The Shadow Puppet (8 page)

‘He came over shortly after you
left this morning. I'd just got back from the Moulin
Bleu
.
'

‘What did he want?'

‘He asked me if I had an aspirin
for Céline, who was ill.'

‘And did they hire you at the
theatre?'

‘I have to go there this evening.
One of the dancers is injured. If she's not better, I'll stand in for
her and perhaps they'll give me a permanent job.'

She lowered her voice and went on,
‘I have the hundred francs. Give me your hand.'

And that gesture revealed her entire
character. She didn't want to give Maigret the money in public. She was afraid
of embarrassing him! So she had the note folded into a tiny oblong in the palm of
her hand. She passed it to him as if he were a gigolo.

‘Thank you, you were so
kind.'

She sounded despondent. She looked about
her without taking the slightest interest in the pantomime of people coming and
going. She gave a wan smile and said, ‘The head waiter's looking at us.
He's wondering why I'm with you. He must think I've already
replaced Raymond … This must be awkward for you!'

‘Would you like a
drink?'

‘No, thank you,' she said
discreetly. ‘If ever you need me … At the Moulin Bleu, my stage name
is Élyane … Do you know where the stage door is, in Rue
Fontaine?'

It wasn't
too difficult. Maigret rang the bell of the apartment on Boulevard Haussmann a few
minutes before dinner time. The moment he stepped inside there was an overpowering
smell of chrysanthemums. The maid who opened the door walked on tiptoe.

She thought the inspector simply wanted
to leave his card and wordlessly she showed him to the room where the body was laid
out, draped in black. By the door were numerous calling cards on a Louis XVI
tray.

The body was already in its casket,
which was invisible under all the flowers.

In a corner, a tall, very distinguished
young man in mourning nodded briefly at Maigret.

Opposite him kneeled a woman in her
fifties, with coarse features, dressed like a countrywoman in her Sunday best.

The inspector went up to the young
man.

‘May I see Madame
Couchet?'

‘I'll ask my sister if she
can see you. You are Monsieur—?'

‘Maigret! The detective chief
inspector in charge of the investigation.'

The countrywoman stayed where she was. A
few moments later, the young man returned and steered his guest through the
apartment.

Apart from the all-pervasive scent of
flowers, the rooms retained their usual look. It was a magnificent late
nineteenth-century apartment, like most of the buildings on Boulevard Haussmann.
Vast rooms. Slightly over-ornate ceilings and doors.

And classy period furniture. In the
drawing room, a
monumental crystal
chandelier tinkled when people walked underneath it.

Madame Couchet sat flanked by three
people, whom she introduced. First of all, the young man in mourning:

‘My brother, Henry Dormoy,
barrister.'

Then a gentleman of a certain age:

‘Colonel Dormoy, my
uncle.'

And lastly, a lady with magnificent
silver hair:

‘My mother.'

And all of them, in mourning, looked
extremely distinguished. The table had not yet been cleared of the tea things and
there was toast and cakes.

‘Please sit down.'

‘One question, if I may. The lady
who is sitting with the body—'

‘My husband's sister,'
replied Madame Couchet. ‘She arrived this morning from Saint-Amand.'

Maigret did not smile, but he
understood. He clearly sensed that they were not overly keen to see the Couchet
family turn up, dressed like bumpkins or got up like petty bourgeois.

There were the relatives on the
husband's side and the relatives on the Dormoy side.

The Dormoys were elegant, discreet. For
a start, everyone was wearing black.

From the Couchets, for the moment there
was only this countrywoman, whose black silk blouse was straining under the
arms.

‘May I have a few words with you
in private, madame?'

She apologized to
her family, who made to leave the drawing room.

‘Please stay, we'll go into
the yellow boudoir.'

She had been crying, there was no doubt.
Then she had powdered her face and her puffy eyelids barely showed. There was a note
of genuine weariness in her voice.

