The Shadow Puppet (16 page)

Martin didn't budge. He was now
even more ashen-faced than his wife. He had to hold on to the door frame for
support.

‘Except that Madame Martin will be
rich … She's at the age when a person knows how to enjoy life and
wealth—'

He walked over to the window.

‘Unless this
window … This is the stumbling block … It is bound to be pointed
out that everything could be seen from here … Everything, you hear! And
that is serious! … Because that would make her an
accessory … And in fact, the criminal code states that accessories to a
murder are prohibited from being beneficiaries of the victim's will.
It's not only the murderer, but the accomplices too … You see now
how important this window is—'

It was no longer silence that was
surrounding him, it was something more absolute, more worrying, almost unreal: a
total absence of any life.

And suddenly, a question, ‘Tell
me, Martin! What did you do with the gun?'

A rustle in the
corridor: old Mathilde, of course, with her moon face and her soft belly under her
gingham apron.

The concierge's shrill voice in
the courtyard.

‘Madame
Martin! … It's the Dufayel man!'

Maigret sat in a wing chair that wobbled
but didn't break straight away.

‘Answer me! The gun—'

He followed Martin's gaze and
noticed that Madame Martin, who was still staring at the ceiling, was moving her
fingers against the wall.

Poor Martin was making desperate efforts
to understand what she meant. He grew impatient. He could see that Maigret was
waiting.

‘I—'

What could that square or trapeze that
she was outlining with her thin finger mean?

‘Well?'

At that moment, Maigret truly pitied
him. This must be terrible for him. Martin was gasping with impatience.

‘I threw it in the
Seine.'

The die was cast! As the chief inspector
pulled the gun out of his pocket and placed it on the table, Madame Martin sat up in
bed, fuming.

‘I did eventually find it in the
dustbin,' said Maigret.

And then the feverish woman hissed,
‘There! Do you understand now? Are you happy? You missed your chance, once
again, as you always have done! Anyone would think you did it on purpose, for fear
of going to prison … but you'll go to prison anyway! Because you
were the thief! The 360 notes that monsieur threw into the Seine—'

She was
terrifying. It was clear that she had bottled everything up inside her for too long.
The release was violent. And she was so carried away that sometimes several words
reached her lips at the same time and tumbled over each other.

Martin bowed his head. His part was
over. As his wife said, he had failed miserably.

‘… Monsieur takes it into his
head to steal, but he leaves his glove on the table—'

All Madame Martin's resentment was
going to burst out, messily, chaotically.

Behind him Maigret heard the voice of
the man with the putty-coloured overcoat.

‘For months she'd been
pointing at the office to me through the window, Couchet, who was always going to
the toilet … and she rebuked me for making her so miserable, for being
incapable of feeding a wife … I went down there—'

‘Did you tell her that you were
going?'

‘No! But she knew. She was at the
window.'

‘And from a distance you saw the
glove that your husband had left behind, Madame Martin?'

‘As if he were leaving a calling
card! Anyone would think he did it on purpose to annoy me—'

‘You picked up your gun and you
went there … Couchet returned while you were in the office … He
thought it was you who had stolen—'

‘He wanted to have me arrested!
That's what he wanted to do! As if it weren't thanks to me that
he'd become rich! … Who'd looked after him, in the early
days, when he barely earned enough to
eat bread without any butter? … All men are the same! … He even
reprimanded me for living in the building where he had his offices. He accused me of
sharing the money he gave my son.'

‘And you shot him?'

‘He had already picked up the
telephone to call the police!'

‘You headed for the dustbins.
Saying you were looking for a silver spoon, you hid the gun in the rubbish. Who did
you bump into then?'

She spat, ‘That stupid old man
from the first floor.'

‘Nobody else? I thought your son
came by. He was out of money.'

‘So what?'

‘He hadn't come to see you,
but his father, isn't that right? Only you couldn't allow him to go into
the office, where he would have discovered the body. You were both in the courtyard.
What did you say to Roger?'

‘I told him to go away. You
can't understand a mother's heart.'

‘And he left. Your husband came
home. Neither of you mentioned anything … Is that
right? … Martin was thinking of the notes he'd ended up throwing
into the Seine, because deep down he's a poor devil of a good man.'

‘Poor devil of a good man!'
echoed Madame Martin with an unexpected fury. ‘Ha! Ha! And what about me?
I've always been unhappy—'

‘Martin doesn't know who has
killed … He goes to bed. A day goes by without you saying
anything … But
the following
night you get up to search the clothes he's taken off … You look for
the money in vain … He watches you … You question
him … And it's the outburst of anger that old Mathilde overheard
behind the door … You've killed for nothing! That idiot Martin has
thrown the money away! He has thrown a fortune in the Seine, for lack of guts! It
makes you ill … You go down with a fever … And Martin, who is
unaware that you are the killer, goes and tells Roger the news. And Roger realizes
the truth. He saw you in the courtyard … You stopped him from going into
the office. He knows you. He thinks I suspect him. He imagines that he'll be
arrested, accused … and he can't defend himself without accusing his
mother … Perhaps he's not a very nice boy … But there are
probably good reasons why he ended up living as he did. He's full of
loathing … loathing for the women he sleeps with, loathing for the drugs,
for Montmartre where he hangs around, and, above all, for this family tragedy in
which he alone is aware of all the motives. He jumps out of the window!'

