Louis dived into the fog with his head bowed and before it enveloped him completely, he said to Maigret:
“If you want to get hold of me, I’ll be at the Trois Mules all evening.”
It was five o’clock. A thick fog had descended over the town and darkness fell at the same time. Maigret had to walk the length of the main street in Saint-Aubin in order to reach the station, where he would take the road leading to Etienne Naud’s house. Louis had offered to go with him, but there is a limit to everything and Maigret had had enough. He was beginning to get tired of being pulled along by this excited and restless youngster.
As they parted company, Louis had said with a note of reproach in his voice, almost sentimentally:
“They’ll butter you up and you’ll start believing everything they tell you.” He was referring to the Nauds, of course.
With his hands in his pockets and the collar of his overcoat turned up, Maigret walked cautiously toward the light in the distance, for any lamp which shone through the fog was a kind of lighthouse. Because of the intense brightness of this halo which looked as if it was still a long way off, the superintendent felt he was walking towards an important goal. And then, all of a sudden, he almost bumped into the cold window of the Vendée Cooperative which he had walked past twenty times that day. The narrow shop had been painted green fairly recently and there were free offers of glassware and earthenware displayed in the window.
Further on, in total darkness, he came up against something hard and groped about in confusion for some time before he realized he had landed in the middle of the carts standing outside the wheelwright’s house with their shafts in the air.
The bells loomed into view immediately above his head. He was walking past the church. The post office was on the right, with its doll-size counter; opposite, on the other side of the road, stood the doctor’s house.
The Lion d’Or was on one side of the street, the Trois Mules on the other. It was extraordinary to think that inside each lighted house people were living in a tiny circle of warmth, like incrustations in the icy infinity of the universe.
Saint-Aubin was not a large town. The lights in the dairy made one think of a brightly-lit factory at night. A railway engine in the station was sending out sparks.
Albert Retailleau had grown up in this microcosm of a world. His mother had spent all her life in Saint-Aubin. Apart from holidays in Sables d’Olonne, someone like Geneviève Naud would to all intents and purposes never leave the town.
As the train slowed down a little before arriving at Niort station, Maigret had noticed empty streets in the rain, rows of gaslights and shuttered houses. He had thought to himself: “There are people who spend their whole lives in that street.”
Testing the ground with his feet, he made his way along the canal towards another lighthouse which was in fact the lantern outside Naud’s house. On various train journeys, whether on cold nights or in slashing rain, Maigret had seen many such isolated houses, a rectangle of yellow light being the only sign of their existence. The imagination then sets to work and pictures all manner of things.
And so it was that Maigret came into the orbit of one of these welcoming lights. He walked up the stone steps, looked for the bell and then saw that the door was ajar. He went into the hall, deliberately shuffling his feet to make his presence known, but this did not deter whoever was in the drawing room from continuing to hold forth in monotonous tones. Maigret took off his wet overcoat, his hat, wiped his feet on the straw mat and knocked on the door.
“Come in…Geneviève, open the door…”
He had already opened it; only one of the lamps in the drawing room was lit. Madame Naud was sewing by the hearth and a very old woman was sitting opposite her. A young girl walked over to the door as Maigret came into the room.
“I’m sorry to disturb you…”
The girl looked at him anxiously, unable to decide whether or not he would betray her. Maigret merely bowed.
“This is my daughter Geneviève, superintendent…She so wanted to meet you. She is quite recovered now…Allow me to introduce you to my mother…”
So this was Clémentine Bréjon, a La Noue before she married and commonly known as Tine. This small, sprightly old lady with a wry expression on her face reminiscent of that on the busts of Voltaire, rose to her feet and asked in a curious falsetto voice:
“Well, superintendent, do you feel you have caused enough havoc in our poor Saint-Aubin? Upon my word, I’ve seen you go up and down ten times or more this morning, and this afternoon I have it on good authority that you found yourself a young recruit…Do you know, Louise, who acted as elephant driver to the superintendent?”
Had she deliberately chosen the words “elephant driver” to emphasize the difference in size between the lanky youth and the elephantine Maigret?
Louise Naud, who was far from having her mother’s vivacity and whose face was much longer and paler, did not look up from her work but just nodded her head and smiled faintly to show she was listening.
“Fillou’s son…It was bound to happen…The boy must have lain in wait for him…No doubt he has regaled you with some fine stories, superintendent?”
