Maigret in Vichy, page 6
‘No anonymous letters?’
‘Not yet …’
There would be. No case shrouded in mystery ends without the police receiving a number of anonymous letters and furtive telephone calls.
‘You haven’t seen the sister again?’
‘I’m waiting for her instructions as to what to do with the body …’
He added after a silence:
‘The two sisters are as different as chalk and cheese, aren’t they? While one appears to have been reserved and withdrawn, with a certain disdain for everything around her, the other embraces life, exudes health … And yet …’
Maigret smiled as he looked at Lecoeur who, with the passing years, had indeed developed a paunch and had a few white hairs in his auburn moustache. His blue eyes were innocent, almost childlike, yet Maigret remembered him as one of his best colleagues.
‘Why are you smiling?’
‘Because I saw her alive, and from her photos and what you’ve been told about her, you have drawn the same conclusions as I have …’
‘Hélène Lange was a fake sentimentalist, a fake romantic, wasn’t she?’
‘I believe she was playing a part, possibly for herself, but she couldn’t help her eyes being hard and sharp …’
‘Like her sister …’
‘Francine Lange, on the other hand, plays the liberated woman, the girl who’s afraid of nothing, who doesn’t give a damn what people think … In La Rochelle, I’m sure she’s a well-loved character whose hijinks are the subject of gossip …’
‘Which doesn’t stop her, from occasionally …’
They didn’t need to finish their sentences.
‘She’s no fool!’
‘And she knows what she wants, irrespective of all the gigolos on earth … Starting out from a little shop in Marsilly, now, at forty, she’s the owner of one of the biggest hair salons in La Rochelle … I know the town, and Place d’Armes …’
He took his watch out of his pocket.
‘My wife’s waiting for me …’
‘At the spring?’
‘First of all, I’m going to clear my mind and watch the boules game … I tried playing once, in Porquerolles … If those gentlemen twist my arm …’
He walked off, filling a new pipe, and found the air much warmer. He was glad to be back in the shade of the big trees.
‘Any news?’
‘Nothing of interest …’
‘They still know nothing of her life in Paris?’
His wife watched him for signs she should stop asking questions, but she felt emboldened by his cheerful mood.
‘Nothing precise … Only that she once had a lover …’
‘You sound happy about that …’
‘Perhaps … It suggests that at one point in her life at least she had a good time … She hasn’t always been withdrawn, brooding over heaven knows what notions or dreams …’
‘What’s known about him?’
‘Almost nothing, except that he drove a big black car, that he came to see her only once or twice a week, that he left before ten o’clock at night and they never spent the holidays or weekends together.’
‘A married man …’
‘Most likely … Around forty … Ten years older than her …’
‘Didn’t the residents of Rue du Bourbonnais ever see him?’
‘First of all, he’s no longer forty … He must be getting on for sixty, if not more—’
‘Do you think—’
‘I don’t think anything … I’d like to know how she lived in Nice, whether there was a transition or whether she behaved like a spinster as she did here … Watch … He’s going to shoot the jack out …’
It was the one-armed player, who took his time, shot his boule and sent the wooden jack flying on to the lawn.
‘I envy them …’ he couldn’t help muttering.
‘Why?’
He thought she looked younger, with the interplay of light and shadow on her smooth face. Her eyes were shining. He felt as if he was on holiday again.
‘Haven’t you noticed their attitude, their air of importance, the expression of intense satisfaction when they pull off a good shot …? Whereas when we wrap up an investigation …’
He broke off mid-sentence, but the expression on his face said it all. They sent a man to court, to prison, or sometimes to his death.
He stopped and said, after emptying his pipe:
‘Shall we walk?’
Wasn’t that why they were there?
Lecoeur’s colleagues had questioned all the neighbours. Not only had no one seen or heard anything on the night of the murder, but they were all unanimous in asserting that Hélène Lange had no friends, male or female, and that she never received any visitors.
‘Sometimes she goes away, carrying a little holdall, and the shutters stay closed for two or three days.’
She never took a bigger suitcase. She had no car and did not call a taxi.
Nor did anyone ever run into her in the street in the company of another person, man or woman.
In the mornings, she’d go out to the local shops. She wasn’t especially stingy, but she knew the value of money and on Saturdays she’d go to the big market to buy food, always wearing a white hat in summer, a dark one in the winter.
As for her current lodgers, they were in the clear. Madame Vireveau had rented a room on the recommendation of a friend from Montmartre who had stayed with Mademoiselle Lange for several seasons. Although she was quite conspicuous because of her stoutness and her fake jewellery, she wasn’t the sort to murder someone, especially without a motive. Her husband had been a florist and up until his death she’d helped him in his shop on Boulevard des Batignolles, before retiring to a small apartment in Rue Lamarck.
‘I have nothing against her,’ she said of Hélène Lange, ‘except that she wasn’t talkative.’
