My Friend Maigret (8 page)

“Because you hadn't left the house in Nice, had you? It's an excellent alibi.”

“Do I need one?”

“According to what you said just now—I am speaking as a policeman. Marcel, despite everything, could have been in your way. Especially as Monsieur Émile is a big fish, a very big fish. Supposing he does marry you, he would leave you, on his death, a considerable fortune.”

“Quite considerable, yes! I wonder now if I was right to come. I wasn't expecting you to speak to me like that. I've admitted everything to you, frankly.”

Her eyes were shining, as though she were on the verge of tears, and it was an old face, badly patched up and disfigured with a childish pout, that Maigret beheld.

“You can do what you like. I don't know who killed Marcel. It's a catastrophe.”

“Especially for him.”

“For him too, yes. But he's at rest. Are you going to arrest me?”

She had said this with the shadow of a smile, although one could feel that she was anxious, more serious than she wanted to appear.

“For the moment I have no such intention.”

“Can I go to the funeral tomorrow morning? If you like, I'll come straight back afterwards. All you have to do is send a boat for me at Giens Point.”

“Perhaps.”

“You won't say anything to Justine?”

“Not before it's strictly necessary and I don't envisage the necessity.”

“Are you cross with me?”

“Of course not.”

“Yes. I felt it straightaway, before leaving the
Cormorant
, from the moment I saw you. I recognized you. I was moved, because it was a whole period of my life coming back to me.”

“A period of regret?”

“Perhaps. I don't know. I sometimes wonder.”

She rose with a sigh, without putting on her shoes again. She wanted to unlace her stays and was waiting for the chief inspector to leave before doing so.

“You must do as you wish,” she sighed finally, as he was putting his hand to the doorknob.

And he felt something like a pang at leaving her all alone, aging, anxious, in the little bedroom into which the setting sun penetrated through the attic window, casting everywhere, on the painted wallpaper and the counterpane, a pink hue, like rouge.

 

“A white wine, Monsieur Maigret!”

Noise, all of a sudden, and movement. The boules players, who had finished their game on the square, were crowding round the bar and speaking at the tops of their voices, with strong accents. In a corner of the dining room, near the window, Mr. Pyke was at a table opposite Jef de Greef, and the two men were deeply engrossed in a game of chess.

Beside them, on the bench, Anna was sitting smoking a cigarette at the end of a long cigarette holder. She had dressed. She wore a little cotton frock under which one sensed she was as naked as beneath her sunsuit. She had a well-rounded body, extremely feminine, so expressly made for caressing that despite oneself one imagined her in bed.

De Greef had put on a pair of gray flannel trousers and a sailor's jersey with blue and white stripes. On his feet he wore rope-soled espadrilles, like practically everyone else on the island, and they were the first thing that strict Mr. Pyke had bought.

Maigret looked round for the inspector, but didn't see him. He was obliged to accept the glass of wine which Paul was pushing toward him, and the people at the bar squeezed themselves together to make room for him.

“Well, inspector?”

They were appealing to him, and he knew that in a few minutes the ice would be broken. Probably the islanders had been waiting ever since the morning for this particular moment to make his acquaintance? There was quite a crowd of them, about ten at the least, most of them in fishermen's clothes. Two or three had a more bourgeois look, probably retired on a modest income.

Never mind what Mr. Pyke might think. He had to have a drink.

“You like our island wine?”

“Very much.”

“But the papers claim you only drink beer. Marcellin said it wasn't true, that you didn't pull a face at a jug of calvados. Poor Marcellin! Your health, inspector…”

Paul, the
patron
, who knew how these things develop, kept the bottle in his hand.

“It's true, he was a friend of yours?”

“I knew him once, yes. He wasn't a bad fellow.”

“Certainly not. Are the papers right, too, when they say he came from Le Havre?”

“Certainly.”

“With his accent?”

“When I knew him, some fifteen years ago, he hadn't got any accent.”

“You hear that, Titin? What have I always said?”

Four rounds…five rounds…and words being bandied about rather at random, for the sake of saying them, like children throwing balls into the air.

“What do you feel like eating this evening, inspector? There is bouillabaisse, of course. But perhaps you don't like bouillabaisse?”

He swore that he liked nothing better, and everyone was delighted. It wasn't the moment to get to know personally the people who surrounded him and formed a rather confused mass.

“You like pastis as well, the real stuff, which is banned? A pastis all round, Paul! I insist! The inspector won't say anything…”

Charlot was sitting on the terrace, with a pastis in front of him, busy reading a paper.

“Have you got any ideas yet?”

“Ideas about what?”

“Well, about the murderer! Morin-Barbu, who was born on the island and hasn't left it for seventy-seven years, has never heard of anything like it. There have been people drowned. A woman from the North, five or six years back, tried to do away with herself by swallowing sleeping tablets. An Italian sailor, in the course of an argument, stabbed Baptiste in the arm. But a crime, never, inspector! Here even the bad ones become as gentle as lambs.”

Everybody there was laughing, trying to talk, for what counted was to talk, to say anything, chat over your drink with the famous inspector.

“You'll understand better when you've been here a few days. What you ought to do is to come and spend your holidays here with your wife. We'd teach you to play boules. Isn't that right, Casimir? Casimir won the
Petit Provençal
championship last year, and you know what that means.”

