Maigret: The Shadow in the Courtyard (1987) (13 page)

“French? Your identity card, then…”

That took a few moments. His fingers fumbled in his wallet.

“Here, monsieur.”

“Right. Edgar Emile Martin…That’s it…Follow me…”

“Where? ”

“You can bring your cases…”

“But…the train…”

The Belgian couple were staring at him now in alarm, thrilled none the less at having travelled with a malefactor. Monsieur Martin, his eyes starting out of his head, climbed on to the seat to take down his cases again.

“I swear to you…Whatever…?”

“Hurry up…The train’s about to leave…”

And the young man in the grey hat trundled the heaviest of the cases on to the platform. It was pitch black. Under the lamplight people were hurrying back from the refreshment room. The whistle blew. A woman was arguing with the customs officials, who prevented her from leaving.

“We’ll see about that tomorrow morning…”

And Monsieur Martin followed the young man, labouring under the weight of his luggage. He had never imagined such a long platform. It was like an endless, deserted racecourse, with a row of mysterious doors alongside it.

Finally the young man pushed open the last door.

“Come in.”

It was dark. Nothing but a lamp with a green shade, hanging so low over the table that it only shone on a few papers. Something was stirring, however, in the depths of the room.

“Good evening, Monsieur Martin…” said a friendly voice.

And an enormous figure emerged from the shadows: Inspector Maigret, huddled in his heavy velvet-collared overcoat, his hands in his pockets.

“Don’t bother to put them down. We’re going to take the train to Paris, which is just coming in on Platform Three…”

This time there was no doubt about it: Martin was weeping silently, his hands immobilized by his beautifully-arranged suitcases.

The detective who had been stationed at 61 Place des Vosges had telephoned Maigret a few hours previously:

“Our man’s on the run…He took a taxi and asked to be driven to the Gare du Nord…”

“Let him run…Keep watching the woman…”

And Maigret had taken the same train as Martin. He had travelled in the next compartment, with two N.C.O.s who had told ribald stories the whole way.

From time to time, the Inspector had put his eye to the little peephole between the two compartments, and caught sight of Martin looking gloomy.

Jeumont…Identity cards…The Special Inspector’s office.

Now they were both travelling back to Paris in a reserved compartment. Martin was not handcuffed. His suitcases were on the rack above his head, and one of them, precariously balanced, looked like tumbling down on him.

At Maubeuge, Maigret had not yet asked him a single question.

It was uncanny. He was wedged in his corner with his pipe between his teeth. He never stopped smoking, watching his companion with little twinkling eyes.

A dozen times, a score of times Martin had opened his mouth without bringing himself to speak. A dozen times, a score of times the Inspector had taken no notice.

It happened at last, however; a voice beyond description, which Madame Martin herself would probably not have recognized.

“It was…”

And Maigret still uttered no word. His eyes seemed to be saying: Really?

“I…I was hoping to cross the frontier…”

There is a certain way of smoking that is exasperating to whoever watches the smoker: at every puff the lips part voluptuously with a tiny
poc
. And the smoke, instead of flying forward, escapes slowly, forming a cloud round the face.

Maigret was smoking like that, and his head was swaying from right to left, from left to right, to the rhythm of the train.

Martin was leaning forward, his gloved hands painfully tense and his eyes feverish.

“D’you think it’ll be a long business? It won’t, will it? since I’m confessing…For I confess everything…”

How did he manage not to break into sobs? Every nerve must have been strained. And from time to time his eyes wore an imploring look, saying clearly to Maigret: “Please help me. You see I’m at the end of my tether…”

But the Inspector did not budge. He was as placid, with the same interested but dispassionate look, as if he had been in a zoo, in front of the cage of some exotic animal.

“Couchet caught me…so then…”

And Maigret sighed. A sigh that meant nothing, or rather that could be interpreted in a hundred different ways.

Saint-Quentin. Footsteps in the corridor. A stout traveller tried to open the door of the compartment, discovered that it was fastened, stopped for a moment looking in with his nose pressed against the window, and at last resigned himself to looking for a seat elsewhere.

