The Carter of ’La Providence’ (5 page)

‘The main point first. They both swore that it was Mary Lampson herself who gave them the pearls last Friday, in Paris, where she'd come to meet them. You'll probably understand this better than I do, because all I know about
the case is what you told me over the phone.

‘I asked if Madame Lampson had come there with Willy Marco. They said no. They said they hadn't seen Willy since last Thursday, when they left him at Meaux.'

‘Just a moment,' Maigret broke in as he knotted his tie in a milky mirror which distorted his reflection. ‘The
Southern Cross
arrives at Meaux on Wednesday evening. Our two girls are on board. They spend a lively night
with the colonel, Willy, Mary Lampson and Gloria.

‘It's very late when Suzy and Lia are taken off to a hotel, and they leave by train on Thursday morning … Did anyone give them money?'

‘They said 500 francs.'

‘Had they got to know the colonel in Paris?'

‘A few days earlier.'

‘And what happened on the yacht?'

Lucas gave a knowing smile.

‘Assorted antics, none very savoury. Apparently the Englishman lives only for whisky and women. Madame Negretti is his mistress.'

‘Did his wife know?'

‘Oh, she knew all right! She herself was Willy's mistress. None of which stopped them bringing Suzy and Lia to join the party, if you follow me. And then there was Vladimir,
who danced with
all the women. In the early hours there was a row because Lia Lauwenstein said that 500 francs was charity. The colonel did not answer, leaving that to Willy. They were all drunk. The Negretti woman fell asleep on the roof, and Vladimir had to carry her into the cabin.'

Standing at the window, Maigret let his eye wander along the black line of the canal. To his left, he could see the small-gauge railway, which was still used to transport earth and gravel.

The sky was grey and streaked low down with shreds of blackish cloud. But it had stopped raining.

‘What happened then?'

‘That's more or less it. On Friday, Mary Lampson supposedly travelled to Paris and met up with both girls at La Coupole, when she must have given them the necklace.'

‘My, my! A teeny-weeny little present …'

‘Not a present. She handed it over for them to sell on. They were to give her half of whatever cash they got for it. She told them her husband didn't let her have much in the way of ready money.'

The paper on the walls of the room was patterned with small yellow flowers. On it the basin was a splash of dirty white.

Maigret saw the lock-keeper hurrying his way along with a bargee and his carter, clearly intending to drink a tot of rum at the bar.

‘That's all I could get out of them,' said Lucas in conclusion. ‘I left them at two this morning. I sent Inspector Dufour to keep a discreet eye on their movements. Then I went back to the Préfecture to check the records
as per
your instructions. I found the file on Willy Marco, who was kicked out of Monaco four years ago after some murky business to do with gambling. The following year he was questioned after an American woman claimed he had relieved her of some
items of jewellery. But the charge was dropped, I don't know why, and Marco stayed out of jail. Do you think that he's …'

‘I don't think anything. And that's the honest truth, I swear. Don't forget the murder was committed on Sunday after ten at night, when the
Southern Cross
was moored at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre.'

‘What do you make of the colonel?'

Maigret shrugged his shoulders and pointed to Vladimir, who had just popped out through the forward hatch and was making for the Café de la Marine. He was wearing white trousers, rope sandals and a sweater. An American sailor's cap was
pulled down over one ear.

‘Phone call for Monsieur Maigret,' the red-haired serving girl called through the door.

‘Come down with me, Lucas.'

The phone was in the corridor, next to a coat stand.

‘Hello? … Meaux? … What was that? … Yes, the
Providence
 … At Meaux all day Thursday loading? … Left at three o'clock Friday morning … Did any others? … The
Éco-III
 … That's a tanker-barge, right? … Friday night at Meaux … Left Saturday morning … Thanks, inspector! … Yes, carry on with the questioning, you never know … Yes, I'll still be at this
address …'

Lucas had listened to this conversation without understanding a word of it. Before Maigret could open his mouth
to tell him, a uniformed officer on a bicycle appeared at the door.

