Maigret: The Shadow in the Courtyard (1987) (5 page)

He signified approval with a jerk of his chin, and laid his pipe on the table.

“Even though we were divorced and Roger has made me unhappy, I couldn’t…”

She was recovering her self-assurance. Almost imperceptibly, she was getting back to her prepared speech.

“Particularly in a big house like ours, where there are twenty-eight families. And what families. I’m not referring to the first-floor tenants. Although even they…Monsieur de Saint-Marc is a gentleman, but as for his wife,
she
wouldn’t say good morning to you for all the money in the world…When one’s been carefully brought up, it’s painful to…”

“Were you born in Paris?”

“My father was a confectioner in Meaux.”

“How old were you when you married Couchet?”

“I was twenty…Of course my parents never let me serve in the shop…In those days Couchet was a traveller…He said he was making plenty of money and would be able to give a woman what she wanted…”

Her eyes hardened, guarding against any hint of irony in Maigret’s expression.

“I’d rather not speak of what I went through with him…Whatever money he made he frittered away on absurd projects…He claimed he was going to get rich…He changed his job three times a year, so that when my son was born we hadn’t a penny saved and my mother had to pay for the baby’s layette…”

She had put down her umbrella at last, leaning it against the desk. Maigret reflected that she must have been speaking with the same curt vehemence the night before, when he had noticed her shadow outlined against the curtain.

“When a man’s incapable of providing for a woman he has no right to get married. That’s what I maintain. And particularly when he has no pride. For I hardly dare mention all the jobs that Couchet did…I used to tell him to look for a respectable situation, something that would bring in a pension…In the Civil Service, for instance…At any rate, if anything had happened to him then I’d not have been left destitute…Not him. He even went so far as to trail around with the cyclists’ Tour de France in some capacity or other…He’d go on ahead and see to supplies, or something of the sort. And he’d come back without a penny…That was the kind of man he was. And that was the life I led…”

“Where did you live?”

“At Nanterre. For we couldn’t even afford a place in town…Did you know Couchet? He didn’t mind. He had no sense of shame. He never worried. He maintained that he was born to make a lot of money and that he would make it…After bicycles, it was watch-chains…No, you’ll never guess. Watch-chains that he sold at a booth in a fair, Inspector. And my sisters dared not visit the fair at Neuilly for fear of seeing him there…”

“It was you who asked for a divorce?”

She dropped her eyes modestly, but her features remained tense.

“Monsieur Martin lived in the same building as we did…He was younger than he is now…He had a good post in the Civil Service…Couchet was always leaving me alone and gadding about to try his luck…Oh, it was all perfectly respectable…I told my husband what I thought of him…Divorce was by mutual consent, for incompatibility of temperament…Couchet merely had to pay me an allowance for the boy…And we waited a year, Martin and I, before getting married…”

Now she was wriggling on her chair. Her fingers were twitching at the silver clasp of her handbag.

“I tell you, I’ve never had any luck. To begin with, Couchet didn’t even pay the allowance regularly. And it’s painful for a sensitive woman to see her second husband paying for the upkeep of a child that’s not his own…”

No. Maigret was not asleep, even though his eyes were half closed and the pipe between his teeth had gone out.

It was getting more painful. The woman’s eyes were filling with tears. Her lips began to quiver distressingly.

“Nobody but myself knows what I suffered…I sent Roger to school…I wanted to give him a good education…He wasn’t like his father…He was affectionate and sensitive…When he was seventeen Martin found him a place in a bank, to learn the job…But that was when he ran into Couchet somewhere or other…”

“And he got into the habit of asking his father for money?”

“I’ll have you know that Couchet had always refused me everything. Everything cost too much for me. I used to make my own dresses and wear the same hat three years running…”

“And he gave Roger whatever he wanted?”

“He completely spoiled him…Roger left home and went to live on his own…He still comes to visit me from time to time…But he used to go and see his father too…”

“How long have you been living in the Place des Vosges?”

