The Shadow Puppet (6 page)

‘Where did you live?'

‘In Nanterre. Because we
couldn't even afford to live in the city. Did you know Couchet? He
wasn't worried, oh no! He wasn't ashamed! He wasn't anxious! He
said he was born to make lots of money and that's what he would do. After
bicycles, it was watch chains. No! You'll never guess! Watch chains which he
sold from a stall at funfairs, monsieur! And my sisters no longer dared go to the
Neuilly fair for fear of coming across him selling his watch chains.'

‘Were you the one who asked for a
divorce?'

She modestly bowed her head, but her
features remained tense.

‘Monsieur Martin lived in the same
apartment block as us. He was younger then. He had a good job in the civil service.
Couchet left me on my own all the time while he went off gallivanting. Oh! It was
all very above-board! I gave my husband a piece of my mind. The divorce was
requested by mutual consent for incompatibility of temperaments. All Couchet had to
give me was maintenance
for the boy. And
Martin and I waited a year before getting married.'

Now she was fidgeting on her chair. Her
fingers plucked at the silver clasp on her bag.

‘You see, I've always been
unlucky. At first, Couchet didn't even pay the maintenance money regularly.
And, for a sensitive woman, it's painful to see her second husband paying for
the upkeep of a child who's not his.'

No, Maigret was not asleep, even though
his eyes were half-closed and his pipe had gone out.

This was becoming more and more
harrowing. The woman's eyes started brimming. Her lips began to tremble in a
disconcerting manner.

‘No one else knows what I've
suffered. I put Roger through school. I wanted to give him a good education. He
wasn't like his father. He was affectionate, caring … When he was
seventeen, Martin found him a job in a bank, so he could learn the profession. But
that's when he met Couchet, I don't know where.'

‘And he got into the habit of
asking his father for money?'

‘Couchet had always refused to
give me anything, mind you! For me, everything was too expensive! I made my own
dresses and I wore the same hat for three years.'

‘And he gave Roger everything he
asked for?'

‘He corrupted him! Roger left home
to go and live on his own. He still comes to see me from time to time. But he also
used to go and see his father.'

‘How long have you lived at Place
des Vosges?'

‘About eight years. When we found
the apartment, we didn't even know that Couchet was in serums. Martin
wanted to move out. That was all I
needed! If it was up to anyone to move, it should have been Couchet, shouldn't
it? Couchet grown rich somehow or other. I'd see him rolling up in a
chauffeur-driven car! He had a chauffeur, you know. I saw his wife.'

‘At her house?'

‘I watched her from the street, to
see what she looked like. I'd rather not say anything. She's nothing
special, in any case, despite her airs and graces and her astrakhan coat.'

Maigret drew his hand across his
forehead. This was becoming obsessive. He'd been staring at the same face for
fifteen minutes and right now he felt that he would never be able to get it out of
his mind.

A thin face, drained of colour, with
fine features, which seemed set in an expression of resigned suffering.

And that too reminded him of certain
family portraits, even of his own family. As a child, he had had an aunt, plumper
than Madame Martin, but who also complained all the time. When she visited his
family, he knew that the moment she sat down she'd pull a handkerchief out of
her bag.

‘My poor Hermance!'
she'd begin. ‘What a life! You'll never guess what Pierre's
done now.'

And she had that same mobile mask, those
too-thin lips and eyes that sometimes registered a flicker of disarray.

Madame Martin suddenly lost her train of
thought. She grew flustered.

‘Now, you must understand my
situation. Naturally, Couchet remarried. All the same, I was his wife, I shared
his early life, in other words, the
hardest years. Whereas she's just a doll.'

‘Are you saying you have a claim
on his estate?'

‘Me!' she cried indignantly,
‘I wouldn't touch his money with a barge pole! We're not rich.
Martin lacks drive, he doesn't know how to put himself forward and he allows
the grass to grow under his feet while less clever colleagues … but even
if I had to be a cleaner to make a living, I wouldn't want—'

‘Did you send your husband to tell
Roger?'

She didn't blanch, because it
wasn't possible. Her complexion remained uniformly ashen. But her gaze
clouded.

‘How do you know?'

And suddenly, indignant,
‘We're not being followed, I hope? Tell me! That would be outrageous!
And, if it is the case, I shall have no hesitation in taking this to the highest
authority.'

‘Calm down, madame … I
didn't say any such thing. I ran into Monsieur Martin by chance this
morning.'

But she was still mistrustful, staring
at the chief inspector with dislike.

‘I'm going to end up wishing
I hadn't come. One tries too hard to do the right thing! And, instead of being
grateful—'

‘I assure you I'm infinitely
grateful to you for coming to see me.'

She still had the feeling that something
was amiss. She felt terrified by this big man with broad shoulders and a hunched
neck who was looking at her with innocent eyes as if his mind were completely
vacant.

‘Besides,' she said shrilly,
‘it's better you hear it from me
than from the concierge … You'd have
found out one way or another—'

‘… That you are the first
Madame Couchet.'

‘Have you seen Madame Couchet
number two?'

Maigret struggled to repress a
smile.

‘Not yet.'

‘Oh! She'll weep crocodile
tears. Mind you, she'll be all right now, with the millions Couchet
made.'

And suddenly she began to cry, her lower
lip came up, transforming her face, softening its sharp angles.

‘She didn't even know him
when he was struggling, when he needed a wife to support and encourage
him—'

From time to time, a muffled sob, barely
audible, escaped from her slender throat encircled by a silk moiré ribbon.

She rose and glanced around to make sure
she hadn't forgotten anything. She sniffed, ‘But none of that
counts.'

A bitter smile, beneath her tears.

