Maigret: The Shadow in the Courtyard (1987) (4 page)

From his shoes to his tie, fixed to a celluloid collar, Monsieur Martin was the caricaturists’ prototype of the petty official. A neat, respectable functionary with well-waxed moustaches, not a speck of dust on his clothes, who would undoubtedly think it below his dignity to go out without gloves on his hands.

Now he didn’t know what to do with those hands, and his eyes roamed round the untidy room as if in search of inspiration.

“May I ask you one question, Monsieur Martin? How long have you known Roger Couchet?”

Instead of terror, the man now displayed bewilderment.

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Why, since…ever since my marriage.”

He said this as if the thing was self-evident.

“I don’t follow.”

“Roger is my stepson…The son of my wife…”

“And of Raymond Couchet?”

“Why, yes…Because…”

He was recovering his self-possession.

“My wife was Couchet’s first wife…They had one son, Roger…When she got her divorce, I married her…”

The effect of this was as if a squall of wind had cleared the sky of clouds. The house in the Place des Vosges was completely transformed. The character of events was changed. Certain points became clearer. Others, on the other hand, became more obscure, more disturbing.

So much so that Maigret dared not say anything more.

He felt the need to get his thoughts straight. He looked in turn at the two men with growing uneasiness.

Only the night before, staring up at all the windows visible from the courtyard, the concierge had asked him:

“D’you think it was somebody from the house?”

And her gaze had finally come to rest on the entrance. She hoped that the murderer had come in that way, somebody from outside.

Well, it wasn’t so. The drama concerned the inhabitants of the house. Maigret was quite unable to say why, but he was sure of it.

But what sort of drama? That he didn’t know.

Only he felt that invisible threads were stretching out, connecting such very different points in space, going from the Place des Vosges to this hotel in the rue Pigalle, from the Martins’ flat to the office at the Rivière Serums laboratory, from Nine’s bedroom to that of the ether-doped couple.

The most disturbing thing, perhaps, was to see Monsieur Martin flung like an unconscious spinning-top into this labyrinth. He was still wearing gloves. His buff overcoat in itself implied a respectable and orderly existence. And his uneasy gaze was trying to settle somewhere, without success.

“I came to tell Roger…” he stammered.

“Yes?”

Maigret looked him in the eyes, calmly and penetratingly, and he almost expected to see his interlocutor shrivel up with anguish.

“My wife suggested, you see, that it would be better if we should…”

“I understand.”

“Roger is very…”

“Very sensitive.” Maigret finished off. “A highly-strung creature.”

The young man, who was now drinking his third glass of water, glared at him resentfully. He must have been about twenty-five, but his features were already worn, his eyelids withered.

He was still handsome, nevertheless, with the sort of good looks that some women find irresistible. His skin was smooth, and even his weary, somewhat disillusioned expression had a certain romantic quality.

“Tell me, Roger Couchet, did you often see your father?”

“From time to time.”

“Where?” And Maigret looked at him sternly.

“In his office…Or else at a restaurant…”

“When did you see him last?”

“I don’t know…Some weeks ago…”

“And you asked him for money?”

“As usual.”

“In short, you sponged on him?”

“He was rich enough to…”

“One minute. Where were you yesterday evening about eight o’clock?”

There was no shadow of hesitation.

“At the Select.” he said with an ironical smile which implied: “If you think I can’t see what you’re getting at.”

“What were you doing at the Select?”

“Waiting for my father.”

“So you needed money. And you knew he would come to the Select…”

“He was there almost every evening with his tart. Besides, that afternoon I’d heard him speak over the telephone…For you can hear everything that’s being said next door…”

“When you saw that your father wasn’t coming, it didn’t occur to you to visit his office in the Place des Vosges?”

“No.”

From the mantelpiece Maigret picked up a photograph of the young man, which stood there surrounded by numerous feminine portraits. He thrust it into his pocket, muttering: “If you’ll allow me.”

“Just as you please.”

“You surely don’t believe…” began Monsieur Martin.

