Maigret: The Shadow in the Courtyard (1987) (12 page)

Poor Martin, with his gloves, his buff overcoat, his waxed moustache. Maigret could imagine all the phrases that would come drizzling or pouring down on his head.

He’d done what he could, though. Before him, Couchet had incurred the same reproaches. And Couchet must have been told:

“Just look at Monsieur Martin. There’s an intelligent man for you. And he thinks he may get married one of these days. And his wife will have a pension if anything should happen to him. Whereas you…”

It all looked like a sinister caricature. Madame Martin had been mistaken, she’d been taken in, she’d taken in everybody else.

There was an appalling mistake at the bottom of it.

The confectioner’s daughter from Meaux wanted money. That was an established fact. Money was a necessity. She knew it. She was born to have money and therefore it was her husband’s duty to make money.

Suppose Couchet did not make enough? And she wouldn’t even get a pension if he died?

Then she would marry Martin. That was that.

Only Couchet was the one who became a millionaire, when it was too late. And there was no hope of spurring on Martin, no way of inducing him to leave the Wills and Probate Office and start selling serums, or something equally profitable.

She was unfortunate. She had always been unfortunate. Life seemed to delight in disappointing her hideously.

Old Mathilde’s eyes, grey-green as jellyfish, were fixed on Maigret.

“Did her son come to see her?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did she make scenes with him too?”

You would have thought the old woman had been waiting for this moment for years. She was taking her time. She was in no hurry.

“She used to give him advice… ‘Your father’s rich. He ought to be ashamed of not fixing you up better. You haven’t even got a car…And d’you know why? Because of that woman who married him for his money. For that was all she married him for… Not to mention that heaven knows what she’s planning against you…D’you expect you’ll get a penny of the fortune that’s due to you? That’s why you ought to get some money out of him now, and put it aside in a safe place… I’ll keep it for you, if you like…Tell me. Wouldn’t you like me to keep it for you?’”

And Maigret, staring at the grimy floor, pondered, with a grim frown.

Amidst that jumble of feelings he thought he could recognize one feeling that dominated, that had perhaps given rise to all the rest: anxiety. A morbid, unhealthy anxiety, verging on madness…

Madame Martin was always talking about what might happen: her husband’s death, her destitution if he left her without a pension…She worried about her son’s future too…

It was a nightmare, an obsession.

“What did Roger reply?”

“Nothing. He never stayed long. He must have had something better to do elsewhere…”

“Did he come on the day of the murder?”

“I don’t know.”

And in her corner the madwoman, as old as Mathilde, was still staring at the Inspector with an engaging smile.

“Did the Martins have a more interesting conversation than usual?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did Madame Martin come downstairs about eight o’clock that evening?”

“I don’t remember. I can’t be in the passage the whole time.”

Was it unawareness, or transcendent irony? In any case she was keeping something back. Maigret could feel it. All the poison hadn’t come out yet.

“They had a quarrel that evening…”

“What about?”

“I don’t know…”

“Didn’t you listen?”

She made no reply. Her face seemed to say: That’s my own business.

“What else do you know?”

“I know why she’s ill.”

And that was the moment of triumph. Her hands, still clasped across her stomach, were quivering. The culminating point of her whole career.

“Why?”

This had to be savoured.

“Because…Wait while I ask my sister if she needs anything…Fanny, aren’t you thirsty? Hungry? Too hot? ”

The small cast-iron stove was glowing. The old woman glided about the room on her noiseless felt soles.

“Because?”

“Because he didn’t bring back the money.”

She uttered this sentence deliberately, and followed it up with a heavy silence. That was the end. She’d stop talking. She had said enough.

“What money?”

Waste of time. She would answer no more questions.

“It’s none of my business. That was what I heard. Make what you like of it…Now it’s time for me to look after my sister…”

He went off, leaving the two old women engaged in heaven knows what ministrations.

It had made him feel quite ill. He was utterly nauseated, as though from seasickness.