‘Well, anyhow, I've done my
duty. I don't know what you think of me, but—'

‘I assure you that—'

He would have been hard put to continue
if she had not finished the sentence for him.

‘I don't care. I've
got a clear conscience! It's not everyone who can say as much.'

She was missing something but she
didn't know what. She glanced round the room again and shook one hand as if
surprised to find it empty.

Maigret had risen to his feet and saw
her to the door.

‘Thank you for coming to see
me.'

‘I did what I felt was my
duty.'

She was in the
corridor where inspectors were chatting and laughing. She swept past the group, head
held high, without looking round.

And Maigret, his door closed, walked
over to the window and flung it wide open, despite the cold. He felt weary, like
after a tough criminal interrogation. In particular he felt that sort of vague
unease one feels when forced to consider certain aspects of life one generally
prefers to ignore.

It wasn't dramatic. It
wasn't horrifying.

She hadn't said anything
extraordinary. She hadn't given Maigret any new leads.

Even so, the conversation with her had
left him with a faint feeling of disgust.

On a corner of the desk, the police
gazette lay open, showing twenty or so photographs of wanted individuals. Most of
them faces of thugs. Faces that bore the scars of degeneracy.

Ernst Strowitz, sentenced in absentia by the Caen tribunal for the murder of
a farmer's wife on the Route de Bénouville …

And the warning, in red:

Dangerous. Still
armed
.

A fellow who would not sell himself
cheaply. Well! Maigret would have preferred that to all this syrupy greyness, to
these family sagas, to this still inexplicable murder, which he found
mind-boggling.

His head was full of images: he pictured
the Martins out
for their Sunday stroll.
The putty-coloured overcoat and the black silk ribbon around the woman's
neck.

He rang a bell. Jean appeared, and
Maigret sent him to fetch the records of all those connected to the murder case that
he had requested.

There wasn't much. Nine had been
arrested once, only once, in Montmartre, in a raid, and had been released after
proving that she did not make her living from prostitution.

As for the Couchet boy, he was being
watched by the vice squad, which suspected him of drug trafficking. But they had
never been able to pin anything on him.

A call to the vice squad. Céline, whose
surname was Loiseau and who was born in Saint-Amand-Montrond, was well known to
them. She had a record. They picked her up fairly frequently.

‘She's not a bad
girl!' said the brigadier. ‘Most of the time she's content with
one or two regular friends. It's only when she ends up back on the street that
we find her.'

Jean had not left the room and was
signalling to Maigret.

‘That lady forgot her
umbrella!'

‘I know.'

‘Oh!'

‘Yes, I need it.'

And the inspector rose with a sigh, went
over and shut the window, and stood with his back to the fire in his habitual
thinking posture.

An hour later, he was able to make a
mental summary of the notes he'd received from various departments and which
were spread out on his desk.

First of all, the
result of the autopsy confirming the pathologist's theory: the shot had been
fired from around three metres away and death had been instantaneous. The dead
man's stomach contained a small amount of alcohol, but no food.

The photographs from the Criminal
Records Office, located under the eaves of the Palais de Justice, showed that no
fingerprint matches had been found.

And lastly, the Crédit Lyonnais
confirmed that at around three p.m., Couchet, who was a well-known customer, had
dropped into the bank's head office and withdrawn 300,000 francs in new bills,
as was customary on the penultimate day of each month.

It was pretty much established that on
arriving at Place des Vosges, Couchet had placed the 300,000 in the safe, alongside
the 60,000 already in there.

And since he still had work to do, he
had not locked the safe again but was leaning against it.

The lights in the laboratory suggested
that at some point he had left the office, either to inspect another part of the
building or, more likely, to go to the toilet.

Had the money still been in the safe
when he sat down at his desk again?

Probably not, for if it had been, the
murderer would have had to move the body to open the heavy door and take the wads of
cash.

So much for the technicalities. But was
it a
thief and murderer
or a
murderer
and a
thief
operating separately?

Maigret spent ten minutes with the
examining magistrate,
apprising him of the
progress to date. Then, since it was just after noon, he set off home, hunching his
shoulders, a sign he was in a bad mood.

‘Is it you who's
investigating the Place des Vosges case?' asked his wife, who had read the
newspaper.

‘It is!'

And Maigret had a very particular way of
sitting down and looking at Madame Maigret, with a mixture of increased affection
and a hint of anxiety.

He could still picture Madame
Martin's thin face, black clothes and sorrowful eyes.

And those tears that had suddenly welled
up, then disappeared, as if consumed by an inner fire, only to flow again a little
later!

Madame Couchet who had
furs … Madame Martin who didn't … Couchet who fed the Tour
de France cyclists while his first wife had to wear the same hat for three
years.

And what about the son … And
the bottle of ether on the bedside table in Hôtel Pigalle?

And Céline, who only went on the streets
periodically, when she didn't have a regular boyfriend?

And Nine?

‘You don't look
happy … You don't look well, you look as though you're coming
down with a cold.'

It was true! Maigret could feel a tickle
in his nostrils and his head was like cotton wool.

‘What's that umbrella
you've brought in? It's horrible!'

Madame Martin's umbrella! The
Martins, putty-coloured
overcoat and black
silk dress, out for a Sunday stroll down the Champs-Élysées!

‘It's nothing. I don't
know what time I'll be back.'

There are impressions that cannot be
explained: something felt wrong, something that emanated from the façade itself.

Was it the flurry of activity in the
shop that made beaded funeral wreaths? Of course, the residents must have clubbed
together to buy a wreath.

Or the anxiety on the face of the
ladies' hairdresser on the other side of the archway whose salon faced on to
the street?

In any case, there was something
unsavoury about the building that day. And, since it was four p.m. and beginning to
grow dark, the feeble little lamp under the archway was already lit.