‘You haven't received any
unexpected visits today, have you?'

She looked up, vexed.

‘How do you know? Yes, early this
afternoon, my stepson came.'

‘Had you met him
before?'

‘Very briefly. He used to go and
see my husband at his office. But we ran into him at the theatre on one occasion and
Raymond introduced us.'

‘What was the purpose of his
visit?'

Embarrassed, she looked away.

‘He wanted to know if we'd
found a will. He also asked me the name of my lawyer so he could contact him
concerning the formalities.'

She sighed by way of an apology for all
this unpleasantness.

‘He's entitled to. I think
that half the inheritance goes to him, and I don't intend to stand in his
way.'

‘May I ask a few personal
questions? When you married Couchet, was he already wealthy?'

‘Yes. Not as wealthy as he is
today, but his business was beginning to flourish.'

‘A love marriage?'

An enigmatic
smile.

‘You could say so. We met in
Dinard. After three weeks, he asked me if I'd consent to be his wife. My
parents made inquiries.'

‘Were you happy?'

He looked her in the eyes and needed no
reply. He murmured the answer himself, ‘There was a certain age gap. Couchet
had his business. In other words, there was not a great deal of intimacy. Is that
so? You ran his household. You had your life and he had his—'

‘I never criticized him!'
she said. ‘He was a man with a great appetite for life, who needed excitement.
I didn't want to hold him back.'

‘Weren't you
jealous?'

‘At first. Then I got used to it.
I believe he loved me.'

She was quite attractive, but with no
spark, no spirit.

Rather nondescript features. A soft
body. A sober elegance. She probably made a gracious hostess, serving her friends
tea in the warm, comfortable drawing room.

‘Did your husband often talk to
you about his first wife?'

Then her pupils contracted. She tried to
hide her anger, but realized that Maigret was no fool.

‘It's not for to me
to—' she began.

‘My apologies. Given the
circumstances of his death, I'm afraid I have to be direct.'

‘You don't
suspect—?'

‘I suspect nobody. I'm
trying to piece together your husband's life, and the lives of those around
him, his movements and actions during his last evening. Did you know
that his ex-wife lived in the building where Couchet had
his offices?'

‘Yes! He told me.'

‘In what terms did he talk about
her?'

‘He resented her … Then
he was ashamed of his feelings and claimed that in reality she was a sad
creature.'

‘Why sad?'

‘Because nothing could satisfy
her … and also—'

‘And also?'

‘You can guess what I mean.
She's very grasping. In short, she left Raymond because he didn't earn
enough money. So when she found out that he was rich … after she'd
ended up the wife of a petty bureaucrat!'

‘She didn't try
to—'

‘No! I don't think she ever
asked him for money. It's true that my husband wouldn't have told me if
she had. All I know is that for him every time he bumped into her at Place des
Vosges it was awkward. I think she deliberately waylaid him. She never spoke to him,
but she gave him malicious looks.'

Maigret couldn't help smiling at
the thought of those encounters, under the archway: Couchet getting out of the car,
fresh and pink, and Madame Martin, starchy, with her black gloves, her umbrella and
her handbag, her spiteful face …

‘Is that all you know?'

‘He was looking for new premises,
but it's difficult to find laboratories in Paris.'

‘I presume you are not aware of
your husband having any enemies?'

‘None!
Everyone loved him. He was too kind. Kind to the point of making a fool of himself.
He didn't just spend money, he threw it away. And when criticized, he'd
reply that he'd spent enough years counting every
sou
, now he could
afford to be generous.'

‘Did he often see your
family?'

‘Very little! They have nothing in
common, do they? And different tastes—'

Maigret found it hard to imagine Couchet
in the drawing room with the young lawyer, the colonel and the stately mother.

All this made sense.

A strong, fiery, coarse young man who
had started out with nothing and who had spent thirty years of his life struggling
to make his fortune.

