Inspector Cadaver (10 page)

‘I am an old woman, inspector, so I
can remember another affair like this one, only much more serious, which almost had
Saint-Aubin up in arms. In those days, there was a clog factory that employed fifty men
and women. It was when strikes were breaking out constantly all over France and the
workers would process through the streets over the least little thing …'

Madame Naud had raised her
head to listen. Maigret saw an expression of barely concealed anxiety on her thin face,
which looked exactly like Examining Magistrate Bréjon's.

‘One of the workers at the clog
factory was called Fillou. He wasn't a bad fellow but he liked a drink and when he
had been drinking he fancied himself as a public speaker. What did really happen? Well,
one day he went in to see his boss with some complaint or other. Not long afterwards,
the door opened and Fillou came flying out, as if he had been shot by a catapult,
staggered backwards for several metres and then fell into the canal.'

‘Was he the father of young
Pockmarks?' asked Maigret.

‘His father, yes. He's dead now.
At the time, you had to be for or against Fillou or the boss. One side claimed that
Fillou was drunk and acting like a lunatic, and that the clogmaker had been forced to
remove him bodily, the other that it was the boss who was entirely to blame. He was
supposed to have said hateful things about the workers, such as: “I can't
help it if they keep producing more urchins when they're drunk on a Saturday night
…”'

‘Fillou died, did you say?'

‘Two years ago. Of stomach
cancer.'

‘Were many people on his side when
this was happening?'

‘Not the majority, but his supporters
were the most rabid, and every morning people would find threats written on their doors
in chalk.'

‘You mean to say, madame, that the two
cases are alike?'

‘I don't mean to say anything at
all, inspector. You know how old people like to ramble on. In small towns, there is
always a Fillou affair or a Retailleau affair, otherwise life
would be
too monotonous. There is always a little group that is beside itself with rage
…'

‘What was the upshot of the Fillou
affair?'

‘Nothing. Silence, of course
…'

Ah yes, silence, Maigret thought. The little
group of radicals can agitate as much as it likes, the silence is always stronger. He
had come up against that silence all day.

There was something else he had been feeling
since he had sat down in the drawing room which unsurprisingly made him uneasy.

Having wandered sullenly and doggedly about
the streets in Pockmarks' wake from dawn to dusk, he had absorbed some of the
lad's outraged determination.

‘She's one of them
…', Louis would have said.

And being
one of them
, in
Louis' mind, meant signing up to the conspiracy of silence; joining the group that
didn't want any fuss, that was bent on living as if everything was for the best in
the best of all worlds.

Deep down, Maigret sided with the little
group of rebels. He had drunk their health at the Trois Mules. He had disowned the Nauds
by saying he wasn't working for them. And when the kid doubted him, he had all but
given him his word.

But Louis still hadn't been mistaken
when, as he left the inspector, he had looked at him suspiciously, dimly sensing what
would happen when his companion was the enemy's guest again. That was why he had
tried to take him to the door. He had wanted to fire him up, to steel him against any
weakness.

‘If you need me, I'll be at the
Trois Mules all evening …'

He would wait in vain. In
the bourgeois hush of that drawing room, Maigret almost felt ashamed to have run around
the streets in the company of a kid and been sent packing by all the people he had got
it into his head to question.

On the wall there was a portrait that
Maigret had not noticed the night before, a portrait of Examining Magistrate
Bréjon, who seemed to be staring at the inspector as if to say, ‘Don't
forget the task I entrusted you with …'

He watched Louise Naud's fingers as
she sewed and was mesmerized by their jitteriness. Her face was almost serene, but her
fingers revealed a fear bordering on panic.

‘What do you think of our
doctor?' asked the chatty old lady. ‘A character, isn't he? The
mistake all of you make in Paris is to think that there aren't any interesting
people in the countryside. If you stayed here just a couple of months … I say,
Louise, isn't your husband coming home?'

‘He telephoned just now to say he
would be late because he had to go to La Roche-sur-Yon. He asked me to apologize to you,
inspector …'

‘I owe you an apology, too, for not
having come back for lunch.'

‘Geneviève! You should give the
inspector a drink.'

‘Well now, children, it's time I
got going.'

‘Stay and have dinner with us, Maman.
Étienne will drive you home when he gets back.'

‘Nay, my girl. I don't need
anyone to drive me home.'

Her daughter helped her tie the ribbons of a
little black cabriolet hat perched jauntily on her head, and slip galoshes over her
shoes.

‘You don't want
me to have the horses put to?'

‘There will be plenty of time to put
the horses to on the day of my funeral. Goodbye, inspector. If you pass under my windows
again, come and say a quick hello. Good night, Louise. Good night, Viève
…'

And then suddenly, as the door closed behind
her, there was a gaping void. Maigret understood why they had tried to stop old Tine
leaving. With her gone, the silence pressed down on their shoulders, weighty and
nerve-racking, and something like fear could be felt crawling through the room. Louise
Naud's fingers ran faster and faster over her handiwork as the girl searched for
an excuse to leave but didn't dare get up.

Wasn't it shocking to think that while
Albert Retailleau was dead, found one morning torn to pieces on the railway track, his
child was alive in the room at that moment, a living being that would be born in a few
months?

When Maigret turned to the girl, she
didn't look away. Quite the opposite. She sat up and looked straight at him, as if
to say, ‘No, you didn't dream it. I came into your room last night and I
wasn't sleepwalking. What I told you then is the truth. You can see I'm not
ashamed of it. I'm not mad. Albert was my lover and I am pregnant with his child
…'

So, the son of Madame Retailleau, who had
stood up so doughtily for her rights when her husband died, Pockmarks' young,
passionate friend, used to slip undetected into this house at night. Geneviève
would be waiting for him in her room at the end of the passage in the right wing.

