Lock No. 1 (12 page)

‘Tell me, for going to prison,
what am I allowed to take with me?'

He was not joking. He was simply
asking.

‘If you like, we could leave
immediately after breakfast. We could drop Gassin off on his boat, and that might
give me a chance to get a glimpse of Aline …'

Not fully dressed, he looked enormous,
like a bear, especially with his trousers concertinaed around his legs.

‘There‘s one other thing I must ask you. You
know what I said last night about my money? I can technically do it, and it would
drive my daughter and her husband wild. But, given the circumstances …'

It was all over! He was fully awake
with, as happens after a serious bout of drinking, a bitter taste in his mouth and a
clear head.

‘Either way, you'll make
your competitors' day for them …' said Maigret.

That sufficed. The solid look of the
boss, the chief, returned to Ducrau's eyes.

‘Can you advise me about a good
lawyer?'

The tug was blowing its hooter to signal
it was approaching the next lock and, by the same token, specified the number of
barges it was towing. They did not hear Madame Ducrau coming in her felt
slippers.

‘The coffee's ready,'
she said meekly.

‘You don't mind if I come
down just as I am? It's an old habit. Let's go and rouse
Gassin.'

His was the room next door. Ducrau
knocked on the door.

‘Gassin! … Hello! …
Gassin?'

He was already filled with foreboding.
His hand reached for the knob of the door. He turned it, took one step inside and
turned to Maigret

There was no one in the room. The bed
had not been slept in, and the nightshirt provided by Madame Ducrau still lay, arms
widespread, on the counterpane.

‘Gassin!'

The window was not open and Maigret
couldn't help
giving Lucas a
suspicious look. But Ducrau had seen something, a dangling length of curtain cord.
Cool and collected, he stepped forwards and drew back the fabric.

A body, dark and elongated, was hanging
against the wall. The cord was not very strong for, at the first touch, it snapped,
and the old man collapsed on to the floor, a heavy mass, like a statue, so that it
seemed that he might shatter.

The smell of stale pipe-smoke still
lingered in the dining room, where the dirty glasses and ashtrays had not been
cleared away. The tablecloth was stained from the night before. The car was waiting
just outside the window, which had just been opened.

Nothing had been said to Madame Ducrau.
The young couple, who could be heard moving about upstairs, had yet to come
down.

Ducrau was eating with his elbows on the
table. It was amazing how much he ate for breakfast, grimly, as if stalked by the
most voracious hunger. He didn't speak. His jaws made a noise. He made even
more as he slurped his café au lait.

‘Fetch down my jacket and my
collar and tie.'

‘Aren't you going to get
dressed in your room?'

‘Just do as you're
told.'

He was looking straight in front of him.
He ate quickly. When he finally stood to put on the jacket which his wife was
holding for him, he was breathing hard.

‘I've packed a case for
you.'

‘Later.'

‘Aren't you going to wait until Berthe
…'

She pointed to the ceiling, but he did
not even bother to respond.

‘What about Gassin?'

‘Inspector Lucas is taking care of
that,' broke in Maigret.

Lucas had already phoned both the local
police and the public prosecutor's office.

Then Ducrau and Maigret left with
indecent haste. Ducrau kissed his wife on the forehead, probably without being aware
of what he was doing.

‘Did you mean it, Émile. Are we to
go back to the old tin tub?'

‘Yes, yes, sure we are!'

He was in a hurry. It was as if
something was drawing him on. He settled himself heavily into the back of his car,
and it was Maigret who said to the driver:

‘Charenton!'

They did not turn and look back. What
was the point? They'd gone several kilometres through the forest of
Fontainebleau when Ducrau gripped Maigret's arm and said:

‘It's perfectly true: I
don't even know why I slept with his wife!'

And, without pausing, he said to the
chauffeur:

‘Can't you go any
faster?'

His beard had grown, he had not washed,
and his face looked dirty. He felt vainly for his pipe, which he had forgotten,
until the chauffeur finally handed him cigarettes in a blue packet.

‘You may or may not believe this,
but I've rarely been as happy as I was last night. It's hard to explain.
Do you
know what my old lady did when we
were in bed? She snuggled up to me and cried and said I was a good man!'

His voice sounded congested, as if a
whole host of words were clogging his throat.

