The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien (10 page)

Another recurrent theme was the steeple
– in fact, so was the whole church, depicted from the front, from the sides, from
below. The church portal, on its own. The gargoyles. The parvis, with its six steps
looming large in perspective …

Always the same
church! And as Maigret moved from one wall to another, he could sense Van
Damme's growing agitation, an uneasiness fuelled, perhaps, by the same
temptation that had overwhelmed him by the dam at Luzancy.

A quarter of an hour passed like this,
and then Jef Lombard returned, his eyes moist with emotion, wiping his hand across
his forehead and brushing away a stray lock of hair.

‘Please forgive me,' he
said. ‘My wife has just given birth. A girl!'

There was a hint of pride in his voice,
but, as he spoke, he was looking anxiously back and forth between Maigret and Van
Damme.

‘Our third child. But I'm
still as excited as I was the first time! You saw my mother-in-law, well – she had
eleven and she's sobbing with joy, she's gone to give the workmen the
good news and wants them to see our baby girl.'

His eyes followed Maigret's gaze,
now fixed upon the two men hanging from the church-steeple cross, and he became even
more nervous.

‘The sins of my youth,' he
murmured, clearly uncomfortable. ‘Terrible stuff. But at the time I thought I
was going to be a great artist …'

‘It's a church in
Liège?'

Jef didn't answer right away. And
when he finally did, it was almost with regret.

‘It's been gone for seven
years. They tore it down to build a new church. The old one wasn't beautiful,
it didn't even have any style to speak of, but it was very old, with a touch
of mystery in all its lines and in the little streets and alleys around
it … They've all been levelled now.'

‘What was
its name?'

‘The Church of Saint-Pholien. The
new one is in the same place and bears the same name.'

Still seated on the corner of
Lombard's table, Joseph Van Damme was fidgeting as if his nerves were burning
him inside, an inner turmoil betrayed only by the faintest of movements, uneven
breathing, a trembling in his fingers, and the way one foot was jiggling against a
table leg.

‘Were you married at that
time?' continued Maigret.

Lombard laughed.

‘I was nineteen! I was studying at
the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Look over there …'

And he pointed, with a look of fond
nostalgia, to a clumsy portrait in gloomy colours that was nevertheless recognizable
as him, thanks to the telling irregularity of his features. His hair was almost
shoulder length; he wore a black tunic buttoned up to his neck and an ample
lavallière
bow tie.

The painting was flagrantly Romantic,
even to the traditional death's-head in the background.

‘If you'd told me back then
that I'd wind up a photoengraver!' he marvelled, with helpless
irony.

Jef Lombard seemed equally unsettled by
Van Damme and Maigret, but he clearly had no idea how to get them to leave.

A workman came for advice about a plate
that wasn't ready.

‘Have them come back this
afternoon.'

‘But they say that will be too
late!'

‘So what! Tell them I've
just had a daughter …'

Lombard's eyes, his movements, the
pallor of his complexion pocked with tiny acid marks – everything
about him reflected a disturbing confusion of joy,
anxiety, perhaps even anguish.

‘If I may, I'd like to offer
you something … We'll go down to the house.'

The three men walked back along the maze
of corridors and through the door where the old woman had spoken to Maigret. There
were blue tiles in the hall and a clean smell faintly scented, however, with a kind
of staleness, perhaps from the stuffiness of the lying-in room.

‘The two boys are at my
brother-in-law's. Come through here …'

He opened the door to the dining room,
where the small panes of the windows admitted a dim, bleak light that glinted off
the many copper pieces on display everywhere. The furniture was dark.

On the wall was a large portrait of a
woman, signed
Jef
, full of awkward passages but imbued with a clear desire
to present the model – presumably the artist's wife – in a flattering way.

When Maigret looked around the room he
was not surprised to find more hanged men. The best ones, considered good enough to
frame!

‘You'll have a glass of
genever?'

The inspector could feel Van Damme
glaring coldly at him, obviously infuriated by the whole situation.

‘You were saying a moment ago that
you knew Jean Lecocq d'Arneville …'

Steps sounded on the floor above,
probably from the lying-in room.

‘But only casually,' the
distracted father replied, listening intently to the faint whimpering of the
new-born infant.

And raising his
glass, he exclaimed, ‘To the health of my little girl! And my wife!'

Turning abruptly away, he drained his
glass in one go, then went to the sideboard and pretended to look for something
while he recovered from his emotions, but Maigret still caught the soft hiccup of a
stifled sob.

‘I'm sorry, I have to go up
there! On a day like today …'

Maigret and Van Damme had not exchanged
one word. As they crossed the courtyard, passing by the fountain, the inspector
glanced with a faint smile at the other man, wondering what he would do next.

Once out in the street, however, Van
Damme simply touched the brim of his hat and strode off to the right.

There aren't many taxis in Liège.
Unfamiliar with the tram lines, Maigret walked back to the Hôtel du Chemin de Fer,
where he had lunch and made inquiries about the local newspapers.

At two o'clock, he entered the
La Meuse
newspaper building at the very moment when Joseph Van Damme
was leaving it: the two men passed silently within arm's reach of each
other.

‘He's still one step ahead
of me!' Maigret grumbled under his breath.

When he asked the usher with his silver
chain of office about consulting the newspaper's archives, he was told to fill
out an authorization form and wait for its approval.

