A Man's Head (11 page)

Maigret, who needed to feel some sort of certainty, found it by concluding:

‘At the very least, that must have him taken half an hour! Therefore he didn't have enough time to go to Nandy.'

The village stands on the plateau which overlooks the Seine. Up on top, the west wind was blowing in gusts, bending the trees, while the brown ploughed fields, in which a solitary hunter looked no bigger than a full-stop, stretched away clear to
the horizon.

‘Where do you want me to drop you?' asked the driver, sliding back the glass panel between them.

‘On the edge of the village … You can wait for me.'

There was only one long street and, halfway along it, a sign which said: ‘Évariste Heurtin, proprietor'.

When Maigret pushed the door, a bell rang, but there was no one in the bar. The walls were decorated with colour-prints. But Sergeant Lucas' hat was hanging on a nail. Maigret called:

‘Hello? Anyone about?'

He heard footsteps above his head, but at least five minutes went by before anyone decided to come down the stairs, which he could see at the end of a corridor.

Maigret saw a man of sixty or so, well built, with eyes that were unexpectedly fixed and staring.

‘What do you want?' he asked from the corridor.

But he followed this up almost immediately with:

‘Are you from the police too?'

The voice was neutral, the syllables indistinct and the innkeeper made no effort to say more. With a wave of his hand he motioned to the stairs, at whose foot he had remained standing, and then started slowly climbing up them.

Muffled sounds came from above. The stairs were narrow, and the walls whitewashed. When a door opened, the first thing Maigret saw was Sergeant Lucas by the window. His head was bowed and at first he did not notice him come in.

Then Maigret made out a bed with a figure leaning over it, and an old woman prostrate in a high-backed elbow chair.

The room was big, with exposed ceiling beams, very worm-eaten, and areas of peeling wallpaper. The pine floorboards creaked underfoot.

‘Shut the door!' snapped the man who was leaning over the bed.

It was the doctor. His bag stood open on a round mahogany table. Lucas, looking haggard, approached Maigret.

‘Here already? How did you manage it? It's less than an hour since I phoned.'

Bare-chested, his skin bluish-white, ribs showing through, the figure lying on the bed like a broken doll was Joseph Heurtin.

The old woman never stopped moaning. The eyes of the father, who was standing by the head of the fugitive's bed, were so vacant they were frightening.

‘This way,' said Lucas. ‘I'll bring you up to date.'

They left the room. On the landing outside, the sergeant hesitated a moment, then opened the door of another room, which had not yet been made up. Women's clothes were scattered everywhere. The window overlooked a yard where hens paddled
around a sodden dung-heap.

‘Well?'

‘I've had a lousy morning, I can tell you! After ringing you I came straight back here and gave the gendarme the nod that he could go. What happened next I've worked out bit by bit …

‘Old man Heurtin was in the bar with me. He asked if I wanted anything to eat. I was aware that he was eyeing me suspiciously especially when I said perhaps I'd be staying the night because I was waiting for someone.

‘At one point, I heard whispering in the kitchen, which is at the end of the corridor, and I saw the landlord cock his ears in surprise.

‘“Is that you, Victorine?” he called.

‘It all went quiet for two or three minutes. Then the old woman came in with a very peculiar look on her face.

‘It was the look of someone who has had a terrible shock and doesn't want to show it.

‘“I'm going to fetch the milk,” she said.

‘“But it's not time … ”

‘She went all the same, clogs on her feet, a shawl over her head, while her husband went off to the kitchen, where his daughter was by herself.

‘I heard raised voices, sobs and one complete sentence which I could make out:

‘“I should have known … Just by the look on your mother's face …”

‘And out he went into the yard, at a run. He opened a door, obviously the door of the outhouse where Joseph Heurtin had hidden.

‘He came back an hour later, just as the daughter was serving drinks to a couple of carters.

‘Her eyes were red. She didn't dare look at us. The old woman came back. There was another parley at the back of the building.

‘When the father returned, he had that look on his face that you've seen for yourself.

‘It was only later that I understood the reason for all their comings and goings. The two women had found Joseph Heurtin in the outhouse and decided not to tell the old man.

‘He sensed that there was something going on … After his wife went out, he questioned his daughter, who couldn't keep her mouth shut … So off he went to see our man but not before making it plain he wasn't
going to have him in the house.

‘You've seen him. He's a decent man and probably has strict principles … And then the penny dropped about who I was …

‘I don't think he would have handed his boy over to me … Maybe he'd even decided to help him get away …

‘Be that as it may, around ten o'clock, when I happened to be standing by the window that gives on to the yard, I saw the old girl picking her way along in the lee of the walls as she headed towards the outhouse.

‘A matter of seconds later she was yelling blue murder! It wasn't a pretty sight, sir. I got there at the same time as old man Heurtin and I swear I saw sweat pouring out of him …

‘Our man was slumped at an odd angle against the wall, and you had to look closely before you realized that he had hanged himself from a nail …

‘The old man had more presence of mind than I did. It was he who cut the rope. He laid his son on his back on the straw and started pulling his tongue, giving him artificial respiration and shouting to his daughter to go and fetch the
doctor.

‘Since then it's all been a shambles … You saw … My throat still feels tight …

‘Nobody in Nandy knows what's happened … They all think it's the old woman who's been taken ill …

‘Between the two of us, we carried the body upstairs, and the doctor's been seeing to him for the last half hour …

‘Apparently Joseph Heurtin could pull through … His father hasn't spoken a word. The daughter's had hysterics, and they've shut her up in the kitchen to stop her screaming.'

