Maigret in Vichy, page 7
‘Unless she’s divorced, for example …?’
‘First, there’d need to be proof that she was married …’
Lecoeur looked at Maigret while twirling the tips of his auburn moustache.
‘You’ve never crossed paths with either of them in the past, I suppose?’
‘Never …’
‘But you spent a certain amount of time at La Rochelle …’
‘I went there twice, let’s say ten days in total … Why?’
‘Because, this morning, I didn’t find Francine Lange exactly the same … She was less chirpy … Her words didn’t come out so directly … The entire time I had the impression that she had an ulterior motive, or that she wanted to tell me a secret …
‘At one point, she said:
‘“That was Inspector Maigret who was here yesterday, wasn’t it?”
‘I asked her if she’d met you before and she replied that she’d recognized your photo in this morning’s newspaper …’
‘A few dozen people among the thousands I walk past each day had the same reaction … Earlier one of my former customers came up to shake my hand and was close to clapping me on the back …’
‘I think it’s more complicated,’ said Lecoeur, as if he was following a train of thought that was still hazy.
‘Do you think I might have had dealings with her at the time she was living in Paris?’
‘It’s not impossible, given the life she must have led there … No! What I’m thinking is less specific, subtler … As far as she’s concerned, I’m an ordinary provincial police officer doing his job as best he can and asking the questions he has to ask … Once I’ve written down the replies, I move on to the next … Do you see what I mean …? That explains why, when she walked in here, she was very relaxed and why, yesterday afternoon, she wasn’t … She glanced over towards your corner a couple of times, but I could tell she hadn’t recognized you …
‘She’s staying at the Hôtel de la Gare … As in most of the hotels here, the newspapers are taken up to the guests along with their breakfast … On seeing your photo, she wondered why you were present during our interview …’
‘What do you conclude from that?’
‘You’re forgetting your reputation, the image the public has of you …’
He turned red, afraid his words might be misconstrued.
‘And not only the public, in fact. In the profession we’re the first—’
‘Let’s move on.’
‘It’s important … She said to herself that you weren’t sitting there by chance … And, even if it was by chance, the fact that you are involved in the case—’
‘Did she seem scared?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far. I found her different, on her guard. I only asked her inconsequential questions, but, each time, she took the trouble to think hard before replying …’
‘She hadn’t found the notary?’
‘I thought of that as well, and I spoke to her about it … Her companion drew up a list of all the notaries in town and telephoned them … Apparently none of them had Hélène Lange as a client … Only one, who was a clerk ten years ago and who has since taken over his employer’s practice, remembered having drawn up the deed of sale for this house …’
‘Do you have his name?’
‘Maître Rambaud …’
‘Do you want to give him a call?’
‘At this hour?’
‘Provincial notaries generally live in the house where they have their practice …’
‘What should I ask him?’
‘Whether she paid by cheque or by bank transfer.’
‘I’ll have to ask the workmen to stop banging while I telephone …’
Meanwhile, Maigret wandered into the bathroom and the kitchen, not thinking about anything in particular.
‘Well?’
‘You guessed?’
‘What?’
‘She paid cash? It was the first time that had happened to our Rambaud, so he remembered it. She had a small suitcase stuffed with notes.’
‘Have you questioned the ticket clerks at the station?’
‘Heavens! I didn’t think of that!’
‘I’d be curious to know whether she went to the same or different places each month …’
‘I hope to be able to tell you tomorrow … Enjoy your dinner … And have a pleasant evening!’
It was a concert evening at the bandstand and the Maigrets had walked enough to take a well-earned rest.
4.
He was ten minutes early, he didn’t know why. Perhaps, that morning, there was less to read in La Tribune? Madame Maigret, who always used the bathroom after him, was still in there, and he said through the half-open door:
‘I’m going down … Wait for me downstairs …’
There was a green seat on the pavement for the hotel’s guests. The sky was still as blue. Since they’d been in Vichy, it hadn’t rained once.
The owner was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs, as usual.
‘So, what about this murderer?’
‘It’s not my case,’ Maigret replied with a smile.
‘Do you think those people from Clermont-Ferrand are up to the job? In a town like ours, it’s not a good thing to have a strangler on the loose. Apparently several elderly women have already left …’
Maigret smiled vaguely as he made his way to Rue du Bourbonnais. From a distance he saw black drapes over the door with a large letter ‘L’ embroidered in silver. There was no police officer outside. Had there been one the previous day? He couldn’t remember. He hadn’t paid any attention. In short, this wasn’t his case. He wasn’t here in a professional capacity, he was just a visitor taking the waters.
He was about to press the bell when he noticed that the white door was open a fraction. He pushed it, saw a very young woman, barely sixteen, wiping a wet rag over the tiles in the hallway.
She wore a dress that was so short that when she bent over, it revealed her pink underwear. Her legs and thighs were pudgy and shapeless, as is often the case at that awkward age. They were like the legs of a cheap doll and were the same artificial colour.