“About eight years…When we found the flat we didn’t even know that Couchet was in the serum business…Martin wanted to leave…That would have been the last straw…If somebody had to go it should have been Couchet, surely…Couchet who’d got rich, goodness knows how, and who used to turn up in a car driven by a chauffeur…For he’d even got a chauffeur…I’ve seen his wife…”

“At her own home?”

“I watched for her on the pavement, to find out what she was like…I’d rather not give my opinion…Nothing so very wonderful, in any case, in spite of the airs she puts on and her Astrakhan coat…”

Maigret passed a hand across his forehead. This was turning into a nightmare. For a quarter of an hour he had been staring at the same face and he felt as if he would never get it out of his mind’s eye.

A thin, faded face, with delicate mobile features, which must never have expressed anything but pained resignation.

And this again put him in mind of certain family portraits, indeed of members of his own family. He’d had an aunt, stouter than Madame Martin but, like her, given to incessant lamentation. Whenever she came to Maigret’s home in his childhood, he knew that as soon as she sat down she would pull a handkerchief from her bag.

“My poor dear Hermance…” she would begin. “What a life. I must tell you the latest thing Pierre has done…”

And she had the same mobile features, the same excessively thin lips, the same wild glint in her eyes.

Madame Martin had suddenly lost the thread of her ideas. She was growing excited.

“Now you must understand my position…Of course, Couchet married again. All the same I was his wife, I was with him at the beginning of his career, that’s to say all through the hardest years of his life…The other woman’s a mere doll…”

“You intend to claim the inheritance?”

“Me?” she exclaimed indignantly. “I wouldn’t have his money for anything in the world. We’re not wealthy. Martin’s got no initiative, he doesn’t know how to put himself forward, he lets less intelligent colleagues cut the ground from under his feet…But even if it meant I had to go charring for a living I’d never consent…”

“Did you send your husband to tell Roger?”

She did not turn any paler, for this would scarcely have been possible. The uniform grey of her complexion remained unchanged. But her glance wavered.

“How do you know?”

And in sudden indignation:

“I hope we’re not being followed? Look here…That would be the limit…And if that’s the case I’d have no hesitation about making a complaint to the authorities…”

“Keep calm, madame…I didn’t say anything of the sort…It was purely by chance that I met Monsieur Martin this morning…”

But she was still suspicious, keeping hostile watch on the Inspector.

“I shall end by being sorry I came…One tries to do the right thing…And instead of being grateful…”

“I assure you I’m extremely grateful to you for coming…”

She felt none the less that something had gone wrong. She was afraid of this big, broad-shouldered, bull-necked man, who was staring at her with such innocent, uncalculating eyes.

“In any case,” she declared in sharp, emphatic tones, “it’s better you should hear it from me than from the concierge…And you’d have found out eventually…”

“That you are the first Madame Couchet…”

“Have you seen the other?”

Maigret found it hard to suppress a smile.

“Not yet…”

“Oh, she’ll shed some crocodile tears…All the same she’s well off now, with all the millions Couchet’s made…”

And then suddenly she was in tears, her lower lip was quivering, and this transformed her face, taking away its excessive sharpness.

“She didn’t even know him when he was struggling, when he needed a woman to help and encourage him…”

From time to time a muffled sob, barely perceptible, broke out in the stringy throat encircled by a band of
moiré
silk.

She rose. She looked round her to make sure she had forgotten nothing. She was sniffling.

“But all that doesn’t count…”

A bitter smile, beneath her tears.

“In any case I’ve done my duty…I don’t know what you think of me, but…”

“I assure you that…”

He would have found it difficult to complete his sentence if she had not gone on herself:

“I don’t care. My conscience is clear. Not everybody can say as much.”

She felt something was missing. She did not know what. She glanced round the room again, and waved one hand, as though surprised to find it empty.

Maigret stood up and showed her to the door.

“Thank you for coming as you did…”

“I acted as I thought right…”

She was out in the passage, where a group of detectives were chatting and laughing. She walked past them with great dignity, without turning her head.

