The Night at the Crossroads (3 page)

Emerging from the roadside, where some trees had concealed him, Lucas walked over to Maigret, who set his suitcase down by his feet. Just as they were about to shake hands, they heard an increasingly loud whistling sound – and suddenly a racing
car whipped past so close to them that the suitcase went flying three metres away.

There was nothing left to see. The turbo-charged car had swung around a hay cart and vanished over the horizon.

Maigret made a face.

‘Do many of those go by?'

‘That's the first one … And I could have sworn it was aiming at us!'

It was a grey afternoon. A curtain twitched in a window of the Michonnet villa.

‘Is there any place to stay around here?'

‘At Arpajon or Avrainville … Arpajon's three kilometres away; Avrainville is closer but has only a country inn …'

‘Take my suitcase there and get us some rooms. Anything to report?'

‘Not a thing … They're watching us from the villa … It's Madame Michonnet. I got a look at her a little while ago. A largish brunette who doesn't appear to be too pleasant.'

‘Do you know why this place is called Three Widows Crossroads?'

‘I asked: it's because of the Andersen house, which dates from the revolution. In the old days it was the only house here. In the end, it seems that fifty years ago three widows lived in it, a mother and two daughters. The mother was
ninety years old, a helpless invalid. The elder daughter was sixty-seven, the other at least sixty. Three old fusspots, so stingy they bought nothing locally and lived off their kitchen garden and poultry yard … The shutters were never opened. Weeks would go by without a glimpse of
them. The elder daughter broke her leg at some point, but people learned about it only after she was dead. Quite a strange story! When a long time had passed without anyone hearing the slightest noise from the Three Widows house, people got to talking … The mayor of Avrainville
decided to come and see for himself – and he found all three of them dead. They'd been dead for at least ten days! There was a lot of newspaper coverage at the time, apparently. A local schoolteacher, fascinated by this mystery, even wrote a booklet in which he claims that the daughter
with the broken leg hated her still-active sister so much that she poisoned her, and the mother wound up poisoned as well … The elder sister supposedly starved beside the two corpses because she couldn't get herself anything to eat!'

Maigret stared at what he could see of the house's top storey. Then he considered the Michonnets' new villa, the even newer garage, the cars going by on the main road at eighty kilometres an hour.

‘Go and get those rooms, then come back and join me.'

‘What are you going to do?'

The inspector shrugged, then walked to the gate of the Three Widows house. It was a good-sized building, surrounded by three or four hectares of grounds graced by a few majestic trees.

A sloping lane ran alongside a lawn and up to the front steps, then on to a garage that had once been a stable, its roof still bearing a pulley.

Nothing stirred. Aside from a thread of smoke, there was no sign of life behind the faded curtains. In the gathering dusk, some farm horses in a distant field were plodding back home.

Maigret noticed a little man taking a walk along the road, his hands stuck deep into the pockets of his flannel trousers, a pipe between his teeth, a cap on his head. The man came right up to him the way neighbours do out in the countryside.

‘You're the one in charge of the investigation?'

He was wearing slippers and had no collar on, but his jacket was of fine grey English cloth and he sported an enormous signet ring on one finger.

‘I own the garage at the crossroads … I saw you from my place …'

Definitely a former boxer: he'd had his nose broken. His face looked as battered as an old copper pot. His drawling voice was husky, coarse, but very self-assured.

‘What do you make of this business with the cars?'

The man laughed, revealing some gold teeth.

‘If there weren't a stiff involved, I'd find the whole thing hilarious. You can't possibly understand – you don't know
the guy across the way, Milord Michonnet, as we call
him. A stand-offish fellow who wears collars
this
high and patent-leather shoes … Then there's Madame Michonnet! You haven't seen her yet? Huh! Those people complain about anything and everything, go running to the police because the cars make too much noise
when they stop at my garage pumps …'

Maigret didn't encourage or discourage the man. He simply stared at him in a way that disconcerted most talkative people but had no effect on the garage owner.

