My Friend Maigret (9 page)

“They are very dangerous fellows,” Mr. Pyke concluded.

He added:

“Perhaps they are very unhappy too?”

Then, probably finding the silence a little too solemn, he said in a lighter tone:

“He speaks perfect English, you know. He hasn't even got an accent. I shouldn't be surprised if he went to one of our public schools.”

It was time to go to dinner. It was long past the half hour. The darkness was almost complete, and the boats in the harbor were swaying to the rhythm of the sea's breathing. Maigret emptied his pipe and knocked it against his heel, hesitated to fill another. Going past, he studied the Dutchman's little boat closely.

Had Mr. Pyke just spoken for the sake of speaking? Had he, in his own way, wanted to convey some sort of message?

It was difficult, if not impossible, to tell. His French was perfect, too perfect, and yet the two men did not speak the same language, their thoughts followed different channels in their passage through the brain.

“They're very dangerous, those fellows,” the Scotland Yard inspector had emphasized.

There was no doubt that he would not have wished, for anything in the world, even to appear to be intervening in Maigret's case. He hadn't asked him any questions about what had happened in Ginette's room. Was he under the impression that his colleague was hiding something from him, that Maigret was trying to cheat? Or worse still, after what he had just said about the customs of the French, did he imagine that Maigret and Ginette…?

The chief inspector grunted:

“She told me of her engagement to Monsieur Émile. It has to be kept secret, because of old Justine, who would attempt to stop the marriage, even after her death.”

He noticed that by contrast with the telling phrases of Mr. Pyke his speech was vague, his ideas even vaguer.

In a few words the Englishman had said what he had to say. From half an hour spent with de Greef, he had formulated definite ideas, not only about the latter, but on the world in general.

As for Maigret he would have been hard put to it to express a single idea. It was quite different. He sensed something. He sensed a whole heap of things, as he always did at the start of a case, but he couldn't have said in what form this mist of ideas would sooner or later resolve itself.

It was rather humiliating. It was a loss of face. He felt himself heavy and dull-witted beside the clear silhouette of his colleague.

“She's a strange girl,” he mumbled, in spite of everything.

That was all he could find to say of someone he had met before, whose whole life story he almost knew, and who had spoken to him openly.

A strange girl! She attracted him in some ways, and in others she disappointed him, as she had herself sensed perfectly well.

Perhaps, later on, he would have a definite opinion about her?

After a single game of chess and a few remarks exchanged over the board, Mr. Pyke had made a definitive analysis of his opponent's character.

Was it not as though the Englishman had won the first rubber?

He had thought about the smell straightaway, when he still imagined he was going to go to sleep at once. In actual fact, there were several smells. The principal one, the smell of the house, which one sniffed immediately on crossing the threshold of the café, he had been trying to analyze since that morning, for it was a smell which was unfamiliar to him. It struck him every time as he went in, and, each time, he would dilate his nostrils. There was a basis of wine of course, with a touch of
anis
, then the kitchen odors. And, since it was a Mediterranean kitchen, with foundations of garlic, red peppers, oil, and saffron, this made it differ from the usual smells.

But what was the point of worrying about all this? His eyes closed, he wanted to sleep. It was no use calling to mind all the Marseillais or Provençal restaurants where he happened to have eaten, in Paris or elsewhere. The smell wasn't the same, let it rest at that. All he had to do was sleep. He had had enough to drink to plunge into a leaden sleep.

Hadn't he been to sleep, immediately after lying down? The window was open and a noise had intrigued him; he had finally realized it was the rustling of leaves in the trees on the square.

Strictly speaking, the smell downstairs could be compared with that of a small bar, in Cannes, kept by a fat woman, where he had once been on a case and had idled away many hours.

The one in the bedroom was unlike anything. What was there in the mattress? Was it, as in Brittany, seaweed, which gave off the iodized smell of the sea? Other people had been in the bed before him, and he thought at odd moments that he could detect the smell of the oil with which women smear themselves before sun-bathing.

He turned over heavily. It was at least the tenth time, and there was still someone about, opening a door, walking down the passage, and going into one of the lavatories. There was nothing extraordinary about that, but it seemed to him that far more people were going there than there were in the house. Then he began counting the occupants of the Arche. Paul and his wife slept over his head, in an attic which one reached by a sort of ladder. As for Jojo, he didn't know where she slept. At any rate there was no room for her on the first floor.