He had grown rich. In Dinard, at last he
had access to a world that had hitherto been closed to him. A real young lady, a
bourgeois family, tea and
petits fours
, tennis and outings to the
country.

He had got married. To prove to himself
that now, the world was his! To have a home like those he had only ever seen from
the outside!

He had got married, too, because he was
in awe of this nice, well-brought-up young lady.

And then it was the apartment on
Boulevard Haussmann, with the most traditional trappings.

Except he needed outside stimulation, to
see other people, talk to them without having to mind his ‘P's and
‘Q's … go to brasseries, bars …

And other women.

He loved his wife.
He admired her. He respected her. He was in awe of her.

But precisely because he was in awe of
her, he needed girls like Nine to relax with.

Madame Couchet had a question on the tip
of her tongue. She was reluctant to ask it. Then she took the plunge, averting her
gaze.

‘I wanted to ask you
if … It's a delicate matter … I'm
sorry … He had girlfriends, I know … He only kept it quiet – and
barely – out of consideration. I need to know whether, on that front, there'll
be any problems, a scandal—'

She obviously imagined her
husband's mistresses to be like prostitutes in a novel, or screen vamps!

‘You have nothing to be afraid
of!' smiled Maigret, who was thinking of little Nine with her distraught face
and the handful of jewellery she had taken that same afternoon to the Crédit
Municipal.

‘There won't be any need
to—?'

‘No! No allowance.'

She was astonished. Perhaps a little put
out, because if these women were making no demands, it must be because they were
fond of her husband! And he of them.

‘Have you decided on the date of
the funeral?'

‘My brother is dealing with it. It
will take place on Thursday, at Saint-Philippe-du-Roule.'

A clatter of plates came from the dining
room next door. Was the table being laid for dinner?

‘All that remains is for me to
thank you and take my leave. I apologize again.'

And, walking down
the Boulevard Haussmann, he caught himself muttering as he filled his pipe,
‘Good old Couchet!'

The words escaped his lips as if Couchet
had been an old friend. And the feeling was so strong that the thought that he had
only seen him dead astounded him.

He felt as if he knew him literally
inside out.

Perhaps because of the three women?

First, there'd been the
confectioner's daughter, in the apartment in Nanterre, despairing at the
thought that her husband would never have a proper job.

Then the young lady from Dinard, and
Couchet's pride and satisfaction at becoming the nephew of a colonel.

Nine … Their dinners at the
Select … Hôtel Pigalle
…

And the son who came to sponge off him!
And Madame Martin who contrived to run into him under the archway, hoping perhaps to
plague him with remorse.

A strange ending! All alone, in the
office where he came as seldom as possible. Leaning against the half-open safe, his
hands on the table.

Nobody had noticed or heard anything.
The concierge, crossing the courtyard, had seen him sitting in the same place as
usual behind the frosted glass, but she was mainly concerned about Madame de
Saint-Marc, who was giving birth.

The madwoman upstairs had screamed! In
other words, old Mathilde, padding around in felt slippers, had been concealed
behind a door on the landing.

Monsieur Martin, in his putty-coloured
overcoat, had come downstairs to hunt for his glove by the dustbins.

One thing was
certain: right now, someone had the stolen 360,000 francs in their possession!

And someone had committed a murder!

‘All men are self-centred!'
Madame Martin had said bitterly, with her pained expression.

Was she the one who had the 360 brand
new thousand-franc notes handed over by the Crédit Lyonnais? Did she now have money,
a lot of money, a whole wad of fat notes promising years of comfort with no worries
about the future or about the pension she would receive on Martin's death?

Was it Roger, with his puny body,
ravaged by ether, and that Céline he'd picked up to moulder away with him in
the dampness of a hotel bed?

Was it Nine, or Madame Couchet?

In any case, there was one place from
which the whole thing could have been witnessed: the Martins' apartment.

And there was a woman prowling around
the building, loitering in the corridors, listening at every keyhole.