The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien (16 page)

‘Not one of us had all his wits
about him, and no one saw the whole thing: Klein darting forward abruptly, a furious
little bundle of nerves, and striking Mortier …

‘It looked as if he'd butted
him in the chest with his head, but we saw blood spurting out! Willy opened his
mouth so wide …'

‘No!' Lombard begged
suddenly, now standing and staring at Belloir as if in a daze.

Van Damme had retreated back to the
wall, his shoulders slumping. But nothing could have stopped Belloir, not even if he
had wanted to himself. It was growing dark. Everyone's face looked grey.

‘We were all frantic!' the
voice went on. ‘And Klein huddled there with a knife in his hand, stunned,
gaping at Willy, who just stood swaying, tottering … These
things don't happen the way
people imagine – I can't explain …

‘Mortier was still on his feet in
spite of the blood streaming from the hole in his shirt front. He said – and
I'm sure of this – “Bastards!” And he kept standing in the same
place, his legs slightly apart, as if to keep his balance. If he hadn't been
bleeding, you'd have thought
he
was the drunk.

‘He had big eyes, and now they
seemed even bigger … His left hand was clutching the button of his dinner
jacket, while his right was fumbling around the back of his trousers.

‘Someone – I think it was Jef –
shouted in terror, and we saw Mortier's right hand pull a revolver slowly from
a pocket, a small black thing, made of steel, that looked so
hard
 …

‘Klein was rolling on the floor in
a fit. A bottle fell, smashing into pieces.

‘And Willy was still alive! Just
barely swaying, he looked at us, one after the other! Although he couldn't
have been seeing clearly … He raised the revolver …

‘Then someone stepped forwards to
grab the gun from him, slipped in the blood, and the two of them fell to the
floor.

‘Mortier must have gone into
convulsions – because he still wasn't dead, you hear me? His eyes, those big
eyes, were wide open! He kept trying to shoot, and he said it again:
“Bastards!”

‘The other man's hand was
able to grip his throat … He hadn't much longer to live,
anyway …

‘I got completely soaked … while the dinner jacket just lay
there on the floor.'

Van Damme and
Lombard were now looking at their companion in horror. And Belloir finished what he
had to say.

‘That hand around his neck, it was
mine! I was the man who slipped in that pool of blood …'

He was standing in the same place as he
had then. Now, though, he was dapper and soigné, his shoes polished, his suit
impeccable. He wore a large gold signet ring on his white, well-cared-for hand with
its manicured nails.

‘We were in a state of shock. We
made Klein go to bed, even though he wanted to go and give himself up. No one spoke.
Again, I can't explain … And yet I was quite lucid! I'll say
it again: people don't understand what such tragedies are really like. I
dragged Van Damme out on to the landing, where we talked quietly, while Klein kept
howling and struggling.

‘The church bells rang the hour
while three of us were going down the alley carrying the body, but I don't
remember what time it was. The Meuse was in spate – Quai Sainte-Barbe was under half
a metre of water – and the current was running fast. Both upstream and down, the
barrage gates were open. We just caught a glimpse of a dark mass being swept past
the nearest lamp post by the rushing water.

‘My suit was stained and torn; I
left it at the studio after Van Damme went home to get me some of his clothes. The
next day, I concocted a story for my parents …'

‘Did you all get together
again?' Maigret asked slowly.

‘No. Most of us bolted from Rue du
Pot-au-Noir. Lecocq d'Arneville stayed on with Klein. And ever since then,
we've all avoided one another, as if by mutual agreement. Whenever any of us
met up by accident in town, we looked the other way.

‘It
turned out that Willy's body was never found, thanks to the flood. Since he
hadn't been proud of knowing us, he'd always been careful never to
mention us at home. People thought he'd simply run off for a few days. Later,
they did look for him in the seedy parts of town, where they thought he might have
finished up that evening.

‘I was the first to leave Liège,
three weeks later. I suddenly broke off my studies and announced to my family that I
wanted to pursue my career in France. I found work in a bank in Paris.

‘I learned from the newspapers
that Klein had hanged himself that February at the door of Saint-Pholien.

‘One day I ran into Janin, in
Paris. We didn't talk about the tragedy, but he told me that he, too, had
moved to France.'

‘I stayed on in Liège,
alone,' muttered Lombard resentfully, his head hanging.

‘You drew hanged men and church
steeples,' Maigret said. ‘Then you did sketches for the newspapers.
Then …'

And he recalled the house in Rue
Hors-Château, the windows with the small, green-tinged panes, the fountain in the
courtyard, the portrait of the young woman, the photoengraving workshop, where
posters and magazine illustrations were gradually invading the walls of hanged
men …

And the kids! The newest one born only
yesterday …

Hadn't ten years gone by? And
little by little, more or less clumsily, hadn't life returned to normal
everywhere?

Van Damme had roamed around Paris, like
the other two. By chance, he'd wound up in Germany. His parents
had left him an inheritance. He had
become an important businessman in Bremen.

Maurice Belloir had made a fine
marriage. Moving up the ladder, he was now a bank deputy director! Then there was
the lovely new house in Rue de Vesle, where a little boy was studying the
violin.

In the evening he played billiards with
other town luminaries in the comfortable ambience of the Café de Paris.

Janin got by with a series of
mistresses, earned his living by making shop-window mannequins and relaxed by
working on portrait busts of his lady friends.

And hadn't even Lecocq
d'Arneville got married? Didn't his wife and child live in the back of
the herbalist's shop in Rue Picpus?