And Maigret, closing the door again, walked to the window and flung it open, in spite of the cold. He felt exhausted, as though after the strenuous cross-examination of some criminal. Above all he was conscious of that indefinable discomfort one feels on looking at certain aspects of life which one usually prefers to ignore.

There was nothing dramatic about it, nothing disgusting.

She had said nothing out of the ordinary. She had revealed nothing sensational to the Inspector.

And yet his interview with her left him with a feeling of nausea.

On a corner of the desk the police journal was open, showing the photographs of a score of ‘Wanted’ criminals. Brutish faces for the most part, heads bearing all the marks of degeneracy.

Ernst Strowitz, sentenced
in absentia
by the Court of Caen for the murder of a farmer’s wife on the Benouville road
…

And a comment in red letters:
Dangerous. Always carries arms
.

A fellow who would fight ruthlessly for his life. Well, Maigret would rather have to deal with him than with all this slimy greyness, these family quarrels, and the crime which was still inexplicable, but whose haunting horror he could guess at.

A vision obsessed him: the Martins, as he pictured them walking down the Champs-Elysées on a Sunday. The buff overcoat and the black silk ribbon round the woman’s neck…

He rang. Jean appeared and Maigret sent him to fetch the files he had asked for about everyone connected with the drama.

There was nothing much. Nine had been arrested once and once only, in Montmartre, during a raid, and she had been released on proving that she did not live by prostitution.

As for young Couchet, he was being watched by the squad in charge of gambling establishments and by the men of the ‘Society’ branch, who suspected him of being involved in drug trafficking. But nothing definite had ever been pinned on him.

A telephone call to the Vice Squad. Céline, whose surname was Loiseau and who was born at Saint-Amand-Montrond, was well known there. She had her card. She came fairly regularly for inspection.

“She’s not a bad girl.” the sergeant said. “She usually sticks to one or two regular boyfriends. It’s only when she falls back on street-walking again that we pick her up…”

Jean, the office boy, was still in the room, and he pointed out something to Maigret.

“That lady forgot her umbrella…”

“I know…”

“Oh.”

“Yes, I need it.”

And the inspector got up with a sigh, went to close the window, and then stood with his back to the fire in the attitude he usually took up when he needed to think.

An hour later, he was able to make a mental summary of the notes that had reached him from the various departments, and which were spread out on his desk.

In the first place, the autopsy report confirming the police doctor’s theory: the shot had been fired from less than three yards and death had been instantaneous. The dead man’s stomach contained a small quantity of alcohol, but no solid food.

The photographers from the Technical Branch, who worked in the basement of the Palais de Justice, declared that no interesting fingerprints had been picked up.

Finally the Crédit Lyonnais stated that Couchet, who was well known there, had visited the company’s registered offices at about half past three and taken away three hundred thousand francs in new notes, as was his custom at the end of the month, before pay-day.

It was thus fairly well established that when he reached the Place des Vosges Couchet had deposited the three hundred thousand francs in the safe, beside the sixty thousand which were already there.

As he still had some work to do he had not closed the safe, which he was leaning against.

The light in the laboratory suggested that at a certain moment he had left the office, either to inspect some other part of the premises or, as was more likely, to visit the toilet.

Was the money still in the safe when he returned to his seat?

Presumably not, for in that case the murderer would have been obliged to push the body to one side in order to pull open the heavy door and get hold of the notes.

This was the technical aspect of the matter. Was the thief a murderer, or had a thief and a murderer acted separately?

Maigret paid a ten minute call on the examining magistrate to pass on the results so far obtained. Then, as it was a little after noon, he went home, hunching his back, always a sign of ill humour.

“Are you in charge of this Place des Vosges case?” inquired his wife, who had read the newspaper.

“I am.”

And Maigret sat down and looked at his wife in an odd way, in which increased tenderness was mingled with a hint of anxiety.

He could still visualize the thin face, the black garments, the anguished eyes of Madame Martin.