The Flemish House (16 page)

And Anna remained impassive, her eyes
fixed on Maigret. Machère was getting impatient.

‘Right! You'll forgive me
for leaving you abruptly, but my train is at seven o'clock and …'

Everyone got up. Joseph didn't
know where to look. Machère stammered, before finally finding the phrase he was
looking for, or something close to it.

‘I'm sorry to have suspected
you … But you must admit that appearances … And if that bargeman hadn't gone
on the run …'

‘Will you show these gentlemen
out, Anna?'

‘Yes, Mother …'

So it was just the three of them who
crossed the grocery. The door was locked, because it was Sunday. But there was a
night light on, making reflections on the brass plates of the scales.

Machère anxiously shook the girl's
hand.

‘Please accept my apology once
again …'

Maigret and Anna spent a few seconds
standing facing one another, and Anna stammered at last:

‘Don't worry … I won't
be staying here …'

In the darkness of the quay, Machère
spoke ceaselessly, but Maigret only listened to scraps of what he said.

‘… as soon as the name of the
guilty man is known, I will go back to Nancy tomorrow …'

‘What did she mean?' Maigret
wondered. ‘“I won't be staying here” … Did she really have
the courage …?'

He looked at the Meuse, where there was
a line of distorted reflections of street lamps at fifty-metre intervals. A brighter
light, on the other side of the river, in the yard of the factory where, tonight,
old Piedboeuf would bring potatoes that he would cook in the ashes.

They passed by the sidestreet. There was
no light on in the house.

‘Did you solve your
case?'

Madame Maigret was surprised to see her
husband in such a bad mood. She patted the overcoat that she had just helped him
take off.

‘You've been walking around
in the rain again … One day you will catch your death, and that will be you done
for. And what was this one all about? A crime?'

‘A family affair!'

‘And the girl who came to see
you?'

‘A girl! Will you give me my
slippers?'

‘It's fine! I'm not
going to ask you any more questions! Not about this, anyway. Did you eat well in
Givet, at least?'

‘I don't know …'

It was true! He could barely remember
the meals he had had.

‘Guess what I'm
making.'

‘Quiches!'

It wasn't hard to guess, given
that the whole house smelled of them.

‘Are you hungry?'

‘Yes, darling … At any rate,
I'll be hungry soon … Tell me what's been going on here … Oh, and by the
way, that business with the furniture has been sorted out …'

Why, when he looked at the dining room,
did he always look at the same corner, where there wasn't anything? He
didn't realize it himself until his wife said:

‘You seem to be looking for
something!'

Then, out loud, he exclaimed:

‘Good heavens! The piano
…'

‘What piano?'

‘Nothing! You wouldn't
understand … Your quiches are astonishing …'

‘What's the point of being
Alsatian if you don't know how to make quiches? Except if you go on, you
won't leave me so much as a slice … About pianos, the people on the fourth
floor …'

A year later, Maigret went into the
offices of an import-export company on Rue Poissonnière pursuing a case involving
fake bank notes.

The warehouses were enormous, stuffed
with goods, but the offices were very small.

‘I'll bring you the fake
note that I discovered in a bundle …' said the boss, pressing down on a
stamp.

Maigret looked elsewhere. He vaguely
noticed a grey skirt coming towards the desk, legs sheathed in cotton. Then he
looked up and stood motionless for a moment looking at the face leaning over the
desk.

‘Thank you, Mademoiselle Anna
…'

And as the inspector watched after the
office worker, the businessman explained:

‘She might look a bit of a dragon
… But I hope you have a secretary like that one day! She replaces precisely
two clerks. She does all the mail and she still has time to do
the accounts …'

‘Have you had her for
long?'

‘About ten months.'

‘Is she married?'

‘No! It's her little vice: a
mortal hatred that extends to all men … One day a colleague who had come to see me
tried to pinch her waist as a joke … If you'd seen the look he got …

‘She comes at eight o'clock
in the morning, sometimes earlier … In the evening she's the one who closes up
… She must be foreign, because she has a slight accent …'

‘Can I have a quick word with
her?'

‘I'll call her.'

‘No! I'd like to go to her
office and …'

And Maigret passed through a glass door.
The office looked out on to a yard full of lorries. And the whole company seemed to
suffer from the juddering of the flood of buses and cars flowing along Rue
Poissonnière.

Anna was calm, as she had been just now
when she leaned over her boss, as Maigret had always known her. She must have been
twenty-seven, but she looked more like thirty, because her complexion no longer had
the same freshness, and her features had faded.

In two or three years, it would be
impossible to tell what age she was. In ten years she would be an old woman!

‘Have you had any news of your
brother?'

She looked away without replying, while
mechanically using a rocking blotter.

‘Is he married?'

She merely nodded.

‘Happily?'

