Lock No. 1 (4 page)

Pedestrians brushed past them. The two
men were standing in the full glare of the sun, which was burning the back of
Maigret's neck.

‘They're decent people. Gassin drinks a bit
too much, but you mustn't think he's always like he is today. That
business the night before last hit him hard. This morning, he thought you were out
to get him.'

Still smiling, the big man touched the
peak of his cap and walked on. Maigret was going to have lunch too. All round him,
there was a change of gear: the stone-crusher had stopped working, the traffic was
not as heavy, and it seemed as if even the lock was working at a slower pace.

Obviously, he would have to come back.
There was enough to keep him busy for several days in this small world whose
distinct character he was only just beginning to get to grips with.

Had Gassin gone back on board? Was he at
that moment in that varnished cabin, sitting at the table in front of a white cloth
with pink roses on it?

In any case, in the Ducrau household
they would surely be arguing, and the Spanish grapes had probably not been enough to
restore the invalid's good humour.

Maigret went back into the bar, though
he wasn't really sure why. There were no customers. The landlord and his wife,
a small, prettyish brunette who had not got round to making herself presentable,
were standing at the bar, eating stew. Light was reflected in the tumblers of red
wine.

‘Back already?' exclaimed
Fernand, wiping his mouth.

Maigret had been adopted. He
hadn't even needed to say who he was.

‘I hope at least you haven't
been tormenting that little girl. Beer again? Irma go and fetch up a cold
beer.'

He looked out of
the window, not on the canal side, but in the direction of the bar across the
road.

‘Poor old Gassin's going to
make himself ill over this business. Mind you, it's no joke falling in the
water in the dark and suddenly feeling somebody dragging you down to the bottom
…'

‘Has he gone back on
board?'

‘No, he's over
there.'

And the landlord nodded to the other
bar, where, in the midst of four men who were still drinking, Gassin was clearly
visible, waving his arms about, completely drunk.

‘That's what he does, goes
from one bar to the other.'

‘It looks like he's
crying.'

‘Yes, he is. He must be on at
least his fifteenth aperitif this morning, not counting the tots of rum.'

The landlord's wife brought the
ice-cold beer. Maigret sipped it slowly.

‘Does his daughter have
boyfriends?'

‘Aline? No, not her!'

Fernand spoke as if the very idea that
Aline could wander off the straight and narrow was the most absurd thing in the
whole world. All the same, the fact was that Maigret had seen her feeding a baby,
her own or another, but either way she was no less a young mother who had been
frightened by his fatherly gesture and had locked herself in the small cabin.

He felt uneasy at the thought of the old
man, dead drunk, crying into his glass, and of the baby lying in its cradle.

‘Do they travel around
much?'

‘Twelve
months of the year.'

‘Don't they have any paid
hands?'

‘It's just them. Aline
handles the helm as well as any man.'

Maigret had seen those northern canals:
straight, verdant banks, poplars lining long lanes of flat water, locks in the
middle of nowhere, their crank handles rusting, the poky lock buildings bright with
hollyhocks and ducks splashing in the eddies created by the sluices.

He imagined the
Golden Fleece
slowly champing at the ribbon of water hour after hour until it reached some distant
unloading quay, with Aline steering, the baby in its cradle, more likely than not
out on the deck, near the helm, and the old man on the towpath driving his
horses.

An old drunk, a crazy girl and a babe in
arms.

When, at six the next morning, Maigret
got off the number 13 tram and headed for the lock, Émile Ducrau was already on the
unloading wharf, a sailor's cap on his head and a heavy cane in his hand.

As on previous days, thanks to the joys
of spring, there was in the air, in the early-morning life of Paris, a child-like
playfulness. Certain objects, certain people, the milk bottles on doorsteps, the
woman in her white apron setting out her dairy stall, the lorry returning from Les
Halles, scattering its last remaining cabbage leaves in its wake, were so many
emblems of peace and exuberance.

Could not the same have been said of the
Ducraus' maid, framed in a window of the tall house, its façade now gilded by
the sun, as she shook out dusters into empty space? Behind her, in the semi-darkness
of the living room, the barely perceptible figure of Madame Ducrau came and went, a
cotton scarf tied round her head.

On the second floor, the blinds remained
closed, and the mind's eye could imagine, striped with bands of sunlight, the
bed occupied by Rose, the languid mistress, asleep with arms folded and armpits
damp.

Ducrau, already solidly ensconced in the
new day,
shouted some final exhortation to
the master of a barge which was emerging from the lock chamber and beginning to slip
down the current of the Seine.

‘I was right. You're like
me.'

Did he mean that the inspector was also
made of the same stuff as those who get up early to organize the work of other
men.

‘Have you a moment?'

His shoulders were so broad that he
looked almost square-shaped. Of course, he was very probably wearing a bandage
around his chest. But he moved briskly, and Maigret saw him jump down from the wall
of the lock on to the deck of a barge which was more than a metre below him.

