The Late Monsieur Gallet Read online

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘Every day?’

  ‘I think so, sir, but when I’m at school I don’t see her.’

  ‘What time did you arrive here today?’

  ‘Oh, ages ago, sir. I left home as soon as I’d had something to eat.’

  ‘And where do you live?’

  ‘In the house you can see down there.’

  It was half a kilometre away, a low-built house with something of the look of a farmhouse about it.

  ‘Was the lady already there then?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘When did she arrive?’

  ‘I can’t say exactly, sir, but it would be about two hours ago.’

  ‘And she hasn’t moved since then?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Not even to go for a little walk along the road?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Does she have a bicycle?’

  ‘No, sir!’

  Maigret took a two-franc coin out of his pocket and put it into the child’s hand. She closed her fingers on the coin without looking at it and stayed there motionless in the middle of the road, her eyes following him, as he mounted the bicycle again and rode off towards the village.

  He stopped outside the post office and drafted a telegram to Paris.

  Urgent. Need to know where Henry Gallet was 15 hours Saturday. Maigret, Sancerre.

  ‘I should let that be for now, old fellow!’

  ‘You told me yourself it was urgent, inspector. Anyway I hardly feel a thing!’

  Good man, Moers! The doctor had given his ear a dressing as complicated and thick as if he had six bullets in his head. The sparkling bright glass of his pince-nez looked strange in the middle of all that white linen.

  Maigret had not felt anxious about him until seven in the evening, knowing that his injury was not a severe one – and now he found him just where he had spent the morning, in front of his sheets of glass, his candle and his spirit stove.

  ‘I haven’t found out anything else about Monsieur Jacob. I’ve just reconstructed a letter signed Clément addressed to I don’t know whom, and talking about a present intended for a prince in exile. The word bution comes in twice, and loyalism once.’

  ‘That’s of minor interest now,’ said Maigret. For all this was obviously to do with the swindle on which Gallet had embarked. The pink file had provided him with information on that subject, as well as several phone calls to the owners of chateaux and manor houses in the Berry and Cher areas. At some time or other, probably three or four years after his marriage, and one or two years after his father-in-law’s death, Émile Gallet had decided that it would be a good idea to make use of the old documents relating to the Le Soleil material that he had inherited.

  The journal, its text from the pen of Préjean himself, had a very small print run, reserved almost exclusively for the few who subscribed to it, and it kept the hope of seeing a Bourbon back on the throne of France alive in the hearts of a few country squires.

  Maigret had leafed through the Soleil material, noticing that half a page was always devoted to subscription lists, sometimes on behalf of an old family that had fallen on hard times, sometimes for the propaganda fund, or again in the cause of celebrating an anniversary worthily.

  That was what had given Gallet the idea of swindling the legitimists. He had their addresses, he even knew from the lists what sum of money could be got from them and how to appeal to each of them individually for contributions.

  ‘Have you found the same handwriting on the other papers?’ Maigret asked.

  ‘Yes, the same,’ said Moers. ‘In fact Professor Locard, who trained me, would tell you more. Calm, careful handwriting, but with signs of agitation and discouragement at the ends of words. A graphologist would say unhesitatingly that the man who wrote those letters was ill and knew it.’

  ‘Good heavens, that’ll do, Moers! You can take a rest now!’

  Maigret was looking at two holes in the canvas blind – the holes made as the bullets passed through it. ‘Would you go and sit back where you were just now?’

  He had no difficulty in reconstructing the trajectory of the bullets.

  ‘The same angle,’ he concluded. ‘Firing from the same place on top of the wall … good heavens, what’s that noise?’

  He raised the blind and saw the gardener raking the ground of the path where the nettles and tall grass grew.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Maigret called.

  ‘It was my master … he told me to …’

  ‘Look for the key?’

  ‘That’s right!’

  ‘And he sent you to look for it here?’

  ‘He’s searching the grounds himself. And the cook and the manservant, they’re searching inside the house.’

  Maigret abruptly pulled the blind down and alone in the company of Moers again he whistled.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Want to bet, old fellow? He’ll be the one who finds the key.’

  ‘What key?’

  ‘Never mind, it would take too long to explain. What was the time when you lowered the blind?’

  ‘As soon as I got back here, about one thirty.’

  ‘And you didn’t hear any sounds on the lane outside?’

  ‘I wasn’t listening for any. I was absorbed in my work … it may look silly, but it’s a very delicate job.’

  ‘I know it is, I know! Come to think of it, who could have heard me talking about Monsieur Jacob? The gardener, I think. And Saint-Hilaire, who was out fishing, came home for lunch, changed his clothes and went out for his card game. Are you sure that the handwriting on all the other charred papers belongs to Monsieur Clément?’

  ‘Absolutely sure.’

  ‘Then they’re of no interest. The only one that counts is the letter signed by Monsieur Jacob speaking of cash, mentioning Monday and looking very much as if it’s threatening the recipient of the letter with prison if 20,000 francs is not received by that day. The crime was committed on Saturday …’

  Sometimes the rake outside hit a stone.