“As I’m confessing everything, surely? It’s not worth trying to deny…”

He might just as well have been speaking to a deaf man, or to someone who did not know a word of French. Maigret was filling his pipe, prodding it meticulously with his forefinger.

“Have you any matches?”

“No…I don’t smoke…You know I don’t…It’s because my wife doesn’t like the smell of tobacco…I’d like it to be over quickly, d’you understand? I shall say so to the lawyer I shall have to choose…No complications…I’ll confess everything…I read in the paper that they’ve found some of the notes…I don’t know why I did that…Knowing I’d got them in my pocket, I felt as if everybody in the street was staring at me…At first I thought of hiding them somewhere…But what for? I walked along the embankment…There were some barges…I was afraid of being seen by a boatman… Then I crossed the Pont-Marie and on the Île Saint-Louis I was able to get rid of the bundle…”

The compartment was very hot. Steam was trickling down the panes. Tobacco smoke was wreathing round the lamp.

“I should have confessed it all the first time I saw you…I hadn’t the courage…I was hoping that…”

Martin fell silent, and stared in surprise at his companion, whose mouth had fallen open and whose eyes were closed. His breathing was as regular as the purring of a big, satisfied cat.

Maigret was asleep.

The other man cast a glance towards the door, which only needed pushing. And as if to avoid the temptation, he huddled in a corner, his thighs pressed tightly together, his two frantic hands on his bony knees.

The Gare du Nord. A grey morning. And the crowd of suburban travellers, still only half awake, trooping out through the gates.

The train had stopped a long way from the main hall. The cases were heavy. Martin was unwilling to stop. He was breathless and both his arms were aching.

They had to wait a longish time for a taxi.

“Are you taking me to jail?”

They had spent five hours in the train and Maigret had not spoken more than a dozen sentences. And even those were sentences that had nothing to do with the crime, nor with the three hundred and sixty thousand francs. He had talked about his pipe, or the heat, or the time the train was due in.

“61 Place des Vosges.” he said to the taxi driver.

Martin begged him:

“Do you think it’s necessary to…”

And to himself:

“What must they be thinking at the office? I hadn’t time to let them know…”

In her lodge, the concierge was sorting the mail: a great pile of letters for the Serum laboratory, a tiny pile for the rest of the house.

“Monsieur Martin. Monsieur Martin…They called round from the Wills and Probate to find out if you were ill…It seems you’ve got the key of…”

Maigret hurried his companion forward. And the latter had to drag his heavy cases up the stairs, where milk bottles and loaves of bread were standing in front of the doors.

Old Mathilde’s door was seen to move.

“Give me the key.”

“But…”

“Open it yourself.”

A deep silence. The click of the lock. Then the orderly dining-room was seen, with everything in its proper place.

Martin hesitated for a long time before saying, in a loud voice:

“It’s me…And the Inspector…”

Somebody stirred in bed in the next room. As he closed the door behind him, Martin moaned:

“We shouldn’t have…She’s not involved in this, is she? And in her condition…”

He dared not go in to the bedroom. To keep himself in countenance he picked up his suitcases and laid them on two chairs.

“Shall I make some coffee?”

Maigret was knocking at the bedroom door.

“May I come in?”

No answer. He pushed open the door, and Madame Martin’s stare met him full in the face, as she lay there motionless, with her hair in pins.

“Excuse me for disturbing you…I’ve brought back your husband, who made the mistake of panicking…”

Martin was behind him. He could feel him there, but not see him.

Footsteps rang out in the courtyard, and voices, particularly women’s voices: the office and laboratory staff were arriving. It was one minute to nine.

A stifled cry from the madwoman next door. Bottles of medicine on the bedside table.

“Are you feeling worse?”

He knew she would not answer, that she would keep up the same tense, guarded attitude in spite of everything.

It seemed as if she was afraid of a word, of a single word. As if one word might have let loose disasters.

