Maigret: The Shadow in the Courtyard (1987) (7 page)

“And what about the theatre? Have they signed you on?”

“I’m to go round there tonight…One of the girls has hurt herself…If she’s not better I shall take her place, and perhaps they’ll take me on permanently…”

She lowered her voice to add:

“I’ve got the hundred francs…Give me your hand…”

And her gesture was deeply revealing, psychologically. She did not want to offer Maigret the hundred francs in public. She was afraid of embarrassing him. So she held the note, folded very small, in the palm of her hand. She slipped it to him as if to a gigolo.

“Thank you very much. You’ve been kind…”

She was evidently depressed. She was looking round her without taking the slightest interest in the sight of people coming and going. With the ghost of a smile, however, she remarked:

“The head waiter is looking at us…He’s wondering why I’m with you…He must think I’ve already found a successor to Raymond…You’re going to be compromised.”

“Will you have a drink?”

“No thanks.” she said tactfully. “If you should happen to want me…At the
Moulin Bleu
I’m called Elyane…You know the stage door in the rue Fontaine?”

It was not too much of an ordeal. Maigret rang the doorbell of the flat in the Boulevard Haussmann a little before dinner time. The heavy scent of chrysanthemums greeted him in the entrance hall. The maid who opened the door walked on tiptoe.

She thought the Inspector merely wanted to leave his card, and she led him without a word to the mortuary chamber, all hung with black. By the entrance stood a silver tray full of visiting cards.

The body was already in the coffin, which was piled high with flowers.

In one corner was a tall, elegant young man dressed in mourning, who greeted Maigret with a slight nod.

Opposite him a woman of about fifty was kneeling, coarse-featured, dressed like a peasant in her Sunday best.

The Inspector went up to the young man.

“Might I see Madame Couchet?”

“I’ll ask my sister if she can see you…Your name is? ”

“Maigret. The Inspector in charge of the investigation…”

The country-woman stayed where she was. A few minutes later the young man returned and piloted his guest through the apartment.

Apart from the scent of flowers that prevailed everywhere, there was nothing unusual about the appearance of the rooms. It was a handsome late-nineteenth-century apartment, like most of those along the Boulevard Haussmann. Spacious rooms. Ceilings and doors somewhat over-ornate.

And period furniture. In the drawing-room, a monumental glass chandelier tinkled whenever one walked.

Mme Couchet was there, with three people whom she introduced. First of all the young man in mourning:

“My brother, Henry Dormoy, barrister-at-law…”

Then an elderly gentleman:

“Colonel Dormoy, my uncle…”

Finally a lady with fine silvery hair:

“My mother…”

And they all looked most elegant in their mourning clothes. The tea-table had not yet been cleared, and there were the remains of toast and cakes.

“If you’ll kindly sit down…”

“One question, if I may. The lady who is in the mortuary chamber…”

“My husband’s sister,” said Madame Couchet. “She arrived this morning from Saint-Amand…”

Maigret did not smile. But he understood. He was well aware that they were not particularly anxious for members of the Couchet family to turn up looking like peasants or
petits-bourgeois
.

There were the husband’s relatives and there were the Dormoy relatives.

The Dormoy relatives were all tact and elegance. Everyone was already wearing black.

So far the Couchet relatives were only represented by that homely matron, whose silk bodice was too tight under the arms.

“Might I have a few words with you in private, madame?”

She apologized to her relatives, who were offering to leave the room.

“Please stay here…We can go into the yellow boudoir…”

She had been weeping, quite unmistakably. Then she had powdered her face and one could make out only a slight redness of the eyelids. Her voice was faint with genuine weariness.

“Have you had an unexpected visitor today?”

She raised her head somewhat crossly.

“How did you know? Yes, early this afternoon my stepson came…”

“Did you already know him?”

“Very slightly…He used to see my husband at his office…Once, though, at the theatre, we met him and Raymond introduced us to one another…”

“What was the purpose of his visit?”

She turned her head aside in some embarrassment.