A baker's van drove by and the man in slippers yelled, ‘Hey there, Clément! … Your horn's been fixed! Just ask Jojo for it!'

Turning back to Maigret, he offered him a cigarette and carried on.

‘Michonnet had been talking about getting a new car for months, was pestering all the car dealers, myself included! He wanted discounts, ran us ragged … The coachwork was too dark, too light; he wanted a burgundy colour – not
too
burgundy, but definitely
burgundy
 … Well, he ended up buying the car from a colleague of mine in Arpajon. You've got to admit, it was a damn fine joke to have the car turn up a few days later in the Three Widows garage! I'd have given anything to
see our gentleman's face that morning when he found the old jalopy instead of the six-cylinder job! … Pity about the dead man, which spoils everything. Because a corpse is a corpse, after all, and such matters deserve our respect … Say! You'll drop by the
garage, won't you, and have a drink? No watering holes at the crossroads, but we'll get some yet! If I can
just find the right fellow to run a place, I'll back him for it …'

The man must have noticed that Maigret wasn't responding to his patter, because he held out his hand.

‘See you later, then …'

He strolled off at the same pace, stopping to talk to a farmer passing by in a one-horse cart. Over at the Michonnet villa, there was still a face behind the curtains.

In the evening the surrounding countryside had a monotonous, stagnant air about it, and sounds carried a long distance: a horse neighing, a church bell pealing perhaps ten kilometres away …

The first car with its headlamps on went by, but they could hardly be seen in the twilight.

Maigret reached for the bell-pull hanging to the right of the gate. Rich, mellow tones rang through the garden, followed by a long silence. At the top of the steps, the front door did not open, but from behind the house came the crunch of gravel.
A tall form appeared; a pale face, a black monocle.

Carl Andersen showed no emotion as he approached and he bowed his head slightly when he opened the gate.

‘I knew you would come … I suppose you want to see the garage. The prosecutor's office has sealed the premises, but you must have the necessary authority …'

He was wearing the same clothes as at Quai des Orfèvres, an elegantly cut suit that was beginning to show signs of wear.

‘Is your sister here?'

It was already too dark to notice any change in his
expression, but Andersen did feel the need to resettle the monocle in his eye-socket.

‘Yes …'

‘I would like to see her.'

A brief hesitation. Andersen nodded again.

‘Please follow me.'

They walked around to the back of the house, where all the ground-floor rooms had tall French windows that opened directly on to a terrace overlooking a fairly large lawn.

There were no lights in any of the upstairs bedrooms. At the far end of the grounds, veils of mist twined around the tree trunks.

‘Allow me to show you the way …'

Andersen led Maigret from the terrace into a large drawing room all draped in shadow. The cool yet heavy evening air followed them in, bringing with it the smell of wet grass and leaves. A single log shot a few sparks up the chimney.

‘I will call my sister.'

Andersen had not lighted any lamps or even appeared to notice that night was falling. Left alone, Maigret walked slowly up and down the room, stopping before an easel on which sat a sketch in gouache. It was a modern design for a fabric pattern,
with bold colours and a strange motif.

But not as strange as the way the room conjured up for Maigret the memory of the three widows of long ago …

Some of the furniture must have been theirs. There
were Empire armchairs with flaking paint and threadbare silk, and rep curtains that had hung there for fifty years.

Some pine bookshelves had been built along one wall, however, and were piled with paperbound books in French, German, English and no doubt Danish as well.

And the white, yellow or multicoloured covers were in stark contrast to an old-fashioned hassock, some chipped vases and a carpet worn almost through in the centre.

The twilight was darkening. A cow lowed in the distance. From time to time, a faint humming pierced the silence, intensifying until a car whizzed by on the road and the engine's rumbling at length died away.

In the house, nothing! Perhaps just a few creaks or scratching sounds. Perhaps just some tiny undecipherable noises suggesting the possibility of life.

