The Flemish House (5 page)

‘The poor love! Eat your egg, my
darling!'

She hadn't invited Maigret to sit
down. There was water on the floor and a soup cooking on the stove.

‘So it must have been you they went
to fetch from Paris?'

The voice was not quite aggressive, but
it was far from amiable.

‘What do you mean?'

‘There's no point being
mysterious here! We know everything!'

‘Explain yourself.'

‘Because you know as well as I do!
A nice job you've accepted here! … But aren't the police always on the
side of the rich?'

Maigret had frowned, not because of the
gratuitous accusation, but because of what the midwife's words revealed.

‘It was the Flemings themselves
who told everyone that we might worry them for now, but that it wouldn't last,
and that things would change when some sort of detective chief inspector arrived
from Paris!'

She smiled meanly.

‘My goodness! We gave them plenty
of time to prepare their lies! They know very well that the body of Mademoiselle
Germaine will never be found! Eat, my little one. Don't fret …'

And tears came to her eyes as she looked
at the boy holding his spoon in the air, without taking his eyes off Maigret.

‘Do you have anything in
particular to tell me?' the inspector asked her.

‘Nothing at all! The Peeters must
have given you all the information you wanted, and they must even have told you that
the child isn't their Joseph's!'

Was it worth pressing the point? Maigret
was the enemy. There was a feeling of hate floating in the air of this poor
house.

‘Now, if you want to see Monsieur
Piedboeuf, you only need to come back at about midday … That's when he gets up
and Monsieur Gérard comes back from the office …'

She led him back along the corridor and
closed the door behind him. The first-floor shutters were down.

Maigret found Inspector Machère near
the Flemish house, in conversation with two sailors, whom he left as he spotted
Maigret.

‘What are they saying?'

‘I was talking to them about the
Étoile Polaire
… They think they remember that on the third of January
the owner left the Café des Mariniers at about eight o'clock, and that he was
drunk, as he was every evening … At this time of day he's still asleep …
I've just been on his boat, and he didn't even hear me …'

Behind the windows of the grocery shop
the white head of Madame Peeters could be seen, observing the policemen.

The conversation was disjointed. The two
men looked around without examining anything in particular.

On one side, the river with the
overturned barriers, dragging flotsam along at a speed of nine kilometres an
hour.

On the other, the house.

‘There are two entrances!'
said Machère. ‘The one we
can see, and another one, behind
the building … In the courtyard there's a well …'

He hastened to add:

‘I've searched it … I think
I've searched everything … And yet, I don't know why, I have a sense
that the corpse wasn't thrown into the Meuse … What was that woman's
handkerchief doing on the roof?'

‘You know they've found the
motorcyclist?'

‘I heard. But that doesn't
prove that Joseph Peeters wasn't here that evening.'

Of course! There was no proof either for
or against! There wasn't even any serious evidence!

Germaine Piedboeuf had come into the
shop at about eight o'clock. The Flemings claimed she had gone out again a few
minutes later, but no one else had seen her.

That was all!

The Piedboeufs had levelled accusations
and were demanding 300,000 francs in damages.

Two boatmen's wives came into the
grocery, and the bell rang.

‘Do you still believe, sir
…'

‘I don't believe anything at
all, old man! See you later …'

He went into the shop in turn. The two
customers shifted up to make room for him. Madame Peeters called out:

‘Anna!'

And she came hurrying, opening the glass
kitchen door.

‘Come in, inspector … Anna will be
here very shortly … She's tidying the bedrooms …'

She turned her attention back to her
customers, and Maigret, crossing the kitchen, turned into the corridor and slowly
climbed the stairs. Anna mustn't have heard. There were noises coming from a
room whose door was open, and Maigret suddenly saw the girl, with a handkerchief
knotted around her head, busy brushing a pair of men's trousers.

She saw the visitor in the mirror,
turned swiftly and dropped the brush.

‘How long have you been
there?'

She seemed much the same, although
casually dressed for the morning. She still had the air of a well-brought-up,
slightly distant girl.

‘Excuse me … I was told you were
upstairs … Is this your brother's room?'

‘Yes … He left first thing this
morning … The exam is very hard … He wants to pass it with the best possible
distinction, like the other ones …'

On a sideboard there was a big portrait
of Marguerite Van de Weert, in a light-coloured dress, wearing an Italian straw
hat.

And the girl had written, in long,
pointed handwriting, the beginning of ‘Solveig's Song':

Maigret was holding the portrait. Anna
looked at him insistently, even with a hint of suspicion, as if she feared a
smile.

‘Those are lines from Ibsen,'
she said.

‘I know …'

And Maigret recited the end of the
poem:

He nearly smiled, however, because he
was looking at the trousers that Anna was still holding.

It was unexpected, ridiculous or moving,
those heroic lines in the dark setting of a student's room.

Joseph Peeters, long and thin, badly
dressed, with his fair hair that no cream could tame, his disproportionately large
nose, his short-sighted eyes …

And that portrait of a provincial girl,
diaphanously pretty!

It wasn't the prestigious context
of Ibsen's play. She wasn't proclaiming her faith to the stars! Like a
good middle-class girl she copied out some lines at the bottom of a portrait.

And she really had waited! In spite of
Germaine Piedboeuf! In spite of the child! In spite of the years!

Maigret felt vaguely awkward. He looked
at the table covered with a green blotting pad, with a brass
inkwell that must have been a present, and a Galalith pen holder.

Mechanically, he opened one of the
drawers of the side-table and saw, in a cardboard box without a lid, some amateur
photographs.

‘My brother has a
camera.'

