Maigret in Vichy, page 4
‘Nine years … She moved here from Nice, where she lived for a while …’
‘Did she work there?’
‘No … She lived in a modest apartment near Boulevard Albert-1er, and seemed to be a woman of independent means …’
‘Did she travel?’
‘Two- or three-day trips, practically every month …’
‘Does anyone know where she went?’
‘She was secretive about her comings and goings …’
‘What about here?’
‘The first two years, she didn’t take in lodgers … Then she rented out three rooms during the season, but all three weren’t always occupied … That’s the case at present … The blue room is empty … Because there’s the white room, the pink room and the blue room …’
Maigret noticed something else. He could not see a single touch of green, not an ornament, not a cushion or decoration.
‘Was she superstitious?’
‘How do you know? One day, she lost her temper because Madame Maleski had bought a bunch of carnations and she told her that she didn’t want those unlucky flowers in the house …
‘Again, she told Madame Vireveau that she was unwise to wear a green dress and that it would undoubtedly cost her dear …’
‘Did she have any visitors?’
‘Never, according to the neighbours.’
‘Post?’
‘From time to time, a letter from La Rochelle. The postman has been questioned. Flyers. Bills from some shops in Vichy.’
‘Did she have a bank account?’
‘At the Crédit Lyonnais, on the corner of Rue Georges-Clemenceau.’
‘You’ve been there, of course?’
‘She paid in regular amounts, around five thousand francs every month, not always on the same date.’
‘In cash?’
‘Yes … During the season, she deposited more, because of the rent from her lodgers—’
‘Did she ever write cheques?’
‘To shops, nearly all in Vichy or Moulins, where she would go occasionally … Sometimes she paid by cheque for items she bought from Paris by mail order … You’ll find a pile of catalogues in this corner …’
Lecoeur watched Maigret, whose cream jacket made him look very different from the man he knew from Quai des Orfèvres.
‘What do you reckon, chief?’
‘That I have to go … My wife’s waiting for me …’
‘And your first glass of water!’
‘The Vichy police know that too?’ he grumbled.
‘Will you come back? The Police Judiciaire doesn’t have an office in Vichy. Every night I drive back to Clermont-Ferrand, which is only sixty kilometres away. The police chief here has offered to put a room and a telephone at my disposal, but I prefer to work at the scene … My men are trying to find passers-by or neighbours who might have seen Mademoiselle Lange on Monday evening, when she returned home, because we don’t know whether there was someone with her or whether she met someone in the street or whether—’
‘I’m sorry, my friend … my wife …’
‘Of course, chief …’
Maigret was torn between his curiosity and his routine. He was a little annoyed with himself for having turned right instead of left on leaving the Hôtel de la Bérézina. He’d have paused as he did every morning at the children’s playground, then, further on, he’d have watched the boules players.
Had Madame Maigret gone on their daily promenade alone, stopping at each of their usual places?
‘Wouldn’t you like a lift? My car’s outside and young Dicelle would be only too happy to—’
‘No thank you … I’m here to walk …’
And he walked, alone, striding quickly to make up for lost time.
He had drunk his first glass of water and found his usual spot, between the vast glazed Fountain Hall and the first tree. He could sense that, although his wife didn’t ask him any questions, she was alert to his every gesture and facial expression.
His newspaper on his knee, he gazed up at the sky through the barely trembling foliage. It was the same clear blue as always, with one small, drifting, dazzling white cloud.
In Paris, he sometimes complained that he missed certain sensations for which he was nostalgic: a breath of air, warmed by the sunshine on his cheek, the play of light among the leaves or on the gravel crunching beneath the feet of the crowd, and even the taste of dust.
Here, a miracle happened. As he mulled over his conversation with Lecoeur, he felt as if he was immersed in the atmosphere, and nothing that was going on around him escaped him.
Was he really thinking? Was he daydreaming? Families strolled past, as everywhere, but there were many more older couples.
Were there more lone men or lone women? The women, especially the elderly ones, tended to gather in groups. You could see them arranging the chairs in circles of six or eight, and they’d lean towards one another and appear to be exchanging secrets, even though they’d only met a few days earlier.
Who knows? Maybe they were real secrets. They talked about their aches and pains, their doctor, their therapy, and then about their married offspring and their grandchildren, whisking photos from their handbags.
It was rare to see one sitting alone like the lady in lilac whose name he now knew.
It was more usual to see lone men, their faces often haunted by weariness or disease, struggling to make their way through the crowds with dignity. All the same, their features, their eyes, betrayed a sort of anxiety, a vague fear of collapsing in a pool of shade or sunlight amid the legs of the passers-by.
Hélène Lange was a loner and her attitude, her bearing, exuded a sort of pride. She didn’t want to be called a spinster, did not accept pity, she held herself upright and walked with a light tread, her chin high.
She mixed with no one, had no need to unburden her soul or her mind by confiding in casual acquaintances.
Had she chosen to live alone? he wondered, intrigued. He tried to picture her sitting, standing, motionless, moving about.
