Maigret and the Spinster (7 page)

“Cécile was killed because she knew the name of the murderer,” Maigret said slowly.

The young man, showing no signs of calming down, stretched out his hand for the bottle of rum, but the Chief Superintendent intervened.

“No, that’s enough. Sit down. What you could really do with is a cup of strong coffee.”

“Are you insinuating…?”

His tone was aggressive. As far as he was concerned, Maigret was the enemy.

“You’re not running away with the idea that I murdered my aunt and my sister, I hope?” he shouted, in a sudden spurt of rage.

Maigret made the mistake of not answering. It was not intentional. He was in the throes of one of his fits of abstraction. Or rather, to be more precise, he had just completed the imaginative leap needed to bring the interior of the apartment to life: the same apartment a few years earlier, the eccentric aunt, the three children, Cécile as an adolescent and her sister Berthe with her hair still loose, and Gérard planning to get away from it all by enlisting…

He started. The young man had seized him by the collar of his coat, and was yelling:

“Why don’t you answer? Do you believe…do you believe I…?”

A powerful smell of spirits. Maigret shrank back, and seized the young man by the wrists.

“Easy, my boy,” he murmured. “Relax…”

He had forgotten his own strength, and was holding the boy’s wrists in a grip of steel.

“You’re hurting me!” he whimpered.

At long last, his eyes overflowed with tears.

W
as there an epidemic of some sort in Bourg-la-Reine? Maigret could easily have found out but, the question having once crossed his mind, he gave no further thought to it. The undertaker’s man would no doubt have told him that deaths occur in waves, that sometimes five days would go by with not a single hearse, either of the luxury or of the plainer variety, being, taken out on the road, and that this lull might be followed by a period of hectic demand.

On this particular morning, the undertaker’s resources were fully stretched, so much so that one of the two horses harnessed to Juliette Boynet’s hearse was not trained for the job, and ten times at least attempted to break into a trot, thus imparting a somewhat jerky and hasty tempo to the procession, not at all in keeping with the funereal dignity of the occasion.

The arrangements for the funeral had been undertaken by a man named Monfils, an insurance agent from Luçon. No sooner had the press reported the murder of Juliette Boynet than he turned up in Paris, dressed in deep mourning (doubtless he had the outfit put by from some former occasion), and from then on this tall, thin, wan figure, sporting a red nose as a result of a cold caught on the train, was very much to the fore at all times.

He was Juliette Boynet’s first cousin.

“I know what I’m talking about, Chief Superintendent. It was understood from way back that she would leave us something, and she agreed to stand godmother to our eldest child…I’m sure there must be a will in existence. If none has been found, it may be that there are those who have an interest in causing it to disappear…What’s more, I intend to register my claim with the court…”

He had insisted on a grand funeral with all the trimmings, including the setting up of a memorial chapel in the apartment on the fifth floor, and the departure of the procession from the funeral parlor.

“We are not in the habit, in our family, of burying our dead on the cheap…”

This very morning he had been to the station to collect his wife, also in deep mourning, and his five sons, all with unruly fair hair, who were now following the coffin, each carrying his hat, in descending order of size.

The traffic was at its heaviest on the main roads at this time of day, trucks mostly returning from the central market in endless file, nose to tail. It was a clear, sunny day, but there was a sharp nip in the air. People were stamping their feet and keeping their hands in their pockets.

Maigret had not had any sleep the previous night. He had sat up with Lucas, keeping watch on his gang of Poles in the room overlooking Rue de Birague. During the past three days, ever since Cécile’s death, he had been gloomy and irritable. He was beginning to lose patience with the Poles, who were preventing him from giving his whole mind to the Bourg-la-Reine murders. By seven o’clock in the morning his mind was made up:

“You wait here! I’m going to pinch the first one to come out…”

“Watch it, Chief…They’re armed…”

He shrugged, went into the Hôtel des Arcades, mounted the stairs, and waited. A quarter of an hour later, the bedroom door opened. A giant of a man went to the stairs. Maigret flung himself upon him from behind, and the two men rolled over and over together until they reached the ground floor.

