Inspector Cadaver (13 page)

Alban was out of his depth. He tried to
think of an explanation and, unable to come up with one, asked, ‘Where's the
maid?'

Cadaver was the first to regain his
composure, saying with a bow, ‘Monsieur Groult-Cotelle, I believe?' Alban
didn't catch on immediately. ‘I'm sorry to bother you at this hour. I
just wanted a quick chat with you. The woman who let me in said you wouldn't be
long, so …'

‘That's enough!' growled
Maigret.

‘What?' Alban started.

‘I said: that's
enough!'

‘What are you insinuating?'

‘I'm not insinuating anything.
Where is she, Cavre, this maid who showed you in here? There's no other light on
in the house. In other words, she's asleep.'

‘She told me …'

‘For the second time, that's
enough! No more playacting! You can sit back down, Cavre. Well now, I see
you've made yourself comfortable, taken off your coat, hung
your hat on the coat rack. What were you busy reading?'

His eyes widened as he picked up the book
lying near Cavre.

‘
Perverse Pleasures
! Look at
that! And you found this charming book here in our friend Groult's library, did
you? … Tell me, gentlemen, why are you still standing there? Am I disturbing you?
Don't forget your headaches, Monsieur Groult … You should take an
aspirin.'

Alban retained enough presence of mind to
retort, ‘I thought nature called?'

‘It's stopped, imagine that
… So, my dear Cavre, how's the investigation? Tell me, just between us, you
must have been sore when you found out I was involved, weren't you?'

‘You're involved, are you? In
what?'

‘So it was Groult-Cotelle who sought
out your talents, which, by the way, I am far from underestimating.'

‘I'd never heard of Monsieur
Groult-Cotelle before this morning.'

‘Then it was Étienne Naud who
told you about him when you met in Fontenay-le-Comte?'

‘When you decide to submit me to a
formal interrogation, inspector, I will be perfectly happy to answer all your questions
in the presence of my lawyer.'

‘If you were accused of stealing a
cap, for instance?'

‘For instance, yes.'

The drawing room was bathed in grey light
because the bulb, which anyway was too weak for a room of that size, was grimy with
dust.

‘Perhaps I could
offer you a drink?'

‘Why not?' replied Maigret.
‘As we've been thrown together like this … By the way, Cavre, that was
one of your men I saw at the station just now, wasn't it?'

‘That was one of my employees,
yes.'

‘Reinforcements?'

‘If you like.'

‘You had important matters to attend
to tonight with Monsieur Groult-Cotelle?'

‘I wanted to ask him some
questions.'

‘If it's about his alibi, you
can set your mind at rest. He thought of everything. He even kept his bill from the
Hotel de l'Europe.'

Cavre refused to be thrown. He had sat back
down, crossing his legs and resting his morocco briefcase on top of them, and now
waited, convinced, it seemed, that he would have the last word. Groult, who had filled
three glasses with Armagnac, handed him one, which he refused.

‘No, thank you. I only drink
water.'

His abstemiousness had been the butt of
enough jokes at the Police Judiciaire, unintentionally cruel ones, as it turned out,
since Cadaver didn't refrain by choice but because of a severe liver
complaint.

‘And you, inspector?'

‘Gladly!'

They fell silent. All three of them seemed
to be playing a strange game of who could keep quiet the longest without backing down.
Alban had drained his glass in one and poured himself a second. He was the only one
still
standing and from time to time he tucked in one of his books
that was sticking out.

‘Are you aware, sir,' Cavre
finally said to him in a quiet voice, with icy composure, ‘that you're in
your own home?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘That you can entertain whomsoever you
choose. I would have liked to speak with you without the inspector being present. If you
prefer this gentleman's company to mine, I'm quite willing to withdraw and
arrange another appointment.'

‘In a word, the inspector is politely
asking you to throw one of us out.'

‘I don't understand, gentlemen!
What's the point of this discussion? The simple fact is, I have nothing to do with
this business. I was in La Roche when the boy died, as you know. Naturally I am a friend
of the Nauds. I have spent a lot of time at their house. In a small town like ours, one
can't choose who one knows.'

‘Don't forget Saint
Peter!'

‘What do you mean?'

‘That you'll have denied your
friends, the Nauds, three times before the sun rises at this rate, assuming the fog lets
it rise, that is.'

‘It's all very well for you to
joke. I'm still in an awkward position. I'm a regular guest of the Nauds;
Étienne is my friend. You see, I don't deny it. What happened at their house?
I have no idea, and I don't want to know. So I'm not the person you should
be questioning about this matter.'

‘Perhaps
Mademoiselle Naud would be a better candidate, do you think? By the way, I don't
know if you noticed her looking at you in a far from tender way this evening. I had the
distinct impression she bore you a grudge.'

‘Me?'

‘Particularly when you handed me your
hotel bill and made such an elegant attempt to cover your back. She didn't find
that a very pretty sight at all. If I were you I'd be on your guard in case she
tries to return the favour …'

Alban gave a hollow laugh.

‘You're joking. Geneviève
is a sweet child who …'

What made Maigret suddenly risk
everything?

‘Who's three months
pregnant,' he said flatly, thrusting his jaw towards Alban.

‘What … what are you
saying?'

Cavre was similarly stunned. For the first
time that day, he lost a little of his self-assurance and looked at his former boss with
involuntary admiration.

‘You didn't know, Monsieur
Groult?'

‘What are you trying to
insinuate?'