Willy Mortier's father was still
buying, cleaning and selling whole truckloads of pig's entrails, bribing city
councilmen and growing ever richer.

His daughter had married a cavalry
officer, who hadn't wanted to join the family business, whereupon Mortier had
refused to hand over the agreed-upon dowry.

The couple lived off somewhere in a
small garrison town.

It was nearly dark. Their faces were
receding into the shadows, but their features seemed all the more sharply
etched.

Lombard was the one who burst out, as if
alarmed by the gathering dusk, ‘We need some light!'

There was still a candle end, left in
the lantern that had hung from the same nail for ten years, kept along with the
broken-down divan, the length of calico, the battered skeleton, the sketches of the
girl with naked breasts and everything else saved as security by the landlord still
waiting for his rent.

When Maigret lit the stump, shadows
danced on the walls, which shone red, yellow and blue in light glowing through the
tinted glass panes, as if from a magic lantern.

‘When did Lecocq d'Arneville
come to see you for the first time?' the inspector asked, turning towards
Belloir.

‘It must be about three years ago.
I hadn't been expecting it … The house you saw had just been
finished. My boy was barely walking yet.

‘I was struck by how much
he'd grown to resemble Klein: not so much physically as in his nature. That
same feverish intensity, the same morbid uneasiness. He came as an enemy. He was
furious and embittered, or desperate – I can't find exactly the right word. He
sniggered at me, spoke aggressively, he was on edge; he pretended to admire
my home, my position, my life and
character, and yet … I had the feeling he might burst into tears, like
Klein when he was drunk!

‘He thought that I'd
forgotten. Not true! I simply wanted to live, you understand me? And that's
why I worked like a dog: to live …

‘But he hadn't been able to
get on with his life. He had lived with Klein for two months after that Christmas
Eve, it's true … We left, they stayed behind: the two of them, here
in this room, in …

‘I can't explain what I felt
in his presence. So many years had passed, but I had the feeling Lecocq
d'Arneville had remained exactly the same. It was as if life had moved on for
some, and stopped short for others.

‘He told me that he'd
changed his name because he didn't want to keep anything that reminded him of
that awful night. He'd even changed his life! He'd never opened another
book. He'd got it into his head to build a new life by becoming a manual
labourer.

‘I had to glean all this
information on my own, weeding it out from all his reproaches, caustic remarks and
truly monstrous accusations.

‘He'd failed! Been a
disaster at everything! And part of him was still rooted right here. It was the same
for the rest of us, I think, but in our case it was less intense, not as painful, as
unhealthy. I believe Klein's face haunted him even more than Willy's
did.

‘Married, with a kid, he'd
been through some tough times and had turned to drink. He was unable, not only to be
happy, but even to be at any kind of peace. He screamed at me that he adored his
wife and had left her because when he was near her, he felt like a thief! A thief
stealing happiness! Happiness stolen
from Klein … And the other man.

‘You see, I've thought a lot
about this since then. And I think I understand. We were fooling around with
dangerous ideas, with mysticism and morbid thoughts. It was only a game, and we were
just kids, playing, but at least two of us let themselves fall into the trap. The
most excitable, fanatical ones.

‘Klein and Lecocq
d'Arneville. We'd all talked about killing someone? Klein went on to do
it! And then he killed himself! And Lecocq, appalled, a broken man, was chained to
this nightmare for the rest of his life.

‘The others and I tried to escape,
to find our way back to a normal life, whereas Lecocq d'Arneville threw
himself recklessly into his remorse, in a rage of despair. He destroyed his own
life! Along with those of his wife and son …

‘So he turned on us. Because
that's why he'd come looking for me. I hadn't understood that at
first. He looked around at
my
house,
my
family,
my
bank.
And I really did feel that he considered it his duty to destroy all that.

‘To avenge Klein! To avenge
himself.

‘He threatened me. He had kept the
suit, with the rips, the bloodstains, and it was the only physical proof of what
happened that Christmas Eve. He asked me for money. Lots of it! And asked for more
later on.

‘Because wasn't that where
we were vulnerable? Van Damme, Lombard, myself, even Janin: everything we had
achieved depended on money.

‘It was the beginning of a new
nightmare! Lecocq had known what he was doing, and he went from one to another of
us, lugging along that sinister ruined suit. With
diabolical cunning, he calculated precisely how much to
ask us for, to make us feel the pinch.

‘You saw my house, inspector.
It's mortgaged! My wife thinks her dowry is sitting untouched at the bank, but
there's not a centime of it left. And I've done other things like
that.

‘He went twice to Bremen, to see
Van Damme. He came to Liège. Still consumed with fury, bent on destroying every last
scrap of happiness.

‘There were six of us around
Willy's corpse. Klein was dead; Lecocq was trapped in a living nightmare. So
we all had to be equally miserable. And he didn't even spend the money! He
lived as wretchedly as before, when he was sharing a bit of cheap sausage with
Klein. He burned all the money! And every banknote he burned meant unbelievable
hardship for us all.

‘For three years we've been
struggling, each off in his own corner: Van Damme in Bremen, Jef in Liège, Janin in
Paris, myself in Rheims. For three years we've hardly dared write to one
another, while Lecocq d'Arneville was forcing us back into the madness of the
Companions of the Apocalypse.

‘I have a wife. So does Lombard.
We've got kids. So we're trying to hang on, for them.

‘The other day Van Damme sent us
telegrams saying Lecocq had killed himself, and he told us to meet.