At last, having managed to fasten handcuffs on his quarry, the Chief Superintendent got up. He blew his whistle, and Inspector Torrence came running.

“Take him to the Quai…I’ll leave the job of grilling him to you…Keep at it till he talks…understood?…Take it in relays, if necessary. I want a full confession.”

He dusted himself down, and then went into a bar and had croissants and coffee laced with brandy at the counter.

Everyone in the Police Judiciaire knew that, at times like these, it was wiser not to cross him. Madame Maigret, for her part, dared not even ask him what time he would be home for his meals.

There he stood on the sidewalk, with his back to the window of the grocer’s, looking sullen and smoking his pipe in little angry puffs. The press had written up the case, and there was a small crowd of spectators, not to mention half a dozen reporters and one or two photographers. The two hearses were drawn up in front of the house, first Juliette Boynet’s and then Cécile’s. Madame “Saving-Your-Presence,” saying that it was the least they could do, had organized a collection among the tenants for a wreath.

To our landlady, who will be sadly missed.

Beside the Monfilses, representing the family of Juliette Boynet, née Cazenove, there was another group representing the deceased husband, the Boynets and the Machepieds, who lived in Paris.

The two rival factions glowered at one another. Boynet and Machepied also claimed that they had been robbed, saying that the old woman had promised, after her husband’s death, that part of her fortune would one day revert to his relations. They had turned up in force the previous night at police headquarters and, as they were persons of some standing, one of them being a city councilor, had been received by the Chief Commissioner himself.

“Tell me, Maigret…these gentlemen claim that there is a will. I’ve told them again and again that the apartment has been thoroughly searched, but it makes no difference.”

They had a grudge against Maigret, they had a grudge against Monfils, they had a grudge against Juliette. In other words, everyone felt cheated, Gérard Pardon most of all. He spoke not a word to anyone, and looked more distraught than ever.

Having no money, he had not been able to afford mourning clothes. Instead of an overcoat, he wore an old khaki mackintosh with a black armband.

His sister Berthe kept close to him, troubled at seeing him so agitated. She was a plump little thing, pretty and well groomed. She had not thought it necessary to buy a dark hat instead of the cherry-red confection she was wearing.

Monsieur Dandurand was also present, accompanied by four or five very self-assured gentlemen, all expensively dressed and wearing numerous flashing rings, who had turned up in a sumptuous limousine. The Siveschis, too, were there in force, except for the mother, who was still in bed. Madame Piéchaud, the grocer, had left Madame Benoit in charge of the shop for a few minutes while she went upstairs and sprinkled holy water on the coffins.

The undertaker, who was anyway on edge because he had another funeral at eleven, could not make head or tail of the various factions, and was quite unable to ascertain who was representing the family officially. And the presence of the photographers was an added cause for alarm.

“Wait a minute, gentlemen, I beg you…Can’t you at least wait until the procession has formed!”

The last thing he wanted was a photograph of a chaotic procession in the papers!

Fingers were pointed at Maigret, but he appeared not to notice. As the two coffins were being brought out, he touched Gérard Pardon on the shoulder. The young man gave a start.

“Could you spare me a minute?” he whispered, taking him aside.

“What do you want this time?”

“Your wife must have told you that I called on her yesterday while you were out.”

“You don’t mean you’ve been searching our hovel!”

He sniggered. It was a painful, grating sound.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

And when the Chief Superintendent replied that he had, Pardon stared at him in horror.

“Believe it or not, when your wife just happened to have her back to me, I took the liberty of digging my fingers into a flowerpot…I’m a bit of a gardener in my spare time, you see, and there was something about those flowers that didn’t look right to me! And look what I found buried in the recently disturbed soil.”

He held out his hand, in the palm of which lay a small key, the key to the front door of Juliette Boynet’s apartment.

