The Carter of ’La Providence’ (15 page)

‘Five years later, a new governor undertook what he called the “rehabilitation” of Darchambaux. But almost immediately he noted in the margin of his report that there was nothing about the man he had interviewed to connect him
with the professional man he once had been nor even to a man with a certain level of education.

‘Right! Has that got your attention?

‘He was given a job as an orderly at Saint-Laurent but he applied to be sent back to the colony.

‘He was quiet, stubborn and spoke little. One of the medical staff took an interest in his case. He examined him from a mental health point of view but was unable to come up with a diagnosis.

‘“There is,” he wrote, underlining the words in red ink, “a kind of progressive loss of intellectual function proceeding in parallel with a hypertrophy of physical
capacity.”

‘Darchambaux stole twice. Both times he stole food. On the second occasion he stole from another prisoner on the chain gang, who stabbed him in the chest with a sharpened flint.

‘Journalists passing through advised him to apply for a pardon, but he never did,

‘When his fifteen years were up, he stayed in the place to which he had been transported and found a manual job in a saw mill, where he looked after the horses.

‘He was forty-five and had done his time. Thereafter, there is no trace of him.'

‘Is that everything?'

‘I can send you the file. I've only given you a summary.'

‘Anything on his wife? You said she was born at Étampes, didn't you? Anyway, thanks for all that, Benoît. No need to send the details. What you've told me is enough.'

When, followed by Lucas, he stepped out of the phone box, he was perspiring profusely.

‘I want you to phone the town hall at Étampes. If Céline Mornet is dead, you'll know, or at least you will if she died under that name. Also check with Moulins if Marie Dupin had any family living at Étampes.'

He walked through the town, looking neither to left nor right, hands deep in his pockets. He had to wait for five minutes at the canal because the lift-bridge was up, and a heavily laden barge was barely moving, its flat hull
scouring the mud on the canal bed which rose to the surface in a mass of bubbles.

When he reached the
Providence
, he had a word with the uniformed man he had posted on the towpath.

‘You can stand down …'

He saw the colonel pacing up and down on the deck of his yacht.

The skipper's wife hurried towards him looking more agitated than she had been earlier that morning. There were damp streaks on her cheeks.

‘Oh, inspector, it's terrible!'

Maigret went pale, and his face turned grim.

‘Is he dead?' he asked.

‘No! Don't say such things! Just now I was with him, by myself. Because I should explain that though he liked my husband, he liked me better.

‘I'm a lot younger than him. But despite that, he thought of me sort of as a mother.

‘We'd go weeks without speaking. All the same … I'll give you an example. Most of the time my husband forgets my birthday, Saint Hortense's Day. Well, for the last eight years, Jean never went once without giving
me flowers. Sometimes, we'd be travelling through the middle of open fields, and I'd wonder where he'd managed to get hold of flowers there.

‘And on those days he'd always put rosettes on the horses' blinkers.

‘Anyhow, I was sat by him, thinking it was probably his last hours. My husband wanted to let the horses out. They're not used to being cooped up for so long.

‘I said no. Because I was sure it meant a lot to Jean to have them there too.

‘I held his big hand.'

She was weeping now. But not sobbing. She went on talking through the large tears which rolled down her mottled cheeks.

‘I don't know how things came to be like that … I never had children myself. Though we'd always said we'd adopt when we reached the legal age.

‘I told him it was nothing, that he'd get better, that we'd try to get a load for Alsace, where the countryside's a picture in summer.

‘I felt his fingers squeezing mine. I couldn't tell him he was hurting me.

‘It was then he started to talk.

‘Can you understand it? A man like that who only yesterday was as strong as his horses. He opened his mouth, straining so much that the veins on the sides of his head went all purple and swelled up.

‘I heard this growly sound, like an animal's cry it was.

‘I told him to stay quiet. But he wouldn't listen. He sat up on the straw, how I'll never know. And he still kept opening his mouth.

‘Blood came out of it and dribbled down his chin.

‘I wanted to call my husband, but Jean was still holding me tight. He was frightening me.

‘You can't imagine what it was like. I tried to understand. I asked: “You want something to drink? No? Want me to fetch somebody?”

‘He was so frustrated that he couldn't say anything! I
should have guessed what he meant. I did try.

‘What do you reckon? What was he trying to ask me? And then it was as if something in his throat had burst, though it's no good asking me what. But he had a haemorrhage. In the end he lay down again, his mouth closed now, and on his
broken arm too. It must have hurt like the very devil, but you wouldn't have thought he could feel anything.

‘He just stared straight in front of him.

‘I'd give anything to know what would make him happy before … before it's too late.'

Maigret walked to the stable in silence. He looked in through the open panel.

It was a sight as arresting, as unforgiving as watching the death of an animal with which there is no means of communicating.

The carter had curled up. He had partly torn away the strapping which the night doctor had placed around his torso.

Maigret could hear the faint, infrequent whispers of his breathing.

One of the horses had caught a hoof in its tether, but it stood absolutely still, as if it sensed that something grave was happening.

Maigret also hesitated. He thought of the dead woman buried under the straw of the stable at Dizy, then of Willy's corpse floating in the canal and the men, in the cold of early morning, trying to haul him in with a boat hook.

One hand played with the Yacht Club de France badge in his pocket.

He also recalled the way the colonel had bowed to the examining magistrate and requested permission to go on his way in a toneless, cool voice.

