The Flemish House (17 page)

Cut off from the rest of the world, the
atmosphere was that of a nightmare.

Had the man above him just raised
himself up on his elbows and leaned over to try and get a look at his companion?

Maigret, meanwhile, didn't dare
move. The half-bottle of Bordeaux and the two brandies he had drunk in the dining
car lay heavy in his stomach.

The night was long. Whenever the train
stopped at a station, there was a babble of voices, footsteps in the corridors,
doors slamming. It felt as if the train would never get going again.

It sounded as if the man was crying.
There were moments when he held his breath. Then suddenly, there'd be a snivel
and he would turn over and blow his nose.

Maigret regretted leaving his
first-class compartment occupied by the elderly couple.

He dozed off, woke up and drifted off
again. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, he coughed to steady his voice and
said, ‘Monsieur, would you kindly try to keep still!'

He felt embarrassed, because his voice
sounded much sterner than he had intended. Supposing the man was ill?

There was no answer. The tossing and
turning stopped. The man must have been making a huge effort to avoid
making the slightest sound. And it suddenly occurred to Maigret
that it might not be a man after all, but a woman! He hadn't seen the person
who was wedged between the bunk and the ceiling.

And the heat must be suffocating up
there. Now Maigret tried to turn down the radiator, but the control knob was
jammed.

It was three o'clock in the
morning.

‘I really must get some
sleep!'

Now he was wide awake. He had become
almost as jumpy as his fellow passenger. He listened out.

‘Here we go! He's at it
again.'

And Maigret forced himself to breathe
regularly and count sheep, in the hope of falling asleep.

The man was definitely crying! Probably
someone who had been to Paris for a funeral. Or vice versa, a poor soul who worked
in Paris and had received bad news from back home – his mother ill, or dead … Or
maybe his wife … Maigret was sorry he'd been harsh with him. You never knew …
Sometimes they hitched a special hearse wagon to the train.

His thoughts turned to his sister-in-law
in Alsace who was about to give birth. Three children in four years!

Maigret slept.

The train halted, then moved off again.
It clattered over an iron bridge, making a terrible racket, and Maigret was suddenly
wide awake.

Then he froze at the sight of two legs
dangling in front of his nose. The man was sitting on his bunk meticulously lacing
up his shoes. It was the first thing that the inspector
saw of him
and, despite the dim light, he noticed that they were patent-leather shoes. His
socks, meanwhile, were grey wool and looked hand-knitted.

The man paused and listened. Had he
noticed the change in Maigret's breathing pattern?

Maigret started counting sheep again. It
was all the more difficult because he was intrigued by the hands tying the
shoelaces. They were trembling so badly that it took the man four attempts to tie
the bow.

The train shot through a small station
without stopping. All that could be seen through the curtain fabric were the lights
flashing past.

The man was coming down! This was slowly
turning into a nightmare. Why couldn't he descend in an ordinary fashion? Was
he afraid of being rebuked again?

His foot groped for the ladder for ages.
He almost tumbled from the bunk. Then, keeping his back to the inspector, the man
left the compartment, without bothering to close the door, and headed for the end of
the corridor.

Had it not been for the open door,
Maigret would probably have turned over and tried to go back to sleep. But he had to
get up to shut it. He looked up and down the corridor.

He just had the time to throw on his
jacket, not bothering with the waistcoat.

For the stranger had opened the carriage
door at the far end of the corridor. It was not by chance: he had opened it just as
the train was slowing down.

They were passing a forest. There were a
few clouds illuminated by an invisible moon.

The brakes squealed. The train had slowed
down from eighty kilometres an hour to around thirty, perhaps even less.

The man jumped off and slipped down the
embankment, then vanished in the darkness. Maigret barely stopped to think. He
leaped. The train was going even slower now, so he wasn't in any danger.

He landed on his side and rolled over
three times, coming to rest by a barbed-wire fence.