“I don’t believe anything at all. That reminds me to ask you a few questions. What sort of relations did you and your wife have with Roger?”

“He didn’t often visit us.”

“And when he did?”

“He only stayed a few minutes…”

“Does his mother know the sort of life he leads?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Don’t play the simpleton, Monsieur Martin. Does your wife know that her son lives in Montmartre, doing nothing?”

And the civil servant stared at the floor, uneasily. “I often tried to get him to take a job.” he sighed.

This time the young man began drumming on the table impatiently.

“I’d like to point out that I’m still in my pyjamas, and that…”

“Will you tell me if you saw anybody you knew at the Select last night?”

“I saw Nine.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“If you don’t mind. I’ve never addressed a word to her.”

“Where was she sitting?”

“At the second table to the right of the bar.”

“Where did you find your glove, Monsieur Martin? If I remember rightly, you were hunting for it last night around the dustbins in the courtyard…”

Monsieur Martin uttered a strained little laugh. “It was at home…Just imagine, I’d gone out with one glove on and I hadn’t noticed…”

“When you left the Place des Vosges where did you go?”

“I went for a walk…Along the embankment…I…I had a headache…”

“Do you often go for walks in the evening without your wife?”

“Sometimes.”

He was in agonies. And he still did not know what to do with his gloved hands.

“Are you going to your office now?”

“No. I telephoned to ask for the day off. I can’t leave my wife in…”

“Well, go back to her now.”

Maigret stood there. The poor fellow was searching for some way of taking his leave decently.

“Good-bye, Roger…” he gulped. “I…I think you ought to see your mother…”

But Roger merely shrugged his shoulders and stared impatiently at Maigret. The sound of Monsieur Martin’s footsteps died away down the stairs.

The young man said nothing. His hand automatically took hold of a flask of ether on the bedside table and set it down further off.

“You’ve no statement to make?” the Inspector asked him slowly.

“None.”

“Because, if you had anything to say, it would be better to do so now than later…”

“I shan’t have anything to tell you later…Yes. One thing, which I’ll say right away: you’re making a hell of a big mistake…”

“By the way, since you didn’t see your father last night you must be out of money?”

“You’ve said it.”

“Where are you going to find any?”

“Don’t worry about me, please…Now, if you’ll excuse me…” And he poured some water into the basin to begin his toilet.

Maigret, for form’s sake, took a few more steps round the room, then left it and went next door, where the two women were waiting for him. Céline was now the more agitated of the two. As for Nine, she was sitting in the easy-chair, slowly gnawing at her handkerchief as her great dreamy eyes stared out of the window at nothing.

“Well?” inquired Roger’s mistress.

“Nothing. You can go back now…”

“Was it really his father who? ”

And suddenly growing grave, with furrowed brow:

“But in that case he’ll inherit?”

And she went off, deep in thought.

On the pavement, Maigret asked his companion:

“Where are you going?”

A vague, apathetic gesture, then:

“I’m going to the Moulin Bleu to see if they’ll have me back…”

He watched her with affectionate interest.

“Were you very fond of Couchet?”

“I told you yesterday: he was a real good sort – and there aren’t so many of them about I can tell you. When you think that some swine has…”

Two tears welled up, and that was all.

“Here we are.” she said, opening a little side door which was the artists’ entrance.

Maigret, who was thirsty, went into a bar and ordered a half pint. He had to go to the Place des Vosges. The sight of a telephone reminded him that he had not yet looked in at the Quai des Orfèvres, where urgent mail might be awaiting him.

He rang up the office boy.

“Is that you, Jean? Anything for me? What’s that? A lady been waiting for an hour? In mourning? Not Madame Couchet? What d’you say? Madame Martin? I’m coming right away.”

Madame Martin
in mourning
. And she’d been waiting for him for an hour in the waiting-room at Police Headquarters.

Maigret knew her only as a shadow: the curious shadow seen the night before, against the curtain of a second-floor window, when she was gesticulating and moving her lips excitedly to utter terrible diatribes.

“It often happens.” the concierge had said.