‘Message from Records … It's urgent!'

The man was spattered with mud to the waist.

‘Go and dry off for a moment and while you're at it drink my health with a hot grog.'

Maigret led Lucas out on to the towpath, opened the envelope and read out in a half-whisper:

Summary of preliminary analyses relating to inquiries into the murder at Dizy:

— victim's hair shows numerous traces of resin and also the presence of horsehairs, dark brown in colour;

— the stains on the dress are fuel oil;

— stomach contents at time of death: red wine and tinned meat similar in type to what is commercially available as corned beef.

‘Eight out of ten horses have dark brown coats!' sighed Maigret.

In the café, Vladimir was asking what was the nearest place where he could buy the supplies he needed. There were three people who were telling him, including the cycling policeman from Épernay, who eventually set off with the Russian in the
direction of the stone bridge.

Maigret, with Lucas in tow, headed for the stable, where, in addition to the landlord's grey, a broken-kneed mare possibly intended for slaughter had been kept since the night before.

‘It wasn't here that she would have picked up traces of resin,' said the inspector.

He walked twice along the path that led round the buildings from the canal to the stable.

‘Do you sell resin?' he asked when he saw the landlord pushing a wheelbarrow full of potatoes.

‘It's not exactly proper resin … We call it Norwegian pitch. It's used for coating the sides of wooden barges above the waterline. Below it they use coal-tar, which is twenty times cheaper.'

‘Have you got any?'

‘There are still about twenty cans in the shop … But in this sort of weather there's no call for it. The bargees wait for the sun to come out before they start doing up their boats.'

‘Is the
Éco-III
made of wood?'

‘Iron, like most boats with motors.'

‘How about the
Providence
?'

‘Wood. Have you found out something?'

Maigret did not reply.

‘You know what they're saying?' said the man, who had set down his wheelbarrow.

‘Who are “they”?'

‘Everybody on the canal, the bargees, pilots, lock-keepers. Goes without saying that a car would have a hard time driving along the towpath, but what about a motorbike? A motorbike could come from a long way off and leave no more trace than
a pushbike.'

The door of the
Southern Cross
's cabin opened. But no one came out.

For one brief moment, a patch of sky turned yellowish, as if the sun was at last about to break through. Maigret and Lucas walked up and down the canal bank without speaking.

No more than five minutes had gone by before the wind was bending the reeds flat, and one minute later rain was coming down in earnest.

Maigret held out one hand, an automatic reaction. With an equally mechanical gesture Lucas produced a packet of grey pipe tobacco from his pocket and handed it to his companion.

They paused a moment by the lock. The chamber was empty but it was being made ready, for an invisible tug still some distance off had hooted three times, which meant that it was towing three boats.

‘Where do you reckon the
Providence
is now?' Maigret asked the lock-keeper.

‘Half a mo' … Mareuil, Condé … and just before Aigny there's a string of about ten boats. That'll hold her up … Only two sluices of the lock at Vraux are working … So I'd say
she's at Saint-Martin.'

‘Is that far?'

‘Exactly thirty-two kilometres.'

‘And the
Éco-III
?'

‘Should be at La Chaussée. But a barge coming downstream told us last night that she'd broken her propeller at Lock 12. Which means you'll find her at Tours-sur-Marne, which is fifteen kilometres upstream. It's their own
fault … It's clear. Regulations state no loads should exceed 280 tons, but they all go on doing it.'

It was ten in the morning. As Maigret clambered on to the bicycle he had hired, he saw the colonel sitting in a rocking chair on the deck of the yacht. He was opening the Paris papers, which the postman
had just delivered.

‘No special orders,' he told Lucas. ‘Stay around here. Don't let them out of your sight.'

The showers became less frequent. The towpath was dead straight. When he reached the third lock, the sun came out, still rather watery, but making the droplets of water on the reeds sparkle.