Martin was leaning against the wall, his
face buried in his folded arms. But his wife gazed fixedly at the inspector, as if
she were just waiting for the right time to interrupt his account, and attack him
back.

Then Maigret produced the lawyers'
written advice.

‘During my last visit, Martin was
so panic-stricken that he was about to confess his theft … but you were
there … He could see you through the doorway … You frantically
signalled to him and he held his tongue. Is that not what finally opened his eyes?
He questioned you. Yes, you
had killed!
You screamed in his face! You killed because of him, to make up for his mistake,
because of that glove left on the desk! And, because you have killed, you
won't even inherit, despite the will! Oh! If only Martin were a man! Let him
go abroad. People will believe he's guilty. The police will go away and
you'll go and join him with the millions. Poor old Martin!'

And Maigret almost crushed the man with
a formidable clap on the shoulder. He spoke in a muted voice. He let the words fall
without insisting.

‘To have done all that for the
money! Couchet's death, Roger throwing himself out of the window, and then to
realize at the last minute that you won't get it! You'd rather pack
Martin's bags yourself. Neatly arranged suitcases. Months' worth of
underwear—'

‘Stop!' begged Martin.

The madwoman screamed. Maigret flung
open the door and old Mathilde almost tumbled into the room!

She fled, terrified at the
inspector's tone of voice, and for the first time she shut her door properly
and turned the key in the lock.

Maigret glanced around the room one last
time. Martin didn't dare move. His thin wife sitting up in bed, her shoulder
blades prominent beneath her nightshirt, followed the police officer with her
eyes.

She was so serious, so calm all of a
sudden, that Maigret wondered, anxiously, what she had up her sleeve.

He remembered certain looks, during the
earlier scene, certain movements of her lips. And he intuited, at exactly the same
time as Martin, what was happening.

There were
unable to stop her. The whole thing happened independently of them, like a
nightmare.

Madame Martin was very, very thin. And
her features became even more tormented. What was she staring at, in places where
there was nothing but the usual bedroom objects?

What was she watching attentively moving
around the room?

Her forehead furrowed. Her temples
throbbed. Martin cried, ‘I'm scared!'

Nothing had changed in the apartment. A
lorry drove into the courtyard and they could hear the concierge's shrill
voice.

It was as though Madame Martin was
making a huge effort, all alone, to scale an impossible mountain. Twice her hand
made a movement as if to swat something away from her face. Finally, she swallowed
her saliva and smiled like someone who has reached their goal, ‘All the same,
you'll all come and ask me for money. I'm going to tell my lawyer not to
give you any.'

Martin was twitching from head to toe.
He realized that this was no passing delirium caused by her fever.

She had lost her mind, permanently!

‘You can't blame her.
She's never been like everyone else, has she?' he moaned.

He was awaiting the inspector's
confirmation.

‘Poor Martin—'

Martin was crying! He seized his
wife's hand and was rubbing his face against it. She pushed him away. She had
a superior, contemptuous smile.

‘No more
than five francs at a time. I've suffered enough, I have, of—'

‘I'm going to call
Sainte-Anne's' said Maigret.

‘Do you think? Does
she … does she need to be locked up?'

Force of habit? Martin was
panic-stricken at the idea of leaving his home, that atmosphere of resentment and
daily quarrels, that sordid life, that wife who, one last time, was trying to think
but who, disconsolate and defeated, lay back with a great sigh, stammering,
‘Bring me the key—'

A few moments later, Maigret crossed the
teeming street like a stranger. He had a throbbing headache, something that occurred
rarely, and he went into a pharmacy to buy a pill.

He couldn't see anything around
him. The sounds of the city blended with others, with voices in particular, which
continued to resonate in his head.

One image in particular haunted him:
Madame Martin getting up, picking her husband's clothes up from the floor and
looking for the money. And Martin watching her from the bed.

The woman's questioning gaze!

‘I threw it into the Seine.'

It was at that moment that something had
snapped. Or rather there had always been something not right in her brain! It was
already so when she lived in the confectioner's at Meaux.

Only it wasn't noticeable. She was
an almost-pretty girl. No one worried about her too-thin lips.

And Couchet had
married her!

‘What would become of me if something happened to you?'

Maigret had to wait to cross the
Boulevard Beaumarchais. For no reason, Nine came into his mind.

‘She'll get nothing, not a
sou,
' he murmured. ‘The family will have the will revoked.
And it is Madame Couchet, née Dormoy—'

The colonel must have begun the
formalities. It was natural. Madame Couchet would get everything. All those
millions—'

She was a distinguished woman, who would
maintain her station.

Maigret slowly climbed the stairs and
pushed open the door of the apartment in Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.

‘Guess what happened?'

Madame Maigret was setting four places
on the white tablecloth. Maigret noticed a small jug of plum brandy on the
sideboard.

‘Your sister!'

It wasn't difficult to guess,
because each time she came from Alsace, she brought fruit brandy and a smoked
ham.

‘She's gone to buy some
things with André.'

The husband. A good fellow who managed a
brickworks.

‘You look tired. I hope
you're not going out again today at least?'

Maigret did not go out. At nine p.m., he
was playing Pope Joan with his sister and brother-in-law. The dining room was
fragrant with the smell of plum brandy.