The Carter of ’La Providence’ (4 page)

Perhaps it was an illusion but Maigret had the impression that the rain was coming down twice as hard and that the sky was the darkest and most threatening he'd ever seen.

He made his way to the Café de la Marine, where everyone stopped talking the moment he walked in. All the watermen were there, huddled round the cast-iron stove. The lock-keeper was leaning against the bar, near the landlord's daughter, a
tall girl with red hair who wore clogs.

The tables were covered with waxy cloths and were littered with wine bottles, tumblers and standing pools of drink.

‘So, was it his missus?' the landlord finally asked, taking his courage in both hands.

‘Yes. Give me a beer. On second thoughts, no. Make it something hot. A grog.'

The watermen's talk started up again, very gradually. The girl brought Maigret the steaming glass and in doing so brushed against his shoulder with her apron.

The inspector imagined those three characters getting dressed in that cramped space. Vladimir too.

He imagined a number of other things, idly and without great relish.

He was familiar with the lock at Meaux, which is bigger than most locks because, like the one at Dizy, it is situated at the junction of the Marne and the canal, where
there is a crescent-shaped port
which is always full of barges packed closely together.

There, among the watermen, the
Southern Cross
would have been moored, all lit up, and on board the two women from Montparnasse, the curvaceous Gloria Negretti, Madame Lampson, Willy and the colonel dancing on the deck to the strains of
the gramophone and drinking …

In a corner of the Café de la Marine, two men in blue overalls were eating sausage and bread, cutting slices off each with their knives and drinking red wine.

And someone was talking about an accident which had happened that morning in the ‘culvert', that is a stretch of the canal which, as it crosses the high part of the Langres plateau, passes through a tunnel for eight kilometres.

A barge hand had got one foot caught in the horses' tow-line. He'd called out but hadn't been able to make the carter hear. So when the animals set off again after a rest stop, he'd been yanked into the water.

The tunnel was not lit. The barge carried only one lamp which reflected faintly in the water. The barge hand's brother – the boat was called
Les Deux Frères
– had jumped into the canal.

Only one of them had been fished out, and he was dead. They were still looking for the other.

‘They only had two more instalments on the boat to pay. But it looks like, going by the contract, that the wives won't have to fork out another penny.'

A taxi-driver wearing a leather cap came in and looked round.

‘Who was it ordered a car?'

‘Me!' said Maigret.

‘I had to leave it at the bridge. I didn't fancy finishing up in the canal.'

‘Will you be eating here?' the landlord asked the inspector.

‘I don't know yet.'

He went out with the taxi-driver. Through the rain, the white-painted
Southern Cross
was a milky stain. Two boys from a nearby barge, out despite the downpour, were staring at it admiringly.

‘Joseph!' came a woman's voice. ‘Bring your brother here! … You're going to get a walloping! …'

‘
Southern Cross
,' the taxi-driver read on the bow. ‘English, are they?'

Maigret walked across the gangplank and knocked. Willy opened the door. He was already dressed, looking elegant in a dark suit. Inside, Maigret saw the colonel, red-faced and jacketless, having his tie knotted by Gloria Negretti. The cabin
smelled of eau de Cologne and brilliantine.

‘Has the car come?' asked Willy. ‘Is it here?'

‘It's at the bridge, a short distance from here.'

Maigret stayed outside. He half heard the colonel and the young man arguing in English. Eventually Willy came out.

‘He won't traipse through mud,' he said. ‘Vladimir's going to launch the dinghy. We'll meet you there.'

‘Thought so,' muttered the taxi-driver, who had heard.

Ten minutes later, Maigret and he were walking to and fro on the stone bridge just by the parked taxi, which had its sidelights on. Nearly half an hour went by before they heard the putt-putt of a small two-stroke engine.

Eventually Willy's voice shouted:

‘Is this the place? … Inspector!'

‘Yes, over here!'

The dinghy, powered by a removable motor, turned a half circle and pulled in to the bank. Vladimir helped the colonel out and made arrangements to pick them up when they got back.

In the car, Sir Walter did not speak. Despite his bulk, he was remarkably elegant. Ruddy-faced, well turned-out and impassive, he was every inch the English gentleman as portrayed in nineteenth-century prints.

Willy was chain-smoking.

‘Some jalopy!' he muttered as they lurched over a drain.

Maigret noticed he was wearing a platinum ring set with a large yellow diamond.

When they got to the town, where the cobbled streets gleamed in the rain, the taxi-driver lifted the glass separating him and his fare and asked:

‘Where do you want me to …?'

‘The mortuary!' replied the inspector.

It didn't take long. The colonel barely said a word. There was only one attendant in the building, where three bodies were laid out on stone slabs.

All the doors were locked. The locks creaked as they were opened. The light had to be switched on.

It was Maigret who lifted the sheet.

‘Yes!'

Willy was the most upset, the most anxious to turn away from the sight.

‘Do you recognize her too?'

‘It's her all right … She looks so …'

He did not finish. The colour was visibly draining from his face. His lips were dry. If the inspector had not dragged him away, he would probably have passed out.

‘You don't know who …?' the colonel said distinctly.

Was a barely noticeable hint of distress just detectable in his tone of voice? Or wasn't it just the effect of all those glasses of whisky?

Even so, Maigret made a mental note of this small shift.

Then they were outside, on a pavement poorly lit by a single lamp-post near the car. The driver had not budged from his seat.

‘You'll have dinner with us, won't you?' Sir Walter asked, again without turning to face Maigret.

‘Thank you, no. Since I'm here, I'll make the most of it to sort out a few matters.'

