Inspector Cadaver (16 page)

He looked at nothing and took in everything,
the glass and the bottle of Armagnac, the unnaturally sleek hair of Étienne Naud,
who called out with forced joviality, ‘Had a good night, inspector?'

Presumably he had just combed his hair. He
kept a comb
in his pocket at all times, being particular about his
appearance. But earlier, when he was waiting aimlessly on his own, he had probably been
running his fingers feverishly through it.

Rather than reply, Maigret went to
straighten a frame on the left-hand wall. That wasn't affectation either. He
couldn't bear to see a picture hanging crooked on a wall. It irritated him, and he
had no wish to be irritated by such a trivial thing when he was about to play his
hand.

It was hot. Smells from dinner still hung in
the air, to which the Armagnac added its aroma when the inspector finally poured himself
a glass.

‘There we are,' he sighed.

Naud started with surprise and anxiety. That
‘There we are' sounded like the conclusion to an internal debate.

If he had been at police headquarters, or
simply officially in charge of the case, Maigret would have felt obliged to stack all
the odds in his favour and use traditional methods. Well, in the circumstances the
traditional way would be to make Naud swing wildly between hope and fear, wear him down,
panic him, reduce him to a state of absolute vulnerability.

It would be easy. Let him get tangled in his
lies first. Then hazard some vague allusions to the two telephone calls. And finally,
why not, say point-blank, ‘Your friend Alban's going to be arrested tomorrow
morning …'

But no, there would be none of that this
time. Maigret simply went and leaned against the mantelpiece. The flames of the fire
roasted his legs. Naud was sitting next to him. He probably still felt hopeful.

‘I'll leave
tomorrow at three o'clock as you want me to,' the inspector finally sighed
after taking two or three hurried puffs on his pipe.

He pitied Naud. He felt embarrassed too.
They were more or less the same age. This man's whole life had been orderly,
comfortable and harmonious. Now he was risking everything, threatened with being locked
up within a prison's four walls for the rest of his life.

Was he going to put up a struggle, carry on
lying? Out of compassion, Maigret hoped not, the way you hope an animal that has been
wounded by mistake will have a quick death. He avoided looking at him and stared at the
carpet.

‘Why do you say that, inspector? You
know you're welcome here, and that my family both admires and likes you, as I do
…'

‘I heard your telephone conversation
with your brother-in-law, Monsieur Naud.'

He put himself in the other man's
shoes. It was one of those moments you hoped never to have to remember, so he pressed
on. ‘What's more, you were wrong about me. Your brother-in-law Bréjon
asked me as a favour to come and help you in a delicate matter. Believe me, I realized
right away that he had misunderstood you and that this wasn't the sort of help you
were expecting. You wrote to him for advice in a moment of panic. You told him about the
rumours, without saying, of course, that they were true. And in return, poor, honest,
conscientious, by-the-book fellow that he is, he sent a detective to get you out of a
tight spot.'

Naud struggled to his feet and walked over
to the side
table, where he filled his glass to the brim with
Armagnac. His hand was shaking. His forehead must have been beaded with sweat, but
Maigret couldn't see. Even if he hadn't pitied him, a sort of tact would
still have prevented him from looking at his host at that moment.

‘I would have left the minute I got
here, after our first conversation, if you hadn't employed Justin Cavre, and if
that man's presence hadn't put me on my mettle.'

No denials from Naud, who was fiddling with
his watch chain and staring at the portrait of his mother-in-law.

‘Of course, as I'm not here in
an official capacity, I'm not accountable to anyone. So you have nothing to fear
from me, Monsieur Naud, and I feel all the more comfortable talking to you. The last few
weeks have been a nightmare for you, haven't they? And for your wife, who
I'm sure knows everything …'

Naud wasn't giving in yet. He had got
to the point where it would only need a nod, a flicker of the eyelids, a muttered word
for all the uncertainty to be over. Then he would be at peace. He could let go. Nothing
to hide, no more games to play.