A door opened. Maigret stepped out on to the landing and saw the doctor, who was getting ready to leave.

He went downstairs behind him and halted him in the bar.

‘Police Judiciaire, doctor … How is he?'

He was a country doctor and did not hide his dislike of the police.

‘Are you going to march him off?' he asked bad-temperedly.

‘I don't know. What state is he in?'

‘He was cut down just in time. But it'll take him a few days yet to get over it. Was it at the Santé that he was allowed to get so weak? You'd think he had no blood left in his veins.'

‘I must ask you not to discuss this with anyone.'

‘There's no need to ask. There's such a thing as professional duty of confidentiality.'

The old man had also come downstairs. His eyes were fixed on the inspector. But he asked no questions. Out of habit he picked up the two empty glasses which stood on the counter and dipped them in the sink.

It was a moment charged with repressed anguish. The sobbing of the girl reached the three men. In the end, Maigret gave a sigh.

‘Would you like to keep him here for a time?' he asked as he watched the old man.

There was no answer.

‘I'll have to leave one of my officers here in the house.'

The old innkeeper's eyes dwelled on Lucas and then he lowered them again and stared at the counter. A tear rolled down one cheek.

‘He swore to his mother …' he began.

But he looked away. He could not speak. To hide his discomfiture he poured himself a glass of rum but as he put it to his lips he retched.

Maigret turned to Lucas but merely said:

‘Stay here.'

He did not leave straight away. He walked along the corridor and found a door which opened on to the inner courtyard. Through the kitchen windows he saw the figure of a woman leaning against a wall, her head in her folded arms.

On the further side of the dung-heap, the outhouse door was wide open, and a length of rope was still dangling from an iron nail.

He gave a shrug, walked back the way he had come and found Lucas, who was now the only occupant of the bar.

‘Where is he?'

‘Upstairs.'

‘Did he say anything? Look, I'll send someone to relieve you … I want you to ring me twice a day …'

‘It was you! It was all your fault, you're the one who killed him!' sobbed the old woman on the floor above. ‘Get out! … You killed him! … My boy … My lovely boy! …'

The bell jangled at the end of its bracket. Maigret himself answered the door and then left to get back into the taxi, which was waiting at the edge of the village.

When Maigret emerged from the taxi outside the Henderson villa at Saint-Cloud, it was just after three in the afternoon. On the way back from Nandy it had struck him that he had forgotten to return to Mrs Henderson's American heirs the key
which he had been given in the previous July to enable him to carry out his inquiries.

He went back now with no particular object in mind, with half a hope that chance might lead him to something he had overlooked, or even more, with the idea that the atmosphere might give him inspiration.

The main building, which was surrounded by a garden too small to be called grounds, was enormous, but without style, and ornamented with a turret in appalling taste.

All the shutters were closed. The paths were covered with dead leaves.

The gate in the railings swung open. Maigret felt slightly uneasy in these surroundings, which were so forbidding that they put him in mind more of a cemetery than a home.

He climbed heavily up the four front steps, which were flanked by pretentious plaster figures each topped with a branched electric lamp, opened the main door and was obliged to wait a moment until his eyes got used to the gloom.

There was a disturbing feel to the place, for it was both luxurious and run down. The ground floor had not been in use for four years, that is, since the death of Mr Henderson.

But most of the furniture and furnishings were just as they had been. When Maigret entered the drawing room, for example, the crystal chandelier tinkled softly, and the boards of the wooden floor creaked as he walked over them.

Out of curiosity, he tried the light switch. Ten out of twelve lamps came on. The bulbs were so thickly encrusted with dust that their light was dimmed.

In one corner were valuable carpets which had been rolled up. The armchairs had been pushed to the far end of the room, and assorted travelling trunks had ended up there in no particular order. One was empty. Another still contained some of the
dead man's clothes, with mothballs sprinkled over them. Yet he had been deceased for more than four years! The house had been accustomed to stylish living. In this very room there had been receptions which had been reported in the press.

In full view on the enormous mantelpiece was a half-opened box of Havanas.

It was probably at this spot that the visitor had the clearest impression of just how overwhelming the house was.

Mrs Henderson was almost seventy when she had been widowed.

She had been too fatigued to make the effort to organize a new life for herself.

She had settled for shutting herself away in her rooms and had left the rest to go to seed.

They had probably been happy together; at any rate they had made a brilliant couple and had cut a figure in most of the world's capitals.

And all that had been left of it was an old woman shut away with her companion!

And one night, that old lady …

Maigret walked through two other reception rooms, then a dining room and emerged at the foot of a great staircase with steps which, up to the first floor, were made of marble.

The faintest sounds reverberated in the absolute silence of the house.

The Crosbys had not touched anything. It was even possible that after their aunt's funeral they had never been back.

The house had been completely neglected, to the point where on the carpet the inspector found a candle he had used during his original investigation.

When he reached the first-floor landing, he suddenly stopped, aware of a certain uneasiness which it took him a moment to analyse. Then he held his breath and listened hard.

Had he heard something? He wasn't sure. But for one reason or another, he'd had a feeling that he was not alone in the house. He seemed to sense, as it were, a stirring of life. At first he gave a shrug. But just as he was opening a
door directly facing him, he frowned and simultaneously began breathing more quickly.