The Maleskis had been taking the waters at Vichy for four years. The first year, they’d stayed in a hotel and on one of their walks they’d noticed a sign advertising a room to rent in Rue du Bourbonnais. They inquired about the price and booked the room for the following summer. This was their third season in the house.
Maleski suffered from liver disease, which forced him to take things easy and to follow a strict regimen. At forty-two he was already a lacklustre man with a sad smile, which did not prevent him from being, according to witness statements gathered over the telephone from Grenoble, a valuable professional and of scrupulous conscience.
He and his wife had realized from the first year that Mademoiselle Lange did not wish to be on friendly terms with her lodgers. They’d only been into the lounge two or three times and were not acquainted with the other rooms on the ground floor. She had never invited them in for a drink or a cup of coffee.
On rainy days, in the evenings, they sometimes heard the television below them, but it stopped early.
Maigret was mulling over these details as he lay dozing on his bed as he did every afternoon, while Madame Maigret sat reading by the window. Through his eyelids he could sense the golden half-darkness, the brighter stripes on the wall where the light filtered through the slats in the shutters.
His convoluted thoughts went round and round in his head, and suddenly he wondered, as if this question were paramount:
‘Why that night?’
Why hadn’t she been murdered the previous day, or the next, one month, two months earlier?’
The question seemed absurd, and yet, in his drowsy state, he saw it as being of the utmost importance.
For ten years, ten long years, she had lived alone in that quiet Vichy street. No one came to see her. She reportedly visited no one except, perhaps, during her brief monthly trips.
The neighbours saw her come in and go out. She could also be spotted sitting on a yellow chair in the park, drinking her glass of water or, in the evenings, in front of the bandstand listening to the concert.
Had he gone to speak to the shopkeepers himself, Maigret would have asked questions that would doubtless have surprised them.
‘Did she sometimes engage in empty chatter …? Would she sometimes bend down to stroke your dog …? Did she talk to the housewives waiting in the queue and did she acknowledge the ones she ran into almost every day at the same time …?’
And lastly:
‘Did you ever see her laugh? … Or even smile …?’
You had to go back more than fifteen years to find any personal contact with another human being: the man who came a couple of times a week to her apartment in Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.
Can a person live for so many years without occasionally confiding in someone, without at least getting things off their chest out loud?
She had been strangled.
‘But why that night?’
For the half-asleep Maigret, this became the key question and, when his wife informed him that it was three o’clock, he was still struggling to answer it.
‘Did you sleep?’
‘I dozed …’
‘Are we both going out?’
‘Of course we’re both going out. Don’t we do that every day? Why do you ask?’
‘You might have arranged to meet Lecoeur.’
‘I haven’t arranged to meet anyone …’
And, to prove it, they went on a long walk, starting with the children’s playground, then passing the boules games, the beach and then, after the Bellerive Bridge, continuing along the boulevard to the Yacht Club where they watched the water-skiers.
They went a lot further, towards the new apartment buildings which were twelve storeys high and rose white against the sky, creating a town on the fringes of the town.
On the opposite bank of the Allier, horses were galloping inside the white fences of the racecourse, and rows of heads and shoulders could be seen in the stands, as well as dark and light silhouettes on the grass.
‘The hotel owner told me that more and more pensioners are coming to live in Vichy …’
He teased:
‘Is that what you’re preparing me for?’
‘We have our house in Meung …’
They discovered quaint old streets. Each neighbourhood had its epoch, its own style. The houses were all different and you could guess the kind of person who had built them.
Maigret enjoyed stopping outside the little restaurants dotted around and reading the menus.
‘Room for rent … Room with kitchen … Beautiful furnished room …’
That explained the restaurants, and also the tens of thousands of people milling around in the streets and along the promenades.
At five o’clock, they both sat down by the spring, their legs tired, and exchanged knowing smiles. Hadn’t they overdone things a little? Were they not trying to prove to themselves that they were still young?
They recognized two faces among the crowd, the merry couple, and there was something different in the look that the man gave Maigret. Now, instead of walking past, he was making a beeline for Maigret with his hand outstretched.
What else could he do but shake it?
‘Don’t you recognize me?’
‘I’m sure I have met you before, but I’m racking my brains …’
‘Bébert, does that ring a bell?’
He had known a lot of Béberts, P’tit Louis and Grand Jules in the course of his career.
‘The Métro …’
He turned to his wife as if seeking her confirmation and was merrier than ever.
‘You arrested me for the first time on Boulevard des Capucines, on a day when there was a parade … I don’t remember which head of state was strutting on horseback between the city guards … The second time was at the Métro exit at Bastille … You’d been following me for a while … It was some time ago … I was young … So were you, with all due respect …’
Maigret recalled the Métro arrest because, during the chase across Place de la Bastille, he’d lost his hat, a boater, as was fashionable at the time. Ha! That proved he’d already worn a straw hat.
‘How long did you get?’