In the mortuary at Épernay, in an icy room lined with metal drawers, like the vaults of a bank, two bodies lay waiting, each in a numbered box.

And in Paris, two young women with badly applied make-up wandered from bar to bar, dogged by their gnawing fears.

Then Lucas appeared.

‘Well?' cried Maigret, when he was still some way off.

‘There has been no sign of life from Céline Mornet at Étampes since the day she requested the papers she needed for her marriage to Darchambaux.'

The inspector gave Lucas an odd look.

‘What's up?' said Lucas.

‘Sh!'

Lucas looked all round him. He saw no one, nothing that might give cause for alarm.

Then Maigret led him to the open stable hatch and pointed to the prone figure on the straw.

The skipper's wife wondered what they were going to do. From a motorized vessel chugging past, a cheerful voice shouted:

‘Everything all right? Broken down?'

She started crying again, though she couldn't have said why. Her husband clambered back on board, carrying the tar bucket in one hand and a brush in the other, and called from the stern:

‘There's something burning on the stove!'

She went back to the galley in a daze. Maigret said to Lucas, almost reluctantly:

‘Let's go in.'

One of the horses snickered quietly. The carter did not move.

The inspector had taken the photo of the dead woman from his wallet, but he did not look at it.

‘Listen, Darchambaux.'

Maigret was standing over the carter of the
Providence
when he spoke the words, his eyes never leaving the man's face. His mind elsewhere, he had taken his pipe out of his pocket but made no attempt to fill it.

Had he got the reaction he had expected? Whether it was or not, he sat down heavily on the bench fixed to the stable wall, leaned forward, cupped his chin in both hands and went on in a different voice.

‘Listen. No need to get upset. I know you can't talk.'

A shadow appearing unexpectedly on the straw made him look up. He saw the colonel standing on the deck of the barge, by the open hatch.

The Englishman did not move. He went on watching what was happening from above, his feet higher than the heads of all three men below.

Lucas stood to one side in so far as he could, given the restricted size of the stable. Maigret, more on edge now, went on:

‘Nobody's going to take you away from here. Have you got that, Darchambaux? In a few moments, I shall leave. Madame Hortense will be here instead.'

It was a painful moment, though no one could have said
exactly why. Without intending to, Maigret was speaking almost as gently as the skipper's wife.

‘But first you have to answer a few questions. You can answer by blinking. Several people might be charged and arrested at any time now. That's not what you want, is it? So I need you to confirm the facts.'

While he spoke, the inspector did not take his eyes off the man, wondering who it was he had before him, the erstwhile doctor, the dour convict, the slow-witted carter or the brutal murderer of Mary Lampson.

The cast of face was rough, and the features coarse. But wasn't there a new expression in those eyes which excluded any hint of irony?

A look of infinite sadness.

Twice Jean tried to speak. And twice there was a sound like an animal moan and beads of pink saliva appeared on the dying man's lips.

Maigret could still see the shadow of the colonel's legs.

‘When you were sent out to the penal settlement, all that time ago, you believed your wife would keep her promise and follow you there … It was her you killed at Dizy!'

Not a flicker! Nothing! The face acquired a greyish tinge.

‘She didn't come … and you lost heart. You tried to forget everything, even who and what you were!'

Maigret was speaking more quickly now, driven by his impatience. He wanted it to be over. And above all he was afraid of seeing Jean slip away from him before this sickening interview was finished.

‘You came across her by chance. By then you had become someone else. It happened at Meaux. Didn't it?'

He had to wait a good few moments before the carter, unresisting now, said yes by closing his eyes.

The shadow of the legs shifted. The whole barge rocked gently as a motor vessel passed by.

‘And she hadn't changed, had she? Pretty, a flirt, liked a good time! They were dancing on the deck of the yacht. At first you didn't think about killing her. Otherwise, you wouldn't have needed to move her to
Dizy.'

Was it certain the dying man could still hear? Since he was lying on his back, he must surely be able to see the colonel just above his head? But there was no expression in his eyes. Or at least nothing anyone could make sense of.

‘She had sworn she would follow you anywhere. You'd seen the inside of a penal settlement. You were living in a stable. And then you suddenly had the idea of taking her back, just as she was, with her jewels, her painted face and her
pale-coloured dress, and making her share your straw mattress. That's how it was, Darchambaux, wasn't it?'

His eyes did not blink. But his chest heaved. There was another moan. In his corner, Lucas, who was finding it unbearable, changed position.

‘That's it! I can feel it!' said Maigret, the words now coming faster, as if he was being rushed along by them. Face to face with the woman who had been his wife, Jean the carter, who had virtually forgotten Doctor Darchambaux,
had begun to remember, and mists of the past rose to meet him. And a strange plan had started to take shape. Was it vengeance? Not really. More an obscure desire to
bring down to his level the woman who had promised to be his for the rest of their
lives.

‘So Mary Lampson lived for three days, hidden on this horse-boat, almost of her own free will.

‘Because she was afraid. Afraid of this spectre from her past, who she felt was capable of anything, who told her she had to go with him!

‘And even more scared because she was aware of how badly she had behaved.

‘So she came of her own volition. And you, Jean, you brought her corned beef and cheap red wine. You went to her two nights in a row, after two interminable days of driving the boat along the Marne.

‘When you got to Dizy …'

Again the dying man tried to stir. But his strength was gone, and he fell back, limp, drained.