The Flemish House (7 page)

‘Let me take your
place!'

He stayed there only for a few seconds
and then said, looking straight at the man:

‘You'll have to find
something else, my friend!'

‘What do you mean, something
else?'

‘I'm saying that your story
doesn't hold water. From
here you can't see the
grocery, or the stretch of river bounded by the two boats.'

‘When I say it was here, what I
mean is …'

‘No! That's enough!
I'm telling you again, find something else! Come and see me when you've
found it. And if it isn't good enough, well, it might be necessary to bang you
up again …'

Machère couldn't believe his ears.
Embarrassed by his failure, he in turn had pressed himself against the wall, and was
checking Maigret's claims.

‘Obviously! …' he
grunted.

The sailor didn't even try to
reply. He had lowered his head. An ironic, mean glance was fixed on Maigret's
feet.

‘Don't forget what I just
told you: a different, more plausible story … Otherwise, prison! … Come, Machère
…'

And Maigret turned on his heels and
headed towards the bridge, filling his pipe.

‘Do you think that that sailor
…'

‘I think that this evening or
tomorrow he'll come and bring us more evidence of the Peeters'
guilt.'

Inspector Machère was unsettled.

‘I don't understand … If he
has evidence …'

‘He will …'

‘But how?'

‘What do I know? … He'll
find something …'

‘To shift the guilt from
himself?'

But Maigret dropped the conversation,
murmuring:

‘Do you have a light? …
That's twenty matches that …'

‘I don't smoke!'

And Machère wasn't exactly sure
that he heard him say:

‘I should have suspected as much
…'

The rain had started falling at about
midday. At dusk, it was hammering loudly on the cobbles. By eight o'clock it
was a deluge.

The streets of Givet were deserted. The
barges gleamed along the quay. Maigret, the collar of his overcoat turned up,
hurried towards the Flemish house, pushed the door open, set off the bell that was
becoming familiar to him, and breathed in the warm smell of the grocery.

It was at this time of day that Germaine
Piedboeuf had come into the shop, on 3 January, and no one had seen her again since
then.

The inspector noticed for the first time
that the kitchen was separated from the shop only by a glass door. It was decorated
with a tulle curtain, so that one could vaguely make out the outlines of the
figures.

Someone got up.

‘Don't let me disturb
you!' Maigret exclaimed.

And he went into the kitchen, walking in
on the normal daily routine. It was Madame Peeters who had got up to go to the shop.
Her husband was in his wicker armchair, still so close to the stove that one might
have worried that he was going to catch fire. In his hand he held a meerschaum pipe
with a long cherry-wood stem. But he wasn't
smoking any more.
His eyes were closed. Regular breaths issued from his half-open lips.

As to Anna, she was sitting at the
sanded white wooden table, which had been polished by the years. She was doing some
calculations in a little notebook.

‘Bring the inspector to the dining
room, Anna …'

‘No!' he protested.
‘I'm just passing through …'

‘Give me your coat …'

And Maigret noticed the Madame Peeters
had a beautiful, serious voice, deep and warm, a faint Flemish accent making it all
the more delightful.

‘You will have a cup of
coffee!'

He wanted to know what she had been
doing before he got there. At her place he saw steel-rimmed glasses and the
day's newspaper.

The old man's breath seemed to
provide a rhythm to the life of the house. Anna closed her notebook, put a cap on
the pencil, got up and went to fetch a cup from a shelf.

‘You will forgive me …' she
murmured.

‘I hoped to meet your sister,
Maria.'

Madame Peeters nodded sadly. Anna
explained:

‘You won't see her for a few
days, unless you pay her a visit in Namur. One of her colleagues, who also lives in
Givet, came just now … Marie was getting off the train, this morning, when she
sprained her ankle …'

‘Where is she?'

‘At the school … They have a room
for her there …'

Madame Peeters sighed, still
nodding:

‘I don't know what
we've done to offend the Lord!'

‘And Joseph?'

‘He won't be back before
Saturday. Although that's only tomorrow …'

‘Your cousin Marguerite
hasn't paid you a visit?'

‘No! I saw her at vespers
…'

Boiling coffee was poured into the cup.
Madame Peeters went out and came back in with a little glass, a bottle of
genever.

‘It's old
Schiedam.'

He sat down. He didn't expect to
find anything out. Perhaps even his presence was barely relevant to the case.

The house reminded him of an
investigation he had conducted in Holland, but with differences that he was unable
to define. There was the same calm, the same heaviness in the air, the same
sensation that the atmosphere was not fluid, but formed a solid body that one would
break by moving.

From time to time the wicker of the
armchair creaked even though the old man hadn't moved. And his breathing still
provided a rhythm for life, for the conversation.

Anna said something in Flemish, and
Maigret, who had learned some words in Delfzijl, more or less understood:

‘You should have given him a
bigger glass …'

Every so often a man in clogs passed
along the quay. The rain could be heard hammering on the front window.

‘You told me it was raining,
didn't you? As hard as it is today? …'

‘Yes … I think so …'

And the two women, sitting down again,
watched him pick up his glass and bring it to his lips.

Anna didn't have her
mother's fine features, nor her
benevolent, indulgent smile.
As usual, she didn't take her eyes off Maigret.

Had she noticed that the portrait was
missing from her room? Probably not! If she had, she would have been upset.

