The Flemish House (3 page)

‘So your brother, at least, is
completely ruled out because he was in Nancy.'

Anna said stubbornly:

‘Not even that! Because of a drunk
who claims to have seen him riding his bike along the quay. He said that a fortnight
later. As if he could remember! It was Gérard, Germaine Piedboeuf's brother,
who found him. There's not much to do around here. So he spends his time
looking for witnesses. Just think, they want to bring a civil case and claim 300,000
francs.'

‘Where's the
child?'

Madame Peeters could be heard hurrying
into the shop, where the bell had rung. Anna put the cake on the side table and set
the coffee pot down on the stove.

‘Their house!'

And the voice of a sailor ordering some
genever burst from behind the partition wall.

Marguerite Van de Weert rummaged
feverishly in her handbag, in a hurry to show them something.

‘Haven't you had the
Écho de Givet
yet?'

And she handed Anna a newspaper cutting.
She had a modest smile on her lips. Anna passed the paper to Maigret.

‘Who gave you the idea?'

‘It was me, yesterday, by
chance.'

It was only a small advertisement.

Would the motorcyclist who passed
along the Route de Meuse on the evening of 3 January please make himself known.
Large reward. Please come to Peeters grocery.

‘I didn't dare to give my
address, but …'

It seemed to Maigret that Anna was
looking at her cousin with a hint of impatience as she murmured:

‘It's an idea. But no one
will come.'

And there was Marguerite, waiting so
excitedly to be congratulated!

‘Why wouldn't he come? If a
motorbike passed along the quay, there's no reason why he wouldn't,
since it wasn't Joseph …'

The doors were open. Water was starting
to sing in the
kettle in the kitchen. Madame Peeters was laying the
table for dinner. The sound of voices came from the shop doorway, and suddenly the
two girls pricked up their ears.

‘Please come in. I have nothing to
say to you, but …'

‘Joseph!' Marguerite
stammered, rising to her feet.

There was ardour rather than love in her
voice. She was transfigured by it. She didn't dare to sit down again. She
waited breathlessly, so much so that one would have imagined that a kind of superman
was about to appear.

Now the voice rose in the kitchen.

‘Hello, Mother.'

And another voice, one that Maigret
didn't know:

‘Forgive me, madame, I have some
things to check, and I took advantage of the fact that your son was coming here
…'

At last the two men appeared in the
dining room. Joseph Peeters frowned slightly, murmuring with embarrassing
sweetness:

‘Hello, Marguerite …'

She took his hand between both of
hers.

‘Not too tired, Joseph? Good
spirits?'

But Anna, who was calmer, addressed the
second person, and pointed to Maigret.

‘Detective Chief Inspector
Maigret, whom you must know …'

‘Inspector Machère,' said
the other man, extending a hand. ‘Is it true that you …?'

But they couldn't talk like that,
all standing between the door and the table, which was still laid.

‘I'm here in a purely
unofficial capacity,' muttered Maigret. ‘Just pretend I'm not here
…'

Someone touched his arm.

‘My brother Joseph. Detective
Chief Inspector Maigret.'

And Joseph held out a long, cold, bony
hand. He was half a head taller than Maigret, and Maigret was over six feet tall.
But he was so thin that it looked as if he hadn't stopped growing, even though
he was twenty-five.

A nose with pinched nostrils. Tired eyes
with heavy dark circles. Short fair hair. He must have had poor eyesight, because
his eyelids fluttered constantly as if to escape the light from the lamp.

‘Delighted to meet you, inspector.
I'm confused.'

He wasn't elegant, however. He
took off a greasy raincoat, beneath which he was wearing a suit of neutral grey, of
unremarkable cut.

‘I met him near the bridge,'
said Inspector Machère, ‘and I asked him to bring me here behind his
motorbike.'

He then turned towards Anna. He
addressed her now, as if she were the real mistress of the house. There was no sign
of Madame Peeters, or her husband, slumped in the wicker armchair in the
kitchen.

‘I imagine it's easy to get
to the roof?'

Everyone looked at each other.

‘Through the skylight in the
attic!' Anna replied. ‘Do you want to …'

‘Yes! I want to take a look from
up there.'

For Maigret it was an opportunity to
take a look around the house.

The staircase was painted and covered so
neatly with waxed linoleum that you had to take care not to slip.

On the first floor, a landing with doors
leading to three rooms. Joseph and Marguerite had stayed downstairs. Anna walked
ahead, and Maigret noticed that she was rolling her hips slightly.

‘I'll need to talk to
you!' he murmured.

‘In a minute!'

They reached the second floor. On one
side a garret room, turned into a bedroom, but unoccupied. On the other a huge attic
with exposed beams, piled up with cases and bags of merchandise. To reach the
skylight, Machère had to climb on two cases.

‘Is there no light?'

‘I have my torch …'

He was a young man with a round, jovial,
tirelessly mobile face. Maigret didn't climb on to the roof but looked through
the skylight. The wind was blowing in gusts. The roar of the river reached them, and
its stormy surface appeared dotted with the light from the occasional gas lamp.

On the left, on the roof cornice, there
was a zinc water-tank, at least two cubic metres, towards which the policeman made
his way immediately. It must have been designed to capture rain water.

Machère leaned forwards, looked
disappointed, walked around on the roof for a few moments and bent to pick something
up.

Anna waited in silence, in the darkness,
behind Maigret. The inspector's legs appeared again, then his torso, and at
last his face.