Carl Andersen came in first. His white hands betrayed a certain nervous anxiety. He stood still and mute for a moment by the door.

A faint movement on the stairs.

‘My sister Else,' he announced at last.

She stepped forwards, her silhouette slightly blurred in the dim light. She stepped forwards like a film star, or rather, like the perfect woman in an adolescent's dream. Was her dress of black velvet? It was darker than anything else, in
any case, and made its deep, magnificent mark on the dusk. And what little light still drifted in the air seemed to settle on her fine blonde hair and matte complexion.

‘I hear you wish to speak to me, chief inspector. But first, please do sit down.'

Her accent was stronger than Carl's and her voice melodious, dropping gently at the ends of words.

And her brother stood by her as a slave stands near the sovereign he is sworn to protect.

She advanced a few steps and only when she was quite close did Maigret realize that she was as tall as Carl. Her slim hips emphasized her willowy silhouette. She turned to her brother.

‘A cigarette!'

Nervously, clumsily, he hurried to offer one. She picked up a lighter and the flickering red of the flame fought, for an instant, with the dark blue of her eyes.

Afterwards the darkness weighed more heavily, so heavily that the inspector, feeling uneasy, looked around for a light switch and, finding none, murmured, ‘May I ask you to light a lamp?'

He had to call on all his self-possession, for this scene was too theatrical for him. Theatrical? Disorienting, rather, like the perfume that had invaded the room with Else's entrance.

Above all, a scene too estranged from normal life. Perhaps just too strange altogether! That accent … Carl's perfect manners and his black monocle … That mixture of sumptuous luxury and distressing old
relics … Even Else's dress, which wasn't the sort of dress one sees in the street, at the theatre, or in society …

Why was that? It had to be the way she wore it. Because the style – the cut – was simple. The dress clung to her figure, covering even her neck, revealing only her face and hands.

Andersen was leaning over a table, removing the glass chimney from an oil lamp dating back to the three old ladies, with a tall porcelain base decorated with faux bronze. It cast a circle of light two
metres wide in its corner of the drawing room. The lampshade was orange.

‘Excuse me … I hadn't noticed that all the chairs have things piled on them.'

Andersen removed books from the seat of an Empire armchair and set them down in a heap on the carpet. Else was smoking, standing perfectly straight, a statue sheathed in velvet.

‘Your brother, mademoiselle, has told me that he heard nothing unusual last Saturday night. He seems to be a very heavy sleeper.'

‘Very,' she repeated, exhaling a wisp of smoke.

‘You heard nothing either?'

‘Nothing particularly unusual, no.'

She spoke slowly, like a foreigner who must translate her thoughts from her native language.

‘You know that we are on a main road. The traffic hardly slows down at all at night. Every evening from eight o'clock on, market lorries driving to Les Halles in Paris go past and they make a lot of noise. On Saturdays we also have
tourists heading for Sologne and the Loire. Our sleep is interrupted by the sounds of engines and brakes, loud voices … If this house were not so cheap …'

‘Had you ever heard of Isaac Goldberg?'

‘Never.'

Outside, it was not yet completely dark. The lawn was
intensely green and each blade of grass stood out so distinctly that it seemed possible to count them all.

Although the grounds had not been kept up, they were still as picturesque as a stage set at the opera. Every clump of bushes, every tree, even every branch was in just the right place. And the background of fields with a farmhouse roof put the
finishing touch to this harmonious vision of the French heartland.

On the other hand, in the drawing room with its old furniture were books with foreign titles, words that Maigret didn't understand. And these two foreigners, the brother and sister … Especially the sister, who struck a discordant
note …

A note that was too voluptuous, too lascivious? Yet she herself was not provocative. Her gestures were unaffected, and she held herself in a natural way.

But this simplicity did not suit such a décor. The inspector would have felt more at home with the three old ladies and their monstrous passions!

‘Will you allow me to have a look around the house?'