  ‘It wasn’t Éléonore or Saint-Hilaire who fired the shots, it was …’

  ‘Well, who’d have believed it!’ said the gardener’s voice outside.

  Maigret smiled with pride and went to raise the blind. ‘I’ll take that!’ he said, holding out his hand.

  ‘If I’d expected to find it here …’

  ‘I said I’ll take that.’

  It was the key, an enormous key, the kind you would never find anywhere except an antique dealer’s. Like the lock, it was rusty and had some scratches on it.

  ‘All you have to do is tell your master that you handed it over to me. Off you go!’

  ‘But I …’

  ‘Off you go!’

  And Maigret pulled the blind down and threw the key on the table.

  ‘You might say that, apart from your ear, we’ve had a wonderful day. Don’t you agree, Moers? Monsieur Jacob! The key! Those two shots and all the rest of it. Well …’

  ‘Telegram for you!’ announced Monsieur Tardivon.

  ‘What was I saying, old fellow?’ the inspector finished, after glancing at the telegram. ‘We’re going backwards, not forwards. Listen to this:

  At three p.m. Henry Gallet was with his mother at Saint-Fargeau. Still there at six p.m.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So nothing! There’s only Monsieur Jacob left who could have fired on you, and so far Monsieur Jacob has been as hard to pin down as a soap bubble.’

  8. Monsieur Jacob

  ‘Wait a moment, Aurore! There’s no point in showing yourself in such a state!’

  And a muffled voice replied, ‘I can’t help it, Françoise. That visit reminds me of the other one a week ago. And the journey … oh, y
ou don’t understand.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is how you can mourn for a man like that, a man who dishonoured you, who lied to you all his life. The only good thing he ever did was to take out life insurance …’

  ‘Oh, do be quiet!’

  ‘And there’s more! He made you live what was almost a life of poverty, swearing that he earned only 2,000 francs a month. The insurance proves that he was making at least twice that and hiding it from you. Who knows if he wasn’t earning even more? If you ask me that man was leading a double life, with a mistress and maybe children somewhere else …’

  ‘Oh, please don’t, Françoise!’

  Maigret was alone in the small sitting room of the house in Saint-Fargeau. The maid had shown him in, forgetting to close the door. The two women’s voices came to him from the dining room, where the door, opening on to the same corridor, was also only half closed. The furniture and other items were back in their old places, and the inspector couldn’t look at the large oak table without remembering that a few days earlier, covered with a black sheet, it had had a coffin and candles on it.

  The atmosphere was dismal, the weather oppressive. There had been a storm during the night, but you could feel that there was more rain to come.

  ‘Why should I keep quiet? Do you think it’s none of my business? I’m your sister. Jacques is about to be offered an important political post. Suppose the local people find out that his brother-in-law was a crook?’

  ‘Why did you come, then? You’ve gone twenty years without …’

  ‘Without seeing you, because I didn’t want to see him! I didn’t hide my opinion when you wanted to get married, and nor did Jacques! When your name is Aurore Préjean, when you have a brother-in-law who’s managing director of one of the largest tanneries in the Vosges area and another who’s going to be principal private secretary to a government minister, you don’t marry a man like Émile Gallet. I mean, the name alone tells you … A commercial traveller! I wonder how our father ever gave his consent to it! Or rather, between ourselves, I can guess just what happened. In his last days Father thought of only one thing: how to bring out his journal at all costs – and Gallet had a little money. So it was decided to involve him in Le Soleil! Don’t you dare to say that’s not true! But as for you, sister, you had the same education as me, you even look like Mama, and you chose a man who was nothing. Don’t look at me like that! I only want you to understand that you’ve lost no one to shed tears about! Were you happy with him? Frankly, were you?’

  ‘I don’t know … I don’t know any more.’

  ‘Admit that you had more ambition than that!’

  ‘I always hoped he would try something else. I encouraged him to …’

  ‘Might as well try encouraging a pebble! And you resigned yourself to it! You didn’t even know that you wouldn’t be left in poverty on the day he died! Because but for that insurance …’

  ‘He did think of that,’ said Madame Gallet slowly.

  ‘That’s all we need! To hear you talk, I’ll end up thinking you loved him!’

  ‘Hush – the inspector might hear us. I must go in and see him.’

  ‘What’s he like? I’ll come with you. That will be best, considering the state you’re in. And please, Aurore, don’t look so miserable. The inspector might think you were his accomplice, that you’re sad, that you’re afraid …’

  • • •

  Maigret just had time to take a step back. The two women came through the communicating door, looking not quite as he had imagined them from the conversation he had just overheard.

  Madame Gallet was almost as distant in her manner as at the time of their first interview. As for her sister, who was two or three years younger, with peroxide hair and a heavily made-up face, she made Maigret feel that she had twice Madame Gallet’s amount of nerve and pretension.

  ‘Have you found out anything more, inspector?’ asked the widow wearily. ‘Please sit down. Let me introduce you to my sister, who arrived yesterday from Épinal.’

