The Late Monsieur Gallet (19 page)

‘Aren't people allowed to dance?'

‘Only indoors.'

‘How poetic that would be!'

Monsieur Tardivon, who was primly listening in on this discussion and admiring, with a sigh, the car that belonged to these difficult guests, caught sight of Maigret.

‘I've had your place laid in the little salon, inspector. Well … is there any news?'

The gramophone was still playing. On the first floor, a woman in a camisole with a scalloped top was watching the newcomers and calling up to her husband, who must be in bed, ‘Come down here and make them keep quiet! If we can't even
sleep on holiday …'

By way of contrast a couple – they looked as if they might be a salesman in a big department store and a typist – were pleading the cause of the new arrivals in their de luxe car, in the hope of getting to know them and spending a more
interesting evening than usual here.

‘I won't be dining,' said Maigret. ‘Would you have my baggage taken to the station, please?'

‘For the 11.32 train? Are you leaving, then?'

‘Yes, I'm leaving.'

‘But all the same … you must have something to eat! Do you have our picture postcard of the house?'

Monsieur Tardivon took a postcard with a photo taken twelve years earlier, to judge by the poor reproduction and the women's fashions. It showed the Hôtel de la Loire with a flag hoisted outside the first floor, and the terrace crowded with
guests. Monsieur Tardivon was standing in the doorway in morning dress, and the waitresses, holding platters, stood motionless in front of the lens.

‘Thank you.'

Maigret put the card into one of his pockets and for a second turned towards the nettle lane.

In the little chateau, a light had just come on at one window, and Maigret could have sworn that Tiburce de Saint-Hilaire was getting undressed and recovering his composure by muttering things like,
‘He had to listen to reason, anyway. First of all there's that clause of limitations … he could tell that I knew my Roman law as well as he does. And after all, Gallet was nothing but a crook. Come to think of it, what exactly did I do? Yes, what reason is there to
blame me for anything?'

But might he not be looking with some alarm at the dark corners of the room?

In Saint-Fargeau, the light must be out in the bedroom where Madame Gallet, her hair pinned up, was divesting herself of anxiety about her dignity, was feeling the empty place between the sheets beside her and perhaps, before going to sleep, was
sobbing quietly.

Didn't she have her sisters to console her, and her brothers-in-law, one of them a departmental councillor, all of whom would welcome her back into the comforting bosom of the family?

Maigret had gently pressed the hand of a distracted Monsieur Tardivon as his eyes followed the motorists, who had decided to dine and dance indoors. The suspension bridge, now deserted, echoed beneath his feet, and you could hardly hear the
murmur of water running around the sandbanks. Maigret amused himself by imagining a Henry several years older, with an even sallower complexion, his mouth longer and thinner, in the company of Éléonore, her features hardening with advancing age and her figure becoming slightly ridiculous.
And they would be arguing. About everything and nothing. But most of all about
their
500,000 francs – because they would get their money.

‘It's all very well for you to talk. Your father was a …'

‘I won't have you talking about my father … and as for
you
, what were you when I first met you?'

‘As if you didn't know perfectly well that …'

 • • • 

He slept heavily until the train reached Paris, and his sleep was populated by indistinct silhouettes and a nauseating sense of teeming crowds.

When he was about to pay for the coffee laced with something stronger that he drank in the buffet at Gare de Lyon, he took the postcard showing the Hôtel de la Loire out of his pocket. A young girl was sitting beside him eating a croissant and
dipping it into a large cup of hot chocolate. He left the card on the zinc counter top. When he turned outside the door, he saw the girl dreamily looking at the end of the suspension bridge and the few trees that framed Monsieur Tardivon's hotel.

Maybe that girl will go there and sleep in the same room, he thought. And Saint-Hilaire, got up in his green hunting garb, will invite her to drink the sparkling wine produced by his estate!

‘You look as if you are just back from a funeral,' remarked Madame Maigret, when he came into their apartment on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. ‘Have you at least had something to eat?'

‘A funeral … yes, you're right,' he said, more to himself than her, looking with pleasure at his familiar surroundings. ‘Since he was buried …' And he added, although she could not understand,
‘All the same I'd rather have a real murder victim and a real murderer … Wake me at eleven, will you? I must go and report to the boss.'

He did not confess that he had no intention of sleeping,
but he was wondering just what to include in that report.

The truth pure and simple – the truth that would deprive Madame Gallet of those 300,000 francs of life insurance, would set her against her son, against Éléonore, against Tiburce de Saint-Hilaire, and would set her sisters and brothers-in-law
against her again?

A tangled skein of clashing interests, of hatreds, of never-ending court cases … perhaps a conscientious judge might want to exhume Émile Gallet in order to question him again!

Maigret no longer had the dead man's picture, but he didn't need that faded image now.

His right cheek was all red … blood was flowing. He was standing there staring at the same place, as if he was waiting for something.

Peace, for heaven's sake, that's what he was waiting for, growled Maigret, getting up well before the appointed time.

And a little later, shoulders squared, he was telling his superior officer, ‘No luck. We can only write off that nasty little case.'

But at the same time he was thinking: the doctor claims he wouldn't have lived three years … let's suppose the insurance company loses 60,000 francs … it has capital of ninety million.

