ‘It’s been gone for seven years. They tore it down to build a new church. The old one wasn’t beautiful, it didn’t even have any style to speak of, but it was very old, with a touch of mystery in all its lines and in the little streets and alleys around it … They’ve all been levelled now.’

  ‘What was its name?’

  ‘The Church of Saint-Pholien. The new one is in the same place and bears the same name.’

  Still seated on the corner of Lombard’s table, Joseph Van Damme was fidgeting as if his nerves were burning him inside, an inner turmoil betrayed only by the faintest of movements, uneven breathing, a trembling in his fingers, and the way one foot was jiggling against a table leg.

  ‘Were you married at that time?’ continued Maigret.

  Lombard laughed.

  ‘I was nineteen! I was studying at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Look over there …’

  And he pointed, with a look of fond nostalgia, to a clumsy portrait in gloomy colours that was nevertheless recognizable as him, thanks to the telling irregularity of his features. His hair was almost shoulder length; he wore a black tunic buttoned up to his neck and an ample lavallière bow tie.

  The painting was flagrantly Romantic, even to the traditional death’s-head in the background.

  ‘If you’d told me back then that I’d wind up a photoengraver!’ he marvelled, with helpless irony.

  Jef Lombard seemed equally unsettled by Van Damme and Maigret, but he clearly had no idea how to get them to leave.

  A workman came for advice about a plate that wasn’t ready.

  ‘Have them come back this afternoon.’

  ‘But they say that will be too late!’

  ‘So what! Tell them I’ve just had a daughter …’

  Lombard’s eyes, his movements, the pallor of his complexion pocked with tiny acid marks – everything about him reflected a disturbing confusion of joy, anxiety, perhaps even anguish.

  ‘If I may, I’d like to offer you something … We’ll go down to the house.’

  The three men walked back along the maze of corridors and through the door where the old woman had spoken to Maigret. There were blue tiles in the hall and a clean smell faintly scented, however, with a kind of staleness, perhaps from the stuffiness of the lying-in room.

  ‘The two boys are at my brother-in-law’s. Come through here …’

  He opened the door to the dining room, where the small panes of the windows admitted a dim, bleak light that glinted off the many copper pieces on display everywhere. The furniture was dark.

  On the wall was a large portrait of a woman, signed Jef, full of awkward passages but imbued with a clear desire to present the model – presumably the artist’s wife – in a flattering way.

  When Maigret looked around the room he was not surprised to find more hanged men. The best ones, considered good enough to frame!

  ‘You’ll have a glass of genever?’

  The inspector could feel Van Damme glaring coldly at him, obviously infuriated by the whole situation.

  ‘You were saying a moment ago that you knew Jean Lecocq d’Arneville …’

  Steps sounded on the floor above, probably from the lying-in room.

  ‘But only casually,’ the distracted father replied, listening intently to the faint whimpering of the new-born infant.

  And raising his glass, he exclaimed, ‘To the health of my little girl! And my wife!’

  Turning abruptly away, he drained his glass in one go, then went to the sideboard and pretended to look for something while he recovered from his emotions, but Maigret still caught the soft hiccup of a stifled sob.

  ‘I’m sorry, I have to go up there! On a day like today …’

  Maigret and Van Damme had not exchanged one word. As they crossed the courtyard, passing by the fountain, the inspector glanced with a faint smile at the other man, wondering what he would do next.

  Once out in the street, however, Van Damme simply touched the brim of his hat and strode off to the right.

  There aren’t many taxis in Liège. Unfamiliar with the tram lines, Maigret walked back to the Hôtel du Chemin de Fer, where he had lunch and made inquiries about the local newspapers.

  At two o’clock, he entered the La Meuse newspaper building at the very moment when Joseph Van Damme was leaving it: the two men passed silently within arm’s reach of each other.

  ‘He’s still one step ahead of me!’ Maigret grumbled under his breath.

  When he asked the usher with his silver chain of office about consulting the newspaper’s archives, he was told to fill out an authorization form and wait for its approval.

  Maigret thought over certain striking details in his case: Armand Lecocq d’Arneville had told him that his brother had left Liège at around the same time that Jef Lombard was drawing hanged men with such morbid fascination.

  And clothing B, which the tramp of Neuschanz and Bremen had carried around in the yellow suitcase, was at least six y
ears old, according to the German technician, and perhaps even ten …

  And now Joseph Van Damme had turned up at La Meuse! Didn’t that tell the inspector something?