‘A hiding place I only thought of
this afternoon, noticing that the people in my hotel only drink rain water … But the
corpse isn't there.'

‘What was the thing you picked
up?'

‘A handkerchief … A woman's
handkerchief …'

He unfolded it, lit it with his lamp and
looked in vain for an initial. The dirty handkerchief had been exposed to the
weather for a long time.

‘We'll look at that
later!' the inspector sighed, walking towards the door.

When they stepped back into the warm
atmosphere of the dining room, Joseph Peeters was sitting on the piano stool,
reading the advertisement that Marguerite had just shown him. She was standing in
front of him, and her wide-brimmed hat and her coat decorated with little flounces
emphasized everything diaphanous about her.

‘Would you come and see me at the
hotel this evening?' Maigret said to the young man.

‘Which hotel?'

‘The Hôtel de la Meuse!'
Anna broke in. ‘Are you leaving us already, inspector? I would have invited
you to dinner, but …'

Maigret walked through the kitchen.
Madame Peeters looked at him with astonishment.

‘Are you leaving?'

The old man's eyes were empty. He
was smoking a meerschaum pipe, without thinking of anything else. He didn't
even say goodbye.

Outside there was the wind, the sound of
the swollen flood of the Meuse, and the bumps of the boats moored side by side.
Inspector Machère hurried to switch places, because he had been standing on
Maigret's right.

‘Do you think they're
innocent?'

‘I don't know. Do you have
any tobacco?'

‘Only some shag … People in Nancy
talk about you a lot, you know. And that's what worries me. Because these
Peeters people …'

Maigret had stopped by the boats, and
let his eye drift over them. Givet, thanks to the floods which had interrupted boat
traffic, looked like a big port. There were several Rhine barges, thousand-tonners,
all in black steel. The wooden barges from the north looked like painted toys in
comparison.

‘I'll have to buy myself a
cap!' muttered the inspector, who had to hold on to his bowler hat.

‘What did they tell you? That
they're innocent, of course!'

They had to speak very loudly, because
of the noise of the wind. Givet, 500 metres away, was only a cluster of lights. The
Flemish house stood out beneath the stormy sky, its windows lit with a dim yellow
glow.

‘Where do they come
from?'

‘From northern Belgium. Old
Peeters came from above Limbourg, on the Dutch border. He's twenty years older
than his wife, which puts him in his eighties now. He was a basket-maker. A few
years ago he still practised his trade with four workmen in the studio behind the
house. Now he's totally gaga …'

‘Are they rich?'

‘They're said to be! They
own the house. They even lent money to some poor sailors who wanted to buy a boat.
You see, sir, they don't have the same mentality as us. Old Peeters has
hundreds of thousands of francs, which means he can easily stand his customers a
round, as they say. Except that his son's going to be a lawyer. His eldest
daughter learned the piano. The other teaches at a famous convent school in Namur.
She's quite a senior teacher.'

And Machère pointed to the barges.

‘Half the people in there are
Flemish. People who don't like changing their habits. Others go to the French
bistros near the bridge, drink wine and aperitifs … The Flemish want their genever,
someone who understands their language, and everything … Each boat buys provisions
for a week or more … And I'm not talking about contraband! They're in
the right place for that …'

Their overcoats stuck to their bodies.
The water was lapping so violently that it splashed over the decks of the laden
barges.

‘They don't think the same
way as we do. For them, it's not a bistro. It's a grocery, even though
they serve drinks at the counter. And even the women have a drop when they're
doing their shopping. Apparently that's what brings in the most …'

‘The Piedboeufs?' asked
Maigret.

‘Little people. A factory security
man. The daughter was a secretary in the same company. The son still works
there.'

‘A sensible boy?'

‘I wouldn't say that. He
doesn't do a lot of work. He prefers playing billiards at the Café de la
Mairie. He's a good-looking guy and he knows it …'

‘The daughter?'

‘Germaine? She's had some
lovers. You know, she's one of those girls you find in dark corners at night,
with a man. Which doesn't mean Joseph Peeters isn't the father …
I've seen the child. It looks like him. What you can't deny, at any
rate, is that she went into the house on the third of January, shortly after eight
in the evening, and since then no one has seen her again.'

Inspector Machère was speaking
frankly.

‘I've looked everywhere. I
even did a detailed summary of the area with an architect. There was only one thing
I'd forgotten: the roof. Normally you wouldn't think of hiding a corpse
on a roof. I went up there, just a moment ago. I found a handkerchief, but nothing
else …'

‘And the Meuse?'

‘Quite! I was going to talk to you
about that … You know, don't you, that almost all drowned bodies are found on
the barriers … There are eight between here and Namur … Except that two days after
the crime, the river had swollen so much that the barriers were knocked over, as
happens every winter … Which means that Germaine Piedboeuf could easily have got as
far as Holland, if not the sea …'

‘I was told that Joseph Peeters
wasn't here the evening when …'

‘I know! That's what he
claims. A witness saw a motorbike that looked like his. He swears it wasn't
him.'

‘Doesn't he have an
alibi?'

‘He does and he doesn't. I
went back to Nancy specially. He lives in a furnished room where he can come back
without being seen by his landlady. He also frequents the cafés and bars where the
students meet every night. No one can remember exactly whether it was on the third,
the fourth or the fifth that he spent the night in one of those bars …'

‘Might Germaine Piedboeuf have
killed herself?'

‘She wasn't that sort of
woman. A little person with poor health and less than perfect morals, but who loved
her son …'