When she turned around, he saw a moon face with expressionless eyes. She didn’t ask who he was or what he was doing there.
‘It’s in there …’ was all she said, pointing to the lounge door.
The room was dark, hung with black drapes, with the coffin resting on what must have been the dining-room table. The two candles weren’t lit, but there was holy water in a glass bowl with a sprig of boxwood.
The dining-room door was open, so was that of the kitchen. In the dining room, the furniture and items from the lounge had been piled up. In the kitchen, young Dicelle was sitting in front of a cup of coffee, reading a comic album.
‘Do you want some coffee too? I’ve made a full pot.’
… On the gas cooker of Hélène Lange, who would probably not have appreciated her kitchen being used in this way.
‘Is Inspector Lecoeur not here?’
‘He received an emergency call in Clermont-Ferrand late yesterday evening … There was a hold-up at the Caisse d’Épargne, leaving one man dead, a passer-by who, on seeing the door ajar after closing time, pushed it open just as the thieves were coming out … One of them fired …’
‘Nothing new here?’
‘Not to my knowledge …’
‘Did you take care of the railway station?’
‘My colleague Trigaud’s dealing with it … He’s probably still there …’
‘The young servant girl I’ve just seen has been questioned, I presume? What does she say?’
‘From the look of her, it’s already surprising that she can speak! She knows nothing. She was only hired for the season. Her job was to clean the lodgers’ rooms. She didn’t clean the ground floor because Mademoiselle Lange did her own housework …’
‘She’s never seen any visitors?’
‘Only the man from the gas company and delivery boys. She started work at nine o’clock and finished at midday … The Maleskis upstairs are worried … They’ve paid up until the end of the month … They’re wondering whether they’ll be allowed to stay … It’s not easy to find a room at the height of the season and they don’t want to go to a hotel …’
‘What did Lecoeur decide?’
‘I think they’re staying … In any case, they’re up there … The other one, the fat woman, has just gone out to get herself pummelled by the masseurs …’
‘Hasn’t Francine Lange arrived?’
‘I’m waiting for her … No one knows what’s going to happen … She insisted on having a chapel of rest set up, but I wonder whether anyone will come … My instructions are to stay here and keep a discreet eye on the visitors, if there are any …’
‘Have a good day, all the same …’ muttered Maigret, leaving the kitchen.
He automatically picked up a book bound in black cloth from a pedestal table which had been in the lounge and was now stashed with the rest of the furniture in the dining room. It was Lucien Leuwen. The yellowing pages had that particular musty smell of books from public libraries and bookshops that offer reading subscriptions.
A purple stamp gave the name and address of the bookshop owner.
He put the novel back on the table and, a moment later, he was walking calmly down the street. A window was flung open and a woman in curlers and a dressing gown called out to him:
‘Tell me, inspector, is it true that we can visit?’
The expression surprised him and he stood there for a moment, baffled.
‘I imagine so, since there’s a chapel of rest and the door is half open …’
‘Can you see her?’
‘As far as I know, the coffin is sealed …’
She sighed:
‘I prefer that … It’s not so scary …’
He found Madame Maigret sitting on the green seat and she looked surprised to see him back so soon.
They started walking, like the other mornings. They were only a few minutes behind schedule, a schedule which, in actual fact, they’d never drawn up but which they kept to as if it were of crucial importance.
‘Are there many people?’
‘No one. We’re waiting …’
This time, they started out at the children’s playground, which was still almost empty, and they walked around it in the shade of the trees. Some of these, like those bordering the Allier, were rare species, from America, India and Japan, and had both a Latin and a French name on a metal plaque. Many of them had been sent as gifts by forgotten heads of state, maharajas or minor oriental princes, in gratitude for a course of treatment at Vichy.
They barely paused by the boules players. Madame Maigret never asked her husband where he was going. He walked straight ahead, as if he had a goal, but, most of the time, if he chose one street rather than another, it was for a change, to encounter new images, new sounds.
Shortly before it was time for his glass of water, he went down Rue Georges-Clemenceau, as if he had some purchases to make, but he turned left into one of the passages, Passage du Théâtre, where outside a bookshop were second-hand books in boxes and other colourful books on revolving stands.
‘Let’s go in …’ he said to his wife, who was hesitant.
The owner wore a long grey coat and was busy sorting out books. He appeared to recognize Maigret, but he waited.
‘Do you have a few minutes?’
‘At your service, Monsieur Maigret. I assume you wish to question me about Mademoiselle Lange?’
‘She was one of your customers, wasn’t she?’
‘She came in at least once a week, more often twice, to change her books. She had a subscription that allowed her to borrow two books at a time …’
‘Had you known her long?’
‘I took over the shop six years ago. I’m not from here but from Paris, from Montparnasse. She already used to come when the previous owner—’
‘Did you converse with her?’
‘As you know, she wasn’t very talkative …’
‘She didn’t ask you to recommend books for her to read?’