‘Faster, damn you!' he
urged, leaning over the chauffeur's shoulder.

They sped through Corbeil, Juvisy,
Villejuif, and weaved through all the cars belonging to the owners of villas who
returned to Paris every Monday morning. There was as much sun as the previous
evening. The rain had merely served to green up the fields and the trees. They
stopped at a petrol station, where eight red pumps were lined up in the sunshine.
The chauffeur turned to his employer:

‘Do you have a hundred
francs?'

Ducrau just handed him his wallet.

At last they drove into Paris, down
Avenue d'Orléans, along the Seine. The windows of the company's offices
were being cleaned when they got to Quai des Célestins. Ducrau leaned against the
car door. When they reached a small bar, he stopped the car.

‘Is it all right if I buy a pipe
and some tobacco?'

Inside, all he could get was a
cherrywood pipe costing two francs. He filled it slowly as the quays slipped by.
They passed the stockpiled barrels at Bercy.

‘Slow down!'

They sensed rather than saw the lock,
above which reared an empty barge which had been raised to the top in the
chamber.

The stone-crusher was already working.
Washing had been hung out to dry on the boats moored at the quayside.

In the bar, men
in sailors' caps recognized the boss and crowded round the window.

‘I think it would be best …'
began Ducrau.

But he overcame a moment of weakness and
walked down the stone steps. He did not spare a glance for his house, nor for the
open window, through which the maid was visible. He stepped on to the
Golden
Fleece
's flimsy gangplank. People on the other barges waved to
him.

He bent over the hatch at the same
moment as Maigret and, also at the same moment as him, he saw Aline, with one breast
bared, holding a baby in her arms, sitting at a table spread with a cloth
embroidered with roses. She cradled the child. She was looking straight in front of
her. And whenever her breast escaped from the eager little mouth, she restored it
with a practised gesture.

It was hot. The stove had been lit for
some time. From a clothes hook hung a heavy jacket belonging to old Gassin, and his
shoes, ready-polished, had been placed under it.

With a slow but firm movement of his
arm, Maigret prevented Ducrau from going further, drew him to the tiller and held
out a letter which had been written on paper supplied by a bar.

I'm writing to let you know
that I am well and I hope that this finds you likewise …

Ducrau did not understand. Then slowly it
came back to him: the inn, the village in the Haute-Marne and Gassin's sister,
whom he had known, once upon a time.

‘She'll be well looked after there,'
said Maigret.

The sun was growing warmer. A passing
boatman shouted:

‘The
Albatross
has broken
down at Meaux!'

He meant it for Ducrau and was very
surprised not to get a reply.

‘Shall we go?'

All around people were staring at them.
One of them even came up to them on the quayside and touched his cap:

‘Got a minute, boss? It's
about the stone that's to be unloaded …'

‘Later.'

‘Thing is …'

‘Dammit, Hubert, leave me
alone!'

The brightly coloured livery of a tram
unwound over the grey cobbles. The stone-crusher seemed to be pulverizing the whole
district, and a fine white dust settled over everything.

The car had turned round. Ducrau was
looking back through the small rear window.

‘It's wonderful!' he
sighed.

‘What is?'

‘Oh nothing.'

Was it that Maigret really did not
understand? Now it was he who wanted the chauffeur to go faster. It felt to him that
every minute which ticked by was a danger. Ducrau was sweating profusely. At one
point, just as they were overtaking a tram, his hand gripped the handle of the
door.

But no, he
behaved himself!

Then they were driving over the
Pont-Neuf. The driver turned and asked:

‘Want to stop at the
tobacconist's?'

For the Henri IV
bar-cum-tobacconist's was still there, red and blue, opposite the equestrian
statue.

‘Pull up here,' said
Maigret. ‘Then drive back to Samois and wait …'

Walking was better. They had only a
hundred metres to go, still along the bank of the Seine. As they walked, Ducrau was
on the parapet side.

‘So you can leave for your new
place as of now?' he said abruptly. ‘You'll be gaining two
days.'

‘I don't know
yet.'

‘Pretty country down that way, is
it?'

‘It's quiet.'

Just twenty metres more, one road to
cross and they'd be at the sombre buildings of the Palais de Justice, outside
the main entrance of the police station, with the gate on the right-hand side.

