Lock No. 1 (11 page)

What was most staggering of all was the
utter stillness of his wife. It was cold in the room. Through the open window, it
was no longer just cool air which seeped in but shadows, spine-tingling chills, the
thrill of danger, of menace.

‘Gassin! Are you there, old
friend?'

Maigret turned and saw Gassin leaning on
the gate, which had not been locked.

‘Isn't he something?'
muttered Ducrau as he returned to the table and poured himself more wine.
‘He's had plenty of time to shoot. He can come as close as he likes
…'

Drops of sweat showed that during the
preceding minutes he had never stopped being afraid! Maybe it was because he was
afraid that he had opened the window and stood in front of it.

‘Mélie! … Mélie! … For God's
sake …'

Eventually she appeared. She had taken
off her apron and had her hat on.

‘What are you doing?'

‘I'm leaving.'

‘Before you leave, go out and
bring the old man by the gate to me. Have you got that? Say I must talk to
him.'

Mélie did not move.

‘Go on,
then!'

‘No, monsieur.'

‘Are you not going to do what I
tell you?'

‘I won't go,
monsieur.'

White-faced, she gave no ground and,
thin, flat-chested, unfeminine and without charm, she finally stood up to
Ducrau.

‘Are you refusing?'

He bore down on her, one hand
raised.

‘Are you refusing?'

‘Yes! … Yes! … Yes! …'

He did not hit her. Deflated, he walked
past her as if she was not there, opened the front door and was heard walking across
the courtyard.

His daughter had not moved. His
son-in-law craned forwards to watch. But his wife had slowly got to her feet and was
making slowly for the window. Meanwhile, Maigret, taking advantage of the moment
when their attention was elsewhere, poured himself a glass of wine and moved to the
window only when he heard the gate creak.

The two men were standing together. They
were clearly visible, so different in build, a metre apart. What they were saying
was inaudible. A querulous voice at Maigret's elbow, as high-pitched as a
child's, said:

‘Please! Can't you
…?'

It was Madame Ducrau, her eyes locked on
to the gate, who had uttered this vague, half-choked plea.

They weren't fighting. They were
talking. They came into the courtyard. Ducrau had one hand on his companion's
shoulder and seemed to be propelling
him on. Before they reached the house, Decharme had enough time to ask Maigret:

‘What have you decided?'

The inspector was tempted to take a leaf
out of Ducrau's book and answer:

‘Dammit!'

The old man screwed up his eyes because
of the light. His wet shoulders gleamed, and he held his cap in one hand, perhaps
out of an instinctive respect because he was in a dining room.

‘Sit down!'

He sat on the edge of a chair. He kept
his cap on his knees and avoided looking around him.

‘Will you have a glass of red with
me? Don't say anything. You know what I told you. You'll have your
chance to do whatever you want later. Isn't that so, inspector? Because I
never go back on my word.'

He touched his glass against
Gassin's and emptied it in one swallow and grinned.

‘Shame you missed the
start.'

He was now talking only to the boatman,
with odd glances at Maigret out of the corner of his eye.

‘Is it true that in the old days I
could floor any man with one punch? Come on, out with it!'

‘It's true.'

It was staggering to hear the old
man's voice like this, so soft, so surprisingly gentle.

‘Do you remember that time in
Châlons when we got into a fight with those Belgians? Well the other night it
was my opponent that got me, though he
wasn't fighting fair, because he used a knife. You haven't heard about
that, but no matter. I turned up on your boat, just happened to be passing, and I
found him lying flat on the deck peeping through the porthole watching your kid
getting undressed.'

He liked saying it again, because it
fuelled his anger.

‘Now have you got it?'

Gassin shrugged, intimating that it was
something he had known for a long time.

‘Listen to me … no, have a drink
first. You too, inspector. It doesn't matter if the others are
here.'

Madame Ducrau, who had not sat down
again, remained standing close to the wall, half hidden by the curtain. Decharme had
one elbow on the mantelpiece while his wife was sitting by herself at the table.
There were sounds of someone moving about the house, and eventually this annoyed
Ducrau. He opened the door, and they all saw the maid packing her bag in the
hallway.

‘I'm not having this! Go if
you want! You can go or fall down dead, you can do anything you like, but for
God's sake, will you stop this racket?'

‘Monsieur, I wanted to say
…'

‘There's no
“monsieur” here! You want money? Here, I don't know how much is
there. Now, goodbye – and may you get run over by a tram!'

It made him smile. He felt the better
for it. He waited until Mélie had gone, banging her case against the door as she
went, and then shut and bolted it himself before going back to the others. And in
all that time Gassin had not moved.