“
He didn’t bring back the money
…”

Couldn’t it all be explained? Martin must have made up his mind to rob the former husband, perhaps so as to incur no more reproaches for his mediocrity. She would have watched him through the window. He’d come out with the three hundred and sixty bank notes…

Only when he came back he hadn’t got them with him. Had he put them away in a safe place somewhere? Had he been robbed himself? Or had he taken fright and got rid of the money by throwing it into the Seine?

Had he committed a murder? Ordinary little Monsieur Martin in his buff overcoat?

He had been anxious to talk, a short while ago. His weariness was surely that of a guilty man who no longer feels strong enough to keep quiet, who prefers immediate imprisonment to the agony of suspense.

But why was it his wife who was ill?

And, above all, why was it Roger who killed himself?

And wasn’t the whole thing a figment of Maigret’s imagination? Why not suspect Nine, or Madame Couchet, or even the Colonel?

The Inspector, walking slowly down the stairs, ran into Monsieur de Saint-Marc, who turned round.

“Hello, it’s you…”

He held out a condescending hand.

“Anything fresh? D’you think we shall be clear of it all?”

And then a cry from the madwoman upstairs, whose sister must have deserted her to take up her post behind some door or other.

An impressive funeral. A large congregation. Highly respectable people, especially Madame Couchet’s relations and the neighbours from the Boulevard Haussmann.

In the front row, only Couchet’s sister did not quite fit in, although she had done her utmost to look smart. She was in tears. Above all she had a noisy way of blowing her nose that each time earned her an angry look from the dead man’s mother-in-law.

Immediately behind the family, the staff from the Serum laboratory.

And with the staff, old Mathilde, looking very dignified, very sure of herself and of her right to be there.

The black dress she was wearing must have been kept for that sole purpose: to go to funerals. Her eyes met Maigret’s. And she deigned to give him a slight nod.

Organ music broke forth, the precentor’s bass, the deacon’s falsetto: “
Et ne nos inducat in tentationem
…”

The sound of chairs being pushed back. The hearse was a high one and yet it was completely hidden under flowers and wreaths.

From the tenants of 61 Place des Vosges
.

Mathilde must have contributed. Had the Martins put their names on the subscription list too?

Madame Martin was not to be seen. She was still in bed.

“
Libéra nos, Domine
…”

The absolution. The end…The chief usher slowly led out the procession. In a corner, near a confessional box, Maigret discovered Nine; her little nose was red, but she had not bothered to powder it.

“It’s terrible, isn’t it?” she said.

“What’s terrible?”

“Everything. I don’t know. That music…And that smell of chrysanthemums…”

She bit her lower lip to check a sob.

“You know…I’ve been thinking a lot…Well. I sometimes wonder if he hadn’t been suspecting something…”

“Are you going to the cemetery?”

“What d’you think? I might be seen, mightn’t I? Perhaps I’d better not go…And yet I’d so much like to know where they’re putting him…”

“You’ve only to ask the caretaker.”

“Yes…”

They were speaking in whispers. The footsteps of the last members of the congregation died away on the other side of the door. Cars started off.

“You were saying he suspected something?”

“Maybe not that he’d die the way he did…But he knew he wouldn’t last much longer…He had serious heart trouble…”

It was obvious that she had been worrying about it, that for hours and hours her mind had been occupied with a single theme.

“Things he said, that keep coming back to me…”

“Was he afraid?”

“No. Rather the reverse…When anyone happened to mention a graveyard, he’d say with a laugh: ‘The only place where you can be quiet…A cosy little corner in the Père-Lachaise…’”

“Did he often joke?”

“Specially when he wasn’t feeling cheerful…You understand? He didn’t like people to see that he had worries…At times like that he’d look for any excuse to be lively and have a laugh…”

“When he talked about his first wife, for instance?”

“He never talked about her to me.”

“Or about the second?”

“No. He didn’t talk about anyone in particular…Just about people in general…He thought they were a funny sort of creature…If a waiter robbed him in a restaurant he’d give him a particularly affectionate look; “A scoundrel.” he’d say.”