For the second time, Ducrau's hand
gripped the inspector's arm and, as they crossed the road, he gasped:

‘I can't do it!'

He was talking about the Seine, the
tram, the cord, anything that could prevent …

Reaching the kerb, he turned round. The
officer on sentry duty had saluted Maigret. The gate was already opening.

‘I can't!' Ducrau said
again as he stepped into the echoing entrance hall while a nib was already being
dipped into
a bottle of the purple ink
used to write down his name and surname in the station register.

A tug travelling downstream sounded its
hooter twice, the signal that it was taking the second arch, while a Belgian barge
going upstream moved across the current and headed for the third.

Maigret struggled to open his eyes,
frowning, as if distrustful of the voice that had just shouted at him, dragging him
out of a deep sleep:

‘Uncle!'

His eyes still closed, he sighed, groped
at the sheet and realized that this was no dream, that something was the matter,
because his hand had not encountered Madame Maigret's warm body where it
should have been.

Finally he opened his eyes. It was a
clear night. Madame Maigret, standing by the leaded window, was pulling back the
curtain while downstairs someone was banging on the door and the noise reverberated
throughout the house.

‘Uncle! It's me!'

Madame Maigret was still looking out.
Her hair wound in curling pins gave her a strange halo.

‘It's Philippe,' she
said, knowing full well that Maigret was awake and that he was turned towards her,
waiting. ‘Are you going to get up?'

Maigret went downstairs first, barefoot
in his felt slippers. He had hastily pulled on a pair of trousers and shrugged on
his jacket as he descended the staircase. At the eighth stair, he had to duck to
avoid hitting his head on the beam. He usually did so automatically, but this time
he forgot and banged his forehead. He groaned and swore as he reached the freezing
hall. He went into the kitchen, which was a little warmer.

There were iron bars across the door. On
the other side, Philippe was saying to someone:

‘I won't be long.
We'll be in Paris before daylight.'

Madame Maigret could be heard padding
around upstairs. Maigret pulled open the door, surly from the knock he had just
given himself.

‘It's you!' he
muttered, seeing his nephew standing in the road.

A huge moon floated above the leafless
poplars, making the sky so light that the tiniest branches were silhouetted against
it while, beyond the bend, the Loire was a glittering swarm of silvery spangles.

‘East wind!' thought Maigret
mechanically, as would any local on seeing the surface of the river whipped up.

It is one of those country habits, as is
standing in the doorway without saying anything, looking at the intruder and waiting
for him to speak.

‘I hope I haven't woken Aunt
up, at least?'

Philippe's face was frozen stiff.
Behind him the shape of a G7 taxi stood out incongruously against the white-frosted
landscape.

‘Are you leaving the driver
outside?'

‘I need to talk to you right
away.'

‘Come inside quickly, both of
you,' called Madame Maigret from the kitchen where she was lighting an oil
lamp.

She added to her nephew:

‘We haven't got electricity
yet. The house has been wired, but we're waiting to be connected to the power
supply.'

A lightbulb was dangling from a flex.
People notice little details like that for no reason. And when they are already on
edge, it is the sort of thing that can irritate them. During the minutes that
followed, Philippe's eyes kept returning to that bulb, which served no purpose
other than to emphasize everything that was antiquated about this rustic house, or
rather everything that is precarious about modern comforts.

‘Have you come from
Paris?'

Maigret was leaning against the chimney
breast, not properly awake yet. The presence of the taxi on the road made the
question as redundant as the lightbulb, but sometimes people speak for the sake of
saying something.

‘I'm going to tell you
everything, Uncle. I'm in big trouble. If you don't help me, if you
don't come to Paris with me, I don't know what will become of me.
I'm going out of my mind. I'm in such a state I even forgot to give my
aunt a kiss.'

Madame Maigret stood there, having
slipped a dressing gown over her nightdress. Philippe's lips brushed her cheek
three times, performing the ritual like a child. Then he sat down at the table,
clutching his head in his hands.

Maigret filled his pipe as he watched
him, while his wife stacked twigs in the fireplace. There was something strange in
the air, something threatening. Since Maigret had retired, he had lost the habit of
getting up in the middle of the night and he couldn't help being reminded of
nights spent beside a sick person or a dead body.