Maigret thought over certain striking
details in his case: Armand Lecocq d'Arneville had told him that his brother
had left Liège at around the same time that Jef Lombard was drawing hanged men with
such morbid fascination.

And clothing B,
which the tramp of Neuschanz and Bremen had carried around in the yellow suitcase,
was at least six years old, according to the German technician,
and perhaps even
ten …

And now Joseph Van Damme had turned up
at
La Meuse
! Didn't that tell the inspector something?

The usher showed Maigret into a room
with heavy formal furniture, where the parquet gleamed like a skating rink.

‘Which year's collection do
you wish to consult?'

Maigret had already noticed the enormous
cardboard cases arrayed around the entire room, each containing the issues of a
particular year.

‘I'll find it myself, thank
you.'

The room smelled of polish, musty paper
and formal luxury. On the moleskin tabletop were reading stands to hold the
cumbersome volumes. Everything was so neat, so clean, so austere that the inspector
hardly dared take his pipe from his pocket.

In a few moments he was leafing page by
page through the newspapers of the ‘year of the hanged men'.

Thousands of headlines streamed past his
gaze, some recalling events of worldwide importance, others dealing with local
incidents: a big department store fire (a full page for three days running), an
alderman's resignation, an increase in tram fares.

Suddenly: torn newsprint, all along the
binding. The daily paper for 15 February had been ripped out.

Hurrying into the reception room,
Maigret fetched the usher.

‘Someone came here before I did,
isn't that right? And it was this same collection he asked for?'

‘Yes. He was
here only five minutes or so.'

‘Are you from Liège? Do you
remember what happened back then?'

‘Ten years ago?
Hmm … That's the year my sister-in-law died … I know! The
big floods! We even had to wait a week for the burial because the only way you could
get around in the streets down by the Meuse was by boat. Here, look at these
articles:
The King and Queen visit the disaster victims
 … There
are photos, and – wait, we're missing an issue. How extraordinary! I'll
have to inform the director about this …'

Maigret picked up a scrap of newsprint
that had fallen to the floor while Joseph Van Damme – and there was no doubt about
it – had been tearing out the pages for 15 February.

There are four daily papers in Liège.
Maigret spent two hours checking their archives one after the other and, as he
expected, they were all missing the 15 February issue.

With its luxury department stores,
popular brasseries, cinemas and dance halls, the place to see and be seen in Liège
is the busy quadrangle of streets known as the Carré. At least three times, the
inspector caught sight of Joseph Van Damme strolling around there, walking stick in
hand.

When Maigret returned to the Hôtel du
Chemin de Fer, he found two messages waiting for him. The first was a telegram from
Lucas, to whom he had given certain instructions just before leaving Paris.

Stove ashes found room Louis Jeunet
Rue Roquette analysed by technician stop Identified remains Belgian and French
banknotes stop Quantity suggests large sum

The other was a letter delivered to the
hotel by messenger, typed on ordinary typing paper without any heading.

Detective Chief Inspector,

I beg to inform you that I am
prepared to furnish the answers you seek in your inquiry.

I have my reasons for being
cautious, and I would be obliged, if my proposal interests you, if you would
meet me this evening at around eleven o'clock, at the Café de
la Bourse, which is behind the
Théâtre Royal.

Until then, I remain, sir, your
most humble, loyal and obedient servant, etc., etc.

No signature. On the other hand, a rather
surprising number of business turns of phrase for a note of this kind:
I beg to
inform you
 …
I would be obliged … if my proposal
interests you … your most humble, loyal and obedient servant, etc.,
etc. …

Dining alone at his table, Maigret
realized that, although he hadn't much noticed it before, the focus of his
attention had shifted somewhat away from Jean Lecocq d'Arneville, who had
killed himself in a hotel room in Bremen under the name of Louis Jeunet.

Now the inspector found himself haunted
by the images Jef Lombard had hung up everywhere, those hanged men dangling from a
church-steeple cross, from the trees in a wood, from a nail in an attic room,
grotesque or sinister hanged men in the garb of many centuries, their faces livid or
flushed crimson.

At half past ten he set out for the
Théâtre Royal; it was five to eleven when he pushed open the door of the Café de la
Bourse, a quiet little place frequented by locals and by card players in
particular.

And there he found a surprise waiting
for him. Three men were sitting at a table off in a corner, over by the counter:
Maurice Belloir, Jef Lombard and Joseph Van Damme.

Things seemed to hang fire for a moment
while the waiter helped Maigret out of his overcoat. Belloir automatically rose
halfway in greeting. Van Damme didn't move a muscle. Lombard, grimacing with
extraordinary nervous tension, could not keep still as he waited for his companions
to make a move.

Was Maigret going
to come over, shake hands, sit down with them? He knew them all: he had accepted Van
Damme's invitation to lunch in Bremen, he'd had a glass of brandy at
Belloir's house in Rheims, and only that morning he had visited
Lombard's home.

‘Good evening,
gentlemen.'

He shook their hands with his customary
firmness, which could at times seem vaguely threatening.

‘Imagine, meeting you all again
like this!'

There was space next to Van Damme on the
banquette, so Maigret parked himself there.

‘A glass of pale ale!' he
called to the waiter.

Then silence fell. A strained,
oppressive silence. Van Damme stared straight ahead, his teeth clenched. Lombard was
still fidgeting, as if his clothes were too tight at his armpits. Belloir, cold and
distant, was studying his fingertips and ran a wooden match end under the nail of
one index finger to remove a speck.