The Saint-Fiacre Affair (4 page)

‘You're aware that there
isn't much left of our fortune … And people like the chap you saw a moment ago
have high ambitions … Let's say that in three or four years there would have
been nothing left at all …'

He was bare-headed. He ran his fingers
through his hair. Then, looking Maigret straight in the eye and pausing for a
moment, he added:

‘It remains for me to tell you
that I came here today to ask my mother for forty thousand francs … And I need
those forty thousand francs to cover a
cheque that will otherwise bounce … You see how everything links
together!'

As they passed a hedge he pulled a twig
from it. He seemed to be struggling not to let events get on top of him.

‘And to think I brought Marie
Vassiliev with me!'

‘Marie Vassiliev?'

‘My girlfriend! I left her in her
bed, in Moulins … She's quite capable of hiring a car right now and running
off. That's all I need!'

They were only now turning out the
lights in Marie Tatin's, where some men were drinking rum. The Moulins bus was
about to set off, half empty.

‘She didn't deserve
that!' Maurice said dreamily.

‘Who?'

‘My mother!'

And at that moment there was something
childlike about him, in spite of his height and his developing paunch
.
Perhaps he was finally on the brink of crying?

The two men were walking up and down
near the church, forever pacing out the same path, now facing the pond, now turning
their backs on it.

‘Look, inspector! It isn't
at all possible that someone might have killed her … or at least I can't
imagine …'

Maigret thought about it, so intensely
that he forgot all about his companion. He was remembering the tiniest details of
the first mass.

The countess in her pew … No one had
gone near her … She had taken communion … She had knelt down with her face in her
hands … Then she had opened
her missal … A
little later, she had her face in her hands again …

‘Would you excuse me for a
moment?'

Maigret climbed the steps and entered
the church, where the sacristan was already preparing the altar for high mass. The
bell-ringer, a clumsy peasant in heavy hobnail boots, was straightening the
chairs.

The inspector walked straight towards
the pews, bent down and called the sexton, who turned round.

‘Who picked up the
missal?'

‘Which missal?'

‘The countess's … It was
left here.'

‘Is that right?'

‘You, come here!' Maigret
said to the bell-ringer. ‘Have you seen the missal that was here
earlier?'

‘What?'

Either he was stupid or he was
pretending to be. Maigret was agitated. He noticed Maurice de Saint-Fiacre standing
at the end of the nave.

‘Who has been near this
pew?'

‘The doctor's wife was
sitting there at seven o'clock mass …'

‘I didn't think the doctor
was a religious man.'

‘Perhaps he isn't – but his
wife …'

‘Right! Tell the whole village
that there's a big reward for anyone who brings me the missal.'

‘To the chateau?'

‘No! To Marie
Tatin's.'

Outside, Maurice de Saint-Fiacre walked
beside him again.

‘I don't understand this matter
about the missal.'

‘Heart attack, isn't that
right? … Maybe caused by some kind of shock … And it happened shortly after
communion, in other words after the countess had opened her missal … Let's
imagine that in that missal …'

But the young man shook his head.

‘I can't imagine any sort of
message that might have given my mother such a shock … Besides, it would be so … so
hateful …'

He was having difficulty breathing. He
looked grimly at the chateau.

‘Let's go and get a
drink!'

He headed not towards the chateau, but
towards the inn, where his entry caused some awkwardness. The four farmers drinking
were suddenly ill at ease. They greeted him with a mixture of respect and fear.

Marie Tatin ran from the kitchen, wiping
her hands on her apron. She stammered:

‘Monsieur Maurice … I'm so
distraught at the news … Our poor countess …'

She was crying. She probably cried her
heart out every time someone died in the village.

‘You were at mass too,
weren't you?' she said, calling Maigret as her witness. ‘To think
that nobody noticed anything. I was here when they came and told me …'

It is always embarrassing, in such
cases, to show less grief than people who are uninvolved. Maurice tried to hide his
impatience as he listened to these words of condolence and to grant himself some
composure he fetched a bottle of rum from the shelf and filled two glasses.

A shiver ran down his back as he drained
his glass in one, and he said to Maigret, ‘I think I caught a cold on my way
here this morning.'

‘Everyone around here has a cold,
Monsieur Maurice.'

And, to Maigret: ‘You should take
care too. I heard you coughing last night …'

The villagers left. The fire was
blazing.

‘A day like today!' said
Marie Tatin.

And it was impossible to tell whether
she was looking at Maigret or at the count, because her eyes went in different
directions.

‘Wouldn't you like a bite to
eat? But look at me! I was so flabbergasted when I was told … that it didn't
even occur to me to change my dress …'

She had just put an apron on over the
black dress that she only ever wore to go to mass. Her hat was on the table.

Maurice de Saint-Fiacre drank a second
glass of rum, and looked at Maigret as if asking him what to do.

‘Let's go!' said the
inspector.

‘Will you have lunch here?
I've killed a chicken and …'

But the two men were already outside. In
front of the church there were four or five carts, their horses tethered to trees.
Heads could be seen coming and going above the low wall of the cemetery. And, in the
courtyard of the chateau, the only touch of vivid colour was the yellow car.

‘The cheque was crossed?'
Maigret asked.

‘Yes! But it will be deposited
tomorrow.'

‘Do you do a lot of
work?'

Silence. The sound of their footsteps on
the paved road.
The rustle of dead leaves
carried by the wind. The horses snorting.