‘Will you excuse me, mesdames? If you
have no
objection, I'd like to go for a quick walk round the
yards and outbuildings.'

‘Do you mind if I come with
you?'

‘You'll catch cold,
Geneviève.'

‘I won't, Maman. I'll wrap
up.'

She brought a stable lantern, already lit,
from the kitchen. In the hall Maigret helped her put on a cloak.

‘What do you want to see?' she
asked in a whisper.

‘Let's go to the
yard.'

‘We can go this way. No need to go all
through the house … Watch out for the steps …'

There were lights on in the stables, and the
doors were open, but the fog was so thick it was impossible to make anything out.

‘Your room's the one right above
us, isn't it?'

‘Yes. I see what you mean. He
didn't use the front door, obviously … Come here. You see that ladder. We
always left it here. He only had to move it a few metres.'

‘Where is your parents'
room?'

‘Three windows along.'

‘And the other two windows?'

‘One is the guest room, where Alban
slept that night. The other is a room that hasn't been used since my little sister
died in it. Only Maman has a key.'

She felt the cold but was trying not to show
it, in case it seemed as if she wanted to end their conversation.

‘Your parents never suspected
anything?'

‘No.'

‘Had your liaison been going on for
long?'

She didn't have to rack her
brains.

‘Three and a half
months.'

‘Retailleau knew the consequences of
your love?'

‘Yes.'

‘What was he planning to
do?'

‘To confess everything to my parents
and marry me.'

‘Why was he furious that last
night?'

Maigret stared at her, trying as best he
could to make out her features in the fog. The ensuing silence revealed her
astonishment.

‘I asked you …'

‘I heard.'

‘Well?'

‘I don't understand. Why do you
say he was furious?'

Her hands were shaking like her
mother's, as was the lantern.

‘Nothing special had happened that
evening?'

‘Nothing, no.'

‘Albert left by the window as
usual?'

‘Yes. There was a moon. I saw him walk
off towards the bottom of the yard, where he could climb over the little wall and take
the lane …'

‘What time was it?'

‘Twelve thirty, maybe
…'

‘Were his visits usually so
brief?'

‘What do you mean?'

She was playing for time. Through a window
not far from them they could see the old cook moving about.

‘He got here around midnight. I assume
he wouldn't usually have been in such a hurry to leave … Did you have an
argument?'

‘Why would we have
had an argument?'

‘I don't know. I'm asking
you.'

‘No.'

‘When was he supposed to talk to your
parents?'

‘Soon. We were waiting for the right
moment …'

‘Think carefully … Are you sure
you didn't see any lights on in the house that night? Didn't you hear any
noise? Was anyone hiding in the yard?'

‘I didn't see anything. I swear,
inspector, I don't know anything. You may not believe me, but it's the truth
… I'll never, you hear, never tell my father what I told you last night
… I'll go away … I don't know what I'll do
…'

‘Why did you tell me?'

‘I don't know … I was
afraid … I imagined you would find out, that you'd tell my parents
everything …'

‘Let's go in, shall we?
You're shivering.'

‘You won't tell?'

He didn't know what to say. He
didn't want to commit himself with a promise, so he muttered:

‘Trust me.'

Had he become
one of them
, as
Pockmarks would have said? Oh, he understood that lad's expression all too well
now. Albert Retailleau had died and been buried. And now there were plenty of people in
Saint-Aubin, the majority in fact, who thought that, since the young man couldn't
be brought back to life, the wisest course of action would be never to mention him
again.

Being one of them was being part of that
clan. Retailleau's mother, who hadn't seemed to understand why an
investigation was being launched, was one herself.

And those who weren't
initially had been won over one by one. Désiré had changed his mind about
finding the cap. What cap? He had enough money to drink his fill and send his bad lot of
a son a postal order for five hundred francs.

Josaphat, the postman, had no recollection
of any thousand-franc notes in the soup tureen.

And Étienne Naud was at a loss as to
why his brother-in-law would send a man like Maigret. The inspector seemed to have got
it into his head that he had to discover the truth.

But what truth exactly? And if it ever was
discovered, what, and who, would it be for?

That only left the little gang in the Trois
Mules. A joiner, a ploughman and a kid called Louis Fillou, whose father was a hothead
anyway, obsessively telling their stories.

‘You're not hungry,
inspector?' asked Madame Naud as Maigret came into the drawing room.
‘Where's my daughter?'

‘I've just left her in the hall.
I imagine she's gone up to her room for a second.'

There followed a genuinely desperate quarter
of an hour. The two of them were alone in the old-fashioned, overheated drawing room.
From time to time a log collapsed in the fireplace with a shower of sparks. A pink
lampshade on the only light that was switched on softened all the colours. Not a sound
was to be heard, apart from the occasional, familiar sound of something in the kitchen,
the stove being stoked, a pot being moved, an earthenware plate being set on the
table.

Louise Naud would have liked to talk. It was
obvious
from her manner. She was possessed by a demon that urged her to
say …

To say what? She was in pain. Sometimes she
would open her mouth, full of resolve, and Maigret was afraid of what was coming …

But then she didn't say anything. A
nervous spasm would clutch her chest, her shoulders would quiver for a second, and then
she would carry on sewing with small stitches, crushed by that weight of stillness and
silence that trapped them both.

Did she know that her daughter and
Retailleau …

‘Do you mind if I smoke,
madame?'

She started, perhaps afraid he had been
going to say something else, and stammered:

‘Please … You must think of this
as your home …'

Then she sat up straight, listening
intently.

‘Oh goodness …'

Oh goodness what? She was waiting for her
husband to come back, for anyone to appear who would put an end to the torment of this
tête-à-tête.