“And he’d look quite pleased and happy as he said it.”

It was cold. Regular Hallowe’en weather. Maigret and Nine had nothing to do in the Saint-Philippe-du-Roule district.

“How are things at the Moulin Bleu?”

“All right.”

“I’ll come and see you there some evening soon…”

Maigret shook her hand and jumped on to the platform of a bus.

He wanted to be alone, to think, or rather to let his thoughts wander. He imagined the procession, which would soon have reached the cemetery…Madame Couchet…the Colonel…the brother…People talking about that strange will…

“What were they after, round those dustbins? ”

For that was the crux of the drama. Martin had prowled round the dustbins under pretext of looking for a glove, which he had not found, and yet he had been wearing next morning. Madame Martin had also ransacked the rubbish, saying that a silver spoon had been thrown away by mistake.

“…
Because he didn’t bring back the money
…” old Mathilde had said.

Actually, things must be cheerful at the Place des Vosges just now. Was the madwoman, left by herself, screaming as usual?

The crowded bus, sped past the stops. Somebody close to Maigret was saying to his neighbour:

“Did you read that story about the thousand-franc notes?”

“No. What was that?”

“Wish I’d been there…At the Bougival lock the morning before yesterday…Thousand-franc notes floating down the stream…A waterman was the first to spot them, and he managed to fish up a few…But the lock-keeper realized what had happened…He sent for the police…So they put a cop to keep his eye on people fishing for loot…”

“Not really? That can’t have stopped them from pinching a few on the sly…”

“The paper says they’ve recovered about thirty notes, but that there must have been many more, because a couple were fished up at Mantes too…What d’you say to that? Notes swimming all down the Seine…Better than gudgeon, eh? ”

Maigret did not move a muscle. He was a head taller than anyone else. His face was placid.

“…
Because he didn’t bring back the money
…”

So that was it? Little Monsieur Martin, seized with terror or remorse at the thought of his crime? Martin, who admitted having gone for a walk on the Île Saint-Louis that evening to clear his head…

Maigret gave a faint smile, however, when he pictured Madame Martin witnessing the whole thing from her window and waiting.

Her husband must have come back weary and depressed. She’d have watched his every action. She’d expect to see the notes, perhaps to count them…

He’d have undressed, got ready for bed.

Didn’t she go and pick up his clothes then and hunt through the pockets?

Anxiety would dawn. She would stare at Martin with his mournful moustache.

“
The…the…the money
.”

“
What money
?”

“
Who did you give it to
?
Answer me
…
Don’t try to lie
.”

And Maigret, as he got off the bus at the Pont-Neuf, from which he could see the windows of his office, caught himself saying half aloud:

“I bet Martin burst into tears in his bed…”

Cards of Identity

T
hings started to happen at Jeumont. It was eleven o’clock at night. A few third-class travellers were making their way towards the customs office, while the officials began their tour of inspection of the second and first-class carriages.

Meticulous people were preparing their luggage in advance, spreading things out on the seat. One was a man with worried eyes, in a second-class compartment where he was alone except for an elderly Belgian couple.

His luggage was a model of order and forethought. The shirts had been wrapped in paper to keep them clean. There were a dozen pairs of cuffs, warm pants and summer pants, an alarm clock, shoes and a pair of tired-looking slippers.

A woman’s hand was obvious in the arrangement. Not a corner had been wasted. Nothing could get crumpled. A customs official turned the things over with a careless hand, his eye on the man in the buff overcoat who looked just the type to own that sort of luggage.

“O.K.”

A cross scribbled in chalk on the cases.

“You people got anything to declare?”

“Excuse me.” the man asked. “Where exactly does Belgium begin?”

“You see the first hedge over there? No, you can’t see anything. But look…Count the lights…The third on the left…Well, that’s the frontier…”

A voice in the corridor, repeating at every door:

“Passports and identity cards ready, please.”

And the man in the buff overcoat was struggling to put his cases back on the rack.

“Passport?”

He turned round, saw a young man wearing a grey hat.