‘I am the very definition of a
good-for-nothing! I've done a bit of everything. You see! The forty thousand …
I was going to set up a film club. Before that I ran a wireless business
 …'

A faint sound of gunshot, on their
right, beyond the Notre-Dame pond. They saw a huntsman striding towards the bird he
had killed, towards which his dog was hurrying.

‘It's Gautier, the estate
manager,' said Maurice. ‘He must have gone hunting …'

Then all of a sudden he had a fit of
annoyance, stamped his heel on the ground, pulled a face and nearly sobbed.

‘Poor old thing!' he
muttered, his lips pursed. ‘It's … it's so wretched! … and that
little swine Jean who …'

As if by magic, they saw Jean pacing the
courtyard of the chateau, side by side with the doctor, who must have been engaged
in a heated discussion with him, since he was waving his thin arms around.

They occasionally caught the smell of
chrysanthemums in the wind.

There was no sun to distort the images,
and no greyness either to blur the outlines of things. Everything stood out with
sharp clarity: the trunks of the trees, the dead branches, the pebbles and
especially the black clothes of the people who had come to the cemetery. The whites,
on the other hand, gravestones or starched shirt-fronts, or the bonnets of the old
women, looked unreal and perfidious: whites too shockingly white.

Had it not been for the crisp breeze
cutting into people's cheeks, it was almost as if they were under a slightly
dusty bell-jar.

‘I'll see you in a
minute!'

Maigret left the Count of Saint-Fiacre
outside the cemetery gate. An old woman, sitting on a little bench that she had
brought with her, was trying to sell oranges and chocolate.

Oranges! Fat ones! Unripe! And candied …
They put your teeth on edge, they rasped your throat but, when he was ten years old,
Maigret had devoured them anyway, because they were oranges.

He had turned up the velvet collar of
his overcoat. He didn't look at anyone. He knew that he had to turn to the
left, and that the grave he was looking for was the third one past the cypress
tree.

All around, the cemetery was covered with
flowers. The previous day, some women had washed certain gravestones with a brush
and soap. The gates had been repainted.

HERE LIES ÉVARISTE MAIGRET …

‘Excuse me! No
smoking.'

The inspector barely noticed that anyone
was talking to him. At last he stared at the bell-ringer, who was also the
grave-digger, and put his pipe, still lit, in his pocket.

He couldn't think about one thing
at a time. Memories came flooding in, memories of his father, a friend who had
drowned in the Notre-Dame pond, the child of the chateau in his beautiful pram …

People looked at him. He looked at them.
He had seen these faces before. But back then, that man holding a little boy in his
arms, for example, the one walking behind a pregnant woman, had been a little boy of
four or five.

Maigret had no flowers. The tombstone
was blackened. He came out grumpily and muttered to himself, making a whole group of
people turn round: ‘We really need to find the missal!'

He didn't want to go back to the
chateau. There was something about it that disgusted, even infuriated him.

Certainly, he was under no illusion
about the men. But he was furious with them for sullying his childhood memories!
Especially the countess, whom he had always considered as noble and lovely as a
character in a picture-book …

And there she was, a batty old lady who
kept gigolos!

Not even that! There was nothing honest or
open about it! The famous Jean was just playing at being a secretary! He
wasn't handsome, he wasn't even all that young!

And the poor old woman, as her son had
said, was tormented, torn between the chateau and the church.

And the latest Count of Saint-Fiacre
risked arrest for presenting a dud cheque!

Someone was walking in front of Maigret
with his gun over his shoulder, and the inspector suddenly noticed that he was
heading towards the estate manager's house. He thought he recognized the
silhouette he had seen in the field from a distance.

A few metres separated the two men, who
were about to enter the courtyard where a few hens were huddled against a wall, in
the shelter of the wind, their feathers trembling.

‘Hey! …'

The man with the rifle turned round.

‘Are you the Saint-Fiacre estate
manager?'

‘And you are?'

‘Detective Chief Inspector
Maigret, Police Judiciaire.'

‘Maigret?'

The estate manager was struck by the
name, but couldn't remember exactly why.

‘Have you been told what's
going on?'

‘I've just been informed … I
was hunting … But what do the police? …'

He was a small, squat man, grey-haired,
his skin criss-crossed with fine, deep wrinkles, and pupils that
looked as if they were lying in ambush behind thick
eyebrows.

‘I was told her heart …'

‘Where are you going?'

‘I'm hardly going to go into
the chateau with my boots covered in mud and my rifle …'

The head of a rabbit hung from his
game-bag. Maigret looked at the house they were walking towards.

‘Wait a moment! They've
changed the kitchen …'

He felt a suspicious glance upon
him.

‘Fifteen years ago!'
murmured the estate manager.

‘What's your
name?'

‘Gautier … Is it true that the
count arrived without …'

His whole attitude was hesitant,
reticent. And Gautier didn't even invite Maigret inside. He pushed open his
door.

The inspector came in anyway and turned
right, towards the dining room, which smelled of biscuits and brandy.

‘If you have a moment, Monsieur
Gautier … You're not needed at the house … But I have a few questions to ask
you …'

‘Hurry up!' said a
woman's voice in the kitchen. ‘Apparently it's horrible
 …'

And Maigret ran his fingers along the
oak table, its corners decorated with carved lions. It was the one from his
childhood! It had been sold on to the new estate manager after his father's
death.