‘Nothing. I'm casting around
… You want the truth as well, don't you? Well then, we're both casting
around for it. Cavre has already got his hands on the bloodstained cap that is
sufficient proof of the crime … Where is that cap, Cavre?'

Without answering, Cavre sank deeper into
his chair.

‘You'll pay dearly for the
pleasure if you've destroyed it, I tell you … And now I feel I'm
disturbing you. I'll leave you both. I imagine, Monsieur Groult-Cotelle, that
I'll see you tomorrow at lunch with your friends, the Nauds?'

He went out. As the door
was slammed shut behind him, he saw a skinny figure standing close by.

‘Is that you, inspector?'

It was young Louis. Holed up behind the
windows of the Trois Mules, he had no doubt seen the shadowy figures of Maigret and
Alban go by. He had followed them.

‘You know what they're saying,
what everyone's going on about all over town?'

His voice shook with anxiety and
indignation.

‘People are saying
they
have
got one over on you and that you're leaving tomorrow on the three o'clock
train.'

And they had very nearly been right.

As sometimes happened, some external factor
seemed to be making Maigret more than usually sensitive at that moment. He had barely
moved from Groult-Cotelle's doorway. He had taken a few steps in the dark and the
fog that clung to his skin like a cold compress, with young Louis at his side, when he
suddenly stopped.

‘What's the matter,
inspector?'

A thought had just struck Maigret and he was
trying to follow its thread. He still registered the hubbub of voices, piercing but
indistinct, that came through the shutters of the house. He also understood the
teenager's alarm: he had stopped dead in the middle of the pavement for no
apparent reason, like someone with heart problems who is halted in his tracks by an
attack wherever he happens to be. It bore no relation to what was on his mind, nor was
it of especial interest, but still he made a mental note: ‘So, someone in
Saint-Aubin has a weak heart …' And later, in fact, he was to learn that the
previous doctor had died of angina pectoris. For years, people had seen him stop
suddenly just like that in the middle of the street, standing rooted to the spot with a
hand pressed to his heart.

Inside, they were having an argument or, at
any rate, their yelling gave that impression. But Maigret wasn't really listening,
unlike Louis Pockmarks, who, thinking he
had worked out why the
inspector had come to a standstill, was straining his ears conscientiously. The louder
the voices, the less one could make out individual words. It sounded just like a record
that has had a new, off-centre hole cut in it and blares out unintelligible sounds.

It wasn't the row that had broken out
in the house between Inspector Cadaver and Alban Groult-Cotelle that had made Maigret
stop so abruptly and seemingly stare off into space.

Just as he had stepped over the threshold,
an idea had struck him. Not even an idea. It was vaguer than that, so vague that he was
now trying to remember the feeling of it. Sometimes an insignificant incident – a
barely noticeable smell, more often than not – takes us back for a split second to
a moment in our lives. The sensation is so acute we're stunned, we want to cling
on to that vivid recollection of something we've experienced, but moments later
it's gone and we can't even say what we were just thinking about. We rack
our brains in vain and, for lack of answers to our questions, end up wondering if we
hadn't actually recalled a dream or, who knows, a previous life.

It was just as the door was shutting. He was
conscious of leaving the two embarrassed, furious accomplices to their own devices. They
had something in common, those two men whom fate had brought together that night. You
couldn't explain it rationally. Cavre was nothing like a bachelor. He was the
quintessential cuckolded husband, seething with shame and pain. He reeked of envy, that
emotion that can make a man look as corrupt as some hidden vices.

Maigret didn't
really bear him a grudge. He pitied him, if anything. Naturally he had him in his sights
and was determined to get the better of him, but he also felt a little sorry for this
man who, when it came down to it, was nothing but a failure.

What was the link between Cavre and Alban?
Something that links two entirely different but equally sordid things. It was almost a
question of colour. They were both grey, greenish, both covered in moral and actual
dust.

Cavre exuded hatred, whereas Alban
Groult-Cotelle exuded fear and cowardice. Cowardice was the founding principle of his
life. His wife had left him and taken his children. He hadn't tried to find them
or bring them back; he probably hadn't even really suffered. He had selfishly made
a new life for himself. Not being wealthy, he squatted in other peoples' nests,
like a cuckoo. And if anything bad happened to his friends, he wasted no time leaving
them in the lurch.

Maigret suddenly realized the trivial detail
that had triggered these thoughts: it was the book he had found in Cadaver's hands
when they had got to Alban's house, one of those grubby works of erotica that are
sold under the counter in backrooms in Faubourg Saint-Martin …

Groult-Cotelle had those sorts of books in
his library in the country … and Cavre had just happened unerringly to lay his
hands on one!

But there had been something else, and that
was what the inspector was trying to remember. For perhaps a tenth of a second, he had
been lit up, so to speak, by a self-evident truth, but before he could grasp it, the
flash of
insight had vanished, leaving only the vaguest of
impressions. And that was why he was standing stock-still like a cardiac patient trying
to outwit his heart.

He was trying to outwit his memory. He was
hoping …

‘What's that light?' he
broke off to ask.

They were both standing motionless in the
fog. Some way off, Maigret could see a large, blurry halo of white light. He
concentrated on this concrete detail to allow his intuition time to revive. He knew the
little town now. So, what was over there where the light was shining, almost directly
opposite Groult's house?

‘Isn't that the post
office?'

‘It's the window next
door,' replied Louis. ‘The postmistress's window. She suffers from
insomnia. She reads novels late into the night. Hers is always the last light to go out
in Saint-Aubin …'