Maigret's Holiday (3 page)

‘If you could have seen the pretty
little girl they brought into the ward …'

She meant the public ward,
for in fact there were three classes, as for trains: the public ward, which was like the
third class, then the two-bed rooms and, finally, the first-class private rooms.

What was the point of worrying about it? All
this was childish. There was really something infantile about the atmosphere in the
hospital. Weren't the nuns rather childlike?

The patients too, with their petty
jealousies and their whispered secrets, the sweets they hoarded like misers and the way
they lay listening out for footsteps in the corridors.

Those three words suggested that the note
could only have come from a woman. Why would the patient in room 15 need him? He did not
intend to take the note seriously or ask Sister Aurélie's permission to visit
someone whose name he didn't even know.

On the beach and in town, the sunshine was
overpowering. At certain times, the air literally quivered with the heat and when you
suddenly stepped into a puddle of shade, for a moment you could only see red.

Right! His siesta was over; it was time for
him to fold up his newspaper, put on his jacket, light a pipe and go downstairs.

‘See you later, inspector!'

And so it went on, hellos and goodbyes like
benedictions, all day long. Everyone was pleasant, smiling. He was the only one to
become disgruntled. A nice downpour or
an argument with someone
cantankerous would have made him feel better.

The green door and the three o'clock
chimes. He wasn't even capable of not taking his watch out of his pocket!

‘Good afternoon, Sister
…'

Why didn't he genuflect, while he was
about it? And now the other one – there was Sister Marie des Anges waiting for him
on the stairs.

‘Good afternoon, Sister
…'

And Monsieur 6 tiptoed into Madame
Maigret's room.

‘How are you?'

She forced herself to sound cheerful but
only managed a half-smile.

‘You shouldn't have brought me
oranges. I still have some left.'

‘Now, you who know all the patients
…'

Why was she signalling to him? He turned
towards Mademoiselle Rinquet's bed. The old spinster lay there facing the wall,
her head buried in her pillow.

He asked quietly:

‘Is something wrong?'

‘It's not her … Shh
… Come closer …'

She was being very secretive. It was like
being in a girls' boarding school.

‘Someone died last night
…'

She was keeping one eye on Mademoiselle
Rinquet, whose blanket twitched.

‘It was terrible, we could hear the
screams … Then the family arrived … It went on for more than three hours.
There were comings and goings … Several patients
panicked …
Especially when the chaplain administered the extreme unction … They turned the
lights out in the corridor, but everyone knew …'

In a whisper, Madame Maigret added, jerking
her head in the direction of her fellow patient:

‘She thinks it's her turn
next.'

Maigret didn't know what to say. He
sat there, heavy and clumsy, in a foreign world.

‘She was a young woman … A very
pretty young thing, apparently … in room 15 …'

She wondered why he knitted
his bushy eyebrows and automatically took a pipe out of his pocket which he didn't
actually fill.

‘Are you sure it was 15?'

‘Of course … Why?
…'

‘No reason.'

He went and sat in his chair. There was no
point telling Madame Maigret about the note, she would immediately become alarmed.

‘What have you had to eat
today?'

Mademoiselle Rinquet began to cry. Her face
was hidden, only her sparse hair could be seen on the pillow, but the blanket was
heaving fitfully.

‘You shouldn't stay too
long.'

In his robust state of health, he was
visibly out of place among the sick and the silent, gliding nuns.

Before leaving, he asked:

‘Do you know her name?'

‘Who?'

‘The girl … In number 15
…'

‘Hélène Godreau
…'

Only then did he notice that Sister Marie
des Anges was red-eyed and seemed resentful towards him. Was she the person who had
slipped the note in his pocket?

He felt unable to ask her. All this was so
far removed from his normal world, from the dusty corridors of the Police Judiciaire,
from the people he questioned in his office, sitting them down in front of him, his eyes
boring into theirs at length and then bombarding them with harsh questions.

What was more, this was none of his
business. A girl was dead. And then what? Someone had slipped a meaningless message into
his pocket …

He continued on his path, like a circus
horse. In short, his days were spent going round in circles exactly like a circus horse.
Now, for example, it was time for the Brasserie du Remblai. He went there as if going to
an important meeting, whereas in fact he had absolutely no business there.

The café was vast and bright. By the
bay windows overlooking the beach and the sea sat most of the customers whom he did not
even bother to glance at, strangers, holidaymakers, who had no routine, whom one did not
expect to see at the same table every day.

At the back, in a spacious corner behind the
billiard table, it was a different matter, with two tables around which sat a group of
earnest, taciturn men, under the eye of a waiter attentive to the slightest signal from
them.

They were important men, the rich, the
elders. Some of them had seen the café being built and others had
known Les Sables d'Olonne before the construction of Le Remblai.

Each afternoon, they gathered to play
bridge. Each afternoon, they shook hands in silence, or exchanged a few short, ritual
words.

They had already grown accustomed to the
presence of Maigret, who did not play cards but straddled a chair and watched them play,
smoking his pipe and sipping a white wine.

They usually waved to him by way of a
greeting. Only Monsieur Mansuy, the chief inspector of police, who had introduced him to
these men, stirred himself to get up and shake his hand.

‘Is your wife continuing to
improve?'

He answered yes, without thinking. He also
added, without thinking:

‘A girl died last night, at the
hospital …'

He had spoken softly, but even so his voice
boomed, especially in the silence that reigned over the two tables.