“He wanted to know if a will had been found…He also asked the name of my lawyer, so as to approach him about formalities…”

She sighed, trying to apologize for all these trivialities.

“He’s within his rights. I suppose he’s entitled to half the fortune, and I’ve no intention of trying to deprive him…”

“May I ask you a few indiscreet questions? When you married Couchet, was he already a wealthy man?”

“Yes…Less so than at present, but he was beginning to get on…”

“A love match?”

A veiled smile.

“You might call it that…We met at Dinard…After three weeks, he asked me if I would consent to be his wife…My parents made inquiries…”

“Were you happy?”

He was looking her in the eyes, and he had no need of an answer. He chose rather to murmur himself:

“There was quite a difference in your ages…Couchet had his business…In short, there was no great intimacy between you…Wasn’t that so? You kept house for him…You led your own life and he led his…”

“I never blamed him for it.” she said. “He was a man of tremendous vitality who needed an eventful life…I never tried to hold him back…”

“You weren’t jealous?”

“To begin with…Then I got used to it…I think he was very fond of me…”

She was rather pretty, but in a lifeless, colourless way, with somewhat indeterminate features, a soft body, dressed with sober elegance: she must have been a gracious hostess, dispensing tea to her friends in the warm, comfortable drawing-room.

“Did your husband often talk to you about his first wife?”

Then her eyes hardened. She tried to conceal her anger, but she realized that Maigret was not taken in.

“It’s hardly my business to…” she began.

“I am sorry. Given the circumstances of his death, there can be no question of delicacy…”

“You don’t suspect? ”

“I suspect nobody. I am trying to reconstruct your husband’s life, his circle of acquaintance, his actions during that last evening. Did you know that this woman lives in the very building where Couchet had his office?”

“Yes. He told me…”

“How did he speak of her?”

“He had a grudge against her…Then he would feel ashamed of this feeling and declare that she was really an unhappy creature…”

“Why unhappy?”

“Because nothing could satisfy her…And also…”

“And also? ”

“You can guess what I’m trying to say…She’s a very selfish woman…In short, she left Raymond because he wasn’t making enough money…Then, to meet him again, a rich man…while she herself was the wife of a petty official…”

“She didn’t try to…”

“No. I don’t think she ever asked him for money. It’s true that my husband would never have told me. All I know is that it was agony for him to meet her in the Place des Vosges. I think she used to contrive to run across him. She would never speak at him, but she’d look at him contemptuously…”

The Inspector could not help smiling as he imagined these meetings, under the archway: Couchet getting out of his car, fresh and rosy, and Madame Martin stiff, with her black gloves, her umbrella, and her handbag, her spiteful face…

“That’s all you know?”

“He would have liked to change his premises, but it’s difficult to find laboratories in Paris…”

“You don’t know, of course, if your husband had any enemies?”

“He had none. Everybody loved him. He was too kind, ridiculously kind…He didn’t merely spend money, he threw it away…And when he was reproached for it he would say that having counted his pennies for years he’d earned the right to be extravagant…”

“Did he see much of your family?”

“Very little…They hadn’t the same mentality, you see…nor the same tastes…”

Indeed, Maigret found it hard to imagine Couchet in the drawing-room with the young lawyer, the colonel, and the dignified mama.

It was all easy to understand.

A full-blooded, powerful, vulgar fellow, risen from nothing, who had spent thirty years of his life trying to make his fortune, and having a rough time…

He’d grown rich. At last at Dinard he’d gained access to a world into which he had never been admitted. A real
jeune fille
, a young lady…a bourgeois family…

Tea and
petits fours
, tennis parties and picnics…

He got married. To prove to himself that from now on nothing was beyond his reach. To have a home like those he had seen only from outside.

He got married because he was, furthermore, impressed by this virtuous and well-brought-up young lady…

And then came the flat in the Boulevard Haussmann, with all the traditional trimmings…

Only he felt the need to bestir himself elsewhere, to see different people, to talk to them without self-consciousness…in brasseries, in bars…

And other women, too.

