The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien (9 page)

‘It was a real shock to see the
photograph, and especially to think that he'd died in Bremen, under a false
name. You can't have any idea … Me, I got off to a bad start, I
messed up, did stupid things, but when I remember Jean,
at thirteen … He was like me, but steadier,
more serious, already reading poetry. He used to study all by himself at night,
reading by the light of candle ends he got from a sacristan. I was sure he'd
make it. Listen, even when he was little, he would never have been a street kid, not
at any price – and the neighbourhood bad boys even made fun of him!

‘But me, I was always short of
money, and I wasn't ashamed to hound my mother for it. She used to go without
to give me some … She adored us. At sixteen, you don't understand!
But now I can remember a time when I was mean to her simply because I'd
promised some girl I'd take her to the movies … Well, my mother had
no money. I cried, I threatened her! A charity had just got some medicines for her –
and she went and sold them.

‘Can you understand? And now
it's Jean who's dead, like that, up there, with someone else's
name! I don't know what he did. I cannot believe he went down the same wrong
road I did. You wouldn't believe it either if you'd known him as a
child …

‘Please, can you tell me
anything?'

But Maigret handed the man's
passport back to him and asked, ‘In Liège, do you know any Belloirs, Van
Dammes, Janins, Lombards?'

‘A Belloir, yes: the father was a
doctor, in our neighbourhood. The son was a student. But they were well-to-do,
respectable people, out of my league.'

‘And the others?'

‘I've heard the name Van
Damme before. I think there was a big grocery store in Rue de la Cathédrale by that
name. Oh, it's so long ago now …' He seemed to hesitate.

And then Armand
Lecocq d'Arneville asked, ‘Could I see Jean's body? Has it been
brought here?'

‘It will arrive in Paris
tomorrow.'

‘Are you sure that he really did
kill himself?'

Maigret looked away, disturbed by the
thought that he was more than sure of it: he had witnessed the tragedy and been the
unwitting cause of it.

The other man was twisting his cap in
his hands, shifting from one foot to the other, awaiting his dismissal. Lost within
pale lids, his deep-set eyes with their pupils flecked grey like confetti reminded
Maigret so poignantly of the humble, anxious eyes of the traveller from Neuschanz
that within his breast the inspector felt a sharp pang that was very like
remorse.

It was nine o'clock in the evening.
Maigret was at home in Boulevard Richard-Lenoir in his shirt-sleeves, his collar
off, and his wife was sewing when Lucas came in soaked from the downpour outside,
shrugging the rain from his shoulders.

‘The man left town,' he
said. ‘Seeing as I wasn't sure if I was supposed to follow him
abroad …'

‘Liège?'

‘That's it! You already
knew? His luggage was at the Hôtel du Louvre. He had dinner there, changed and took
the 6.19 Liège express. Single ticket, first class. He bought a whole slew of
magazines at the station newsstand.'

‘You'd think he was trying
to get underfoot on purpose!' groused the inspector. ‘In Bremen, when
I've no idea he even exists, he's the one who shows up at the morgue,
invites me to lunch and plain latches on to me. I get back to Paris: he's here
a few hours before or after I arrive … Probably before, because he took a
plane. I go to Rheims; he's already there. An hour ago, I decided to return to
Liège tomorrow – and he'll be there by this evening! And the last straw?
He's well aware that I'm coming and that his presence there almost
amounts to an accusation against him.'

Lucas, who knew nothing about the case,
ventured a suggestion.

‘Maybe he
wants to draw suspicion on himself to protect somebody else?'

‘Are you talking about a
crime?' asked Mme Maigret peaceably, without looking up from her sewing.

But her husband rose with a sigh and
looked back at the armchair in which he'd been so comfortable just a moment
before.

‘How late do the trains run to
Belgium?'

‘Only the night train is left, at
9.30. It arrives in Liège at around 6 a.m.'

‘Would you pack my bag?'
Maigret asked his wife. ‘Lucas, a little something? Help yourself, you know
where everything is in the cabinet. My sister-in-law has just sent us some plum
brandy, and she makes it herself, in Alsace. It's the bottle with the long
neck …'

He dressed, removed clothing B from the
yellow suitcase and placed it, well wrapped, in his travel bag. Half an hour later,
he left with Lucas, and they waited outside for a taxi.

‘What case is this?' Lucas
asked. ‘I haven't heard anything about it around the shop.'

‘I hardly know myself!' the
inspector exclaimed. ‘A very strange fellow died, in a way that makes no
sense, right in front of me – and
that
incident is all tied up in the most
ungodly tangle of events, which I'm attempting to figure out. I'm
charging blindly at it like a wild boar and wouldn't be surprised if I wound
up getting my knuckles rapped … Here's a taxi. Shall I drop you off
somewhere?'

It was eight in the morning when
Maigret left the Hôtel du Chemin de Fer, across from Gare des Guillemins, in
Liège. He'd taken a bath, shaved
and was carrying a package containing not all of clothing B, just the suit
jacket.

He found Rue Haute-Sauvenière, a steep
and busy street, where he asked for directions to Morcel's. In the dim light
of the tailor's shop, a man in shirt-sleeves examined the jacket, turning it
over and over carefully while questioning the inspector.

‘It's old,' he finally
announced, ‘and it's torn. That's about all I can tell
you.'

‘Nothing else comes to
mind?'

‘Not a thing. The collar's
poorly cut. It's imitation English woollen cloth, made in Verviers.'

And then the man became more chatty.

‘You're French? Does this
jacket belong to someone you know?'

With a sigh, Maigret retrieved the suit
jacket as the man nattered on and at last wound up where he ought to have
started.