‘Do they have any leads?’
Madame Maigret was beginning to be jealous of his reverie. In Paris, she would not have dared ask her husband any questions midway through an investigation. But here, walking side by side for hours, had they not got into the habit of thinking aloud?
It was never a real conversation, an exchange of precise rejoinders, but nearly always a few words or a comment that was enough to indicate the other person’s train of thought.
‘No. They’re waiting for the sister …’
‘She doesn’t have any other family?’
‘Apparently not …’
‘It’s time for your second glass.’
They went inside the Fountain Hall where the attendants’ heads were visible above the sunken bar behind which they worked. Hélène Lange used to come and drink here every day. Was it on doctor’s orders or simply to give herself a purpose for her walk?
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘I’m asking myself, why Vichy?’
She’d moved to this town around ten years ago and bought a house. So she was thirty-seven at the time and did not appear to need to earn a living because, in the first two years, she hadn’t rented out the first-floor bedrooms.
‘And why not?’ retorted Madame Maigret.
‘There are hundreds of small and medium-sized towns in France where she could have moved to, not to mention La Rochelle, which she knew from her childhood and adolescence … Her sister, after living in Paris, went back to La Rochelle and settled down there …’
‘Maybe the two sisters didn’t get along?’
It wasn’t so straightforward. Maigret was still watching the people walking, and their pace reminded him of a similar permanent procession elsewhere, in the warm sunshine. In Nice, on the Promenade des Anglais.
Because, before coming to Vichy, Hélène Lange had lived in Nice for five years.
‘She lived in Nice for five years,’ he said aloud.
‘A lot of people with small private incomes …’
‘Quite … People with small private incomes, but also people from every walk of life, just like here … I was wondering the day before yesterday what the crowds strolling in this park and sitting on the chairs reminded me of … It’s the same as on the seafront in Nice … Crowds from so many different backgrounds that they become neutral … Here too there must be former stage and screen celebrities … We discovered a neighbourhood of opulent mansions where you can still glimpse menservants in striped waistcoats …
‘In the hills, you can make out luxurious, secluded villas …
‘Like in Nice …’
‘What do you infer from that?’
‘Nothing. She was thirty-two when she moved to Nice and she was as alone there as she was here. In general, solitude sets in later …’
‘There is such a thing as heartache …’
‘I know, but it doesn’t cause a face like that.’
‘There are also broken relationships …’
‘Ninety-five per cent of women remarry.’
‘What about men?’
He gave her a broad smile and said, without her realizing that he was joking:
‘One hundred per cent!’
In Nice, there was a floating population, branches of Paris shops and several casinos. In Vichy, tens of thousands of people came to take the waters, changing every three weeks, and there were the same shops, three casinos and a dozen cinemas.
Anywhere else, she would have been known, people would have gossiped about her and spied on her.
Not in Nice. Not in Vichy. So did she have something to hide?
‘Do you have to meet up with Lecoeur?’
‘He invited me to drop by and see him when I want … He still calls me chief like when he was in my department …’
‘They all do …’
‘It’s true … Out of habit …’
‘You don’t think it’s more out of affection?’
He shrugged, and they soon found themselves making their way back to their hotel. This time they went through the old town, pausing in front of the poignant displays in the windows of the antiques shops.
They knew that, at mealtimes, the other guests watched them, but they had to get used to it. Maigret tried to follow Doctor Rian’s recommendations. Chew every mouthful carefully before swallowing, even mashed potatoes. Don’t pick up more food on your fork before you’ve swallowed the previous mouthful. Don’t drink more than one or two sips of water, possibly tinted with a dash of wine …
He preferred no wine at all.
He indulged in a few puffs on his pipe before going upstairs and lying down fully dressed for his nap. Enough light filtered through the shutters for his wife, in the armchair, to take her turn at skimming the newspaper, and, through his drowsiness, he could hear a rustle as she turned the page.
He had been lying down for barely twenty minutes when there was a knock on the door. Madame Maigret scuttled out on to the landing and closed the door behind her. There was whispering, then she went downstairs, and was only out of the room for a few minutes.
‘That was Lecoeur.’
‘Has there been a development?’
‘The sister’s just arrived in Vichy. She went to the police station and they’re going to drive her to the morgue to identify the body. Lecoeur’s waiting for her at Rue du Bourbonnais. He wondered whether you’d like to go over there and be present when he questions her.’
Maigret was already on his feet, grumbling, and he began by opening the shutters to bring light and life back into the room.
‘Shall I meet you at the spring?’
The spring, the first glass of water, the iron chair, weren’t until five o’clock in the afternoon.
‘It won’t take that long. Wait for me on one of the benches near the boules players instead …’
He wasn’t sure whether to take his straw hat.
‘Are you afraid they’ll laugh at you?’
Too bad. He was on holiday, after all, and he placed it proudly on his head.
Curious bystanders continued to stop in front of the house, still under police guard. Once they realized that there was nothing to see except closed windows, they soon moved off, shaking their heads.