‘She had her own ideas. Come and have a look over here …’
At the back of the bookshop was a room stacked from floor to ceiling with books bound in black cloth.
‘She would often spend half an hour, even an hour, examining the books, reading a few lines of one and then another …’
‘The last book she borrowed was Stendhal’s Lucien Leuwen.’
‘Stendhal was her most recent discovery … Before that she’d read all of Chateaubriand, Alfred de Vigny, Jules Sandeau, Benjamin Constant, Alfred de Musset, George Sand … Always the romantic novelists … Once, she took a Balzac, I don’t remember which one, and brought it back the next day … I asked her if she’d disliked it and she answered something along the lines of:
‘“It’s too violent.”
‘Balzac, violent …!’
‘No modern-day authors?’
‘She never tried … On the other hand, she read and reread the letters of George Sand and Alfred de Musset …’
‘Thank you …’
He’d almost reached the door when the bookshop owner called him back.
‘I was forgetting a detail which you might find amusing. I was surprised to find the books annotated in pencil. Phrases and words were underlined. Sometimes there was a cross in the margin. I wondered which of my customers had this compulsion and I eventually found out it was her …’
‘Did you mention it to her?’
‘I had to … My assistant couldn’t spend all day erasing those marks.’
‘What was her reaction?’
‘She looked offended and said:
‘“I apologize … When I read, I forget the books don’t belong to me …”’
The spa patients, the pale trunks of the plane trees and the patches of sunlight were all in position, as well as the thousands of yellow chairs.
She found Balzac too brutal … She probably meant too life-like … She confined herself to the first half of the nineteenth century, arrogantly ignoring Flaubert, Hugo, Zola and Maupassant … but all the same, on the first day, in a corner of the lounge, Maigret had spotted a pile of magazines.
He couldn’t help trying to flesh out the picture he had built up of her. She only read romantic novels, but there was sometimes a note of real steeliness in her gaze.
‘Have you seen Lecoeur?’
‘No. He was called to Clermont-Ferrand because of a hold-up …’
‘Do you think he’ll find the killer?’
Maigret gave a start. It was his turn to be brought back down to earth. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t thinking of the murder. He had almost forgotten that the owner of the house with green shutters had been strangled and that the most important thing was to catch her murderer.
He too was looking for someone. He even thought about it more often than he’d have liked, to the point where it was becoming an obsession.
What intrigued him was the man who, at one point, had found a place in this woman’s solitary life.
There was no trace of him in Rue du Bourbonnais. There was no photograph of him, no letter or brief note.
Nothing! Nothing of anyone else either, apart from bills.
One had to go back to Paris, to Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, twelve years earlier to find any mention of a rather hazy visitor who came once or twice a week and spent an hour in the apartment of the woman who was still young.
Even the sister, Francine, who lived in the same city at the time, claimed not to know anything.
Hélène Lange devoured books, watched television, did her shopping, her housework, went for walks in the shady park, like the people taking the waters, without speaking to a soul, and she listened to music by the bandstand staring straight ahead of her.
He found this disconcerting. In the course of his career, he had encountered individuals, men and women, fiercely attached to their freedom. He had met maniacs who’d withdrawn from the world to hide away in the most unlikely places, often the most squalid.
But these people always maintained some sort of connection to the outside world. For old women, it was a seat in a park, for example, where they’d meet another old woman, or the church, the confessional, the priest … Old men were regulars at a café where everyone knew them and casually greeted them …
In this case, for the first time, Maigret was up against solitude in its pure state.
A solitude that wasn’t even aggressive. Mademoiselle Lange wasn’t unpleasant towards her neighbours or the local shopkeepers. She didn’t treat them with contempt and, despite her taste for certain colours and styles of dress, she did not put on airs.
Quite simply, she took no notice of others. She didn’t need to. She took in lodgers because she had empty rooms and it gave her an income. But there was a dividing line between those rooms and the ground floor, and she’d hired a half-witted servant girl to clean the upstairs rooms.
‘May I, detective chief inspector?’
A shadow in front of Maigret, a lanky form gripping the back of a chair. Maigret had seen the man at Rue du Bourbonnais. He was one of Lecoeur’s colleagues, probably Trigaud. He sat down and Maigret asked:
‘How did you know you’d find me here?’
‘Dicelle told me—’
‘And how did Dicelle …?’
‘There isn’t a police officer in town who doesn’t know you by sight, so that wherever you go—’
‘Is there any news?’
‘Last night, I spent an hour at the railway station, because it’s not the same staff on duty as during the day … I went back there this morning … Then I telephoned Inspector Lecoeur, who’s still in Clermont …’
‘Won’t he be coming today?’
‘He doesn’t know yet. In any case, he’ll arrive early tomorrow for the funeral. I presume you’ll be there too …’
‘Have you seen Francine?’
‘She dropped in to the funeral parlour … The transportation of the body will take place at nine o’clock … It was probably she who sent the flowers …’
‘How many wreaths?’
‘Just one …’