‘You see, I've only been
here for the past six months. If I'd made the suit in question, it
wouldn't have had time to wear out like that.'

‘And Monsieur Morcel?'

‘In Robermont!'

‘Is that far from here?'

The tailor laughed, tickled by the
misunderstanding.

‘Robermont, that's our
cemetery. Monsieur Morcel died at the beginning of this year, and I took over his
business.'

Back out in the street with his package
under his arm, Maigret headed for Rue Hors-Château, one of the oldest streets in the
city, where, at the far end of a courtyard, he
found a zinc plaque announcing:
Photogravure Centrale
– Jef Lombard – Rapid results for work of all kinds
.

The windows had small panes, in the
style of historic Liège, and in the centre of the courtyard of small, uneven paving
stones was a fountain bearing the sculpted coat of arms of some great lord of long
ago.

The inspector rang. He heard footsteps
coming down from the first floor, and an old woman peeked out from the
ancient-looking door.

‘Just push it open,' she
said, pointing to a glazed door. ‘The workshop's all the way at the end
of the passage.'

A long room, lit by a glass roof; two
men in blue overalls working among zinc plates and tubs full of acids; a floor
strewn with photographic proofs and paper smeared with thick, greasy ink.

The walls were crowded with posters,
advertisements, magazine covers.

‘Monsieur Lombard?'

‘He's in the office, with a
gentleman. Please come this way – and don't get any ink on you! Take a left
turn, then it's the first door.'

The building must have been constructed
piecemeal; stairs went up and down, and doors opened on to abandoned rooms.

The feeling was both antiquated and
weirdly cheerful, like the old woman who'd greeted him downstairs and the
atmosphere in the workroom.

Coming to a shadowy corridor, the
inspector heard voices and thought he recognized that of Joseph Van Damme. He tried
in vain to make out the words, and when he took a few steps closer, the voices
stopped. A man stuck his head out of the half-open door: it was Jef Lombard.

‘Is it for
me?' he called, not recognizing his visitor in the half-light.

The office was smaller than the other
rooms and furnished with two chairs, shelves full of photographic negatives and a
table cluttered with bills, prospectuses and business letters from various
companies.

And perched on a corner of the table was
Van Damme, who nodded vaguely in Maigret's direction and then sat perfectly
still, scowling and staring straight ahead.

Jef Lombard was in his work clothes; his
hands were dirty, and there were tiny blackish flecks on his face.

‘May I help you?'

He cleared papers off a chair, which he
pushed over to his visitor, and then he looked around for the cigarette butt
he'd left balanced on the edge of a wooden shelf now beginning to char.

‘Just some information,'
replied the inspector, without sitting down. ‘I'm sorry to bother you,
but I'd like to know if, a few years ago, you ever knew a certain Jean Lecocq
d'Arneville …'

There was a quick, distinct change. Van
Damme shuddered, but resisted turning towards Maigret, while Lombard bent abruptly
down to pick up a crumpled paper lying on the floor.

‘I … may have heard that
name before,' murmured the photoengraver. ‘He … From Liège,
isn't he?'

The colour had drained from his face. He
moved a pile of plates from one spot to another.

‘I don't know what became of
him. I … It was so long ago …'

‘Jef! Jef, hurry!'

It was a woman's voice, coming
from the labyrinth of
stairs and
corridors, and she arrived at the open door breathless from running, so excited that
her legs were shaky and she had to wipe her face with a corner of her apron. Maigret
recognized the old lady he'd seen downstairs.

‘Jef!'

And he, now even whiter from emotion,
his eyes gleaming, gasped, ‘Well?'

‘A girl! Hurry!'

The man looked around, stammered
something impossible to decipher and dashed out of the door.

Alone with Maigret, Van Damme pulled a
cigar from his pocket, lit it slowly, crushed out the match with his shoe. He wore
the same wooden expression as in Maigret's office: his mouth was set in the
same hard line, and he ground his jaws in the same way.

But the inspector pretended not to
notice him and, hands in his pockets, pipe between his teeth, he began to walk
around the office, examining the walls.

Very little of the original wallpaper
was still visible, however, because any space not taken up by shelves was covered
with drawings, etchings, and paintings that were simply canvases on stretchers
without frames, rather plodding landscapes in which the tree foliage and grass were
of the same even, pasty green.

There were a few caricatures signed
Jef
, some of them touched up with watercolours, some cut from a local
paper.

What struck Maigret, though, was how
many of the drawings were all variations on one particular theme. The drawing paper
had yellowed with age, and a few dates
indicated that these sketches had been done about ten
years earlier.

They were executed in a different style
as well, with a more darkly Romantic sensibility, and seemed like the efforts of a
young art student imitating the work of Gustave Doré.

A first ink drawing showed a hanged man
swinging from a gallows on which perched an enormous crow. And there were at least
twenty other etchings and pen or pencil sketches that had the same leitmotif of
hanging.

On the edge of a forest: a man hanging
from every branch.

A church steeple: beneath the
weathercock, a human body dangling from each arm of the cross.

There were hanged men of all kinds. Some
were dressed in the fashions of the sixteenth century and formed a kind of Court of
Miracles, where everybody was swinging a few feet above the ground.

There was one crazy hanged man in a top
hat and tails, cane in hand, whose gallows was a lamp post.

Below another sketch were written four
lines from François Villon's
Ballad of the Hanged Men
.

There were dates, always from around the
same time, and all these macabre pictures from ten years earlier were now displayed
along with captioned sketches for comic papers, drawings for calendars and almanacs,
landscapes of the surrounding Ardennes and advertising posters.