Then the tears for which Maigret had
been waiting for such a long time began to pour; at the same time as her throat
swelled, and she shouted at him, as if blaming him for everything:

‘He's started drinking …
Marguerite's expecting a baby …'

‘His business?'

‘His chambers didn't bring
in anything … He had to accept a job at a thousand francs per month, in Reims
…'

She dabbed her eyes with her
handkerchief, little dry, angry blows.

‘Maria?

‘She died, a week before taking
the veil …'

The phone rang, and Anna answered it in
a different voice, reaching for a notepad:

‘Yes, Monsieur Worms … of course.
Tomorrow evening … I'll send a cable right this minute … About the cargo of
wool, I'll send you a letter containing a few remarks … No! I haven't
time … You'll read it …'

She hung up. Her boss was in the
doorway, looking at her and Maigret in turn.

The inspector came back into the
adjacent office.

‘What do you think? And I
haven't even mentioned how honest she is. Almost fanatically so …'

‘Where does she live?'

‘I don't know … Or rather I
don't know her address, but I know it's in a furnished house for women
living on their own, kept by some charity or other … But … Hello!
You're starting to scare me … You didn't meet her in the course of
your professional duties, did you? Because it would be a bit worrying …'

‘It wasn't in the course of
my professional duties!' Maigret replied slowly. ‘So, we were saying
that you found that note in a bundle of …'

He listened out for the sounds of the
adjacent office, where a woman's voice was saying on the telephone:

‘No, sir, he's busy! This is
Mademoiselle Anna speaking … I know about it …'

He never heard anything more about the
bargeman.

It all came about by pure chance! The
previous day, Maigret had not known that he was about to go on a journey, even
though it was the time of year when he usually began to find Paris oppressive. It
was a March spiced up with a foretaste of spring and a clear, sharp sun that was
already warm.

Madame Maigret was away in Alsace for a
couple of weeks, staying with her sister, who was having a baby.

On the Wednesday morning, the inspector
received a letter from a former colleague who had retired from the Police Judiciaire
two years earlier and moved to the Dordogne.

… And of course, if you happen to be in the area, do come and stay with me
for a few days. I have an elderly housekeeper who is only too happy when
there are guests to fuss over. And it's the start of the salmon
season—

Maigret's imagination was
particularly fired by the letter-head with its drawing of a manor house flanked by
two circular towers above the address:

At midday, Madame Maigret telephoned from
Alsace to say that her sister would probably give birth that night, adding,
‘You'd think it was summer … The fruit trees are in blossom!'

Chance … Pure chance … A little later,
Maigret was in the chief's office, chatting, when his superior said, ‘By
the way … Did you ever go to Bordeaux to follow up that matter we talked
about?'

It was a minor case of no urgency. At
some point, Maigret had to go to Bordeaux to trawl through the municipal
records.

One idea led to another: Bordeaux … the
Dordogne.

At that exact moment, a ray of sunlight
struck the crystal globe paperweight on the chief's desk.

‘That's a thought! I'm
not working on anything at the moment.'

Later that afternoon, having purchased
a first-class ticket to Villefranche, Maigret boarded the train at the Gare
d'Orsay. The guard reminded him to change trains at Libourne.

‘Unless you're in the
sleeper compartment which gets hitched to the connecting train.'

Maigret thought no more about it, read a
few newspapers and made his way to the dining car where he sat until ten
o'clock.

When he returned to his compartment, he
found the curtains drawn and the light dimmed. An elderly couple had commandeered
both seats.

An attendant walked past.

‘Is there a free bunk by any
chance?'

‘Not in first-class … but I think
there's one in second … If you don't mind—'

‘Of course not!'

And Maigret lugged his carpetbag along
the corridors. The attendant opened several doors and finally
found the compartment in which only the upper bunk was taken.

Here too, the light was dimmed and the
curtains drawn.

‘Would you like me to switch on
the light?'

‘No thank you.'

The air was warm and stuffy. There was a
faint hissing sound, as if there was a leak in the radiator pipes. Maigret could
hear the person in the top bunk tossing and turning and breathing heavily.

The inspector silently removed his
shoes, jacket and waistcoat. He stretched out on the lower bunk and felt a slight
draught coming from somewhere. He picked up his bowler hat and put it over his face
for protection.

Did he fall asleep? He dozed off, in any
case. Perhaps for an hour, perhaps two. Perhaps longer. But he remained half
conscious.

And, in that semi-conscious state, he
was aware of a feeling of discomfort. Was it because of the heat battling with the
draught?

Or was it because of the man in the top
bunk, who couldn't keep still for a second? He tossed and turned continually,
just above Maigret's head. Every movement made a rustling sound.

His breathing was irregular, as if he
had a fever.

After a time, Maigret got up,
exasperated, went into the corridor and paced up and down. But there it was too
cold.

So it was back into the compartment, and
another attempt to sleep, his thoughts and sensations befuddled by drowsiness.