“Odd, don’t you think?” he went on. “And here’s a coincidence…when I returned to my office a little while later, I found there was a locksmith waiting to see me, a locksmith who lives not a hundred yards from here, and who wished to inform me that he had cut a key similar to this one less than a fortnight ago.”

“What does that prove?”

Gérard was trembling. He looked about him wildly, as though in search of help, and his glance rested on his sister’s coffin being hoisted into the hearse by the men in black.

“Are you going to arrest me?”

“I don’t know yet…”

“If you questioned the locksmith, he must have told you that I got that key…”

He had got it from Cécile! The locksmith’s statement had established that beyond doubt.

“On Monday, September twenty-fifth,” he had stated, “a young woman of about thirty came into my workshop, produced a Yale key, and asked me if I could make her a copy. I said I would need the original key to work from. She objected that it was her only key, and that she would be needing it, so I made a wax impression. Next day, she came to collect the new key, and paid me twelve francs seventy-five centimes…It was only when I read in the papers that Cécile Pardon had been murdered, and in particular when I learned from her description that she had a slight squint, that…”

The procession was beginning to move. The master of ceremonies bustled up to Gérard, waving his arms. Maigret whispered:

“We’ll talk later…”

Gérard and his sister Berthe were placed immediately behind the hearses, but they had not gone ten yards before Monfils, disputing their right of precedence, came forward to join them.

The Boynets and the Machepieds, less officious, scorned any hypocritical show of grief and followed behind, deep in discussion regarding the succession. Monsieur Dandurand and the gentlemen of the flashy rings came next, all except one, who brought up the rear of the procession, driving the big car.

From the start, on account of the temperamental horse, the pace was distinctly brisk. When the time came, however, to turn left off the main road for the church, there was a fearful snarl-up. All traffic was brought to a halt for several minutes, including three streetcars in a row.

In view of her condition, Gerard’s wife was not present.

Her confinement was due within a week or less. Maigret had spent an hour with her the previous night, in their lodgings, comprising two rooms over a butcher’s shop on Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule.

She was barely twenty-three years of age, yet her face was not youthful, but aged with the resignation of the poor. It was plain to see that she had tried, with all the inadequate means at her command, to make the two rooms habitable. Some of her possessions had no doubt already found their way to the pawnshop. Maigret noticed that the gas had been cut off.

“Gérard has always been unlucky,” she sighed without rancor. “And yet he has many virtues…He’s a great deal more intelligent than many others who have good jobs…Maybe that’s his trouble?”

Her name was Hélène. Her father was working for a credit company. She had been too scared to let him know how things really stood in her house, and had led him to believe that Gérard was working, and that the marriage was a happy one.

“He may seem somewhat aggressive to you, but look at it from his point of view. Lately, everything has gone against him. He’s out from morning till night, answering advertisements for jobs…Surely you don’t regard him as a suspect? He’s the soul of honesty. Maybe it’s just because he is so scrupulously honest that he’s a failure…Let me give you an example! In his last job, he worked in a shop selling vacuum cleaners. There was a break-in. Gérard suspected that one of his fellow employees was involved. He said nothing, but later the boss subjected him to a barrage of questions, making Gérard feel that he himself was under suspicion. And rather than involve anyone else, Gérard gave notice…”

“Oh, by all means make a thorough search! You won’t find anything of interest here except bills…”

And the flowerpot on the window sill! Maigret had noticed that the soil had been recently disturbed, although the geranium planted in it had long since died. While Hélène’s attention was momentarily distracted, he had pounced…

With his hands in his pockets, he strolled along the sidewalk on the edge of the procession, and so felt free to smoke his pipe.

At the tail end of the procession he observed the two Siveschi girls, Nouchi and Potsi, who were treating it as a festive occasion and relishing every detail. Madame “Saving-Your-Presence.” had left her lodge in the charge of a neighbor for an hour or so, unaware that Maigret had posted an inspector on guard outside the building. She would be attending the service in the church, but not the burial. She was sensitive to drafts, on account of her stiff neck.