“He has done nothing of the kind, madame…He merely directed me to the various people I wanted to see. I’d have found it difficult to find their houses on my own as the locals aren’t exactly talkative on the whole…”
Geneviève had sat down and was staring at Maigret as if she was hypnotized by him. Madame Naud looked up occasionally from her work and glanced furtively at her daughter.
The drawing room looked exactly as it had done the previous evening for everything was in its usual place. An oppressive stillness hung over the room and it was really only the grandmother who conveyed any sense of normality.
“I am an old woman, superintendent. Let me tell you that, some time ago, something much more serious happened which nearly destroyed Saint-Aubin. There used to be a clog factory which employed fifty people, men and women. It was at a time when there were endless strikes in France and workers walked out at the slightest provocation.”
Madame Naud had looked up from her work to listen and Maigret saw that she found it difficult to conceal her anxiety. Her thin face bore a striking resemblance to that of Bréjon the magistrate.
“One of the workmen in the clog factory was called Fillou. He wasn’t a bad sort, but he was inclined to drink too much and when he was tipsy he thought he was a real orator. What happened exactly? One day, he went into the manager’s office to lodge a complaint of some sort. Shortly afterwards the door opened. Fillou catapulted out, staggering backwards for several yards, and then fell into the canal.”
“And he was the father of my young companion with the pock-marked face?” inquired Maigret.
“His father, yes. He is dead, now. At the time, the town was divided into two factions. One side thought that the drunken Fillou had behaved abominably and that the manager had been forced to take violent action to get rid of him. The other side felt that the manager was completely in the wrong and that he had provoked Fillou, taunting him when referring to the large families of his employees with remarks like:
“‘I can’t help it if they breed on Saturday nights when they’re pissed…’”
“Fillou is dead, you said?”
“He died two years ago of cancer of the stomach.”
“Did many people support him at the time of the incident?”
“The majority of people did not support him, but those who did were really committed to their cause. Every morning various people used to find threats written in chalk on their doors.”
“Are you implying, madame, that the case is similar to the one we are dealing with now?”
“I am not implying anything, superintendent. Old people love rambling on, you know. There is always some scandal or other to discuss in small towns. Life would be very dull, otherwise. And there will always be a few people willing to fan the flames…”
“What was the end of the Fillou affair?”
“Silence, of course…”
“Yes, silence just about sums it up,” thought Maigret to himself. For despite the efforts of a few fanatics to stir things up, silence is always the most effective form of action. And he had been confronted with silence all day long.
Moreover, ever since he had come into the drawing room, a strange feeling had taken hold of him, a feeling which made him somewhat uneasy. He had trailed through the streets from morning till night, sullenly and obstinately following Louis, who had passed on to him something of his own eagerness.
“She’s one of them…” Louis would say.
And “them” in Louis’s mind meant a number of people who had conspired not to talk, and who did not want any trouble, people who wanted to let sleeping dogs lie.
In one sense, one could say that Maigret had sided with the small group of rebels. He had had a drink with them at the Trois Mules. He had disowned the Nauds when he declared he was not working for them and whenever Louis doubted his word, he was sorely tempted to give him proof of his loyalty.
And yet Louis had been right to look at the superintendent suspiciously when he left him, for he had an inkling what would happen when his companion became the enemy’s guest once again. That was why he had tried his best to escort Maigret all the way to the Nauds’ front door, to bolster him up and caution him not to give in.
“I’ll be at the Trois Mules all evening, if you need me…”
He would wait in vain. Now that he was back in this cozy, bourgeois drawing-room, Maigret felt almost ashamed of himself for having wandered through the streets with a youngster and for having been snubbed by everyone he had persisted in questioning.
There was a portrait on the wall which Maigret had not noticed the night before, a portrait of Bréjon the examining magistrate, who seemed to be staring down at the superintendent as if to say: “Don’t forget the purpose of your visit.”
He looked at Louise Naud’s fingers as she sewed and was hypnotized by their nervousness. Her face remained almost serene, but her fingers revealed a fear which bordered on panic.
“What do you think of our doctor?” asked the talkative old lady. “He’s a real character, isn’t he? You Parisians are wrong in thinking no one of interest lives in the country. If you were to stay here for two months, no more…Louise, isn’t your husband coming back?”