His wife must have been awake upstairs,
listening intently, worried because there had been no sign of the two men turning in for
the night. What about his daughter – had she been able to get to sleep?

‘I'll speak my mind now,
Monsieur Naud, and you'll understand why I didn't leave without saying
anything, which, however strange it may seem to you, I was on the verge of doing. Listen
carefully, take your time; I don't want you to misunderstand me. I have a very
clear sense
– I am all but certain, in fact – that, guilty
though you may be of Albert Retailleau's death, you are also a victim. I would go
further. Your actions may have resulted in his death but you're not really
responsible for it.'

And then it was Maigret's turn to go
and pour himself a drink, to give his companion time to weigh his words. As Naud
remained silent, he finally looked him full in the face, forced him to meet his gaze and
asked, ‘Don't you trust me?'

The result was as painful as it was
unexpected, for Naud's surrender took the form of a fit of weeping. The grown
man's eyes swelled, clouded over, swam with tears. His lips stuck out in a
childish pout. He fought it for a moment, standing uneasily in the middle of the drawing
room, then finally rushed over and leaned against the wall, his head buried in his arms,
his shoulders heaving spasmodically.

There was nothing to do but wait. Twice Naud
tried to speak, but it was too soon, he hadn't regained enough composure. Maigret
had discreetly sat down by the fireplace, and was rearranging the logs with the tongs
rather than poking the fire, as he would usually have done.

‘In a moment,' Maigret said
finally, ‘you can tell me exactly what happened, if you like. Not that
there's any great need, at least as far as the events of that night are concerned;
they're easy to reconstruct. Other sequences of events are a different matter
…'

‘What do you mean?'

Naud was as tall and strong as ever, but he
seemed insubstantial all of a sudden, as if he had been hollowed
out.
He was like one of those children prone to sudden growth spurts who have the height and
build of a grown man when they're only twelve.

‘You never suspected your daughter was
involved with this young man?'

‘I didn't even know him,
inspector! I mean, I knew he existed because I know more or less the whole village, but
I wouldn't have been able to put a name to the face. I still wonder where
Geneviève, who hardly ever went out, could have met him …'

‘You were in bed next to your
wife?'

‘Yes … And you see …
It's ridiculous … We'd had goose for dinner …'

He clung to details of this kind as if, by
giving the truth a veneer of familiarity, they made it less tragic.

‘I like goose, although it's
hard on my digestion. About one in the morning, I got up to take some bicarbonate of
soda. You know the layout of the house pretty much. After my bedroom comes my dressing
room, then a guest bedroom, then a room we never go into because …'

‘I know … In remembrance of a
child …'

‘Finally there's my
daughter's room, which as a result is off on its own. Both the maids, you see,
sleep on the floor above … So, I was in my dressing room. I was groping about in
the dark because I didn't want to wake my wife, who would have told me off for
being greedy. I heard a hum of voices. People were arguing in the house. I didn't
think for a moment that the noise could be coming from my daughter's room …

‘But once I was in the passage, I had
to face facts. Besides,
there was a light under her door. I recognized
a man's voice …

‘I don't know what you would
have done in my place, inspector. I don't know if you have a daughter. We're
still quite old-fashioned here in Saint-Aubin. Perhaps I'm especially naive.
Geneviève is twenty. Well, it had never occurred to me that she could hide anything
from her mother and me! As for thinking that a man … No! You see, even now
…'

He rubbed his eyes and mechanically took a
pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

‘I almost rushed in in my nightshirt.
I'm old-fashioned that way too and I still wear nightshirts rather than pyjamas.
At the last minute I realized how ridiculous I looked, went back into my dressing room
and got dressed, still without turning on the light … As I was putting on my
socks, another sound struck me, outside this time. The dressing-room shutters
weren't closed; I pulled back the curtain. There was a moon, and I could see the
figure of a man climbing down from my daughter's room into the yard on a ladder
…

‘I put on my shoes, God knows how
… I rushed down the stairs … I wasn't sure, but I thought I heard my
wife's voice calling, “Étienne …”

‘Have you ever been curious enough to
look at the key to the door to the yard? It's an old key, huge, a real hammer
… I couldn't swear to you that I picked it up by accident, and yet it
wasn't premeditated either, because I hadn't planned to kill him and, if
you'd told me at that moment …'

His voice was low but
shaking. To calm himself, he lit a cigarette and took several long drags like a
condemned man.