‘That's got rid of one! What were we saying?
Oh yes, we were talking about your kid. If you'd been there, wouldn't
you have reacted exactly as I did?'

The old man's eyes were watering,
and his pipe had gone out. Maigret examined him closely, and at that very moment the
thought struck him:

‘If in the next two minutes I
haven't got the answer, something terrible is going to happen and it'll
be on my head!'

For everything that was happening now
seemed unreal. There was something else, some other story being played out
underneath … One man was talking for talking's sake, and the other man
wasn't listening. It was the latter Maigret was observing but he could detect
nothing at all in those eyes. Surely Gassin could not be that inert at a moment like
this? He wasn't even drunk! Ducrau was so sure of this that the sweat was
pouring off him.

‘I wouldn't have strangled
him just for that. But there was my son who died because of him, so …'

He stopped in front of Berthe.

‘What are you looking at me like
that for? Still thinking about the cake you'll not be getting a piece of? Hear
that, Gassin? When I die, I'll have the last laugh because I won't be
leaving them a penny!'

Maigret had suddenly started walking
slowly and apparently aimlessly, moving round the room in all directions.

‘… Because I'll tell you
something important: your wife, my wife, none of all that counts for anything!
I'll tell you something that does count: the two of us in the days when
…'

Gassin was
holding his glass in his left hand. His right hand was still in his jacket pocket.
He didn't have a gun, that was certain, because Lucas was not a man who made
mistakes.

On one side of the old man, two metres
away, was Madame Ducrau, and on his other side was Berthe.

Ducrau had paused halfway through a
sentence when he saw Maigret stop behind the boatman. What happened next was so fast
that nobody understood what was going on. Maigret leaned forwards and wrapped his
powerful arms around Gassin's chest and arms. There was a brief scuffle. A
poor old man struggling vainly to break free! Berthe screamed with fear, and her
husband took two steps forwards just as Maigret's hand reached into one of the
old man's pockets and took something from it.

Then it was over! Gassin, free to move,
started breathing again. Ducrau waited to see Maigret open his hand. The inspector,
his forehead bathed in cold sweat, took a moment to recover and then said:

‘You are in no danger
now.'

He was standing behind Gassin who could
not see him. When Ducrau approached, Maigret said nothing but merely opened his
right hand to reveal a small stick of dynamite like the kind used in quarries. As he
did so, he said:

‘Carry on.'

Ducrau, hooking his thumbs in the
armholes of his waistcoat, went on, in a loud, rough voice:

‘I was saying …'

He smiled. He laughed. He had to sit
down.

‘It's all so stupid!'

Indeed it was stupid for a man like him
to feel this way after the event, so much so that his legs buckled under him.
Meanwhile, Maigret, standing with his elbows on the mantelpiece next to Decharme,
waited for an unpleasant dizzy spell to pass.

The susurration of rain heard through the
open window evoked the gentle sound of plants being watered. The smell of damp earth
floated into the dining room on every movement of the air.

From a distance, for Lucas, for example,
the spectacle of so many people frozen in the brightness of the room as if they were
figures in an old master, must have been alarming.

Ducrau was the first to recover.

‘Well now,' he sighed.
‘There you have it!'

The words meant nothing, but they were a
release. They stirred things. They broke the general stagnation. He looked around
him with the astonishment of a man who had been expecting that something must have
changed.

But nothing had changed. They were all
in their places, motionless and grim. To the point where Ducrau's footsteps,
as he walked to the door, sounded like thunder.

‘Mélie, the silly bitch, has
gone,' he growled when he came back.

He turned to his wife:

‘Jeanne, you'd better go and
make the coffee.'

She left the room. The kitchen
couldn't have been far because almost at once came the sound of the grinder,
and Berthe got up and started to clear the table.

‘So there
you have it!' repeated Ducrau, directing the remark mainly at Maigret.

The way he looked round the room now
gave a meaning to the words.

‘The show's over.
We're all friends again. The coffee is being ground. There's a rattle of
cups and saucers.'

He was limp now, drained and despondent.
Like a man who does not know what to do next, he picked up the dynamite from the
mantelpiece where Maigret had left it and looked at the maker's name. He
turned to Gassin.

‘It's from one of my sites,
isn't it? Maybe the quarry at Venteuil?'

The old man nodded a yes. Ducrau looked
thoughtfully at the dynamite and explained:

‘We always used to keep some on
board, remember? We used to explode the stuff in places where there were lots of
fish.'