The colonel bowed and did not insist.

‘Come, Willy.'

Maigret remained for a moment in the doorway of the mortuary while the young man, after conferring with the Englishman, turned to the taxi-driver.

He was obviously asking which was the best restaurant in town. People walked past while brightly lit, rattling trams trundled by.

A few kilometres from there, the canal stretched away, and all along it, near the locks, there were barges now asleep which would set off at four in the morning, wrapped in the smell of hot coffee and stables.

When Maigret got into bed, in his room, with its distinctive, slightly nauseating smell, he lay for some time aligning two distinct mental pictures.

First, Épernay: seen through the large, brightly lit windows of La Bécasse, the best restaurant in town, the colonel and Willy elegantly seated at a table surrounded by high-class waiters …

It was less than half an hour after their visit to the mortuary. Sir Walter Lampson was sitting ramrod straight, and the aloof expression on that ruddy face under its sparse thatch of silver hair was phenomenal.

Beside his elegance, or more accurately his pedigree, Willy's smartness, though he wore it casually enough, looked like a cheap imitation.

Maigret had eaten elsewhere. He had phoned the Préfecture and then the police at Meaux.

Then, alone and on foot, he had headed off into the rainy night along the long ribbon of road. He had seen the illuminated portholes of the
Southern Cross
opposite the Café de la Marine.

He had been curious and called in, using a forgotten pipe as an excuse.

It was there that he had acquired the second mental picture: in the mahogany cabin, Vladimir, still wearing his
striped sailor's jersey, a cigarette hanging from his lips, was sitting opposite
Madame Negretti, whose glossy hair again hung down over her cheeks.

They were playing cards – ‘sixty-six', a game popular in central Europe.

There had been a brief moment of utter stupefaction. But no shocked reaction! Both had just stopped breathing for a second.

Then Vladimir had stood up and begun hunting for the pipe. Gloria Negretti had asked, in a faint lisp:

‘Aren't they back yet? Was it Mary?'

The inspector had thought for a moment of getting on his bicycle, riding along the canal and catching up with the barges which had passed through Dizy on Sunday night. The sight of the sodden towpath and the black sky had made him change his
mind.

When there was a knock on the door of his room, he was aware, even before he opened his eyes, that the bluey-grey light of dawn was percolating through the window of his room.

He had spent a restless night full of the sound of horses' hooves, confused voices, footsteps on the stairs, clinking glass in the bar underneath him and finally the smell of coffee and hot rum which had wafted up to him.

‘What is it?'

‘Lucas! Can I come in?'

Inspector Lucas, who almost always worked with Maigret, pushed the door open and shook the clammy hand which his chief held out through a gap in the bedclothes.

‘Got something already? Not too worn out, I hope?'

‘I'll survive, sir. After I got your phone call, I went straight to the hotel you talked about, on the corner of Rue de la Grande-Chaumière. The girls weren't there, but at least I got
their names. Suzanne Verdier, goes under the name of Suzy, born at Honfleur in 1906. Lia Lauwenstein, born in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in 1903. The first arrived in Paris four years ago, started as a housemaid, then worked for a while as a model. The Lauwenstein girl has been living
mainly on the Côte d'Azur … Neither, I checked, appears in the Vice Squad's register of prostitutes. But they might as well be on it.'

‘Lucas, would you pass me my pipe and order me coffee?'

The sound of rushing water came from the chamber of the lock and over it the chug of a diesel engine idling. Maigret got out of bed and stood at a poor excuse for a washstand where he poured cold water into the bowl.

‘Don't stop.'

‘I went to La Coupole, like you said. They weren't there, but the waiters all knew them. They sent me to the Dingo, then La Cigogne. I ended up at a small American bar, I forget what it's called, in Rue Vavin, and found them
there, all alone, looking very sorry for themselves. Lia is quite a looker. She's got style. Suzy is blonde, girl-next-door type, not a nasty bone in her body. If she'd stayed back in the sticks where she came from, she'd have got married and made a good wife and mother.
She had got freckles all over her face and …'

‘See a towel anywhere?' interrupted Maigret. His face was dripping with water, and his eyes were shut. ‘By the way, is it still raining?'

‘It wasn't raining when I got here, but it looks like it could start up again at any moment. At six this morning there was a fog which almost froze your lungs … Anyway, I offered to
buy the girls a drink. They immediately asked for sandwiches, which didn't surprise me at first. But after a while I noticed the pearl necklace the Lauwenstein girl was wearing. As a joke I managed to get a bite on it. They were absolutely real! Not the necklace of an American
millionairess, but even so it must have been worth all of 100,000 francs. Now when girls of that sort prefer sandwiches and hot chocolate to cocktails …'

Maigret, who was smoking his first pipe of the day, answered the knock of the girl who had brought his coffee. Then he glanced out of the window and registered that there was as yet no sign of life outside. A barge was passing close to the
Southern Cross
. The man leaning his back against the tiller was staring at the yacht with reluctant admiration.

‘Right. Go on.'

‘I drove them to another place, a quiet café.

‘There, without warning, I flashed my badge, pointed to the necklace and asked straight out: “Those are Mary Lampson's pearls, aren't they?”

‘I don't suppose they knew she was dead. But if they did, they played their parts to perfection.

‘It took them a few moments to admit everything. In the end it was Suzy who said to her friend: “Best tell him the truth, seeing as he knows so much about it already.”

‘And a pretty tale it was too … Need a hand, chief?'

Maigret was flailing his arms wildly in his efforts to catch his braces, which were dangling down his thighs.