“He telephoned a short while ago to say he will be late. He’s been called to La Roche-sur-Yon. He asked me to apologize on his behalf, superintendent…”
“I owe you an apology, too, for not having come back for lunch.”
“Geneviève! Would you give the superintendent an apéritif…”
“Well, children, I must be going.”
“Stay to dinner, maman. Etienne will take you home in the car when he gets back.”
“I won’t hear of it, my child. I don’t need anyone to drive me home.”
Her daughter helped her tie the ribbons of a small black bonnet which sat jauntily on her head and gave her galoshes to wear over her shoes.
“Would you like me to have the horse harnessed for you?”
“Time enough for that the day of my funeral. Goodbye, superintendent. If you’re passing my house again, come in and see me. Goodnight, Louise. Goodnight, Vièvre…”
And suddenly the door was closed once more and a great feeling of emptiness prevailed. Maigret now understood why they tried to make old Tine stay. Now that she had gone, an oppressive, uneasy silence fell over the room and one sensed an aura of fear. Louise Naud’s fingers ran increasingly rapidly over her work, while the young girl desperately tried to find an excuse to leave the room but did not dare.
Was it not an incredible thought that although Albert Retailleau was dead, although he had been discovered one morning, cut to pieces on the railway line, his son was living in this room at this very moment, in the form of a creature that would come into the world in a few months’ time?
When Maigret turned towards the young girl, she did not look away. On the contrary, she stood up straight and looked Maigret squarely in the eye, as if to say:
“No, you did not dream it. I came into your bedroom last night and I wasn’t sleepwalking. What I told you then is the truth. You see I am not ashamed of it. I am not mad. Albert was my lover and I am expecting his child…”
Albert, the son of Madame Retailleau, a woman who had stood up for her rights so bravely after her husband’s death, Albert, Louis’s young and faithful friend, used to creep into this house at night without anyone knowing. And Geneviève would take him into her room, the one at the end of the right wing of the house.
“Will you excuse me, ladies. I should like to go for a short walk round the stableyards, if you have no objection, that is…”
“May I come with you?”
“You’ll catch cold, Geneviève.”
“No, I won’t, maman. I’ll wrap up warmly.”
She went into the kitchen to fetch a hurricane lamp which she brought back lit. In the hall, Maigret helped her on with her cape.
“What would you like to see?” she asked in a low voice.
“Let’s go into the yard.”
“We can go out this way. There’s no point in going right around the house…Mind the steps…”
Lights were on in the stables whose doors were open, but the fog was so thick that one could not see anything.
“Your room is the one directly above us, isn’t it?”
“Yes…I know what you are getting at…He didn’t come in through the door, naturally…Come with me…You see this ladder…It’s always left here…He just had to push it a few yards…”
“Which is your parents’ room?”
“Three windows along.”
“And the other two windows?”
“One is the spare bedroom, where Alban slept last night. The other is a room which hasn’t been used since my little sister died, and maman has the key.”
She was cold; she tried not to show it in order not to look as if she wanted to end the conversation.
“Your mother and father never suspected anything?”
“No.”
“Had this affair been going on for some time?”
She answered at once.
“Three and a half months.”
“Was Retailleau aware of the consequences of these meetings?”
“Yes.”
“What did he intend to do?”
“He was going to tell my parents everything and marry me.”
“Why was he angry, that last evening?”
Maigret looked at her closely, trying his best to glimpse the expression on her face through the fog. The ensuing silence betrayed the young girl’s amazement.
“I asked you…”
“I heard what you said.”
“Well!”
“I don’t understand. Why do you say he was angry…”
And her hands trembled like her mother’s, thereby causing the lantern to shake.
“Nothing out of the ordinary happened between you that night?”
“No, nothing.”
“Did Albert leave by the window as usual?”
“Yes…There was a moon…I saw him go over to the back of the yard where he could jump over the little wall on to the road.”
“What time was it?”
“About half past twelve.”
“Did he usually stay for such a short time?”
“What do you mean?”
She was playing for time. Behind a window, not far from where they were standing, they could see the old cook moving about.
“He arrived at about midnight. I imagine he usually stayed longer…You didn’t have a fight?”
“Why should we have had a fight?”
“I don’t know…I’m just asking…”
“No…”
“When was he to speak to your parents?”
