The Night at the Crossroads (12 page)

The report was as sharp as a whip-crack. Then came the shattering of the window and a shower of glass shards into the garden.

Yet nothing moved in the bedroom. The shadow was intact behind the linen shade.

‘What have you done?'

‘Break down the door! … No – ring the bell instead! I'd be surprised if someone didn't open up.'

But no one did. The house was completely silent.

‘Break it down!'

Grandjean was a big, burly man. He reared back and threw himself three times at the door, which finally gave way, ripped off its hinges.

‘Careful … Easy does it …'

They each had a weapon out. The first light they turned
on was in the dining room. On the table, still sitting on the red check cloth, were dirty dinner dishes and a carafe with some white wine left in
it. Maigret finished it off, right from the carafe.

There was nothing in the drawing room. Dust covers on furniture. The musty atmosphere of a room no one ever uses.

A cat was the only creature to run out of the white-tiled kitchen.

Grandjean kept looking uneasily at Maigret. They soon went upstairs to the landing and its three closed doors.

The inspector opened the one to the front bedroom.

The shade was stirring in a draught from the broken window. They saw a ridiculous object leaning against the armchair: a broom with a round turban of rags around the top, which stuck up over the back of the chair so it would look like a head in
the shadow seen from outside.

But this sight did not amuse Maigret, who opened a connecting door and turned on the light in the neighbouring bedroom, which was empty.

The third door led to the attic. Apples lay on the floor, about two fingers' width apart from one another, and strings of green beans hung from a beam. There was a bedroom intended for a maid but unused, for it contained nothing but an old
night table.

They went back downstairs. Maigret walked through the kitchen and out to the courtyard, which faced east, where the smudged halo of dawn was growing larger.

A small shed … A door that moved …

‘Who's there?' he bellowed, brandishing his revolver.

There was a yelp of fright. No longer held from the inside, the door swung open, revealing a woman who fell to her knees.

‘I haven't done anything! … I'm sorry! I … I …'

It was Madame Michonnet, her hair all mussed, her clothing flecked with plaster from the shed.

‘Your husband?'

‘I don't know! I swear I don't know anything! I'm so miserable, it's not fair …'

She was weeping. Her whole plump body seemed to soften and collapse. Her face had aged ten years, puffy from tears, sagging with fear.

‘It wasn't me! I didn't do a thing! It's that man, across the way …'

‘What man?'

‘The foreigner … I know nothing about it, but he's the one, you can be sure of that! My husband isn't a murderer, or a thief … He's been honest all his life … It's him – with his bad
eye! An evil eye! Ever since he came to the crossroads, everything's been going wrong … I …'

The chicken run was full of white hens pecking at some fat yellow grains of corn strewn on the ground. The cat was perched on a window-sill, its eyes gleaming in the semi-darkness.

‘Stand up.'

‘What are you going to do to me? Who fired a gun?'

It was pathetic. She was fifty years old and crying like a child. She was so utterly at a loss that when she got to her feet and Maigret automatically gave her shoulder a little pat, she almost threw herself into his arms, resting her
head against his chest, in any case, and clinging to his jacket lapels.

‘I'm only a poor woman,' she moaned. ‘I've worked all my life! When I got married, I was the cashier in the biggest hotel in Montpellier …'

Maigret eased her away from him but couldn't stem her lamentation.

‘I should have stayed where I was … Because I was a valued employee … When I left, I remember that the hotel manager – who thought quite highly of me – told me that one day I would be sorry …

‘And it's true! I've worked harder than I ever had before …'

She broke down again. The sight of her cat brought fresh distress.

‘Poor Kitty! You're not to blame for any of this, either! And my hens, my furniture, my little house! … Inspector, you know I think I could kill that man if he were right here! I felt it the first day I saw him – just the
sight of that black eye of his …'

‘Where is your husband?'

‘How would I know?'

‘He went out early yesterday evening, didn't he? As soon as I left here. He wasn't any more laid up than I am …'

Stumped for a reply, she looked frantically around as if for help.

‘He actually does suffer from gout …'

‘Has Mademoiselle Else ever been here?'

‘Never!' she exclaimed indignantly. ‘I won't have such creatures in my home.'

‘How about Monsieur Oscar?'

‘Have you arrested him?'

‘Almost!'

‘It would serve him right, too … My husband should never have mixed with people who aren't our sort, who have no education. Oh, if only men listened to women! What do you think will happen? Tell me! I keep hearing
gunshots … If something happens to Michonnet, I believe I'll die of shame! And besides, I'm too old to return to work …'

‘Get back into the house.'

‘What should I do?'

‘Have a hot drink and wait. Get some sleep, if you can.'

‘Sleep?'

And the word released another flood of frantic tears, which she had to deal with by herself, however, for both men had left.

Maigret went back to the house, though, and unhooked the phone receiver.

‘Hello, Arpajon? … Police! … Would you tell me what numbers were requested during the night by this line?'

He had to wait for a few minutes. At last, the answer came: ‘Archives 27-45 … It's a big café near Porte Saint-Martin …'

‘I know,' said Maigret. ‘Did you have other calls from the Three Widows Crossroads?'

‘Just a moment ago, from the garage, requesting various police stations …'

‘Thanks!'

When Maigret rejoined Inspector Grandjean out on the
road, a rain as fine as mist was beginning to fall, yet the sky was brightening to a milky white.