She had grown thinner. Her complexion was more ashen. But the eyes, those strange grey eyes, still retained their own burning, self-willed vitality.

Martin came in, weak-kneed. His whole attitude seemed apologetic, begging for forgiveness.

The grey eyes turned slowly towards him, with a look so hard and frozen that he averted his head, muttering:

“It was at Jeumont station…One minute more and I’d have been in Belgium…”

Words were needed, sentences, noise, to fill the emptiness that could be felt surrounding each person. An emptiness which was so palpable that their voices seemed to echo as if in a tunnel or a cave.

But nobody talked. They uttered a few syllables, painfully, with anxious glances, then silence fell again, implacable as a fog.

Something was happening, none the less. Something slow and stealthy: a hand was creeping out from under the covers and moving imperceptibly towards the pillow.

The thin, damp hand of Madame Martin. Maigret, although looking the other way, was watching its progress, waiting for the moment when that hand would finally reach its goal.

“Isn’t the doctor coming this morning?”

“I don’t know…Is anybody looking after me? I’m here like an animal left to die…”

But her eyes brightened as her hand at last touched the object she was seeking.

A barely perceptible rustle of paper.

Maigret took one step forward, seized Madame Martin by the wrist. She seemed to be devoid of strength, almost devoid of life. None the less within the space of one second she gave proof of incredible energy.

What she held, she had no intention of relinquishing. Sitting up in bed, she defended herself furiously. She raised her hand to her mouth. With her teeth, she tore the white sheet of paper she was clutching.

“Let go of me…Let go or I’ll scream…And
you
just stand by and watch him…”

“Please, Inspector…I implore you…” Martin was moaning.

He was listening anxiously. He was afraid of all the other tenants rushing in. He dared not intervene.

“You brute…You foul brute…Striking a woman.”

No, Maigret did not strike her. He merely grasped her hand, gripping the wrist rather tightly maybe, to prevent her from destroying the paper.

“Aren’t you ashamed? A woman at death’s door…”

A woman who was displaying energy the like of which Maigret had rarely encountered during the whole of his career in the police. His bowler hat fell on the bed. She suddenly bit him on the wrist.

But with her nerves so strained she could not last out much longer, and he managed to part her fingers, while she uttered a moan of pain.

Now she was weeping. She was weeping without tears, from resentment, from rage, perhaps also for the sake of striking an attitude?

“And
you
let him do it…”

Maigret’s back was too broad for the narrow room. It seemed to fill up the whole space, to shut out the light.

He went to the fireplace, unfolded the sheet of paper, the ends of which were torn off, and ran his eyes over a typewritten document surmounted by the heading:

Maîtres Laval and Piollet
,

Consultant Solicitors
,

Paris

On the right, in red letters:

Couchet ⁄ Martin Case
.

Consultation of 16 November
.

Two pages of dense typescript, single-spaced. Maigret read only scraps of it, half aloud, and the rattle of typewriters could be heard from the offices of the Serum laboratory.

In view of the law of…

Given the fact that the death of Roger Couchet was subsequent to that of his father
…

…
that no will can deprive a legitimate son of the share to which he is entitled
…

…
that in the case of the second marriage of the testator, to Madame Couchet née Dormoy, all goods were held in common
…

…
that the natural heir of Roger Couchet is his mother
…

…
have the honour to inform you that you are entitled to claim one half of the fortune left by Raymond Couchet, his goods and chattels and his real estate…which, according to our private information we estimate, subject to error, at about five million francs, the value of the firm known as Dr Rivière’s Serums being reckoned in this estimate as three million
…

…
We are entirely at your disposal for any steps required for the annulment of the will and
…

…
We confirm our statement that we shall retain a commission of ten per cent for expenses on the sums thus recovered
…

Madame Martin had stopped crying. She was lying down again, and her cold gaze fixed once more on the ceiling.

Martin was standing in the doorway, more distracted than ever, not knowing what to do with his hands, with his eyes, with his whole body.