From the pink it had been a short while ago, the church at the far end of the square was becoming violet; the sky was gently turning a pale green and the men began to depart one after the other; now and again a shrill woman's voice could be heard calling in the distance:

“Hey, Jules!…The soup's ready…”

Or else a small boy would come boldly in to look for his father and pull him by the hand.

“Well, aren't we going to have a game?”

“It's too late.”

It was explained to Maigret that after the game of boules it was cards, but that the latter hadn't taken place because of him. The sailor from the
Cormorant
, a dumb colossus with immense bare feet, who smiled at the chief inspector with all his teeth, now and again raised his glass and made a strange gobbling noise which took the place of: “
Here's to you!
”

“Do you want to eat straightaway?”

“Have you seen the inspector?”

“He went out while you were upstairs. He didn't say anything. That's his way. He's marvelous, you know. In the three days he's been ferreting about the island, he knows almost as much as I do about all the families.”

Leaning forward, Maigret could see that the de Greefs had left and the Englishman was alone in front of the chessboard.

“We eat in half an hour,” he announced.

Paul asked him in a low voice, indicating the Scotland Yard detective:

“Do you think he likes our cooking?”

A few minutes later Maigret and his colleague went out for a walk and, quite naturally, walked toward the harbor. They had fallen into the habit. The sun had disappeared, and there was a feeling, as it were, of an immense release in the air. The noises were no longer the same. One could hear the faint lapping of the water against the stone of the jetty, and the stone had become a harder gray, like the rocks. The greenery was dark, almost black, mysterious, and a torpedo boat with a huge number painted in white on the hull slid silently toward the open sea, at what appeared to be a giddy speed.

“I just beat him,” Mr. Pyke had declared at the outset. “He's very good, very much his own master.”

“It was he that suggested the game?”

“I had taken the chessmen, to practice” (he didn't add: while you were upstairs with Ginette), “not expecting to find an opponent. He sat down at the next table with his girlfriend and I realized, from his way of looking at the pieces, that he wanted to pit his wits against mine.”

After this there had been a long silence and now the two men were strolling along the jetty. Near the white yacht there was a little boat, the name of which could be seen on the stern:
Fleur d'amour
.

It was de Greef's boat, and the couple were on board. There was a light under the roof, in a cabin just wide enough for two, where it was impossible to stand up. A noise of spoons and crockery was coming from within. A meal was in progress.

When the detectives had passed the yacht, Mr. Pyke spoke again, slowly, with his habitual precision.

“He's the sort of son good families hate to have. Actually you can't have many specimens in France.”

Maigret was quite taken aback, for it was the first time, since he had known him, that his colleague had expressed general ideas. Mr. Pyke seemed a little embarrassed himself, as though overcome with shame.

“What makes you think we have hardly any in France?”

“I mean not of that type, exactly.”

He picked his words with great care, standing still at the end of the jetty, facing the mountains which could be seen on the mainland.

“I rather think that in your country, a boy from a good family can commit some
bêtises
, as you say, so as to have a good time, to enjoy himself with women or cars, or to gamble in the casino. Do your bad boys play chess? I doubt it. Do they read Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard? It's unlikely, isn't it? They only want to live their life without waiting for their inheritance.”

They leaned against the wall which ran along one side of the jetty, and the calm surface of the water was occasionally troubled by a fish jumping.

“De Greef does not belong to that category of bad characters. I don't think he even wants to have money. He's almost a pure anarchist. He has revolted against everything he has known, against everything he's been taught, against his magistrate of a father and his bourgeois mother, against his hometown, against the customs of his own country.”

He broke off, half-blushing.

“I beg your pardon…”

“Go on, please.”

“We only exchanged a few words, the two of us, but I think I have understood him, because there are a lot of young people like that in my country, in all countries, probably, where morals are very strict. That's why I said just now that one probably doesn't come across a vast number of that type in France. Here there isn't any hypocrisy. Perhaps there isn't enough.”

Was he alluding to the surroundings, the world the two of them had been plunged in since their arrival, to the Monsieur Émiles, the Charlots, the Ginettes, who lived among the others without being singled out for opprobrium?

Maigret felt a little anxious, a little piqued. Without being attacked, he was stung by an urge to defend himself.

“By way of protest,” pursued Mr. Pyke, “these young people reject everything
en bloc
, the good and the bad. Look, he has taken a young girl away from her family. She's sweet, very desirable. I don't think, however, that it was from desire for her that he did it. It was because she belonged to a good family, because she was a girl who used to go to Mass every Sunday with her mother. It was because her father is probably an austere and high-minded gentleman. Also because he was taking a big risk in carrying her off. But, of course, I may be quite wrong.”

“I don't think so.”

“There are some people who, when in a clean and elegant setting, feel the need to defile. De Greef feels the need to defile life, to defile anything. And even to defile his girlfriend.”

This time Maigret was astounded. He was bowled over, as they say, for he realized that Mr. Pyke had been thinking the same thing as he had. When de Greef had admitted having been several times on board the
North Star
, it had immediately occurred to him that it was not only to drink, but that more intimate and less admissible relations existed between the two couples.