  The usher showed Maigret into a room with heavy formal furniture, where the parquet gleamed like a skating rink.

  ‘Which year’s collection do you wish to consult?’

  Maigret had already noticed the enormous cardboard cases arrayed around the entire room, each containing the issues of a particular year.

  ‘I’ll find it myself, thank you.’

  The room smelled of polish, musty paper and formal luxury. On the moleskin tabletop were reading stands to hold the cumbersome volumes. Everything was so neat, so clean, so austere that the inspector hardly dared take his pipe from his pocket.

  In a few moments he was leafing page by page through the newspapers of the ‘year of the hanged men’.

  Thousands of headlines streamed past his gaze, some recalling events of worldwide importance, others dealing with local incidents: a big department store fire (a full page for three days running), an alderman’s resignation, an increase in tram fares.

  Suddenly: torn newsprint, all along the binding. The daily paper for 15 February had been ripped out.

  Hurrying into the reception room, Maigret fetched the usher.

  ‘Someone came here before I did, isn’t that right? And it was this same collection he asked for?’

  ‘Yes. He was here only five minutes or so.’

  ‘Are you from Liège? Do you remember what happened back then?’

  ‘Ten years ago? Hmm … That’s the year my sister-in-law died … I know! The big floods! We even had to wait a week for the burial because the only way you could get around in the streets down by the Meuse was by boat. Here, look at these articles: The King and Queen visit the disaster victims … There are photos, and – wait, we’re missing an issue. How extraordinary! I’ll have to inform the director about this …’

  Maigret picked up a scrap of newsprint that had fallen to the floor while Joseph Van Damme – and there was no doubt about it – had been tearing out the pages for 15 February.

  7. The Three Men

  There are four daily papers in Liège. Maigret spent two hours checking their archives one after the other and, as he expected, they were all missing the 15 February issue.

  With its luxury department stores, popular brasseries, cinemas and dance halls, the place to see and be seen in Liège is the busy quadrangle of streets known as the Carré. At least three times, the inspector caught sight of Joseph Van Damme strolling around there, walking stick in hand.

  When Maigret returned to the Hôtel du Chemin de Fer, he found two messages waiting for him. The first was a telegram from Lucas, to whom he had given certain instructions just before leaving Paris.

  Stove ashes found room Louis Jeunet Rue Roquette analysed by technician stop Identified remains Belgian and French banknotes stop Quantity suggests large sum

  The other was a letter delivered to the hotel by messenger, typed on ordinary typing paper without any heading.

  Detective Chief Inspector,

  I beg to inform you that I am prepared to furnish the answers you seek in your inquiry.

  I have my reasons for being cautious, and I would be obliged, if my proposal interests you, if you would meet me this evening at around eleven o’clock, at the Café de la Bourse, which is behind the Théâtre Royal.

  Until then, I remain, sir, your most humble, loyal and obedient servant, etc., etc.

  No signature. On the other hand, a rather surprising number of business turns of phrase for a note of this kind: I beg to inform you … I would be obliged … if my proposal interests you … your most humble, loyal and obedient servant, etc., etc. …

  Dining alone at his table, Maigret realized that, although he hadn’t much noticed it before, the focus of his attention had shifted somewhat away from Jean Lecocq d’Arneville, who had killed himself in a hotel room in Bremen under the name of Louis Jeunet.

  Now the inspector found himself haunted by the images Jef Lombard had hung up everywhere, those hanged men dangling from a church-steeple cross, from the trees in a wood, from a nail in an attic room, grotesque or sinister hanged men in the garb of many centuries, their faces livid or flushed crimson.

  At half past ten he set out for the Théâtre Royal; it was five to eleven when he pushed open the door of the Café de la Bourse, a quiet little place frequented by locals and by card players in particular.

  And there he found a surprise waiting for him. Three men were sitting at a table off in a corner, over by the counter: Maurice Belloir, Jef Lombard and Joseph Van Damme.

  Things seemed to hang fire for a moment while the waiter helped Maigret out of his overcoat. Belloir automatically rose halfway in greeting. Van Damme didn’t move a muscle. Lombard, grimacing with extraordinary nervous tension, could not keep still as he waited for his companions to make a move.

