My Friend Maigret (11 page)

“Not with his luggage, I presume?”

“No. He's with Monsieur Paul. Your friend has gone out too, at least a quarter of an hour ago.”

Maigret contemplated the expanse of the square through the open windows.

“He's probably in the water. He was wearing a bathing suit, with his towel under his arm.”

It had something to do with Ginette. But it was also linked in his mind with Jojo. He remembered that, in his half-sleep, he had recalled Jojo at the moment she was going up the stairs. Now this wasn't an erotic thought. The legs she disclosed were only incidental to it. Let's see! Later on, she had come into his room.

The day before, he had persistently asked Ginette:

“Why have you come?”

And she had lied several times. At first she had said that it was to see him, because she had learned that he was on the island and had assumed he would send for her.

A little later, she was admitting that she was in a sort of way engaged to Monsieur Émile. This meant admitting at the same time that she had come to clear him, to assure the chief inspector that her employer was in no way concerned with Marcellin's death.

He hadn't been so very wrong to be hard with her. She had yielded some ground. But she hadn't yet yielded enough.

He was drinking his coffee in small sips, standing in front of the stove. By a curious coincidence, the cup of common china, but of an old-fashioned design, was almost a replica of the one he used during his childhood, which he then imagined to be unique.

“Aren't you having anything to eat?”

“Not now.”

“In a quarter of an hour, there will be fresh bread at the baker's.”

In the end he relaxed, and Jojo must have wondered why he began to smile. He had remembered.

Hadn't Marcellin mentioned to Jojo a “packet” which he could have had? He was drunk, certainly, but he often was drunk. For how long had the possibility of laying his hands on this “packet” been here? It wasn't necessarily recent. Ginette used to visit the island practically every month. She had come the month before. It was easy to check into. Marcellin, on the other hand, could have written to her.

If he was able to get hold of a packet, it was probable that someone else could get it in his place, for instance by knowing what he knew.

Maigret stayed where he was, cup in hand, staring at the brightly lit rectangle of the door and Jojo kept darting curious glances at him.

Lechat claimed that Marcel had died because he had talked too much about “his friend Maigret” and, at first sight, this appeared to make sense.

It was odd to see Mr. Pyke, almost naked, come out into the light, his soaked towel in his hand, his hair stuck to his forehead.

Instead of greeting him, Maigret murmured:

“Just a moment…”

He almost had it. A slight effort and his idea would fall into place. Starting off, for example, with the notion that Ginette had come because she knew why Marcellin had died.

She hadn't necessarily put herself out to prevent the discovery of the guilty party. Once she had married Monsieur Émile she would be rich, certainly. Only old Justine wasn't dead yet, she might linger on for years, despite the doctors. If she discovered what was afoot, she was quite capable of playing a dirty trick so as to prevent her son marrying anyone after her death.

Marcellin's “packet” was to be had straightaway. Perhaps it was still there to be got? In spite of the presence of Maigret and the Inspector Lechat?

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Pyke. Did you sleep well?”

“Very well,” replied the Englishman imperturbably.

Was Maigret to admit that he had counted the times the lavatory was flushed? It was not necessary and, after his bath, the Scotland Yard inspector was as fresh as a fish.

Presently, while he was shaving, the chief inspector would have time to think about the “packet.”

There is something to be said for the English. Would a French colleague, in Mr. Pyke's place, have been able to resist the desire to score a point? And hadn't Maigret, who was not especially given to teasing, all but made a discreet allusion, just now, to the lavatory which the Yard inspector had flushed so many times during the night?

Perhaps more alcohol had flowed that evening than either of them had imagined? At all events it was rather unexpected. There were still the three of them, Maigret, Pyke, and Jojo, in the kitchen with the door left open. Maigret was finishing his coffee, and Mr. Pyke, in his bathing trunks, was standing between him and the light, while Jojo was trying to find some bacon for him in the larder. It was exactly three minutes to eight and then, looking at the clock, Maigret declared in that innocent, inimitable voice that comes to one in moments of gaffes:

“I wonder if Lechat is still sleeping off his wine from last night.”

Jojo started, but managed not to turn round. As for Mr. Pyke, all his good education failed to prevent the round look of astonishment being seen to light up his face. It was, however, with perfect simplicity that he uttered:

“I've just seen him taking his place on board the
Cormorant
. I presume it will wait for Ginette.”

Maigret had done nothing more or less than forget all about Marcellin's funeral. Worse still, it suddenly came back to him that the day before he had talked about it for a long time, with even a little too much insistence, to the inspector. Was Mr. Pyke present at that conversation? He couldn't have said, but he could picture himself again, seated on the bench.