‘The man went round the house and
climbed the low wall by the lane. I followed him, without it occurring to me to muffle
the sound of my steps. He must have heard me and yet he walked on unhurriedly. When I
wasn't far away, he turned and, without seeing his face, I felt, I don't
know why, that he was taunting me.

‘“What do you want from
me?” he asked in an aggressive, contemptuous voice.

‘I swear, inspector, there are moments
in your life you wish you've never lived through. I recognized him. As far as I
was concerned, he was just a boy. But that boy had come out of my daughter's
bedroom and was goading me. I didn't know what to do. Things like that don't
happen the way you imagine. I shook him by the shoulders without finding the words to
say what I wanted, and he shouted in my face:

‘“You hate it that I'm
breaking it off with your bitch of a daughter! … You were all in on it,
weren't you?”'

He ran his hand over his face.

‘I don't know, inspector. With
the best will in the world I couldn't tell you exactly what happened. He was as
furious as I was, but he was more in control. He was the one insulting me, insulting my
daughter … Instead of falling on his knees at my feet, as I'd perhaps
stupidly imagined he would, he mocked me, my wife, this house. He said things like,
“Oh yes, such a lovely family!”

‘He used the foulest language about my
daughter, words I can't repeat, and then I don't know what happened, I
started hitting him. I had the key in my hand. The boy's
reaction caught me by surprise. He headbutted me in the stomach and the pain was so bad
that I started to hit harder … He fell …

‘I ran off at first, tried to go home
… I swear that all this is the truth … I thought I'd call the Benet
gendarmerie. As I got near the house I saw a light in my daughter's room. I
thought if I told the truth. You can understand, though. I retraced my steps … He
was dead …'

‘You carried him on to the train
track,' said Maigret, to help him and to get this depressing explanation over with
more quickly.

‘Yes …'

‘By yourself?'

‘Yes …'

‘And when you got back?'

‘My wife was standing by the front
door. She whispered, “What have you done?”

‘I tried to deny it, but she'd
realized. She looked at me with a mixture of terror and pity. I was in a sort of
feverish state, so while I got into bed, she sat in the dressing room, checking my
clothes one by one to make sure that …'

‘I understand.'

‘You may not believe it, but since
then neither my wife nor I have had the strength to talk to our daughter about this. Not
a single word has passed between us on the subject. Not one allusion. That might be the
most terrible thing of all. Sometimes it's unbelievable. Life goes on in this
house just as it always has, but the three of us know …'

‘And Alban?'

‘I can't
explain … I didn't think about him at first. Then, the following day I was
surprised not to see him come through the door as we sat down to eat. I started talking
about him, just to have something to say. I said: “I must call Alban.” I
did, and his maid said he wasn't home. But I was sure I heard his voice in the
background when she picked up the telephone …

‘It became an obsession for me. Why
hasn't Alban come to see us? Does Alban suspect anything? It's stupid to
admit, but I got to the point of thinking Alban was the only danger, and four days
later, when he still hadn't set foot in the house, I went to see him.

‘I wanted to know the reason for his
silence. I hadn't intended to talk but I ended up telling him everything. I needed
him. You'd understand if you were in my position. He told me what people in town
were saying. He described the funeral …

‘I heard people were beginning to
suspect me, and then another idea started going round my brain and I couldn't stop
it: I should atone for what I'd done … Don't smile, I beg you
…'