 

 

 

No one noticed what was happening. No one suspected that something serious was taking place in the small station's waiting room, where only six passengers sat dejectedly among odours of coffee, beer and lemonade.

It was five in the afternoon, and night was falling. The lamps had been lighted, but through the windows one could still see both German and Dutch railway and customs officials pacing along the platform, stamping their feet for warmth in the grey dusk.

For Gare de Neuschanz is at the northern tip of Holland, on the German border.

A railway station of no importance. Neuschanz is barely a village. It isn't on any main railway line. A few trains come through mostly in the morning and evening, carrying German workers attracted by the high wages paid in Dutch factories.

And the same ceremony is performed every time: the German train stops at one end of the platform; the Dutch train waits at the other end. The train staff in orange caps and the ones wearing the dull green or Prussian blue uniforms get together to pass the time during the hour allotted for customs formalities.

As there are only twenty or so passengers per train, mostly regular commuters on a first-name basis with the customs men, such formalities do not take long.

The passengers go and sit in the station restaurant, which resembles all those found at international borders. The prices are marked in
cents
and
Pfennige
. A display case contains Dutch chocolate and German cigarettes. Gin and schnapps are served.

That evening, the place felt stuffy. A woman dozed at the cash register. Steam was shooting from the coffee percolator. Through the open kitchen door came the whistling of a wireless as a boy fiddled with its knobs.

A cosy scene, and yet a few small things were enough to insinuate an uneasy sense of mystery and adventure into the atmosphere: the two different national uniforms, for example, and the posters, some advertising German winter sports, others a trade fair in Utrecht.

Off in a corner was a man of about thirty, his face wan and stubbled, in threadbare clothing and a soft felt hat of some vague grey, someone who might well have drifted all around Europe.

He had arrived on the Holland train. When he had produced a ticket for Bremen, the conductor had explained in German that he had chosen a roundabout route without any express trains.

The man had indicated that he did not understand. He had ordered coffee, in French, and everyone had considered him with curiosity.

His eyes were feverish, too deeply sunk in their orbits. He smoked with his cigarette stuck to his lower lip, a small detail that spoke volumes about his weariness or indifference.

At his feet was a small suitcase of the kind sold in any cheap store, made of cardboard treated to look like leather. It was new.

When his coffee arrived, he pulled a handful of loose change from his pocket: French and Belgian tokens, some tiny silver Dutch coins.

The waitress had to select the correct amount herself.

People paid less attention to a traveller sitting at the neighbouring table, a tall, heavy fellow, broad in the shoulders. He wore a thick black overcoat with a velvet collar and a celluloid protector cradled the knot of his necktie.

The first man kept anxiously watching the railway employees through the glass door, as if he feared missing a train.

The second man studied him, calmly, almost implacably, puffing on his pipe.

The nervous traveller left his seat for two minutes to go to the toilet. Without even leaning down, simply by moving a foot, the other man then drew the small suitcase towards him and replaced it with one exactly like it.

Thirty minutes later, the train left. The two men took seats in the same third-class compartment, but without speaking to each other.

At Leer, the other passengers left the train, which still continued along its way for the two remaining travellers.

At ten o'clock it pulled in beneath the monumental glass roof of Bremen Station, where the arc-lamps made everyone's face look deathly pale.

The first traveller must not have known a word of German, because he headed several times in the wrong direction, went into the first-class restaurant and managed only after much coming and going to find the third-class buffet, where he did not sit down. Pointing at some sausages in bread rolls, he gestured to explain that he wished to take them with him and once again paid by holding out a handful of coins.

Carrying his small suitcase, he wandered for more than half an hour through the wide streets near the station, as if he were looking for something.

And when the man with the velvet collar, who was following him patiently, saw him finally turn left and walk quickly into a poorer neighbourhood, he understood that the fellow had simply been seeking an inexpensive hotel.

The younger man's pace was slowing down, and he examined several such establishments suspiciously before choosing a seedy-looking one with a large white globe of frosted glass over the front door.

He was still carrying his suitcase in one hand and his little sausages in bread rolls wrapped in tissue paper in the other.

The street was bustling. Fog began to drift in, dimming the light from the shop windows.

The man with the heavy overcoat finally managed to obtain the room next to that of the first traveller.

A poor room, like all the other poor rooms in the world, except, perhaps, that poverty is nowhere more dispiriting than in northern Germany.

But there was a communicating door between the two rooms, a door with a keyhole.

The second man was thus able to witness the opening of the suitcase, which turned out to contain only old newspapers.

He saw the other fellow turn so white that it was painful to witness, saw him turn the suitcase over and over in his trembling hands, scattering the newspapers around the room.

The rolls and sausages sat on the table, still in their wrapping, but the young man, who had not eaten since four that afternoon, never even gave them a glance.

He rushed back to the station, losing his way, asking for directions ten times, blurting out over and over in such a strong accent that he could barely be understood: ‘
Bahnhof?
'

He was so upset that, to make himself better understood, he imitated the sound of a train!

He reached the station. He wandered in the vast hall, spotted a pile of luggage somewhere and stole up to it like a thief to make sure that his suitcase wasn't there.

And he gave a start whenever someone went by with the same kind of suitcase.