She, too, had a special smell of her own. It came partly from her oiled hair, partly from her body and clothes, and it was at once vague and spicy, not at all disagreeable. This smell had distracted him while she was talking to him.

Another case where Mr. Pyke might have thought Maigret was cheating. The chief inspector had gone up to his bedroom for a moment, after dinner, to wash his teeth and hands. He had left the door open, and without his hearing, her feet making no sound on the floor, Jojo had come in and stood framed in the doorway. How old could she be? Sixteen? Twenty? She had the look, at once admiring and timorous, of girls who go to the stage door of theaters to beg for autographs. Maigret impressed her, because he was famous.

“Have you got something to say to me, my girl?”

She had closed the door behind her, which he hadn't liked, for you never know what people will think. He was not forgetting that there was an Englishman in the house.

“It's about Marcellin,” she went on to say, blushing. “He talked to me one afternoon when he was very drunk and took his siesta on the café bench.”

Well! Not so long ago, too, when the Arche was empty, he had seen someone stretched out on that same bench, a newspaper over his face, taking a short nap. It was evidently a cool spot. An odd house, even so! As for the smell…

“I thought it might be of some use to you. He told me that, if he wanted, he could have a pile as big as that.”

“A pile of what?”

“Of banknotes, of course.”

“A long time ago?”

“I think it was two days before what happened.”

“There wasn't anyone else in the café?”

“I was alone, polishing the counter.”

“Did you tell anyone about it?”

“I don't think so.”

“He didn't say anything else?”

“Only: ‘
What would I do with it, my little Jojo? It's so nice here
.'”

“He never made love to you, never made any proposals?”

“No.”

“And the others?”

“Nearly all of them.”

“When Ginette was here—she came almost every month, didn't she?—did Marcellin ever happen to go up to see her in her bedroom?”

“Certainly not. He was very respectful toward her.”

“Can I speak to you like a grown-up, Jojo?”

“I'm nineteen, you know.”

“Good. Did Marcellin have relations with women, now and again?”

“Certainly.”

“On the island?”

“With Nine, to start with. That's my cousin. She does it with everybody. It seems she can't help it.”

“On board his boat?”

“Anywhere. Then with the widow Lambert, who keeps the café on the other side of the square. He would sometimes spend the night with her. Whenever he caught some sea wolves, he would bring them to her. I suppose, now he's dead, I can tell you: Marcellin fished with dynamite.”

“There was never any question of his marrying the widow Lambert?”

“I don't think she wants to remarry.”

And Jojo's smile let it be understood that the widow Lambert was no ordinary person.

“Is that all, Jojo?”

“Yes. I'd better be going down again.”

Ginette wasn't asleep either. She lay in the next room, just behind the partition, so that Maigret had the impression that he could hear her breathing. It made him feel uncomfortable because when he turned over, half-asleep, he sometimes banged the partition with his elbow and each time that must have made her jump.

It had been a very long time before she went off to sleep. What could she have been doing? Seeing to her face or her toilet? The silence at times was so profound in her bedroom that Maigret wondered if she was in the middle of writing something. Especially as the attic window was too high for her to be able to lean out and breathe the fresh air.

That famous smell again…It was, quite simply, the smell of Porquerolles. He had caught it at the end of the jetty, a short while ago, with Mr. Pyke. There were whiffs of smells from the water, overheated by the sun during the day, and others coming from the land with the breeze. Weren't the trees in the square eucalyptus? There were probably other natural scents on the island.

Who was it going down the passage again? Mr. Pyke? It was the third time. Paul's cooking, for which he was so ill acclimatized, must have upset him.

He had drunk a lot, had Mr. Pyke. Was it from choice, or because he had been unable to do otherwise? At all events he liked champagne and Maigret had never thought of offering him any. He had drunk it all evening with the major. They got on so well together from the start, that one might have thought they had always known one another. They had settled themselves in a corner. On instructions, Jojo had brought champagne.

Bellam didn't drink it in champagne glasses, but in large ones, like beer glasses. He was so perfect that he looked like a drawing in
Punch
, with his silvery gray hair, his rosy complexion, large clear eyes swimming in liquid, and the huge cigar which never left his lips.

He was an old boy of seventy or seventy-two years, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. His voice, probably because of the champagne and the cigars, was husky. Even after several bottles, he maintained an affecting dignity.

“May I introduce Major Bellam?” Mr. Pyke had said at a certain moment. “It turns out we were at the same school.”

Not the same year, at all events, nor the same decade. One could feel that this gave them both pleasure. The major called the chief inspector “Monsieur Maigrette.”