From time to time, Maigret had to get off his bike to get past horses towing a barge. Harnessed side by side, they took up the full width of the towpath and plodded forward, one step at a time, with an effort which made their muscles swell
visibly.

Two of these animals were being driven by a little girl of eight or ten. She wore a red dress and carried a doll which dangled at the end of one arm.

The villages were, for the most part, some distance from the canal so that the long ribbon of flat water seemed to unfurl in an absolutely empty landscape.

Here and there was an occasional field with men bent over the dark earth. But most of it was woods. Reeds a metre and a half or two metres high further added to the mood of calm.

A barge taking on a cargo of chalk near a quarry sent up clouds of dust which whitened its hull and the toiling men.

There was a boat in the Saint-Martin lock, but it wasn't the
Providence
.

‘They'll have stopped for their dinners in the reach above Châlons!' the lock-keeper's wife said as she went, with two young children clinging to her skirts, from one dock-gate to
the other.

Maigret was not a man who gave up easily. Around eleven o'clock he was surprised to find himself in springlike surroundings, where the air pulsed with sun and warmth.

Ahead of him, the canal cut a straight line across a distance of six kilometres. It was bordered with woods of fir on both sides.

At the far end the eye could just make out the light-coloured stonework of a lock. Through its gates spurted thin jets of water.

Halfway along, a barge had halted, at a slight angle. Its two horses had been unharnessed and, their noses in a feedbag, were munching oats and snorting.

The first impression was cheerful or at least restful. Not a house in sight. The reflections in the calm water were wide and slow.

A few more turns of the pedals and the inspector saw a table set up under the awning over the tiller in the stern of the barge. On it was a blue and white checked waxed tablecloth. A woman with fair hair was setting a steaming dish in the middle
of it.

He got off his bike after reading, on the rounded bows in gleaming polished letters:
Providence
.

One of the horses, taking its time, stared at him, then twitched its ears and let out a peculiar growl before starting to eat again.

Between the barge and the side of the canal was a thin, narrow plank, which sagged under Maigret's weight. Two men were eating, following him with their eyes, while the woman advanced towards
him.

‘Yes, what do you want?' she asked as she buttoned her blouse, which was part open over her ample bosom.

She spoke with a singsong intonation almost as strong as a southern accent. But she wasn't at all bothered. She waited. She seemed to be protecting the two men with the fullness of her brazen flesh.

‘Information,' said the inspector. ‘I expect you know there was a murder at Dizy?'

‘The crew of the
Castor et Pollux
told us about it. They overtook us this morning. Is it true? It doesn't hardly seem possible, does it? How could anybody have done such a thing? And on the canal too, where it's always
so peaceful.'

Her cheeks were blotchy. The two men went on eating, never taking their eyes off Maigret, who glanced involuntarily down at the dish which contained dark meat and gave off an aroma which startled his nostrils.

‘A kid goat. I bought it this morning at the lock at Aigny … You were looking for information? About us, I suppose? We'd gone long before any dead body was discovered. Speaking of which, anybody know who the poor woman
was?'

One of the men was short, dark-haired, with a drooping moustache and a soft, submissive air about him.

He was the husband. He'd merely nodded vaguely at the intruder, leaving his wife to do the talking.

The other man was around sixty years of age. His hair, thick and badly cut, was white. A beard three or four centimetres long covered his chin and most of his cheeks, and he had very thick eyebrows. He
looked as hairy as an animal.

In contrast, his eyes were bright but without expression.

‘It's your carter I'd like to talk to.'

The woman laughed.

‘Talk to Jean? I warn you, he don't talk much to anyone. He's our tame bear! Look at the way he's eating! But he's also the best carter you could hope to find.'

The old man's fork stopped moving. He looked at Maigret with eyes that were disturbingly clear.

Village idiots sometimes have eyes like that. And also animals who are used to being treated with kindness and then without warning are beaten without pity.

There was something vacant about them. But something else too, something beyond words, almost withdrawn.