Some young people in students'
caps … Joseph on his motorbike, his hand on the throttle lever ready for a fast
start … Anna at the piano … Another girl, thinner and sadder …

‘That's my sister
Maria.'

And suddenly there was a little passport
photograph, as gloomy as all portraits of that kind, because of the brutal contrast
of black and white.

A girl, but so frail, so small that she
looked like a child. Big eyes took up the whole of her face. She wore a ridiculous
hat and seemed to be looking with fear at the camera.

‘Germaine, isn't
it?'

Her son looked like her.

‘Was she sick?'

‘She had tuberculosis. She
wasn't very healthy.'

Anna was! Tall and well built, she
seemed in a perfect mental and physical equilibrium. At last she set the trousers
down on the counterpane.

‘I've just been to her house
…'

‘What did they say? They must have
…'

‘I only saw a midwife … and the
little boy …'

She didn't ask any questions, as
though out of modesty. There was something discreet about her demeanour.

‘Is your bedroom next
door?'

‘Yes … My bedroom, which is also
my sister's …'

There was a connecting door, which
Maigret opened. The other room was brighter, because its windows looked out on to
the quay. The bed was already made. It wasn't untidy in the slightest, not so
much as a piece of clothing on the furniture.

Only two nightdresses neatly folded on
the two pillows.

‘You're
twenty-five?'

‘Twenty-six.'

Maigret wanted to ask a question. He
didn't know how to do it.

‘You've never been
engaged?'

‘Never.'

But that wasn't entirely what he
had wanted to ask. She impressed him, particularly now that he had seen her room.
She impressed him as an enigmatic statue might have done. He wondered if her
unappealing flesh had ever trembled, if she was anything but a devoted sister, a
model daughter, a mistress of the house, a Peeters, if, in the end, beneath that
surface, there was a woman!

And she didn't look away. She
didn't hide. She must have felt that he was studying her figure as much as her
features but she didn't so much as blink.

‘We never see anyone apart from
our cousins, the Van de Weerts …'

Maigret hesitated, and his voice
wasn't entirely natural when he said:

‘I'm going to ask you to do
an experiment for me. Will
you go down to the dining room and play
the piano for me until I call you. For as long as possible, the same piece as on the
third of January … Who was playing?'

‘Marguerite. She sings and
accompanies herself. She's had singing lessons.'

‘Do you remember the
piece?'

‘It's always the same.
“Solveig's Song” … But … I … I don't understand.'

‘It's just an experiment
…'

She left the room backwards, and was
about to close the door.

‘No! Leave it open.'

A few moments later, some fingers ran
carelessly over the keyboard, producing disconnected chords. And Maigret, without
wasting any time, opened the cupboards in the girls' bedroom.

The first was the linen cupboard.
Regular piles of shirts, trousers and well-ironed skirts …

The chords followed on from one another.
The tune became recognizable. And Maigret's fat fingers came and went among
the white cloth underwear.

An onlooker would probably have taken
him for a lover, or even for a man satisfying some hidden passion.

Coarse underwear, solid, hard-wearing,
inelegant. The underwear of the two sisters must have been mixed together.

Then it was the turn of a drawer:
stockings, suspenders, boxes of hairpins … No powder … No perfume, except a bottle
of Russian eau de Cologne that must only have been used on important occasions.

The sound grew louder … The house was
filled with music … And gradually a voice accompanied the piano, and came to the
fore.

It wasn't Marguerite who was
singing – it was Anna Peeters! She clearly enunciated each syllable, and lingered
wistfully on certain phrases.

Maigret's fingers were still
working fast, probing around in the fabric.

In a pile of linen there was a rustle
that was not of cloth, but of paper.

Another portrait. An amateur portrait,
in sepia. A young man with curly hair and fine features, his upper lip jutting
forward in a confident and slightly ironic smile.

Maigret didn't know who the man
reminded him of. But he reminded him of something.

A serious voice, almost a masculine
voice fading slowly away. Then a call:

‘Should I go on,
inspector?'

He closed the doors of the cupboards,
put the photograph into his waistcoat pocket and darted into Joseph Peeters'
room.

‘Don't bother.'

He noticed that Anna was paler when she
came back.
Had she been putting too much soul into her singing? Her
eyes scoured the room but found nothing unusual.

‘I don't understand … I
would like to ask you something, inspector. You saw Joseph last night … What did you
think of him? … Do you think he's capable …'

Probably downstairs, she had taken off
the headscarf that covered her head. Maigret even had a sense that she had washed
her hands.

‘Everyone, you understand,
everyone,' she went on, ‘must acknowledge his innocence! He has to be
happy!'

‘With Marguerite Van de
Weert?'

She said nothing. She sighed.

‘How old is your sister
Maria?'

‘Twenty-eight … Everyone agrees
that she's going to be headmistress of the school in Namur.'

Maigret touched the portrait in his
pocket.

‘No lovers?'

And she replied, straight away:

‘Maria?'

It meant, ‘Maria, a lover? You
don't know her!'

‘I'm going to pursue my
inquiry!' said Maigret, moving towards the landing.

‘Have you had any results so
far?'

‘I don't know.'

She followed him down the stairs. As
they passed through the kitchen, he noticed old Peeters, who had taken up his place
in his armchair and plainly couldn't see him.

‘He isn't aware of anything
any more,' Anna sighed.

In the grocery, there were three or four
people. Madame
Peeters was pouring genever into glasses. She
greeted him with a slight bow, without setting down her bottle, then went on talking
Flemish.

She must have explained that the visitor
was the police inspector who had come from Paris, because the sailors turned
respectfully towards Maigret.