From time to time he would give an almost imperceptible signal to Jojo or Paul, which was enough for them to bring fresh champagne to the table. At other times, a different sign would bring Jojo, who would pour out a glass and take it over to someone in the room.

This might have had something haughty or condescending about it. The major did it so charmingly, so naively, that it gave no offense. He looked a little as if he were distributing good marks. When the glass had arrived at its destination, he raised his own and drank a silent toast from where he sat.

Everyone, or almost everyone, dropped in. Charlot, almost the whole evening, had been working the crane. He had started off by playing with the fruit machine and he could allow himself to spend as much as he liked since it was he who collected the kitty. The crane must have belonged to him as well. He fitted a coin into the slot, and with sustained concentration turned the knob, directing the small chromium pincers toward a cheap cigarette case, or a pipe, or a wallet from a bazaar.

Was Ginette not sleeping because she was worried? Had Maigret been too harsh with her? In the bedroom, yes, he had been hard. It was not out of spite, as might have been thought. Had she thought it was out of spite?

It is always ridiculous to play the Good Samaritan. He had picked her up in the Place des Ternes and had sent her off to the sanatorium. He had never told himself he was saving a soul, that he was “snatching a girl from the gutter.”

Someone else, “who was like him,” as she had told him, had looked after her in his turn: the doctor at the sanatorium. Had he been hoping for something?

She had become what she had become. That was her affair. He had no reason to take offense, to resent it with bitterness.

He had been hard because it had been a necessity, because that type of woman, even the least wicked of them, lie as they breathe, sometimes without any need, without any reason. And she hadn't told him everything yet, he was sure. So much so that she couldn't get to sleep. There was something on her mind.

Once, she got up. He heard her bare feet on the floor of the room. Was she going to come and find him? There was nothing impossible about that, and Maigret had prepared himself mentally to hurry into his trousers, which he had left lying on the floor.

She hadn't come. There had been the clink of a glass. She was thirsty. Or else she had taken a sleeping pill.

He had only drunk one glass of champagne. The rest of the time he had drunk mostly wine, then, God knows why, anisette.

Who had ordered anisette? Oh yes, it was the dentist. A retired dentist, to be precise, whose name escaped him. Another phenomenon. There were nothing but phenomena on the island, at the Arche at any rate. Or perhaps was it they who were right and the people on the other side of the water, on the mainland, who were wrong to behave otherwise?

He must once have been very respectable, very well groomed, for he had a dentist's surgery in one of the smartest districts of Bordeaux, and the people of Bordeaux are particular. He had come to Porquerolles by chance, on holiday, and since then he had only left for a week, the time it took to go and wind up his affairs.

He wore no collar. It was one of the Morins, a fisherman, who cut his hair once a month. That Morin was called Morin-Coiffeur. The ex-dentist's beard was at least three days old and he neglected his hands, he neglected everything, didn't do anything, except read, in a rocking chair, in the shade on his veranda.

He had married a girl on the island who had perhaps been pretty but who had very quickly become enormous, with the shadow of a mustache on her lip and a strident voice.

He was happy. Or so he claimed. He would say with a disconcerting assurance:

“You'll see! If you stay long enough, you'll be bitten, like the others. And then you won't go away again.”

Maigret knew that, on certain of the Pacific islands, white people sometimes let themselves go like that, go native, as they say, but he didn't know it was possible three miles from the French coast.

When someone was mentioned to the dentist, he only judged them in terms of the extent to which they had gone native. He called it something else. He said: Porquerollitis.

The doctor? For there was a doctor, too, whom Maigret had not yet met, but Lechat had mentioned him. Infected to the bone, according to the dentist.

“I presume you are friends?”

“We never see one another. We pass the time of day, at a distance.”

True, the doctor had arrived with his preoccupations. He was very ill and had only settled in the island to cure himself. He was a bachelor. He lived alone in a poky little house with a garden full of flowers and he did his own housework. Indoors, it was very dirty. On account of his health, he didn't go out in the evenings, even in cases of emergency, and, in winter, if it happened to be really cold, which was rare, days and sometimes weeks would go by without his white nose being seen.

“You'll see! You'll see!” the dentist insisted with a sarcastic smile. “Besides, you've already got some idea of what it is by looking around you. Just think, it's the same every evening.”

And it was indeed a curious spectacle. It wasn't quite the atmosphere of a café, nor was it that of a drawing room. The disorder called to mind a soirée in an artist's studio.