He put it back where it had been. He did
not want to sit but he didn't want to remain on his feet either. Perhaps he
wanted to talk but he had no clear idea of what to say.

‘Gassin, do you understand what
I'm saying?' he sighed eventually, approaching to within a metre of the
boatman.

Gassin looked at him beadily with his
small, dead eyes.

‘Or rather, you don't
understand, but it's no odds to me. Look at them!'

He gestured towards his wife and
daughter, who, like black ants, were pouring coffee. The door had stayed open, and
the hiss of the gas stove was audible. It was a large house, grand even, but it
seemed as if the family had cut it down to their size.

‘It's always been the same! I've been
dragging them around by the arm for years and years. Then just for a break I go to
the office and I take it out on the morons! Then … No thanks. No sugar.'

It was the first time he had spoken to
his daughter without giving her the rough side of his tongue, and she looked up at
him in surprise. Her eyes were puffy, and her cheeks mottled with red.

‘You're a good-looking girl,
really! You know, Gassin, all women get like that from time to time. That's
God's truth! Stay calm. We're all friends here. I'm very fond of
you. Everybody should be able once and for all to …'

Perhaps out of habit, Madame Ducrau had
picked up her knitting and, seated in a corner, was plying her long steel needles,
Decharme was stirring his cup with a spoon …

‘Do you know the thing
that's bothered me most in life? The fact that I slept with your wife! First,
it was a stupid thing to do. I don't even know why I did it. And then, things
were never the same with you afterwards. From my window I used to watch you on the
boat, and her, and the kid … The truth is that your wife herself never knew whose
she was. Maybe she was mine, maybe she was yours …'

Berthe gave a heavy sigh. He gave her a
baleful look. It was none of her business! He was not worried about either her or
his wife!

‘Do you understand, old friend?
Oh, say something!'

He walked round and round Gassin, not
daring to look at him directly and leaving lengthy pauses between sentences.

‘But all
in all, of us two, you were the happy one!'

Despite the chill of night, he felt
hot.

‘Shall I give you the dynamite
back? I don't care if I get blown up. But somebody's got to stay with
the kid, on the barge …'

His eye fell on Decharme, who was
smoking a cigarette, and all the contempt a man can feel darkened his eyes as he
spat:

‘Do you find this
interesting?'

And then, since his son-in-law could
find nothing to say:

‘You can stay! You are no more in
my way than that coffee-pot – and that's laying aside the fact that you are
incapable of malice of any sort!'

He had grabbed a chair by the back and
finally dared set it down in front of Gassin, sit on it and pat him on the knee.

‘Well now! Don't you think
we're all just about at the same point? Tell me, inspector, what do you think
I'll get for Bébert?'

They were discussing the topic in the
much same way that, after dinner, as a family, they might have been discussing their
forthcoming holidays, all against a rhythmic accompaniment of clicking knitting
needles.

‘You might get away with two
years. Maybe a jury would make it a suspended sentence.'

His wife raised her head but did not go
so far as to look straight at him.

‘And when it's over, Gassin,
I'll get myself some old tin tub, the smallest tug I can find, like
Eagle
I
…'

And, his throat
suddenly tightening, he added:

‘Talk to me, for God's sake!
Haven't you got it yet? Nothing matters any more!'

‘What do you want me to
say?'

The old man did not know either. He was
in a daze. There is nothing more disconcerting than a situation left hanging. He was
so bewildered that he suddenly reverted to his old self-effacing ways and remained
seated, like a poverty-stricken visitor, not daring to move.

Ducrau shook him by the shoulders.

‘You see! Maybe we can still do
things together! Tomorrow you'll go off on the
Golden Fleece
. Then,
one fine day, just when you're least expecting it, you'll hear someone
shouting your name from a tug. It'll be me, in dungarees! The other men
won't understand what's going on. People will say I've lost money,
gone bust. Not so! The truth is that I'm tired of dragging this lot around
with me …'

He could not resist glancing defiantly
at Maigret.

‘You know, I can still deny
everything, and it's more than likely that you won't be able to produce
evidence that will stand up! It's only what I thought of doing. Oh, if you
only knew what I've thought of doing! When I was at home, convalescing, with
the police busying around, I swore to myself that I'd take advantage of it and
make life hard for all concerned.'

Without intending to, he turned for a
moment towards his daughter and son-in-law.

‘It was such an
opportunity!'

He ran his hand
over his face.

‘Gassin!' he cried, changing
tack, his eyes sparkling with malevolence.