He was very fond of his wife. He admired her, he respected her, he was in awe of her.

But just because he was in awe of her he needed a common girl like Nine to relax with.

Madame Couchet had a question on the tip of her tongue. She seemed reluctant to ask it. Nevertheless she forced herself to, looking away as she spoke.

“I’d like to ask you if…It’s rather delicate…Excuse me…He had women friends, I know…He scarcely made any secret of it, and that only out of delicacy…I must know if there’s likely to be any trouble in that direction, any scandal…”

She obviously imagined her husband’s mistresses as novelettish tarts or film vamps.

“You’ve nothing to be afraid of.” smiled Maigret, remembering little Nine, with her piquant features and the handful of jewels she had taken that very afternoon to the municipal pawn-office.

“It won’t be necessary to…?”

“No. No compensation.”

She was quite amazed at this. Perhaps a trifle hurt, for surely if these women demanded nothing, they must have had a certain fondness for her husband, and he for them…

“Have you fixed the date of the funeral?”

“My brother has seen to that…It’s to be on Thursday, at St Philippe-du-Roule…”

There was a clatter of plates in the dining-room next door. Presumably the table was being laid for dinner.

“It only remains now for me to thank you and take my leave, with renewed apologies…”

And as he walked down the Boulevard Haussmann he caught himself muttering, while he filled his pipe:

“You old rascal, Couchet.”

The words had sprung to his lips as if Couchet had been an old friend. And he felt this impression so strongly that he could not realize he had only seen him dead.

He felt he knew Couchet from every possible angle.

Perhaps because of the three women?

The first wife, to begin with, the confectioner’s daughter in the Nanterre lodgings, in despair at the thought that her husband would never have a respectable job.

Then the young lady from Dinard, and the flattering experience for a man like Couchet of becoming nephew to a Colonel…

Nine…The meetings at the Select…The Hôtel Pigalle…

And the son coming to sponge on him. And Madame Martin contriving to run across him in the entrance-way, hoping perhaps to torture him with remorse…

A queer end to things. All alone, in that office to which he came as seldom as he could. Leaning against the half-open safe, with his hands on the table…

Nobody had noticed anything…As she passed through the courtyard, the concierge had seen him still in the same place behind the frosted window…But she had been chiefly concerned about Madame de Saint-Marc, who was having her baby.

The madwoman had called out, upstairs. In other words, old Mathilde, in her felt slippers, was hiding behind one of the doors in the passage…

Monsieur Martin, in his buff-coloured overcoat, had gone down to hunt for his glove among the dustbins.

One thing was certain: somebody, now, was in possession of the three hundred and sixty thousand stolen francs.

And somebody had committed a murder.

“All men are selfish.” sad-faced Madame Martin had commented bitterly.

Was it she who had the three hundred and sixty brand-new notes handed out by the Crédit Lyonnais? She who at last had money in her possession, plenty of money, a whole bundle of big notes representing years of comfort, free from worry about the morrow or about what pension she would get at Martin’s death?

Was it Roger, with his limp body, sapped by ether, and that Céline he had picked up to get stupefied together in a stuffy hotel bedroom?

Was it Nine, or Madame Couchet?

In any case, there was one spot from which it was possible to have seen everything: the Martins’ flat.

And there was a certain woman who prowled about the house, gluing her ear to every door, creeping in slippered feet along the passages.

“I shall have to pay a call on old Mathilde.” Maigret said to himself.

But, next morning, when he reached the Place des Vosges, the concierge, who was sorting the mail (a great pile for the Serum laboratory and a mere handful of letters for the other tenants), stopped him.

“Are you going up to the Martins? I don’t know if you’d better…Madame Martin was taken horribly ill last night…They had to send for the doctor…Her husband’s nearly out of his mind…”

The employees were crossing the courtyard, going to start their work in the laboratories and offices. The manservant was shaking carpets out of a first-floor window.

There was the sound of a baby wailing and a monotonous lullaby chanted by a nurse.

A Raging Temperature

“H
ush…She’s fallen asleep…Come in all the same…”