  Was Maigret going to come over, shake hands, sit down with them? He knew them all: he had accepted Van Damme’s invitation to lunch in Bremen, he’d had a glass of brandy at Belloir’s house in Rheims, and only that morning he had visited Lombard’s home.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen.’

  He shook their hands with his customary firmness, which could at times seem vaguely threatening.

  ‘Imagine, meeting you all again like this!’

  There was space next to Van Damme on the banquette, so Maigret parked himself there.

  ‘A glass of pale ale!’ he called to the waiter.

  Then silence fell. A strained, oppressive silence. Van Damme stared straight ahead, his teeth clenched. Lombard was still fidgeting, as if his clothes were too tight at his armpits. Belloir, cold and distant, was studying his fingertips and ran a wooden match end under the nail of one index finger to remove a speck.

  ‘Madame Lombard is doing well?’

  Jef Lombard darted a glance all around, as if seeking something to cling to, then stared at the stove and stammered, ‘Very well … Thank you.’

  By the wall clock behind the counter, Maigret counted five whole minutes without anyone saying a word.

  Van Damme, who had let his cigar go out, was the only man who allowed his face to burn with undisguised hatred.

  Lombard was the most interesting one to observe. Everything that had happened that day had surely rubbed his nerves raw, and even the tiniest muscle in his face was twitching.

  The four men were sitting in an absolute oasis of silence in a café where everyone else was loudly chattering away.

  ‘And belote again!’ crowed a card player on the right.

  ‘High tierce,’ said a fellow cautiously on the left. ‘We’re all agreed on that?’

  ‘Three beers! Three!’ shouted the waiter.

  The whole café was a beehive of noise and activity except for that one table of four, around which an invisible wall seemed to be growing.

  Lombard was the one who broke the spell. He’d been chewing on his lower lip when suddenly he leaped to his feet and gasped, ‘The hell with it!’

  After glancing briefly but piercingly at his companions, he grabbed his hat and coat and, flinging the door violently open, left the café.

  ‘I bet he bursts into tears as soon as he gets off on his own,’ said Maigret thoughtfully.

  He’d sensed it, that sob of rage and despair swelling inside the man’s throat until his Adam’s apple quivered.

  Turning to Van Damme, who was staring at the marble tabletop, Maigret tossed down half his beer and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

  The atmosphere was the same – but ten times more concentrated – as in the house in Rheims, where the inspector had first imposed himself on these three people. And the man’s imposing bulk itself helped make his stubborn presence all the more menacing.

  Maigret was tall and wide, particularly broad-shouldered, solidly built, and his run-of-the-mill clothes emphasized his peasant stockiness. His features were coa
rse, and his eyes could seem as still and dull as a cow’s. In this he resembled certain figures out of children’s nightmares, those monstrously big blank-faced creatures that bear down upon sleepers as if to crush them. There was something implacable and inhuman about him that suggested a pachyderm plodding inexorably towards its goal.

  He drank his beer, smoked his pipe, watched with satisfaction as the minute hand of the café clock snapped onwards with a metallic click. On a livid clock face!

  He seemed to be ignoring everyone and yet he kept an eye on the slightest signs of life to either side.

  This was one of the most extraordinary hours of his career. For this stand-off lasted almost one hour: exactly fifty-two minutes! A war of nerves.

  Although Jef Lombard had been hors de combat practically from the outset, the other two men were hanging on.

  Maigret sat between them like a judge, but one who made no accusations and whose thoughts could not be divined. What did he know? Why had he come? What was he waiting for? A word, a gesture that would corroborate his suspicions? Had he already found out the whole truth – or was his confident manner simply a bluff?

  And what could anyone say? More musings on coincidence and chance encounters?

  Silence reigned. They waited even without any idea of what they were waiting for. They were waiting for something, and nothing was happening!

  With each passing minute, the hand on the clock quivered as the mechanism within creaked faintly. At first no one had paid any attention. Now, the sound was incredibly loud – and the event had even separated into three stages: an initial click; the minute hand beginning to move; then another click, as if to slide the hand into its new slot. And as an obtuse angle slowly became an acute angle, the clock face changed: the two hands would eventually meet.

  The waiter kept looking over at this gloomy table in astonishment. Every once in a while, Maurice Belloir would swallow – and Maigret would know this without even looking. He could hear him live, breathe, wince, carefully shift his feet a little now and again, as if he were in church.