“Soon…We were waiting for a suitable moment…”
“Try to remember accurately…Are you sure there were no lights on in the house that night? You heard no noise? There was no one skulking in the yard?”
“I didn’t see anything…I swear to you, superintendent, I know nothing…Maybe you don’t believe me, but it’s the truth…I’ll never, do you hear, never tell my father what I told you last night…I shall leave. I don’t yet know what I’ll do…”
“Why did you tell me?”
“I don’t know…I was frightened…I thought you would find out everything and tell my parents…”
“Shall we go back? You’re shivering.”
“You won’t say anything?”
He did not know what to say. He did not want to be bound by a promise. He muttered:
“Trust me.”
Was he, too, “one of them,” to use Louis’s phrase? Oh! Now he understood perfectly what the youngster meant. Albert Retailleau was dead and buried. A certain number of people in Saint-Aubin, the majority in fact, thought that since it was impossible to bring the young man back to life, the wisest course of action was to treat the subject as closed.
To be “one of them” was to belong to that tribe. Even Albert’s mother was “one of them” since she had not appeared to understand why anyone should wish to investigate her son’s death.
And those who had not subscribed to this view at the outset had been brought to heel one after the other. Désiré wished he had never found the cap. What cap? He now had money to drink his fill and could send a money order for five hundred francs to his good-for-nothing son.
Josaphat, the postman, could not remember having seen a wad of thousand franc notes in the soup tureen.
Etienne Naud was embarrassed that his brother-in-law should have thought of sending someone like Maigret, a man bent on discovering the truth.
But what was the truth? And who stood to gain by discovering the truth? What good would it do?
The small group of men in the Trois Mules, a carpenter, a plowman and a youngster called Louis Fillou whose father had already proved to be strong-willed, were the only ones to weave stories round the affair.
“Aren’t you hungry, superintendent?” asked Madame Naud, as Maigret came into the drawing-room. “Where is my daughter?”
“She was in the hall just now. I expect she has gone up to her room for a minute.”
The atmosphere for the next quarter of an hour was gloomy indeed. Maigret and Louise Naud were now alone in the old-fashioned, stuffy drawing room. From time to time a log toppled over and sent sparks flying into the grate. The single lamp with its pink shade shed a soft glow over the furniture. Familiar sounds coming from the kitchen occasionally broke the silence. They could hear the stove being filled with coal, a saucepan being moved, an earthenware plate being put on the table.
Maigret sensed that Louise Naud would have liked to talk. She was possessed by a demon who was pushing her to say…To say what? She was in considerable difficulty. Sometimes she would open her mouth, as if she had decided to speak, and Maigret would be afraid of what she was going to say.
She said nothing. Her chest tightened in a nervous spasm and her shoulders shook for a second. She went on with her embroidery, making tiny stitches, as if weighed down by this cloak of silence and stillness which formed such a barrier between them.
Did she know that Retailleau and her daughter…
“Do you mind if I smoke, madame?”
She gave a start. Perhaps she had been afraid he was going to say something else. She stammered:
“Please do…Make yourself at home…”
Then she sat up straight and listened for a sound.
“Oh, my goodness…”
Oh, my goodness what? She was merely waiting for her husband to return, waiting for someone to come and end the torment of this tête-à-tête.
And then Maigret began to feel sorry for her. What was to stop him getting up and saying:
“I think your brother made a mistake in asking me to come here. There is nothing I can do. This whole affair is none of my business and, if you don’t mind, I’ll take the next train back to Paris. I am most grateful to you for your hospitality.”
He recalled Louis’s pale face, his fiery eyes, the rueful smile on his lips. Above all, he pictured Cavre with his briefcase under his arm, Cavre who after all these years had suddenly been given the chance to get the better of his loathsome ex-boss. For Cavre hated him, there was no doubt about that. Admittedly, he hated everyone, but he hated Maigret in particular, for Maigret was his alter ego, a successful version of his own self.
Cavre had doubtless been up to all sorts of shady tricks ever since he got off the train the night before and was nearly mistaken by Naud for Maigret himself.
Where was the clock which was going tick-tock? Maigret looked round for it. He felt really uncomfortable and said to himself:
“Another five minutes and this poor woman’s nerves will get the better of her…She’ll make a clean breast of it…She can’t stand it any longer…She’s at the end of her tether…”
All he had to do was ask her one specific question. Hardly that! He would go up to her and look at her searchingly. Would she be able to restrain herself then?
