The Carter of ’La Providence’ (16 page)

‘… she must have rebelled. She could not endure that kind of life any more. In a moment of madness, you strangled her rather than allow her to let you down a second time. You dumped her body in the stable. Is that what
happened?'

He had to repeat the question five times until finally the eyelids flickered.

‘Yes,' they said with indifference.

There was a faint scuffle on deck. It was the colonel holding back the skipper's wife, who was trying to get closer. She did not resist, for she was cowed by his solemn manner.

‘So it was back to the towpath, back again to your life on the canal. But you were worried. You were scared. For
you were afraid of dying, Jean. Afraid of being transported again. Afraid of being
sent back to the colonies. Afraid, unbearably afraid of having to leave your horses, the stable, the straw, the one small corner which had become your entire universe. So one night, you took the lock-keeper's bike. I asked you about it. You guessed I had my suspicions.

‘You rode back to Dizy intending to do something, anything, that would put me off the scent.

‘Is that right?'

Jean was now so absolutely still that he might well have been dead. The expression on his face was a complete blank. But his eyelids closed once again.

‘When you got there, there were no lights on the
Southern Cross
. You could safely assume that everyone on board was asleep. On deck an American cap was drying. You took it. You went into the stable, to hide it under the straw. It
was the best way of changing the whole course of the investigation and switching the focus to the people on the yacht.

‘You weren't to know that Willy Marco was outside, alone. He saw you take the cap and followed you. He was waiting for you by the stable door, where he lost a cufflink.

‘He was curious. So he followed you when you started back to the stone bridge, where you had left the bike.

‘Did he say something? Or did you hear a noise behind you?

‘There was a fight. You killed him with those strong hands, the same hands that strangled Mary Lampson. You dragged the body to the canal …

‘Then you must have walked on, head down. On the towpath, you saw something shining, the YCF badge. You thought that since the badge belonged to someone you'd seen around, maybe you'd
noticed it on the colonel's lapel, you left it at the spot where the fight had taken place. Answer me, Darchambaux. That was how it happened, wasn't it?'

‘Ahoy,
Providence
! Got a problem?' called another barge captain, whose boat passed so close that his head could be seen gliding past level with the hatch.

But then something strange and troubling happened. Jean's eyes filled with tears. Then he blinked, very fast, as though he was confessing to everything, to get it over and done with once and for all. He heard the skipper's wife
answering from the stern, where she was waiting:

‘It's Jean! He's hurt himself!'

As Maigret got to his feet, he said:

‘Last night, when I examined your boots, you knew that I would sooner or later get to the truth. You tried to kill yourself by jumping into the lock.'

But the carter was now so far gone and his breathing so laborious that the inspector did not even wait for a response. He nodded to Lucas and cast one last look around him.

A diagonal shaft of sunlight entered the stable, striking the carter's left ear and the hoof of one of the horses.

Just as the two men were leaving, not finding anything else to say, Jean tried again to speak, urgently, disregarding the pain. Wild-eyed, he half sat up on his straw.

Maigret paid no attention to the colonel, not immediately.
He crooked one finger and beckoned the woman, who was watching him from the stern.

‘Well? How is he?' she asked.

‘Stay by him.'

‘Can I? And no one will come and …'

She did not dare finish. She had gone rigid when she heard the muffled cries uttered by Jean, who seemed frightened that he would be left to die alone.

Suddenly, she ran to the stable.

Vladimir sat on the yacht's capstan, a cigarette between his lips, wearing his white cap slantwise, splicing two rope ends.

A policeman in uniform was standing on the canal bank. From the barge Maigret called:

‘What is it?'

‘We've had the reply from Moulins.'

He handed over an envelope with a brief note which said:

Marie Dupin, wife of the baker, has confirmed that she had a distant cousin at Étampes named Céline Mornet.

Maigret stared hard at the colonel, sizing him up. He was wearing his white yachting cap with the large crest. His eyes were just starting to acquire the faintest blue-green tinge, which doubtless meant that he had consumed a relatively small
quantity of whisky.

‘You had suspicions about the
Providence
?' Maigret asked him point blank.

It was so obvious! Wouldn't Maigret also have
concentrated on the barge if his suspicions had not been diverted momentarily to the people on the yacht?

‘Why didn't you say anything?'

The reply was well up to the standard of Sir Walter's interview with the examining magistrate at Dizy.

‘Because I wanted to take care of the matter myself.'

It was more than enough to express the contempt the colonel felt for the police.

‘And my wife?' he added almost immediately.

‘As you said yourself, and as Willy Marco also said, she was a charming lady.'

Maigret spoke without irony. But in fact he was more interested in the sounds coming from the stable than in this conversation.

Just audible was the faint murmur of a single voice. It belonged to the skipper's wife, who sounded as if she were comforting a sick child.

‘When she married Darchambaux, she already had a taste for the finer things of life. It seems very likely that it was on her account that the struggling doctor he then was did away with his aunt. I'm not saying she aided and abetted
him. I'm saying that he did it for her. And she knew it, which explains why she stood up in court and swore that she would follow him and be with him.

‘A charming lady. Though that's not the same thing as saying she was a heroine.

‘She loved life too much. I'm sure you can understand that, colonel.'

The mixture of sun, wind and threatening clouds
suggested a shower could break out at any moment. The light was shifting constantly.