  ‘Where her husband is a tanner, I think?’

  ‘He owns a number of tanneries, actually,’ Françoise corrected him drily.

  ‘Madame was not at the funeral, am I right? And now, three days ago the newspapers reported that you, Madame Gallet, are to receive a life insurance payment of 300,000 francs.’

  He spoke slowly, looking right and left with apparent awkwardness. He had come to Saint-Fargeau for no precise reason, to sniff out the atmosphere and refresh his memory of the dead man. None the less, he would not have been sorry to meet Henry Gallet again.

  ‘I’d like to ask you a question,’ he said without turning to the two women. ‘Your husband must have known that your marriage to him estranged you from your family.’

  It was Françoise who answered. ‘That’s not true, inspector! At first we welcomed him. Several times, my husband advised him to find another job and offered to help him. It was only when we saw that he would always be someone of low achievement, incapable of making an effort, that we avoided him. He would have shown us in a poor light.’

  ‘What about you, madame?’ Maigret asked gently, turning to Madame Gallet. ‘You encouraged him to change to a different profession? You blamed his lack of ambition?’

  ‘It seems to me that anything like that belongs to our private life. Isn’t it my right to keep that to myself?’

  Hearing her just now through the door, Maigret had been able to imagine a woman made more human by her grief. A woman who had abandoned that scornful dignity that he now found neither more nor less robust than on the first day.

  ‘Did your son get on with his father?’

  Her sister intervened again. ‘Henry will make something of himself! He’s a Préjean, although physically he looks like his father. And he did right to get away from that atmosphere when he came of age. He was back at work this morning in spite of that attack of his liver trouble he had last night.’

  Maigret looked at the table, trying to imagine Émile Gallet somewhere in this room, but he couldn’t do it, perhaps because the inhabitants of this villa never set foot in the sitting room except when they were receiving a formal visit from someone.

  ‘Did you have a message for me, inspector?’

  ‘No … I’ll leave you now, ladies, with my apologies for disturbing you. However … yes, I do have one question. Do you have a photograph of your husband in Indochina? I believe he lived there before his marriage.’

  ‘No, I have no photograph of him then. My husband almost never talked about that time of his life.’

  ‘Do you know what he studied as a young man?’

  ‘He was very clever … I remember that he talked to my father about Latin literature.’

  ‘But you don’t know the name of the school he attended?’

  ‘All I know is that he was a native of Nantes.’

  ‘Thank you very much. And I do apologize to you once again.’

  He picked up his hat and stepped backwards into the corridor, still unable to identify the obscure anxiety he felt each time he set foot in that house.

  ‘I hope my name will not be given to the press, inspector,’ said Françoise, in a tone not far from impertinence. ‘You may know that my husband is a departmental councillor. He has a great deal of influence in government circles, and as you are an official …’

  Maigret did not feel brave enough to reply to this. He merely looked her between the eyes and then took his leave, sighing.

  As he crossed the tiny garden, escorted by the maid with the squint, he murmured thoughtfully, ‘You poor devil, Gallet!’

  • • •

  He briefly stopped at the Quai des Orfèvres to pick up his post, which included nothing bearing on the present case. On coming out of the building he looked in, on the off chance, at the shop of the gu
nsmith who had examined the bullet taken from the dead man’s skull as well as the two that had been aimed at Moers.

  ‘Have you finished examining those bullets?’

  ‘Yes, just this minute. I was going to write the report. All three bullets were fired from the same gun, no doubt about that. An automatic revolver, a precision weapon and one of the latest models, no doubt from the National Factory at Herstal.’

  Maigret was feeling gloomy. He shook hands with the gunsmith and hailed a taxi. ‘Rue Clignancourt, please.’

  ‘What number?’

  ‘Drop me off at either end of the street, it doesn’t matter which.’

  On the way he tried to banish from his mind the unpleasant memory of the Saint-Fargeau villa and the conversation between the two sisters. He wanted to concentrate only on the positive aspects of the problem. But as soon as he had put a few simple ideas together, back came the woman Françoise whose husband was a departmental councillor – as she had been careful to point out – and who had come running to Les Marguerites on discovering that Madame Gallet had inherited 300,000 francs.

  He would have shown us in a poor light.

  And early in the marriage Émile Gallet had been badly treated, just to get the idea into his head that he must do credit to the Préjeans, like their other sons-in-law. But he was only a commercial traveller in gift items!

  Yet he had the courage to sign that life assurance agreement and pay the premium for five years, thought Maigret, intrigued. His feelings were contradictory; he was both attracted and repelled by the complex physiognomy of his murder victim. Did he do it because he loved his wife? She too must have given him a piece of her mind, more than once, about his humble station in life.

  Funny sort of household! Funny sort of people, too. But in spite of everything hadn’t Maigret felt, for a moment, that Madame Gallet felt genuine affection for her husband? True, he had heard her only through the door. That was all gone when she was in front of him. Once again she had been the pretentious and disagreeable petit bourgeois woman who had talked to him on that first visit of his, and who was very much Françoise’s sister.