The train's red light moved off
and the clatter of the wheels grew fainter.

Maigret stood up. He hadn't broken
any bones. His companion's fall must have been much harder, for he could see
him, fifty metres away, still struggling to get to his feet.

This situation was ridiculous. Maigret
wondered what instinct had prompted him to jump off the train while his luggage
continued on its way to Villefranche-en-Dordogne. He didn't even know where he
was!

He could see nothing but woodland –
probably a vast forest. Further away the pale ribbon of a road plunged into the
trees.

Why was the man not moving? All Maigret
could see was a kneeling shadow. Had he realized he was being followed? Was he
hurt?

‘Hey! You over there!'
shouted Maigret fumbling for the gun in his pocket.

He didn't have time to grab it. He
saw a flash of red. And he felt something hit his shoulder even before hearing the
report.

The whole thing hadn't lasted a
tenth of a second and
already the man had sprung up, sprinted
through a copse, crossed the main road and vanished into the pitch darkness.

Maigret cursed. Tears sprang to his
eyes, not from the pain, but from shock, rage and confusion. It had all happened so
fast! And he was in such a sorry mess!

He dropped his gun, bent down to pick it
up and winced because his shoulder hurt.

No, it was something else: the sensation
that he was bleeding profusely, that with each heartbeat the warm blood was spurting
from a severed artery.

He didn't dare run. He
didn't dare move. He didn't even pick up his weapon.

His temples were damp, his throat tight.
And, as expected, when he touched his shoulder, his hand came into contact with a
sticky liquid. He squeezed and felt for the artery with his fingertips to staunch
the flow of blood.

In his semi-conscious state, Maigret had
the impression that less than a kilometre away, the train had been stationary for a
long, long time while he listened out, acutely anxious.

What could it matter to him if the train
had stopped? His response was automatic. The absence of the wheels' rumbling
left a void which terrified him.

At last! The noise started up again in
the distance. He glimpsed something red moving in the sky, behind the trees.

Then nothing.

Maigret stood utterly alone, clutching
his shoulder with his right hand. It was his left shoulder that had been hit.
He tried to move his left arm and managed to raise it slightly,
but it flopped back again, too heavy.

The woods were completely silent,
suggesting that the man had not fled but was hiding in the undergrowth. If Maigret
tried to reach the main road, might he not shoot again to finish him off?

‘Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!'
muttered Maigret, who felt utterly wretched.

Why had he felt the urge to jump off the
train? At dawn his friend Leduc would be waiting for him at Villefranche station and
his housekeeper would have cooked a salmon.

Maigret walked listlessly. He was forced
to stop after three metres. He set off again, stopped once more.

Only the pale road stood out in the
blackness, white and dusty like at the height of summer. Maigret was still bleeding,
but not so profusely. His hand was stemming the flow and was covered in blood.

You would never have guessed that he had
been wounded three times before. He was as scared as if on an operating table. He
would prefer acute pain to this slow ebbing of blood.

It would be stupid to die here, tonight,
all alone. Without even knowing where he was! While his luggage continued on its way
without him!

‘Too bad if the man shoots!'
He walked as fast as he could, lurching forwards, feeling giddy. There was a
signpost. But only the right hand side was lit up by a halo of moonlight:
3.5
km
.

What was at 3.5 km? Which town? Which
village?

A cow mooed from that direction where
the sky was a
little paler. That was probably the east. Dawn was
about to break!

The stranger must have moved on. Or he
had decided against trying to finish off the wounded inspector. Maigret calculated
that he still had the strength to keep going for three or four minutes, and tried to
make the most of it. He walked like a soldier, with regular steps, counting to stop
himself from thinking.

The mooing cow must belong to a farm.
Farmers rise early … Therefore—

The blood was seeping down his left
side, beneath his shirt, beneath his trouser belt.

Was that a light he could see? Was he
delirious already?

‘If I lose more than a litre of
blood—' he thought.