And the poor little fellow from the Wills and Probate Office, who had forgotten his glove, had gone off for a walk by himself in the darkness of the riverside…

And when Maigret had left the courtyard, at one in the morning, there had been the sound of something brushing against a window pane.

He went slowly up the dusty staircase of Police Headquarters, shaking hands with a few colleagues on the way, and put his head through the half-open door of the waiting-room.

Ten armchairs, upholstered in green velvet. A sort of billiard table. On the wall, the roll of honour: two hundred portraits of detectives killed in the performance of their duty.

In the middle armchair, a woman in black sat very stiffly, one hand holding a handbag with a silver clasp, the other resting on the handle of an umbrella.

Thin lips. A determined gaze fixed straight ahead.

She did not flinch when she felt herself being watched.

With set features, she waited.

The Second-Floor Window

S
he walked ahead of Maigret with the aggressive dignity of those for whom someone else’s irony is the worst of disasters.

“Please sit down, madame.”

It was a clumsy, good-natured, dreamy-eyed Maigret who ushered her in and motioned her to a chair directly under the pallid square of light from the window. She sat down in it, assuming exactly the same attitude as in the waiting-room.

A dignified attitude, evidently. And also a militant one. Her shoulders did not touch the chair-back. And the hand in its black cotton glove was ready to gesticulate without dropping the handbag, which would swing about in the air.

“I suppose, Inspector, you must be wondering why I…”

“No.”

It was not out of unkindness that Maigret chose to disconcert her in this way on their first contact. Neither was it by chance. He knew it was necessary.

He himself sat in an office armchair. He was leaning back in a somewhat vulgar attitude and smoking his pipe in greedy little puffs.

Madame Martin had given a start, or rather her shoulders had stiffened.

“What do you mean? I fancy you were not expecting…”

“Yes.”

And he gave her a bland smile. This time, her fingers seemed uneasy in their black cotton gloves. Her piercing eyes scanned the horizon, and suddenly Madame Martin had an inspiration.

“You’ve had an anonymous letter?”

Her question was a statement, made with a forced air of being certain of what she was suggesting, which made the Inspector’s smile even broader, for this too was a characteristic trait which fitted in with all he had already learnt about the lady.

“I’ve had no anonymous letter…”

She shook her head sceptically.

“You’re not going to make me believe…”

She seemed to have stepped straight out of a family photograph album. Physically, she was a perfect match for the civil servant she had married.

It was easy to imagine them, for instance, walking up the Champs-Elysées on a Sunday afternoon: Madame Martin’s wiry, black-clad back, her hat always askew on account of her chignon, her busy, hurried walk, and that jerk of the chin underlining categorical remarks…And Martin’s buff overcoat, his leather gloves, his stick, his steady, peaceful way of walking, his attempts to linger and pause in front of shop windows…

“Had you got mourning clothes at home?” Maigret murmured insidiously, blowing out a big puff of smoke.

“My sister died three years ago…I mean my sister at Blois, the one who married a police inspector…You see that…”

“That what? ”

Nothing. She’d been warning him. It was time to make him feel that she wasn’t just anybody.

Moreover she was growing nervous, because the whole of the speech she had prepared was useless, thanks to this stupid Inspector.

“When did you hear about your first husband’s death?”

“Why…this morning, like everybody else. It was the concierge who told me you were in charge of the case and, as my position is somewhat delicate…You can’t possibly understand.”

“Oh yes, I can. By the way, didn’t your son pay you a visit yesterday afternoon?”

“What are you trying to insinuate?”

“Nothing. A simple question.”

“The concierge will tell you that it’s at least three weeks since he came to see me…”

She was speaking drily. Her expression was more aggressive. Had Maigret been wrong not to let her make her speech?

“I’m very glad of your visit, for it proves your conscientiousness and…”

At the mere word
conscientiousness
something altered in the woman’s grey eyes, and she thanked him with a nod.

“Certain situations are so painful.” she said. “Many people don’t understand. Even my husband, who advised me not to wear mourning. Note that I’m not really in deep mourning. No veil, no crêpe. Just black clothes…”