‘Morning, Maurice. Did you run
across
Eagle IV
above Chalifert? Did they get those seals fixed?'

But he was scarcely listening. Once he
had been given the information he'd asked for, he dismissed people with a
grunt and turned his attention elsewhere.

‘Hear any more about the accident
in Revin culvert?'

Aline was sitting on the deck of the
Golden Fleece
near the helm, grinding coffee and looking vaguely around
her. No sooner had Maigret spotted her than Ducrau was at his elbow, with a
short-stemmed pipe clenched between his teeth.

‘Are you beginning to make any
sense of it?'

A jerk of his chin indicated that he was
talking about all the activity in the canal port and the lock, not about the attack
on him. He was much more jovial than on the previous evening, and less guarded.

‘You see,
there is a three-way junction of waterways connected to the Seine. Here, we are on
the Marne canal. Over that way is the River Marne itself – it isn't used for
navigation hereabouts. Finally there is the Upper Seine. The Upper Seine will take
you to Burgundy, the Loire, Lyons and Marseilles. Le Havre and Rouen are the most
significant towns on the Lower Seine. Two companies share all the freight business:
the General and the Centre Canal Company. But from this lock and as far as Belgium,
Holland and the Saar, it's Ducrau's.'

His eyes were blue and his skin fair in
the early-morning sunlight, which bathed the landscape in a rosy glow.

‘The entire block of houses all
around mine belongs to me, including the bar, the detached villas and the small
dance hall. Also those three cranes over there and the stone-crusher too. And the
boat-repair yards on the other side of that footbridge.'

He drank it all in, savouring his
delight.

‘They say that altogether the
whole lot is worth forty million,' observed Maigret.

‘You seem rather well informed,
give or take five million. Did your men come up with anything yesterday?'

Even saying this gave him delight. In
the event, Maigret had sent three inspectors to make detailed inquiries, at
Charenton and elsewhere, about Ducrau, his family and everyone who had any
connection with what had happened.

The trawl hadn't netted much. The
brothel at Charenton confirmed that the canal magnate had been there on the
evening the crime was committed. He was
often there. He paid for drinks, kidded around with the girls, yarned and frequently
went home without asking anything more of them.

As for his son, Jean, people living in
the area knew almost nothing about him. He worked at his books. He did not go out
often. He seemed like a young man from a good home and his health was delicate.

‘Incidentally,' said
Maigret, pointing to the
Golden Fleece
, ‘I believe it was on that
barge that your son spent three months last year?'

Ducrau did not flinch, though he perhaps
became a shade more solemn.

‘Yes.'

‘Was he convalescing?'

‘He'd been overdoing it. The
doctor prescribed calm and fresh air. The
Golden Fleece
was leaving for
Alsace …'

Aline, holding her coffee-grinder, went
inside the cabin, and Ducrau turned away for a moment to give orders to the
crane-driver. He did not go far, and Maigret could hear every word they said.

On the daughter and son-in-law, there
were only routine details. Captain Decharme was from Le Mans, the son of an
accountant. The couple lived in a nice brand-new house on the outskirts of
Versailles, and every morning one orderly brought the officer his horse and another
cleaned the house.

‘Are you going back to
Paris?' asked Ducrau as he returned. ‘It's as the fancy takes you,
but for me, this is always my morning walk, all along the quays.'

He glanced up at
his house. The skylights on the sixth floor were still shut, and the curtains had
not been opened. The trams were all full, and small carts loaded with vegetables
were scurrying into Paris, for the market.

‘Can I count on you?' Ducrau
called to the lock-keeper.

‘All in hand, boss.'

Ducrau winked at Maigret to draw
attention to the word ‘boss', which was the name by which a public
servant called him.

The two men were now strolling along the
Seine, where convoys of boats were lining up, using the full width of the river to
go about and, propellers thrashing, moving off either upstream or down, with the
current.

‘Know what made me my money? I
realized that when my boats were lying idle they could be working for me instead. So
I bought sand pits and chalk quarries, further north, and then anything that came up
for sale, even brick-works, as long as it was next to a waterway!'

He shook the hand of a passing boatman,
who merely said:

‘Morning, Mimile.'

The port at Bercy was piled high with
barrels, and the arms of the wine town they came from were stamped on all of
them.

‘Anything classed as champagne
among that lot was carried by me. Hey, Pierrot, is it true that Murier's old
tin tub snagged a pier of the bridge at Château-Thierry?'

‘It's true enough,
boss.'

‘If you see him, tell him it
serves him right!'

He walked on,
still laughing. On the opposite bank of the river, the enormous concrete buildings
of the Magasins Généraux reached into the sky, all straight lines and right angles,
while two cargo boats, one from London and the other from Amsterdam, brought a whiff
of the high seas into the very heart of Paris.