‘Have a seat, chief … If you place the chair in the corner, near the window, you’ll see her in the full light …’
‘Haven’t you met her yet?’
‘I was having lunch – in an excellent restaurant incidentally – when I was informed that she was at the police station … She’s being taken to the morgue and then brought to me.’
Through the net curtains, they spotted a black vehicle, driven by a uniformed police officer, followed by a long red open-topped car. The couple in the front, hair dishevelled, faces tanned, looked very much as if they were returning home from a holiday.
The woman and the man exchanged a few words then leaned towards each other and, after a quick kiss, the woman got out and slammed the door, while her companion remained at the wheel and lit a cigarette.
He was swarthy, with clearly defined features and muscles rippling beneath his yellow polo shirt. He looked in the direction of the house without curiosity as the police officer showed the young woman into the lounge.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Lecoeur … You are Francine Lange, I assume?’
‘That’s correct …’
She glanced vaguely over at Maigret, who was not introduced to her and sat with his back to the light.
‘Madame or mademoiselle?’
‘I’m not married, if that’s what you mean. My friend, who’s in the car, is with me. But I know men too well to marry one. Afterwards, they’re a nightmare to get rid of …’
She was an attractive woman who didn’t look her forty years as she paraded her provocative figure around the small conventional lounge. She wore a flame-coloured dress, so light that it was see-through, and you could have sworn she gave off a whiff of the sea.
‘The telegram reached me last night … Lucien managed to get us seats on the first flight to Paris … At Orly, we picked up our car, which we’d left there when we flew out—’
‘I presume that the victim is indeed your sister?’
She nodded, without emotion.
‘Wouldn’t you like to sit down?’
‘Thank you. May I smoke?’
She watched the smoke rising from Maigret’s pipe as if to say: ‘If he can sit there puffing away, then I should be allowed a cigarette.’
‘Please do … I imagine this murder is as much of a shock to you as it is to us?’
‘It’s the last thing I’d have expected …’
‘Do you know if your sister had any enemies?’
‘Why would Hélène have any enemies?’
‘When was the last time you saw her?’
‘Six or seven years ago. I don’t know exactly … I remember that it was in winter and there was a storm … She hadn’t told me she was coming, and I was surprised to see her walk calmly into my hair salon.’
‘Did you get along with her?’
‘As sisters do … I didn’t know her that well because of the age gap … She left school when I was just starting … Then she took lessons in La Rochelle. That was a long time before I became a manicurist … After that she moved away—’
‘How old was she then?’
‘Hold on … I’d been doing my apprenticeship for a year … So I was sixteen … Add seven … She was twenty-three.’
‘Did you write to her?’
‘Rarely … Our family’s not the sort …’
‘Was your mother already dead?’
‘No … She died two years later and Hélène came to Marsilly for the division of the inheritance … There wasn’t a lot to divide up … The shop wasn’t worth a great deal …’
‘What did your sister do in Paris?’
Maigret continued to scrutinize her, while recalling the shape and face of the dead woman. The two siblings had little in common, and Francine did not have her sister’s long face or her dark eyes. Hers were blue and her hair was blond, perhaps dyed, because she had a curious strand of flaming auburn in the front.
At first glance, she was a hardworking woman who doubtless greeted her customers with cheerful, even saucy good humour. She didn’t try to appear sophisticated, on the contrary, it was as if she delighted in flaunting her vulgar side.
Less than half an hour after viewing her sister’s body at the morgue, she sounded almost cheerful as she answered the questions put to her by Lecoeur, on whom it appeared she was working her charm, out of habit.
‘What did she do in Paris? … I suppose she was a typist in an office, but I never went to see her there … We were very different, the two of us … At fifteen, I already had a boyfriend, who was a taxi-driver, and since then I’ve had lots of others … I don’t think Hélène was like that, or if she was she kept it quiet …’
‘What address did you write to her at?’
‘I remember, at first, a hotel in Avenue de Clichy, but I’ve forgotten the name … She changed lodgings quite often … Then she had an apartment in Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, I don’t recall the number …’
‘And when you went to Paris as well, didn’t you visit her?’
‘Oh yes, I did … It was in Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, and I was amazed to see her living somewhere so classy … I said so to her … She had a lovely bedroom overlooking the street, a living room, a kitchenette and a proper bathroom …’
‘Was there a man in her life?’
‘I wasn’t able to find out … I wanted to stay with her for a few days until I found a suitable room, but she said she’d take me to lodgings that were very clean and inexpensive, because she couldn’t live with anyone …’
‘Not even for three or four days?’
‘That’s what I understood.’
‘Did that not surprise you?’
‘Not particularly … You know, it takes a lot to surprise me … So long as people let me do what I want, they’re free too and I don’t ask any questions …’
‘How long did you stay in Paris?’
‘Eleven years …’
‘As a manicurist all that time?’
‘At first, in local hair salons, then, towards the end, in a luxury hotel on the Champs-Élysées … I trained to become a beautician …’