And when the old man looked up at him,
he went on:

‘Is that everything? Or do you
still have it in for me? You know, if you want my wife in place of …'

He felt like crying but he
couldn't. But equally he wanted to embrace his friend. He crossed to the
window and closed it, drawing the curtains like any decent, law-abiding citizen.

‘Listen, everybody. It's now
eleven o'clock. I suggest we all sleep here and tomorrow we'll all leave
together …'

The proposal was directed mainly at
Maigret, as was what followed.

‘There's nothing to be
afraid of. I have no intention of running off – the very opposite! Anyway,
there's a police inspector on the premises! Jeanne, make us all a glass of
grog before we go to bed …'

She obeyed like some skivvy, abandoning
her knitting needles. Ducrau walked to the courtyard door and called into the damp
night air:

‘Officer! Come inside. Your boss
is asking for you.'

Lucas was wet, bewildered and
worried.

‘You can start by having a
nightcap with us.'

And so, at the end of the evening, they
were all sitting around the table, each holding a steaming glass. When Ducrau held
out his to clink with Gassin, the old man did not react and drank noisily.

‘Are there enough sheets on the
beds?'

‘I don't think so,'
said Berthe.

‘Go and see to it,
then.'

A little later,
he confided to Maigret:

‘I'm so tired I could drop,
yet in spite of everything I'm feeling better!'

The women trotted from room to room,
making beds, finding night-clothes for everyone. Maigret, who had put the stick of
dynamite in his pocket, turned to Ducrau:

‘Give me your revolver,' he
said, ‘and your word that there isn't another one in the
house.'

‘There isn't.'

But the atmosphere was no longer tense.
It was more like the mood in a bereaved house after the burial and the general
feeling was one of lassitude.

Again, Ducrau approached Maigret, this
time to tell him, with a gesture which included the entire household:

‘See! Even on a night like this,
they can still manage to do something sordid!'

His cheeks were redder than usual. He
was probably feverish. He went upstairs first, to show the way. Unexceptional
bedrooms furnished like rooms in a hotel led off both sides of a corridor. Ducrau
indicated the first room.

‘This is mine. Believe it or not,
I've never been able to sleep without my wife.'

His wife had heard. She was looking in a
cupboard for a pair of slippers for Maigret. Her husband gave her a pat, saying:

‘Never mind, old girl! Come along!
I think I'll be able to find a small corner for you on that old tin tub
…'

The breaking day found Maigret propped
on his elbows looking out of his window, fully dressed, with a blanket
draped over his shoulders, for it had
been a wet night. The gravel of the courtyard was still damp, and even though it had
stopped raining, large, bloated drops of water were still falling from the cornice
and the trees.

The Seine was grey. A tug towing four
barges was waiting at the lock. In the far distance, in the middle of a loop of the
river, another convoy of boats could be seen advancing between two lines of dark
trees.

The surface of the water grew lighter.
Maigret shrugged off the blanket and straightened his clothes. Nothing had happened.
He had heard nothing. Just to be on the safe side, he opened the door and found
Lucas standing in the corridor outside.

‘You can come in.'

Lucas, pale with fatigue, took a drink
from the water jug, stood in front of the window and stretched.

‘Nothing!' he said.
‘No one stirred. The young couple were last to go to sleep. They were still
talking in whispers at one in the morning.'

They saw the chauffeur, who did not live
in, arrive on his bicycle.

‘I'd give anything for a cup
of steaming-hot coffee,' sighed Lucas.

‘Go and make some!'

It was as though his wish had been
anticipated. There was a shuffling sound from the corridor. Madame Ducrau, in a
dressing gown with an Indian scarf around her head, was padding quietly along the
corridor.

‘Up already?' she said in
surprise. ‘I'll go down this minute and make the breakfast.'

The tension had
not affected her in any lasting way. She looked the same as she must always have
looked, glum and pinched.

‘Better stay in the
corridor.'

Maigret washed his face in cold water to
wake himself up and soon, turning round, he saw that the river had changed colour
and that the tug and the barges had passed through the lock. There was a pink glow
in the sky, and birds were singing. An engine throbbed. It was the car, which the
chauffeur was driving out of the garage. But it was not yet fully day. The cold of
night remained in their bones, and the sun had not brought life to the
landscape.

‘Chief, here he is …'

It was Ducrau, who emerged from his room
and entered Maigret's, braces hanging down, hair uncombed and his shirt open
over his hairy chest.

‘Need anything? Want me to lend
you a razor?'

He too looked out at the Seine, but
through different eyes. He said:

‘Ah! They've made a start
with the sand.'

Downstairs, there was again the sound of
the coffee-grinder.