‘Can you figure any of this out, chief?'

‘I'm getting there …'

‘That woman is faking it, isn't she?'

‘She is perfectly sincere.'

‘But … her husband …'

‘Now, him, he's a different story. An honest man gone bad. Or, if you prefer, a crook who was born to be an honest man. There's nothing more complicated than that kind! They stew for hours trying to find a way out of trouble,
coming up with incredible plots, playing their parts to perfection … Listen, what's still a mystery is what, for instance, made him decide at some point to turn crooked, so to speak. And we still need to find out what in heaven's name he was up to last night.'

And filling his pipe, the inspector went over to the front gate of the Three Widows house. An officer was standing guard.

‘Any news?'

‘I don't think we've found anything. We've surrounded the grounds. No one's been spotted, though.'

Maigret and Grandjean walked around the house, which was recovering its yellow colour in the half-light, its architectural details just beginning to emerge from the gloom.

The drawing room had not changed at all from Maigret's first visit: the easel still held the sketch of a fabric design with large crimson flowers. Two symmetrical reflections in the shape of an hourglass gleamed on a record on the
phonograph. The dawning day was filtering into the room like wisps of fog.

The same step creaked on the staircase. In his room, Carl Andersen had been groaning before the inspector appeared but fell silent when he saw him. Mastering his pain, if not his anxiety, he stammered, ‘Where is Else?'

‘In her room.'

‘Ah!'

Seemingly reassured, he sighed and felt his shoulder, frowning thoughtfully.

‘I don't think I'm going to die from this …'

It was his glass eye that was most painful to see, because it played no part in the life of his face, remaining separate, clear and wide open while all the facial muscles were moving.

‘I'd rather she did not see me like this. Do you think my shoulder will recover? Will a good surgeon be coming?'

Like Madame Michonnet, he was reduced to a child in his anguish. His eyes were pleading. He was asking to be reassured. What seemed to concern him the most, however, was the damage that his injuries might do to his appearance.

On the other hand he was displaying extraordinary will-power, a remarkable capacity for rising above his suffering. Maigret, who had seen his two wounds, knew what he was going through.

‘Tell Else …'

‘You don't want to see her?'

‘No. I had better not. But tell her that I am here, that I will recover, that … I am perfectly lucid, that she should
have confidence, have faith. Repeat that word to her: faith! Tell
her to read a few verses in the Bible: the story of Job, for example … That makes you smile, because the French don't know the Bible well. Faith! … 
And I shall always know my own
 … God is speaking … God who knows his own … Tell
her that! Also:
There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner
 … She'll understand. And
The just man is tested nine times in a day
 …'

It was astonishing. Wounded, in pain, bedridden under police guard, he was serenely quoting Holy Scripture.

‘Faith! You will tell her, won't you? Because the only true example is innocence.'

He scowled. He had caught a fleeting smile on Grandjean's face. And between his teeth, he muttered to himself,
‘Franzose!'

Frenchman
 … In other words, unbeliever! Sceptic, freethinker, recreant, apostate!

Discouraged, he turned his face to the wall and stared at it with his one good eye.

‘Tell her …'

Except that when Maigret and his colleague pushed open the door of Else's room, no one was there.

A hothouse atmosphere. An opaque cloud of aromatic tobacco smoke. And a feminine presence overwhelming enough to infatuate a schoolboy or even a grown man …

But not a living soul! The window was closed: Else had not left that way.

The painting hiding the niche in the wall, the tube of veronal, the key and the revolver was in its place …

Maigret slid it to one side. The revolver was missing.

‘Stop looking at me like that, dammit!' exclaimed Maigret, glaring angrily at Grandjean, who was standing at his heels, gazing at him in beatific admiration.

Then the inspector bit down on his pipe so hard that he snapped the stem and sent the bowl rolling along the rug.

‘She's run off?'

‘Shut up!'

He was furious, out of line. Shocked, Grandjean did his best to stand perfectly still.

Day had not yet broken; that grey mist still drifted along the ground but brought no light. The baker's car drove by on the road, an old Ford with front wheels that wobbled along the asphalt.

Suddenly Maigret dashed to the hallway and down the stairs. And at the very moment when he reached the drawing room, where the French windows were standing open to the grounds, there was a ghastly cry, a death cry, the wavering howl of a beast in
agony.

It was a woman crying out, her voice half stifled in some mysterious way.

It was far away or quite close by. It could have come from the eaves. It could have come from beneath the ground.

And it spread such anguish that the man on guard at the gate came running up, his face haggard.

‘Chief inspector! Did you hear that?'

‘Silence, damn it all!' shouted Maigret, at the absolute end of his tether.

Before he'd even finished speaking a shot was fired, but
the report was so muffled that no one could tell whether it had come from the left, the right, the grounds, the house, the woods or the
road.

Then they heard footsteps on the stairs. Carl Andersen was coming down them, stiffly, a hand clamped to his chest, and he was yelling like a madman, ‘It's her!'

He was panting … His glass eye never moved. No one could tell at whom he was staring so wildly with the other one.

For a few seconds, about as long as it took the last echoes of the shot to die away, nothing happened. They were all waiting for another. Carl Andersen walked outside and over to a gravel path.

It was one of the policemen stationed in the grounds who dashed towards the kitchen garden, in the middle of which stood a raised well topped by a pulley. He leaned over it, but quickly jerked back and blew his whistle.