‘We've been here for thirty
years, inspector …' said Madame Peeters. ‘My husband set up as a
basket-maker, in this very house; we added a second storey later on …'

Maigret was thinking about something
else, about Anna, five years younger, going with Gérard Piedboeuf to the Rochefort
caves.

What had driven her into her
companion's arms? Why had she given herself? What had she thought afterwards?
…'

He had a sense that it was the only
affair in her life, that she would never have any others …

The rhythm of life in this house was
like a magic spell. The genever put a dull heat in Maigret's skull. He noticed
the slightest little noises, the creaks of the armchair, the old man's snores,
the drops of rain on a window-sill …

‘You should play me that piece you
played to me this morning again …' he said to Anna.

And as she hesitated, her mother pressed
her:

‘Yes indeed! … She plays well,
doesn't she? … She had lessons for six years, three times a week, with the
best teacher in Givet …'

The girl left the kitchen. The two doors
remained open between her and the rest of the family. The piano lid banged open.

A few lazy notes with the right hand.

‘She should sing …' murmured
Madame Peeters. ‘Marguerite sings better … There was even talk of her taking
lessons at the Conservatoire …'

The notes filled the empty, echoing
house. The old man didn't wake up, and his wife, worried that he might drop
his pipe, delicately took it from his hands and hung it on a nail in the wall.

What was Maigret still doing there? He
had nothing to find out. Madame Peeters listened, looking at her newspaper without
daring to pick it up. Anna gradually accompanied herself with her left hand. Maigret
guessed that it was at this table that Maria usually corrected her pupils'
homework.

And that was all!

Except that the whole town was accusing
the Peeters of killing Germaine Piedboeuf, on an evening just like this one!

Maigret gave a start at the sound of the
shop bell. For a moment he felt as though he were three weeks younger, that
Joseph's mistress was going to come in and claim the money for her keep, the
hundred francs that she was paid each month to look after the child.

It was a sailor in an oilskin, who held
out a small bottle to Madame Peeters, and she filled it with genever.

‘Eight francs!'

‘Belgian?'

‘French! Ten Belgian francs
…'

Maigret got up and walked across the
shop.

‘Are you leaving
already?'

‘I'll come back
tomorrow.'

Outside, he saw the sailor returning to
his boat. He turned towards the house. With its big, illuminated window it looked
like a stage set, particularly because of the music it exhaled, sweet and
sentimental.

Wasn't Anna's voice mingled
with it?

Maigret waded about in the mud, and the
rain fell so heavily that his pipe went out.

Now the whole of Givet seemed like a
stage set. Now that the sailor was back on his boat, there wasn't a soul
outside.

Nothing but the filtered lights at a few
windows. And the noise of the Meuse in spate that gradually drowned out the song of
the piano.

When he had walked 200 metres, he was
able to see, at the end of the stage, both the Flemish house and, in the foreground,
the other house, the one where the Piedboeufs lived.

There was no light upstairs. But the
corridor was lit. The midwife must have been alone with the child.

Maigret was in a bad mood. He
didn't often feel the pointlessness of his efforts to such an extent.

What had he come to do here, in the end?
He wasn't on duty! People were accusing the Flemings of killing a young woman.
But they couldn't even be sure that she was dead!

Might she not, weary of her wretched life
in Givet, be in Brussels, Reims, Nancy or Paris, drinking in some brasserie or other
with some friends she had met?

And even if she was dead, had she been
killed? Discouraged, might she not have been drawn by the muddy river as she left
the grocery?

No proof! No clue! Machère would go as
far as he could, but he wouldn't find anything, so that one day the public
prosecutor's office would decide to close the case.

So why was Maigret getting drenched on
this foreign stage?

Just in front of him, on the other side
of the Meuse, he saw the factory, whose courtyard was lit only by an electric light.
Very near the gate, a guardroom with a light.

Old Piedboeuf had gone to work. What did
he do there all night?

And then, without knowing quite why,
Maigret, hands deep in his pockets, made his way towards the bridge. In the café
where he had had a hot rum in the morning a dozen sailors and tugboat-owners were
talking so loudly that they could be heard from the quay. But he didn't
stop.

The wind vibrated the steel girders of
the bridge which replaced the stone bridge that had been destroyed during the
war.

And, on the opposite shore, the quay
hadn't even been paved. You had to wade through mud. A roaming dog pressed
itself against the whitewashed wall.

A small door was built into the closed
gate. And
immediately Maigret saw Piedboeuf pressing his face to
the glass of the guardroom.

‘Good evening!'

The man was wearing an old army jacket
that he had had dyed black. He too was smoking a pipe. And, in the middle of the
room, he had a little stove whose chimney, after two bends, went into the wall.

‘You know you're not allowed
…'

‘To come here at night!
That's fine!'

A wooden bench. A chair with a rush
seat. Maigret's overcoat was already starting to steam.

‘Do you stay in this room all
night?'

‘Excuse me! I have to do three
rounds of the courtyards and the workshops.'

From a distance, his big grey moustache
might have misled. Close up, he was a timid man, ready to collapse at any moment,
with the keenest sense of his humble condition.

Maigret intimidated him. He didn't
know what to say to him.

‘So, you always live on your own …
Here at night … In your bed in the morning … And in the afternoon …?'

‘I do the garden!'