‘I don't want to be nosy,
but how are you going to proceed with your investigations?'

It was now Maigret's turn to
smile, for this walk clearly had no other purpose than to lead up to this question.
Ducrau was aware of it. He sensed that his companion could read his thoughts and he
smiled again, faintly, as though he were mocking his own simple-mindedness.

‘As you see, just like
this,' replied Maigret, playing the role of a man out for a relaxed
stroll.

They walked on in silence for perhaps
another four hundred metres, their eyes trained on the Pont d'Austerlitz, a
pyrotechnic display of metal fretwork, from which the architecture of Notre-Dame
could be just made out against a blaze of blue and pink.

‘Hey, Vachet! Your brother has
broken down at Larzicourt. He said to tell you the christening has been
postponed.'

Ducrau went on walking steadily. After a
sideways glance at Maigret, he framed a question with the bluntness of a man who
likes to put his foot in it on purpose.

‘How much does a man like you
earn?'

‘Not much.'

‘Sixty thousand francs?'

‘A lot less
than that.'

Ducrau frowned, gave his companion
another look, this time with as much admiration as curiosity.

‘What do you make of my wife? Do
you think I make her unhappy?'

‘No, not really. If it
wasn't you it would be somebody else. She's one of those women who are
perpetually self-effacing and dreary, whatever fate does to them.'

It was as if Maigret had opened the
scoring, because Ducrau was nonplussed.

‘She is dull, dim and
vulgar,' he sighed. ‘Just like her mother, who I've settled in one
of the small houses nearby. That one has spent her whole life crying! Ah! See that?
The stone-crusher, it's another one of mine. It's the most powerful in
the port of Paris. But seriously, what line of inquiry are you following?'

‘All of them.'

They were still walking, surrounded by
the noises of the river and the activity on its banks. The morning air smelled of
water and tar. From time to time they had to make a detour around a crane or wait
for a gap between two lorries.

‘You've been on board the
Golden Fleece
, I assume?'

Ducrau had hesitated for much longer
before asking this question than over any of the others and immediately pretended to
be engrossed in the movement of a convoy of barges. Actually, the question was
unnecessary, because he had watched Maigret go aboard from his window.

‘She's a very strange
mother.'

The effect was
dramatic. Ducrau came to a sudden stop. With his short legs and bloated neck, he
looked like a bull about to charge.

‘Who the devil told you
that?'

‘I didn't need anybody to
tell me.'

‘So?' he said, to say
something. He scowled, clasping his hands behind his back.

‘So nothing.'

‘What did she tell you?'

‘That you went there to see
her.'

‘Is that all?'

‘That she wouldn't open the
door. Didn't you tell me that old Gassin was your very good friend? Yet it
looks to me …'

But Ducrau growled impatiently:

‘Stupid idiot! If I hadn't
grabbed you, you'd have been knocked over by that barrel …!'

He turned to a member of the crew who
had been rolling barrels and boomed:

‘Can't you be more careful,
you idiot?'

So saying, he emptied his pipe by
knocking the bowl on the heel of his shoe.

‘I bet you've got it into
your head that the child is mine! Go on, admit it! Just because I have a reputation
for chasing skirts! Well, inspector, this time you've got it wrong.'

He spoke the words softly, for a marked
change had come over him. He seemed less hard, less sure of himself. He had lost the
bombast of the rich man who is showing inferiors around his domain.

‘Do you have
kids?' he asked with that side glance which Maigret was beginning to
recognize.

‘I only ever had a little girl.
She died.'

‘Well I have! Now look, I'm
not going to ask you to promise not to tell anyone, but if you are unwise enough to
say a single word, I'll smash your face in! For a start, I've got the
two you know about. The girl is as pathetic as her mother. Then there's the
boy. I'm not sure about him yet, but I can't see him amounting to much.
Have you met him? No? Quiet, shy, affectionate, and always ill. So much for them.
But, second, I have another daughter. You mentioned Gassin just now. He's a
good man, though that didn't stop me from sleeping with his amazing wife. He
doesn't know. If he did, he'd go berserk, because when he goes to Paris
he never comes back without taking flowers to the cemetery.

‘And it's been sixteen
years!'

By now they had crossed the Pont de la
Tournelle and were just walking on to the Ile Saint-Louis, that haven of provincial
peace. As they passed, a boatman in a sailor's cap emerged from a café and ran
after Ducrau. Maigret stepped to one side while they exchanged a few words and as he
waited his retina continued to display an image of an Aline who was more unreal than
ever.

Only a little while earlier he had been
picturing the
Golden Fleece
gliding along gleaming canals, the blonde girl
at the helm, the old man driving his horses on the towpath and, on deck, lying in a
hammock or stretched out on the sun-warmed, resinous cargo of logs, a much too
bookish convalescent.