‘I don't know how I could
have been so stupid!' Philippe suddenly sobbed.

He poured out his tale of woe in a
sudden rush, punctuated by hiccups. He looked about him like a person seeking to pin
his agitation on something, while, in contrast to this outburst of emotion, Maigret
turned up the wick of the oil lamp and the first flames leapt up from the
fireplace.

‘First of all, you're going
to drink something.'

The uncle took a bottle of brandy and
two glasses from a cupboard that contained some leftover food and smelled of cold
meat. Madame Maigret put on her clogs to go and fetch some logs from the
woodshed.

‘To your good health! Now try to
calm down.'

The smell of burning twigs mingled with
that of the brandy. Philippe, dazed, watched his aunt loom silently out of the
darkness, her arms filled with logs.

He was short-sighted and, seen from a
certain angle, his eyes looked enormous behind his spectacle lenses, giving him the
appearance of a frightened child.

‘It happened last night. I was
supposed to be on a stakeout in Rue Fontaine—'

‘Just a moment,' interrupted
Maigret, sitting astride a straw-bottomed chair and lighting his pipe. ‘Who
are you working with?'

‘With Chief Inspector
Amadieu.'

‘Go on.'

Drawing gently on his pipe, Maigret
narrowed his eyes and stared at the lime-plastered wall and the shelf with copper
saucepans, caressing the images that were so familiar to him. At Quai des Orfèvres,
Amadieu's office was the last one on the left at the end of the corridor.
Amadieu himself was a skinny, sad man who had been promoted to divisional chief when
Maigret had retired.

‘Does he still have a drooping
moustache?'

‘Yes. Yesterday we had a summons
for Pepito Palestrino, the owner of the Floria, in Rue Fontaine.'

‘What number?'

‘Fifty-three, next to the
optician.'

‘In my day, that was the Toréador.
Cocaine dealing?'

‘Cocaine initially. Then something
else too. The chief had heard rumours that Pepito was mixed up in the Barnabé job,
the guy who was shot in Place Blanche a fortnight ago. You must have read about it
in the papers.'

‘Make us some coffee!' said
Maigret to his wife.

And, with the relieved sigh of a dog who
finally settles down after chasing its tail, he leaned his elbows on the back of his
chair and rested his chin on his folded hands. From time to time, Philippe removed
his glasses to wipe the lenses and, for a few moments, he appeared to be blind. He
was a tall, plump, auburn-haired boy with baby-pink skin.

‘You know that we can no longer do
as we please. In your day, no one would have batted an eyelid at arresting Pepito in
the middle of the night. But now, we have to keep to the letter of the law.
That's why the chief decided to carry out the arrest at eight o'clock in
the morning. In the meantime, it was my job to keep an eye on the fellow
…'

He was getting bogged down in the dense
quiet of the room, then, with a start, he remembered his predicament and cast around
helplessly.

For Maigret, the few words spoken by his
nephew exuded the whiff of Paris. He could picture the Floria's neon sign, the
doorman on the alert for cars arriving, and his nephew turning up in the
neighbourhood that night.

‘Take off your overcoat,
Philippe,' interrupted Madame Maigret. ‘You'll catch cold when you
go outside.'

He was wearing a dinner-jacket. It
looked quite incongruous in the low-ceilinged kitchen with its heavy beams and
red-tiled floor.

‘Have another drink—'

But in a fresh outburst of anger
Philippe jumped up, wringing his hands violently enough to crush his bones.

‘If only you knew,
Uncle—'

He was on the verge of tears, his eyes
stayed dry. His gaze fell on the electric lightbulb again. He stamped his foot.

‘I bet I'll be arrested
later!'

Madame Maigret, who was pouring boiling
water over the coffee, turned around, saucepan in hand.

‘What on earth are you talking
about?'

And Maigret, still puffing on his pipe,
opened his night-shirt collar with its delicate red embroidery.

‘So you were on a stakeout
opposite the Floria—'

‘Not opposite. I went
inside,' said Philippe, still on his feet. ‘At the back of the club
there's a little office where Pepito has set up a camp bed. That's where
he usually sleeps after closing up the joint.'