It was a light. But there was a ploughed
field to cross and that was more difficult. His feet sank into the mud. He brushed
past an abandoned tractor.

‘Hello! … Someone! … Help!
Quick!'

That desperate
quick
escaped
him as he leaned against the tractor for support. He slid down and sat on the
ground. He heard a door opening and made out a lantern swinging on the end of an
arm.

‘Quick!'

Hopefully the man who was coming over,
getting closer, would be sharpwitted enough to staunch the bleeding! Meanwhile
Maigret's hand lost its grip and fell limply to his side.

‘One … two … one … two
…'

The blood spurted out with every
count.

Confused images, with blanks in between.
All of them tinged with that note of panic that is the stuff of dreams.

A rhythm … The clip-clop of hooves …
Straw under his head and trees filing past on his right.

That much, Maigret understood. He was
lying in a cart. It was light. They were plodding slowly along a road lined with
plane trees.

He opened his eyes without moving.
Eventually a man entered his field of vision. He was sauntering along the road
swinging a whip.

A nightmare? Maigret hadn't seen
the face of the man from the train. All he knew of him was a vague form,
patent-leather shoes and grey woollen socks.

So why did he think that the man leading
the cart was the man from the train?

He saw a deeply lined face, with a bushy
grey moustache and heavy eyebrows … and light-coloured eyes looking straight ahead,
taking no notice of the wounded man.

Where were they? Where were they
going?

Maigret's hand moved and he felt a
strange wad around his chest, like a thick dressing.

Then his thoughts became muddled just as
a ray of sunshine bored through his eyes into his brain.

Later there were houses, white façades …
A wide street, bathed in light. Noise behind the cart, the noise of a crowd on the
move … and voices … but he couldn't make out the words. The bumping made his
wound hurt.

No more jolts … Just a swaying movement
now, a rolling that he had never experienced before.

He was on a stretcher. In front of him
was a man in a
white coat. A big gate clanged shut behind them and
on the other side was a milling crowd. There was a sound of running footsteps.

‘Take him to the operating theatre
right away.'

He didn't move his head. He
didn't think. But he looked.

They were crossing lawns dotted with
small, pristine buildings. Men in grey uniforms sat on benches. Some had their heads
or legs bandaged. Nurses were bustling about.

And in his sluggish mind, he tried,
without success, to formulate the word ‘hospital'.

Where was the farmer who looked like the
man on the train? Ouch! They were going up some stairs. That hurt.

Maigret came to again to see a man
washing his hands and looking at him gravely.

His heart skipped a beat. The man had a
goatee, and busy eyebrows!

Did he look like the farmer? In any
case, he looked like the man from the train!

Maigret couldn't speak. He opened
his mouth. The man with the goatee said calmly, ‘Put him in number three.
It's best for him to be in isolation because of the police.'

Because of the police? What did he
mean?

People in white transported him through
the grounds again. The sunshine was brighter than any sunshine Maigret had ever seen
– a sun so strong, so powerful, it seemed to reach the farthest recesses!

They were putting him in a bed. The
walls were white. It was almost as hot as in the train. A voice was saying,
‘It's the inspector who's asking when he'll be able
to—'

The inspector – wasn't he the
inspector? He hadn't asked
anything! This was ridiculous!
Especially this business with the farmer who looked like the doctor and the man on
the train!

But did the man on the train have a grey
goatee? A moustache? Bushy eyebrows?

‘Unclench his teeth … Good …
Enough.'

The doctor was pouring something into
his mouth.

To finish him off by poisoning him, of
course!

When Maigret came round, towards
evening, the nurse who was watching over him went out into the corridor where five
men were waiting: the investigating magistrate from Bergerac, the prosecutor, the
police inspector, a court clerk and the forensic pathologist.

‘You may go in, but the doctor
advises you not to tire him. He has such a strange look that I wouldn't be
surprised if he's mad!'