‘Not many people return from those penal settlements. She was pretty. All of life's pleasures were hers for the taking. There was only her name to hold her back. So when she got to the Côte d'Azur and met someone, her first
admirer, who was ready to marry her, she got the idea of sending to Moulins for the birth certificate of a distant cousin she remembered.

‘It's so easy to do! So easy that there's talk now of taking the fingerprints of newborn babies and adding them to the official registers of births.

‘She got a divorce and then became your wife.

‘A charming lady. No real harm in her, I'm sure. But she liked a good time, didn't she? She was in love with youth and love and the good things in life.

‘And maybe sometimes the embers would be fanned and she'd feel the unaccountable need to go off and cut loose …

‘Know what I think? I believe she went off with Jean not so much because of his threats but because she needed to be forgiven.

‘The first day, hiding in the stable on board this boat, among the horsey smells, she must have derived some sort of satisfaction from the thought that she was atoning.

‘It was the same thing as the time she vowed to the jury she would follow her husband to Guiana.

‘Such charming creatures! Their first impulses are generous, if theatrical. They are so full of good intentions.

‘It's just that life, with its betrayals, compromises and its overriding demands, is stronger.'

Maigret had spoken rather bitterly but had not stopped listening for sounds coming from the stable while simultaneously keeping a constant eye on the movement of boats entering and leaving the lock.

The colonel had been standing in front of him with his head bowed. When he looked up now it was with obviously warmer sentiments, even a touch of muted affection.

‘Do you want a drink?' he said and pointed to his yacht.

Lucas had been standing slightly to one side.

‘You'll keep me informed?' said the inspector, turning to him.

Between them, there was no need for explanations. Lucas had understood and began to prowl silently round the stable.

The
Southern Cross
was as ship-shape as if nothing had happened. There was not a speck of dust on the mahogany walls of the cabin.

In the middle of the table was a bottle of whisky, a siphon and glasses.

‘Stay outside, Vladimir!'

Maigret looked round him with new eyes. He was not there now pursuing some fine sliver of truth. He was more relaxed, less curt.

And the colonel treated him as he had treated Monsieur Clairfontaine de Lagny.

‘He's going to die, isn't he?'

‘He could go at any time. He's known since yesterday.'

The sparkling soda water spurted from the siphon. Sir Walter said sombrely:

‘Your good health!'

Maigret drank as greedily as his host.

‘Why did he run away from the hospital?'

The rhythm of their conversation had slowed. Before answering, the inspector looked round him carefully, taking in every detail of the cabin.

‘Because …'

As he felt for his words his host was already refilling their glasses.

‘… a man with no ties, a man who has severed all links with his past, with the kind of man he used to be … a man like that has to have something to cling to! He had his stable … the smell of it … the
horses … the coffee he drank scalding hot at three in the morning ahead of a day spent slogging along the towpath until it was evening … It was his burrow, if you like, his very own corner, a place filled with animal warmth.'

Maigret looked the colonel in the eye. He saw him turn his head away. Reaching for his glass he added:

‘There are all kinds of bolt-holes. Some have the smell of whisky, eau de Cologne, a woman and the sounds of gramophone records …'

He stopped and drank. When he looked up again, his host had had time to empty a third glass.

Sir Walter watched him with his large, bleary eyes and held out the bottle.

‘No thanks,' protested Maigret.

‘Yes for me! I need it.'

Was there not a hint of affection in the look he gave the inspector?

‘My wife … Willy …'

At that moment, a thought sharp as an arrow struck the inspector. Was not Sir Walter as alone, just as lost, as Jean, who was busy dying in his stable?

And at least the carter had his horses by him and his motherly Madame Hortense.

‘Drink up! That's right! I'd like to ask … You're a gentleman …'

He spoke almost pleadingly. He held out his bottle rather shamefacedly. Vladimir could be heard moving about up on deck.

Maigret held out his glass. But there was a knock at the door. Through it came Lucas's voice:

‘Inspector?'

And through the crack in the door he added:

‘It's over.'

The colonel did not move. He watched grimly as the two policemen walked away.

When Maigret turned round, he saw him drink the glass he had just filled for his guest in one swallow. Then he heard him sing out:

‘Vladimir!'

A number of people had gathered by the
Providence
because from the bank they had heard the sound of sobbing.

It was Hortense Canelle, the wife of the master, on her knees by Jean's side. She was talking to him even though he had been dead for several minutes.

Her husband was on deck, waiting for the inspector to
come. He hurried towards him with little skipping steps, thin as a wraith, visibly flustered, and said in a desperate voice:

‘What shall I do? He's dead! My wife …'

An image which Maigret would never forget: the stable, seen from above, the two horses almost filling it, a body curled up with half its head buried in straw. And the fair hair of the skipper's wife catching all the sun's rays while
she gently moaned and at intervals repeated:

‘Oh Jean! Poor Jean!'

Exactly as if Jean had been a child and not this granite-hard old man, with a carcass like a gorilla, who had cheated all the doctors!

No one noticed, except Maigret.

Two hours after Jean died, while the body was being stretchered to a waiting vehicle, the colonel, his eyes bloodshot but as dignified as ever, asked:

‘Do you think now they can issue the burial permit?'

‘You'll get it tomorrow.'

Five minutes later, Vladimir, with his customary neat movements, cast off.