A cart rumbled past on the road. The
clock had stopped. Maigret glanced at his watch hanging from a nail above the
fireplace. The hands showed half past four. In the cowsheds, milking had begun and
carts were trundling to Orléans market. The taxi was still waiting outside the
house.

‘I wanted to be clever,'
confessed Philippe. ‘Last week the chief yelled at me and told me—'

He turned red and trailed off, trying to
fix his gaze on something.

‘He told you—?'

‘I can't
remember—'

‘Well I can! If it's
Amadieu, he probably came out with something along the lines of: “You're
a maverick, young man, a maverick like your uncle!”'

Philippe said neither yes nor no.

‘Anyway, I wanted to be
clever,' he hastily went on. ‘When the customers left, at around 1.30, I
hid in the toilet. I thought that if Pepito had got wind of anything, he might try
and get rid of the stuff. And do you know what happened?'

Maigret, more solemn now, slowly shook
his head.

‘Pepito was alone. Of that
I'm certain! Suddenly, there was a gunshot. It took a few moments for it to
dawn on me, then it took me a few more moments to run into the bar. It looked
bigger, at night. It was lit by a single lightbulb. Pepito was lying between two
rows of tables and as he fell he'd knocked over some chairs. He was
dead.'

Maigret rose and poured himself another
glassful of brandy, while his wife signalled to him not to drink too much.

‘Is that all?'

Philippe was pacing up and down. And
this young man, who generally had difficulty expressing himself, began to wax
eloquent in a dry, bitter tone.

‘No, that's not all!
That's when I did something really stupid! I was scared. I couldn't
think straight. The empty bar was sinister, it felt as if it was shrouded in
greyness. There were streamers strewn on the floor and over the tables. Pepito was
lying in a strange position, on his side, his hand close to his wound, and he seemed
to be looking at me. What can I say? I took out my revolver and I started talking. I
yelled out some nonsense and my voice scared me even more. There were shadowy
corners everywhere, drapes, and I had the impression they were moving. I pulled
myself together and went over to have a look. I flung open a door and yanked down a
velvet curtain. I found the switchbox and I wanted to turn on the lights. I pushed
the switches at random. And that was even more frightening. A red projector lit the
place up. Fans started humming in every corner. “Who's there?” I
shouted again.'

He bit his lip. His aunt looked at him,
as distressed as he was. He was her sister's son and had been born in Alsace.
Maigret had wangled him a job at police headquarters.

‘I'd feel happier knowing he
was in the civil service,' his mother had said.

And now, he panted:

‘Please don't be angry with
me, Uncle. I don't know myself how it happened. I can barely remember. In any
case, I fired a shot, because I thought I saw something move. I rushed forwards and
then stopped. I thought I heard footsteps, whisperings. But there was nothing but
emptiness. I would never have believed the place was so big and full of obstacles.
In the end, I found myself in the office. There was a gun on the table. I grabbed it
without thinking. The barrel was still warm. I took out the chamber and saw that
there was one bullet missing.'

‘Idiot!' groaned Maigret
between clenched teeth.

The coffee was steaming and Madame
Maigret, sugar bowl in hand, stood there not knowing what she was doing.

‘I had completely lost my mind. I
still thought I could hear a noise over by the door. I ran. It was only later that I
realized I had a gun in each hand.'

‘Where did you put the
gun?'

Maigret's tone was harsh. Philippe
stared at the floor.

‘All sorts of things were going
through my mind. If it was a murder, people would think that since I'd been
alone with Pepito—'

‘Dear God!' groaned Madame
Maigret.

‘It only lasted for a few seconds.
I put the gun near Pepito's hand, to make it look like a suicide,
then—'

Maigret rose to his feet and took up his
favourite position in front of the fireplace, his hands clasped behind his back. He
was unshaven. He had put on a little weight since the days when he used to stand
like that in front of his stove at Quai des Orfèvres.

‘When you left, you ran into
someone, am I right?'

He knew it.

‘Just as I was closing the door
behind me, I bumped into a man who was walking past. I apologized. Our faces were
almost touching. I don't even know whether after that I closed the door
properly. I walked to Place Clichy. I took a taxi and gave the driver your
address.'

Madame Maigret put the sugar bowl down
on the beech table and slowly asked her husband: