Félicie (8 page)

I didn't get much of a look at the man,
who was standing in shadow by the bushes round the fountain, holding his head down. He was
broad in the shoulder and wore a dark suit and a grey hat.

A description which could apply to any number of
men!

‘This is one shambles that I won't
forget in a hurry, I can assure you,' growls Maigret. ‘Whoever thought up a stunt
like that is … He crouches between two taxis or in a patch
of shadow.
He fires. At the same moment the taxi drives off, and naturally everybody assumes the assassin
is in it, and someone sets off in pursuit, while our man has had all the time in the world to
make his escape or even to blend in with the crowd … The other taxi-drivers who were
parked there have been questioned. None of them saw anything. One, an old hand I've known
for years, thinks he saw a figure walking round the fountain.'

Imagine! The saxophone player was ready to talk,
in a mood to tell everything even when he was still in the Pelican, and Maigret was responsible
for not letting him speak! Now, God only knows when he'll be fit for questioning, if, that
is, he ever will be.

‘What are you planning to do
now?'

There is the classic approach. The attempted
murder took place in Montmartre, within a defined perimeter. Fifty or so people to interview,
all already known to the police, who just happened to be in the area, in fact all those who
reacted liked crabs in a basket when news of the presence of Detective Chief Inspector Maigret
went the rounds of Rue Pigalle.

Of that number a few are not snow-white lambs. By
pushing them, by threatening them and looking more closely into their petty dealings, it is
possible to extract information from them.

‘I'll get a couple of men on it, sir.
Meanwhile, I …'

There is nothing for it: he is irresistibly drawn
elsewhere. As he has been from the start, from the very first day he set foot in that cardboard
cut-out world of Jeanneville.

Shouldn't his reluctance to put a distance
between
himself and Cape Horn and the erratic Félicie have been a kind
of warning?

Events had proved him wrong. All the indications
now are that it is around Place Pigalle that the search for the truth about the death of old
Lapie should be centred.

‘Even so, I'm going back out to the
sticks …'

Pétillon had just had enough time to tell
him one thing: he wasn't sleeping with Félicie. He looked totally bewildered when
Maigret talked about her, as if it had never even crossed his mind to think …

It is now 8.30 a.m. Maigret phones his wife.

‘That you? … No, nothing special
… I don't know when I'll be home …'

She's used to it. He stuffs the reports
into his pockets. Among them is one from Rouen giving the pedigree of all the girls who work at
the Tivoli. Pétillon did not
go upstairs
with any of them. When he went in, he hid
himself away in a corner. Two of the girls sat down next to him on the crimson plush wall
seat.

‘Isn't there a girl here called
Adèle?' he'd asked.

‘You're behind the times, kid.
Adèle hasn't been around here for ages. You mean a small, dark-haired girl with boobs
like pears, is that her?'

He doesn't know. All he knows is that
he's looking for a girl called Adèle, who was working in this brasserie the previous
year. She's been gone for months. No one knows where she is. If he was going to have to go
looking for all the Adèles in all the brothels in France …

One inspector has been despatched to make a
thorough search of the saxophone player's room in Rue Lepic.
Janvier,
who hasn't had much of a chance to rest for long, will spend the day in and around Place
Pigalle.

While that is happening, Maigret has taken the
train at Saint-Lazare station, gets out at Poissy and starts walking up the slope to
Jeanneville.

It seems that after the previous day's
storm the fields have become even greener, the sky a more delicate blue. Soon he comes in sight
of the pink houses. He waves at Madame Chochoi, who stares back blankly through her window as he
passes by.

He goes straight to find Félicie. Why does
he feel so pleased by the prospect? Why does he unconsciously quicken his step? He smiles at the
thought of seeing Lucas's glum face after an overnight stake-out of Cape Horn. He sees him
from a distance, sitting by the side of the road, an unlit pipe between his teeth. He must be
feeling sleepy. He must be feeling hungry.

‘Had a hard time, Lucas? Anything
happened?'

‘Nothing, sir. But I could fancy a cup of
coffee and bed. The coffee first …'

His eyes are puffy with lack of sleep, his
overcoat is worn, his shoes and the bottoms of his trousers are covered with reddish mud.

‘Take yourself off to the Anneau
d'Or. There's been a development.'

‘What?'

‘The musician's taken a hit
…'

It might seem that the inspector is callous, but
Sergeant Lucas is not taken in, and moments later he is walking away, shaking his head.

Best foot forwards! Maigret
looks all round him with the satisfaction of one who finds himself back in familiar
surroundings, then strides towards the front door of the house. But no. He decides instead to
walk round the building and go in through the garden. He pushes the side-gate … The
kitchen door is open.

He stands rooted for a moment, stunned by
surprise, and then wonders whether he's not about to start laughing. Hearing his
footsteps, Félicie has come to the door, where she stands very straight, confronting him
with a stern expression on her face.

What on earth is the matter with her now? What is
it that makes her look so different? It's not because she has been crying that her eyes
look so puffy and her face covered with red blotches.

As he walks towards her, she says in a voice
which is more acid than ever:

‘Well? Are you satisfied now?'

‘What's happened? Did you fall down
the stairs?'

‘What's the point of standing a
policeman outside the house night and day! I assume your guard-dog was asleep on the
job?'

‘Slow down, Félicie, say it more
clearly … You're not trying to make me believe …'

‘That the murderer came and that he
attacked me? Yes, I am! Isn't that what you wanted?'

Maigret was intending to talk to her about
Pétillon and last night's shooting, but decides that first he'd rather hear
more about what has been going on at Cape Horn.

‘Come and sit yourself down. Here, in the
garden, that's
it! Don't look so sorry for yourself! …
Now, stay calm, don't look so fierce, just tell me nicely what happened. When I left you
yesterday evening, you were overwrought. What have you been up to?'

‘Nothing,' she said disdainfully.

‘Very well, I assume that first you ate
… then you locked up and went upstairs to your room … All right so far? Are you
quite sure you locked the doors?'

‘I always lock the door before I go to
bed.'

‘So you got into bed … What time was
it?'

‘I waited downstairs until the storm had
passed.'

It was of course true that he had been callous
enough to leave her alone despite her fear of thunder and lightning!

‘Did you drink anything?'

‘Just coffee …'

‘To help you to sleep, no doubt …
What next?'

‘I read.'

‘For a long time?'

‘I don't know. Maybe until midnight.
I turned the light off. I was sure something terrible was going to happen … I did warn
you.'

‘Now tell me what that something terrible
was.'

‘You're making fun of me … But
I don't care … You think you're so clever, don't you! … Well, at
some point, I heard a sort of scraping noise coming from Monsieur Lapie's room
…'

Of course. Maigret does not believe a word of
what she is telling him and as he listens and observes her, he wonders what she's up to
with this new fabrication. Lying comes
to her as naturally as breathing. The
local police chief at Fécamp had phoned with some information as requested.

Maigret knows now that Félicie's
insinuations about the nature of her connection with Jules Lapie were pure invention. Actually
she has a father and mother. Her mother takes in washing, and her father is an old drunk who
roams around the docks, lending a hand here, helping out there, especially when it means being
stood small shots of strong, rotgut brandy. Questioning local men and the most gossipy of the
neighbours yielded nothing: old Lapie had never had any close relations with the laundress. When
he needed someone to keep house for him, his brother, the ship's carpenter, pointed him in
the direction of Félicie, who used to come sometimes to his place to help with the
housework.

‘Right, so you heard a sort of scraping
sound … Naturally you threw open the window immediately to call the policeman who was
standing guard outside.'

He has spoken with heavy irony, but she shakes
her head.

‘Why not?'

‘Because!'

‘Because, I can only suppose, you
didn't want the man you assumed to be in the room across the landing to be
arrested?'

‘Perhaps!'

‘Go on …'

‘I got out of bed, without making a noise
…'

‘And without putting the light on either, I
expect. Because if you'd switched it on, Sergeant Lucas would
have
seen it. The shutters don't close properly … So, you're out of bed …
You're not afraid, though an ordinary storm scares you to death … What happened
then? Did you leave your bedroom?'

‘Not straight away. I put my ear against
the door and listened. There was someone on the other side of the landing. I heard a chair being
moved. Then what sounded like a stifled curse. I knew then that the man couldn't find what
he was looking for and that he was getting ready to leave …'

‘Was your bedroom door locked?'

‘Yes.'

‘But you opened it so you could rush out,
unarmed, and confront a man who was probably the murderer of Jules Lapie?'

‘Yes.'

She glares in defiance. He gives a little whistle
of admiration.

‘So you were quite sure he wouldn't
harm you? Obviously you had no way of knowing that at exactly that time young Pétillon was
far from here, in Paris …'

She cannot help exclaiming:

‘What do you know about that?'

‘Let's see … What time was
it?'

‘I looked at the time
after
. It
was half past three in the morning. How do you know that Jacques …'

‘Ah! You call him by his Christian
name?'

‘Oh, why don't you just leave me
alone! If you don't believe me, why don't you just go!'

‘Fair enough, I won't interrupt again
… So, you
came out of your room, full of spirit, armed only with
courage …'

‘And got punched in the face!'

‘The man ran away?'

‘Went out through the door into the garden.
That's the way he came in.'

Actually, Maigret would love to tell her, despite
the bruises to her face:

‘Know something? I don't believe a
word of it.'

On the other hand, if it could be shown that
she'd caused her injuries herself, would it have made a difference? Why?

But at this juncture, his eye is caught by
something, and he stares intently at the still-damp earth of a flower bed. She notices and,
looking in the same direction, sees the footprints and through a thin smile says:

‘Perhaps it was my feet that made those
marks?'

He stands up.

‘Come …'

He goes into the house. He has no difficulty
seeing the muddy trail on the polished treads of the staircase. He opens the door of the old
man's bedroom.

‘You came in here?'

‘Yes. But I didn't touch
anything.'

‘What about this chair? Was it just here
last night?'

‘No. It was by the window.'

At present, it is in front of the huge walnut
wardrobe, and on its woven straw seat distinct traces of mud are visible.

So Félicie wasn't lying after all. A
man really did break into Cape Horn during the night, and it could not have
been Pétillon, who, at that moment, poor devil, was lying on an operating table in
Beaujon Hospital.

If Maigret needed further proof, he finds it when
he in turn stands on the chair and looks on the top of the wardrobe, where fingers have
disturbed the thick layer of dust and where someone has used a tool to prise up a strip of
wood.

He'll have to call in experts from Criminal
Records to photograph everything and take fingerprints, if there are any.

More serious now, with a worried expression on
his face, Maigret mutters, seemingly to himself:

‘And you didn't call for help! You
knew there was a police officer outside the window and you did nothing. You even took great care
not to switch any lights on.'

‘I switched the light on in the kitchen
when I was bathing my face in cold water.'

‘But wasn't that because the kitchen
light can't be seen from the road? In other words, you did not want to raise the alarm.
Despite being punched, you wanted to give your attacker time to get away. This morning, you got
up as if nothing had happened and you still didn't call the sergeant.'

‘I knew you'd come.'

Oddly enough – it's childish and he
hates himself for it – he feels somewhat flattered that she waited for him to come instead
of turning to Lucas. He is even secretly grateful for that ‘I knew you'd
come'!