But instead, he remained silent and even timidly picked up a magazine which was lying on a small round table to put her at her ease. It was a women’s magazine full of embroidery patterns.
Just as in a dentist’s waiting-room one reads things one would never read anywhere else, Maigret turned the pages and looked carefully at the pink and blue pictures, but the invisible chain which bound him to his hostess remained as tight as ever.
They were saved by the entry of the maid. She was rather a rough-looking country girl whose black dress and white apron merely accentuated her rugged, irregular features.
“Oh! Pardon…I didn’t know there was someone…”
“What is it, Marthe?”
“I wanted to know if I should lay the table or wait for monsieur…”
“Lay the table!”
“Will Monsieur Alban be here for dinner?”
“I don’t know. But lay his place as usual…”
What a relief to talk of everyday things, they were so simple and reassuring! She latched on to Alban as a topic of conversation.
“He came to lunch here today. It was he who answered the telephone when you rang…He leads such a lonely life! We consider him one of the family now…”
The maid’s appearance had given her a golden opportunity to escape and she made the most of it.
“Will you excuse me for a moment? You know what it’s like to be mistress of the house. There is always something to see to in the kitchen…I’ll ask the maid to tell my daughter to come down and keep you company…”
“Please don’t bother…”
“Besides…” She listened carefully to see if she could hear anything. “Yes…That must be my husband…”
A car drew up in front of the steps, but the engine went on running. They heard voices and Maigret wondered whether his host had brought someone back with him, but he was only giving instructions to a servant who had rushed outside on hearing the car.
Naud came into the drawing-room still wearing his suede coat. There was an anxious look in his eyes as he surveyed Maigret and his wife, astonished to find them alone together.
“Ah! You’re…”
“I was just saying to the superintendent, Etienne, that I would have to leave him for a minute and see to things in the kitchen…”
“Forgive me, superintendent…I am on the board of the regional agricultural authority and I had forgotten we had an important meeting today.”
He sneezed and poured himself a glass of porto, trying all the while to gauge what could have happened in his absence.
“Well, have you had a good day? I was told on the telephone you were too busy to come back for lunch…”
He, too, was afraid of being alone with the superintendent. He looked round at the armchairs in the drawing-room, as if to reproach them for being empty.
“Alban’s not here yet?” he said with a forced smile, turning towards the dining-room door which was still open.
And his wife answered from the kitchen:
“He came to lunch. He didn’t say whether he’d be here for dinner…”
“Where’s Geneviève?”
“She went up to her room.”
He did not dare sit down and settle himself in a chair. Maigret understood how he felt and almost came to share his anxiety. In order to feel strong, or in order not to tremble visibly, the three of them needed to be together, side by side, in an unbroken family circle.
Only then would the superintendent be able to sense the spirit of the house in normal times. The two men helped each other, for they talked of seemingly trivial things and the sound of their chatter reassured them both.
“Will you have a glass of porto?”
“I have just had one.”
“Well, have another…Now…Tell me what you’ve been doing…Or rather…For perhaps I am being indiscreet…”
“The cap has disappeared,” declared Maigret, his eyes on the carpet.
“Has it really? This famous cap was to be proof…And where was it…Mind you, I have always had my doubts as to whether it really existed…”
“A young lad called Louis Fillou claims it was in one of the drawers in his bedroom…”
“In Louis’s house? And you mean it was stolen this morning? Don’t you think that is rather odd?”
He stood there laughing, a tall, strong, sturdy figure of a man with a ruddy complexion. He was the owner of this house, the head of the family, and he had just taken part in administrative debates in La Roche-sur-Yon. He was Etienne Naud, Squire Naud as the locals would have said, the son of Sébastien Naud who was known and respected by everyone in the département.
But his laughter sounded shaky as he took a glass of port and looked round in vain for a member of his family to appear. At a time like this, he needed the support they always gave him. He would have liked them to be present, his wife, his daughter and even Alban, who had decided to stay away today of all days.
“Will you have a cigar?…No, are you sure?”
He walked around and around the room, as though to sit down would have been to fall into a trap, to play right into the hands of the formidable superintendent whom that idiotic brother-in-law of his had foisted on him. Etienne Naud felt doomed.