“You go with her, old man, you get the idea? I don't say it'll lead anywhere. Perhaps she will show some reaction, perhaps not. Perhaps someone will try to speak to her on the sly. Perhaps recognizing a face in the congregation may tell you something. One should always go to funerals, it's an old principle that has often succeeded. Keep your eyes open. That's all.”

He seemed even to recall that, while chatting away to the inspector, he had related one or two stories of funerals which had put him on the track of criminals.

He understood now why Ginette had made so much noise in her bedroom. He heard her opening her door and calling out from upstairs:

“Pour me out a cup of coffee, Jojo. How much time have I got?”

“Three minutes, madame!”

Just at that moment, the sound of a siren was announcing the
Cormorant
's imminent departure.

“I'll come as far as the landing stage,” the chief inspector announced.

In his slippers and with no collar, for he hadn't time to go up and get dressed. He wasn't the only one in that attire. There were little groups in the neighborhood of the boat, still the same ones as had been there the day before when the chief inspector had landed. They must have attended all the departures and all the arrivals. Before starting the day they would come to watch the
Cormorant
leaving the harbor, after which, delaying their morning toilet a little longer, they would have a glass of white wine at Paul's or in one of the cafés.

The dentist, less discreet than Mr. Pyke, looked hard at Maigret's slippers and his state of undress, and his satisfied smile was saying unambiguously:

“I warned you! It's started!”

Porquerollitis, presumably, in which he himself was steeped to the marrow. Aloud, he contented himself with asking:

“Slept well?”

Lechat, already on board, petulant, impatient, went ashore again to have a word with his chief.

“I didn't want to wake you up. Isn't she coming? Baptiste says that if she doesn't come at once, they'll go off without her.”

There were others making the crossing for Marcellin's funeral, fishermen in their Sunday best, the builder, the tobacconist. Maigret couldn't see Charlot around and yet he had spotted him just now in the square. Nothing was moving aboard the
North Star
. At the moment the dumb sailor was about to cast off, Ginette appeared, half-walking, half-running, dressed in black silk with a black hat and a veil, leaving a rustling and scented wake behind her. She was whisked on board as though by a conjuring trick, and it was not until she was seated that she saw the chief inspector on the jetty and wished him good morning with a little nod of her head.

The sea was so smooth, so luminous, that when one stared at it for long one could no longer distinguish, for a moment or two, the shape of things. The
Cormorant
described a silver curve on the water. The people waited another moment watching her, from habit and tradition, then set off, slowly, toward the square. A fisherman, who had just spiked an octopus with his harpoon, was skinning it and the tentacles were coiling round his tattooed arm.

At the Arche, Paul, bright-eyed, was serving out white wine from behind his counter, and Mr. Pyke, who had had time to dress, was at a table eating bacon and eggs. Maigret drank a glass of wine, like the others, and a little later, while he was busy shaving in front of his window, with his braces hanging over his thighs, there was a knock at the door.

It was the Englishman.

“Am I in the way? May I come in?”

He sat in the only chair, and the silence was a long one.

“I spent part of the evening chatting with the major,” he said finally. “Do you know he was one of our best polo players?”

He must have been disappointed with the reaction, or to be more precise, with the lack of reaction on the part of Maigret. The latter had only a vague notion of the game of polo. All he knew was that it was played from horseback and that somewhere, in the Bois de Boulogne or at St. Cloud, there was a very aristocratic polo club.

Mr. Pyke, with a guileless air, stretched out a helping hand.

“He's a younger son.”

For him, this meant a lot. In England, in great families, isn't it the eldest son alone who inherits title and fortune, which obliges the others to make a career for themselves in the army or the navy?

“His brother is a member of the House of Lords. The major chose the Indian Army.”

The same phenomenon must take place, in reverse, when Maigret made allusions to his English colleague about people like Charlot, or Monsieur Émile, or Ginette. But Mr. Pyke was being patient, dotting his i's with an exquisite discretion, almost without touching them.

“People with a certain name are reluctant to remain in London unless they have the means to cut a fine figure there. The great passion in the Indian Army is horses. To play polo a stable of several ponies is essential.”

“The major's never got married?”

“Younger sons seldom marry. In taking charge of a family Bellam would have had to give up his horses.”

“And he preferred the horses!”

This did not seem at all surprising to Mr. Pyke.

“In the evening, out there, the bachelors gather at the club and have no distraction besides drink. The major has drunk a lot in his time. In India it was whisky. It was only here that he took to champagne.”

“Did he tell you why he chose to live in Porquerolles?”

“He had an appalling tragedy, the worst that could have befallen him. As a result of a bad fall from his horse, he was immobilized in bed for three years, half of the time in a cast and, when he was on his feet again, he realized that his riding days were over.”

