Félicie (6 page)

‘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 station. 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 when 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.'