‘Two years … That brought me to my senses … I went straight … First of all, I worked for a second-hand dealer where I patched up a load of junk, because I’ve always been good with my hands …’
A wink implied that had come in very useful when he made his living from pickpocketing.
‘Then I met Madame …’
He said the word emphatically and also with a certain pride.
‘No criminal record. She was never on the game. She’d barely arrived from Brittany and she was working in a dairy … With her, it was serious from the word go and we tied the knot officially … She even insisted we marry in her village church, and it was a proper white wedding …’
He loved life with every fibre of his being.
‘I thought I recognized you … Every day I looked at you, but I wasn’t sure … This morning, when I opened the newspaper and saw your photo …’
He pointed to the glass holders.
‘It’s not serious, I hope?’
‘I’m in very good health …’
‘So am I … All the doctors say so … They still sent me here because of the pains I get in my knees … Hydrotherapy, underwater massages, radiation therapy, the works … What about you?’
‘Glasses of water …’
‘Well, then it’s nothing … But I don’t want to keep you or your dear lady … You were very decent with me, in the past … Those were the good old days, weren’t they …? Goodbye, inspector … Say goodbye, sweetie pie …’
As the couple walked off, Maigret was still smiling at the colourfulness and the fate of the former pickpocket. Then his wife saw his expression gradually cloud and his brow furrow. Finally, he gave a sigh of relief.
‘I think I know why …’
‘Why that woman was killed?’
‘No … Why that particular day … Why not a month or a year ago …’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Since we’ve been here, we’ve met the same people two or three times a day, and their faces end up becoming familiar … It is only today, because of the photo in the newspaper, that that loony was certain he recognized me and came to talk to me …
‘Now this is our first visit, our only one, most likely … If we were to return next year, we’d find a certain number of regulars …
‘Someone is here in Vichy, like us, for the first time … He followed the routine, chose a doctor, was examined, had tests done, and was given his schedule, the names of the springs, the volume of centilitres to drink at such-and-such a time …
‘He ran into Hélène Lange and thought he recognized her …
‘Then he saw her a second time, and a third … Perhaps he wasn’t far from her the other evening, when she was listening to the music …’
It all sounded quite simple to Madame Maigret and she was surprised that he was excited about a discovery that wasn’t one.
Maigret quickly added, ironically:
‘According to the publicity brochures, some two hundred thousand people take the waters here each year, over a six-month period. That means more than thirty thousand each month. Let’s say a third of them are first-timers, like us, and that leaves some ten thousand suspects … No! Because we should rule out women and children … How many women and children, do you reckon?’
‘More women than men … As for children …’
‘Wait! … There are a number of people in invalid carriages … Others are on crutches or walk with sticks … Most of the old men would be incapable of strangling a woman who’s still in her prime …’
She wondered whether he was being serious or whether he was joking.
‘Let’s say a thousand men physically capable of strangulation … And since we’re talking about a tall, muscular individual, according to the eye-witness accounts of Madame Vireveau and the bar owner, that rules out the short and the puny men … That brings it down to five hundred …’
She was relieved to hear him laugh.
‘Who are you laughing at?’
‘The police. Our profession. Later on, I’m going to tell the good Lecoeur that he’s only got five hundred suspects, unless we can eliminate any others, those who were at the theatre that night, for instance, and can prove it, the ones who were playing bridge or something else … and to think that this is often the way we arrest a culprit …! Once, Scotland Yard questioned every resident in a town of two hundred thousand … It took months.’
‘Did they find him?’
And Maigret replied:
‘In a different town, by chance, one night when the fellow was drunk and talked too much.’
It would probably be too late to see Lecoeur that day, because he still had two glasses of water to drink, with an interval of half an hour in between. He tried to take an interest in the evening newspaper, which was full of articles about celebrities on holiday. It was quite curious. Even those who led a frenetic life had themselves photographed with their children or their grandchildren, claiming that they devoted all their time to them.
Later, when the breeze had become fresher, they turned the corner of Rue d’Auvergne. A van was parked outside Mademoiselle Lange’s house.
As they drew near, they heard the sound of hammering.
‘Shall I go back to the hotel?’ murmured Madame Maigret.
‘I’ll be along in a minute …’
The lounge door was open and men in beige coats were hanging black drapes on the walls.
Lecoeur appeared.
‘I thought you’d come … Step this way …’
He led Maigret into the bedroom, which was quieter.
‘Is she being buried in Vichy?’ asked Maigret. ‘Is that what the sister decided?’
‘Yes … She dropped in to see me before lunch …’
‘With her gigolo?’
‘No. By taxi …’
‘When’s the funeral?’
‘In two days’ time, to give the local people the opportunity to visit the chapel of rest …’
‘Will there be an absolution?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘Wasn’t the Lange family Catholic?’
‘The old folk, yes … The girls were baptized and took their first communion … But since …’