“That's the reason he left India?”

“That's why he's here. I'm sure that almost everywhere in climates like this, in the Mediterranean or the Pacific, you will find old gentlemen of the same type as the major, who are considered eccentrics. Where else could they go?”

“Don't they have any desire to go back to England?”

“Their means won't permit them to live in London according to their rank, and the habits they have adopted would be frowned upon in the country in England.”

“Did he tell you why he doesn't speak to Mrs. Wilcox?”

“There was no need for him to tell me.”

Should he persist? Or would Mr. Pyke, too, prefer not to hear too much about his compatriot? Mrs. Wilcox, to put it in a nutshell, was not as a woman what the major was as a man.

Maigret wiped his cheeks, hesitated about putting on his jacket. The Yard inspector had not put on his. It was already hot. But the chief inspector could not allow himself, like his slim colleague, not to wear braces, and a man in braces always looks like a shopkeeper on a picnic.

He put his jacket on. They had nothing else to do in the room, and Mr. Pyke murmured as he rose:

“The major, despite everything, has remained a gentleman.”

He followed Maigret down the stairs. He didn't ask what he intended to do, but he was following him, and that was enough to spoil the chief inspector's day.

He had vaguely promised himself, expressly on Mr. Pyke's account, to behave that morning like a high police official. In theory, a Police Headquarters chief inspector does not run around streets and bars looking for murderers. He is an important man, who spends most of his time in his office, and like a general in his HQ, directs a small army of sergeants, inspectors, and technicians.

Maigret had never been able to resign himself to this. Like a gun dog, he had to ferret things out for himself, to scratch and sniff the smells.

The first two days, Lechat had got through a considerable amount of work and had handed over to Maigret an account of all the interrogations he had carried out. The whole island had been put through it, the Morins and the Gallis, the sick doctor, the priest, whom Maigret hadn't yet seen, and the women as well.

Maigret would have installed himself in a corner of the dining room, which was empty all the morning, and he would have zealously studied these reports, marking them with a blue or red pencil.

With an uneasy glance, he asked Mr. Pyke:

“Does it happen at the Yard for your colleagues to run about the streets like novices?”

“I know at least three or four who are never to be seen in their offices.”

So much the better, for he had no desire to remain sitting down. He was beginning to understand why the people of Porquerolles were always to be found in the same places. It was instinctive. Despite oneself one was to some extent affected by the sun, by the landscape. Now, for example, Maigret and his companion were taking a walk out of doors, without any definite direction, and hardly noticing that they were going down toward the harbor.

Maigret was sure that if, by chance, he was obliged to spend the rest of his days on the island, he would take the same walk every morning and that the pipe he smoked then would always be the best pipe of the day. The
Cormorant
, over there, on the other side of the water, at Giens Point, was disgorging its passengers, who were piling into an old bus. Even with the naked eye one could make out the boat as a tiny white dot.

The mute would be about to load up some crates of vegetables and fruit for the mayor and for the Cooperative, meat for the butcher, and the mailbags. People would embark perhaps, as Maigret and Mr. Pyke had embarked the day before, and would no doubt experience the same feeling of vertigo on discovering the underwater landscape.

The sailors on the big white yacht were washing down the deck. They were middle-aged men who from time to time went for a drink, without mixing with the locals, at Morin-Barbu's.

To the right of the harbor a footpath ran up the steep slope, like a cliff, and ended at a hut, with the door open.

A fisherman, sitting in the doorway, was holding a net stretched out between his bare toes, and his hands, as nimble as a seamstress's, were passing a netting hook in and out of the holes.

It was here that Marcellin had been killed. The two policemen glanced at the interior. The center was occupied by a huge cauldron, like the ones used in the country for boiling pig swill. Here it was the nets that were put to boil in a brown mixture which protected them against the action of the sea water.

Marcellin must have used old sails as a mattress, and in the corners there were pots of paint scattered about, oil or kerosene cans, pieces of scrap iron, patched-up oars.

“Do other people ever sleep here?” Maigret asked the fisherman.

The latter raised his head indifferently.

“Old Benoît, sometimes, when it's raining.”

“And when it's not raining?”

“He prefers to sleep out of doors. It depends. Sometimes it's in a cove or on the deck of a boat. Sometimes on a bench in the square.”

“Have you seen him today?”

“He was over there just now.”

The fisherman pointed at the footpath which continued beside the sea at a certain height and which, on one side, was bordered with pine trees.

“Was he alone?”

“I think the gentleman from the Arche joined up with him a little further on.”

“Which one?”

“The one with a linen suit and a white cap.”