He realized from the gentlemen's
reaction that he had committed a blunder. Chief Inspector Mansuy signalled to him not to
say any more.

Although he had been watching them play for
six days, he still hadn't managed to understand the game. This time, he contented
himself with watching their faces.

Monsieur Lourceau, the ship-owner, was very
old, but tall, still strong, with a ruddy face beneath a crown of white hair. He was the
best bridge player of all of them and, when his partner made a mistake, he had a way of
glaring at him that did not make one want to play with him.

Depaty, the estate agent,
who handled mainly private homes and housing developments, was livelier, with
mischievous eyes that belied his seventy years.

Then there was a building contractor, a
judge, a boat-builder and the deputy mayor.

The youngest player must have been between
forty-five and fifty. He was just finishing a game. He was thin and wiry, with sharp
eyes and lustrous brown hair, and he dressed with studied elegance, if not with
affectation.

When he had played his last card, he stood
up, as he usually did, and went over to the telephone booth. Maigret glanced up at the
clock. It was four thirty. Each day, at the same time, that player made a telephone
call.

Chief Inspector Mansuy, who changed places
with his neighbour for the next game, leaned towards his colleague and murmured:

‘It's his sister-in-law who died
…'

The man who telephoned his wife every day
during the game was Doctor Bellamy. He lived less than three hundred metres away, the
big white house after the casino, exactly halfway between the casino and the pier, in
one of the town's most beautiful residences. It could be seen from the bay window.
With its calm dignity, the immaculate, even façade with its big, high windows was
reminiscent of the convent hospital.

Doctor Bellamy was walking back, impassive,
to the table where the others were waiting for him and the cards had already been dealt.
Monsieur Lourceau, who did not like futile questions to interrupt the solemnity of
bridge, gave a shrug. Things had probably gone on like this for years.

The doctor was not a man to
allow himself to be intimidated. Not a muscle in his face moved. He scanned his hand at
a glance, and called:

‘Two clubs …'

Then, during the game, he began for the
first time to examine Maigret covertly. It was barely noticeable. His glances were so
fleeting that Maigret only just intercepted them in passing.

Why were words forming unconsciously in
Maigret's mind that would then nag away at him during the rest of the game?
In
any case, there is one man who won't have any pity …

He had rarely seen eyes that were so hard
and at the same time blazing, a man so in control of himself, so capable of betraying
nothing of his feelings.

On previous days, Maigret had not waited for
the game of bridge to end. Other ‘corners' awaited him. He was horrified at
the thought of the slightest change to his routine.

‘Will you still be here at six
o'clock?' he asked Chief Inspector Mansuy.

The latter looked at his watch, a pointless
action, before replying that he would.

Le Remblai, right to the end of the
promenade this time, past Doctor Bellamy's house, which was typical of those
residences that passers-by gaze at with envy, saying:

‘It must be so lovely to live there
…'

Then the port, the
yacht-builder's yard with its sails spread over the pavement, the ferryman, the
boats coming in and mooring alongside each other opposite the fish market.

Here, there was a little café painted
green, with four steps, a dark bar, two or three tables covered with brown oilcloth and
nothing but men wearing blue, their high rubber waders turned down over their
thighs.

‘A small glass of white wine
…'

…Which did not taste the same as the
wine at the Hôtel Bel Air, or that of the covered market, or the white wine at the
Brasserie du Remblai
.

Now all he had to do was to walk to the end
of the quayside, then turn right and make his way back through the narrow streets where
the single-storey houses were teeming with life, noise and smells.

When, at six o'clock, he reached the
Brasserie du Remblai, Chief Inspector Mansuy, who had just emerged, stood winding up his
watch as he waited for Maigret.

It took half an hour, and the wait was not
unpleasant, on the contrary. Chief Inspector Mansuy had said to him:

‘I have to stop by the police station.
I need to sign some documents and there's probably a man waiting to see
me.'

He was a stocky redhead, and there was an
air of formality, of shyness even, about him – he always seemed to be saying
‘I'm sorry, but I assure you I'm doing everything I can.'

As a child he had probably been one of those
pretentious boys who spend their break time daydreaming in a corner, and are described
as being too serious for their age. He was a bachelor and lived in furnished lodgings
owned by a widow, in a house near the Hôtel Bel Air. From time to time, he came to
have an aperitif at the hotel, and that was how Maigret had met him.

He did not seem like a proper inspector, and
the police station did not seem like a proper police station either. The offices were in
a residential house, on a little square. In some rooms, the wallpaper hadn't been
changed, and you could tell which rooms had formerly been bedrooms, or bathrooms, with
lighter patches on the walls in the shape of each piece of furniture, and pipes that had
been sealed off.

But there was the smell, which Maigret
sniffed with
delight, almost relief − a lovely, heavy smell, so
thick you could cut through it with a knife, the odour of the leather shoulder holsters,
the wool of the uniforms, administrative forms, pipes gone cold and, lastly, the poor
wretches who had worn out their trouser seats on the two wooden benches in the waiting
room.

Compared with the Police Judiciaire, the
place appeared rather amateurish. The men gave the impression they were playing at being
cops. An officer in shirt-sleeves was washing his hands and face in the courtyard. You
could hear the hens in the next-door garden clucking. Other officers were playing cards
in the guardroom, lounging around in imitation of real officers, and there were some
very young ones who looked like conscripts.