Inspector Cadaver (3 page)

The smells of cooking heralded an exquisite
dinner, the chink of porcelain and crystal evoked a table being meticulously laid next
door in the dining room. He imagined the groom rubbing down the mare in the stable, as
two long rows of reddish-brown cows chewed the cud in the barn.

Everything radiated the peace of the Good
Lord, order and virtue, as well as all the little mannerisms, all the charming little
idiosyncrasies of simple families who lead cloistered lives.

Tall and broad-shouldered,
with a ruddy complexion and prominent eyes, Étienne Naud met his gaze with complete
candour, as if to say:

‘You see what I'm like! …
Straight as a die … Not an unkind bone in my body …'

The gentle giant. The good boss. The
attentive father. The man who called out from his cart, ‘Evening, Pierre …
Evening, Fabien …'

His wife smiled timidly in the strapping
fellow's shadow, as if apologizing for all the space he took up.

‘If you'll excuse me for a
moment, inspector …'

Of course. He had been expecting as much.
The impeccable hostess who casts a final eye over the preparations for dinner.

Even Alban Groult-Cotelle was true to type,
the more refined, better-bred, more intelligent friend. He looked as if he had stepped
out of an engraving, the old friend of the family with his slightly condescending
ways.

‘You see,' the look in his eyes
seemed to say, ‘these are decent people, ideal neighbours … You
shouldn't try to have a conversation about philosophy with them but, apart from
that, you'll be very well looked after, and you'll find their Burgundy is
the genuine article and their brandy deserving of the highest praise …'

‘Dinner is served …'

‘If you'd like to sit on my
right, inspector …'

Weren't there any signs of anxiety,
though? After all, Examining Magistrate Bréjon had clearly been concerned when he
summoned Maigret to his office.

‘You can understand,' he had
insisted, ‘I know my
brother-in-law, just as I know my sister and
my niece. Besides, you will see them for yourself. Yet this vicious accusation is
gaining so much ground by the day that now the public prosecutor's department is
having to investigate … My father has been a notary for forty years in
Saint-Aubin, and he took over from his father. They'll show you the family house
in the middle of town … I can't understand how such blind hatred could have
sprung up so suddenly, how it can keep on spreading, threatening to ruin innocent
people's lives … My sister has never had a strong constitution. She's
a highly strung person who has trouble sleeping and takes the least setback very hard
…'

There wasn't a hint of any of that
here. Maigret might as well just have been invited over for a good dinner followed by a
hand of bridge. As a helping of roast lark was put on his plate, he was treated to a
detailed explanation of how the locals literally fished the birds out of the meadows at
night using nets.

Incidentally, why wasn't their
daughter there?

‘My niece Geneviève,' the
examining magistrate had said, ‘is a well-brought-up young lady, the sort you
don't find any more these days except in novels.'

That wasn't the opinion of the author
or authors of the anonymous letters, nor of most of the locals, who essentially accused
her.

The story was still confused in
Maigret's mind but it jarred so intensely with what he saw before him. According
to the rumours going round, the man found dead on the railway track, Albert Retailleau,
had been Geneviève
Naud's lover. It was even claimed he came
to see her two or three times a week, at night, in her bedroom.

He was a lad without means, barely twenty.
His father, a worker at the Saint-Aubin dairy, had died as the result of a boiler
accident. His mother lived on a pension the dairy had been ordered to pay her.

‘Albert Retailleau did not commit
suicide,' his friends insisted. ‘He enjoyed life too much. And, even if he
had been drunk, as they're claiming, he wasn't stupid enough to cross the
tracks when a train was coming.'

The body had been found more than five
hundred metres from the Nauds', roughly halfway between their house and the train
station.

Yes, but now people were alleging that the
boy's cap had been found in the reeds along the canal, much closer to the
Nauds' house.

And there was another, even more suspect
story going round. Someone who had visited the young man's mother, Madame
Retailleau, a week after the death of her son, claimed to have seen her hurriedly hiding
a bundle of thousand-franc notes. As far as anyone knew, she had never had such a
fortune in her life.

‘It's a pity you're
visiting our part of the world in the depths of winter, inspector … It is so
beautiful round here in summer people call it the Green Venice … You'll have
a little more pullet, won't you?'

And what about Cavre? Why had Inspector
Cadaver come to Saint-Aubin?

They ate too much; they drank too much; it
was too hot. In a torpor, they went back into the drawing room
and sat
down with their legs stretched out in front of the crackling fire.

‘You must … I know you're
particularly partial to your pipe but surely you'll have a cigar
…'

Were they trying to pull the wool over his
eyes? The idea was laughable. They were good people, nothing more and nothing less. The
examining magistrate in Paris must have blown the whole affair out of proportion. And
Alban Groult-Cotelle was just a po-faced idiot, one of those vaguely wealthy idlers you
find everywhere in the country.

‘You must be tired from your journey.
When you want to go to bed …'

Meaning they wouldn't talk tonight.
Because Groult-Cotelle was there? Or because Naud preferred not to say anything in front
of his wife?

‘Do you take coffee in the evening?
No? No herbal tea? Will you excuse me if I go up? Our daughter hasn't been very
well for two or three days and I have to go and see if she needs anything … Young
girls are always a little fragile, you know, especially in our climate.'

The three men smoke. They talk about this
and that, even local politics, because there is some story of a new mayor who is at
loggerheads with all the right-thinking folk in the area and …

‘Well, gentlemen!' Maigret
finally growls with a mixture of amusement and impatience. ‘If I may, I'll
go to bed.'

‘You'll sleep here too, Alban
… You're not going home tonight in this weather …'

They go upstairs. Maigret's room is
hung with yellow
wallpaper, at the far end of the passage. A real trove
of childhood memories.

‘You don't need anything? I was
forgetting … Let me show you the w.c. …'

The men shake hands, and then Maigret
undresses and gets into bed. He hears noises in the house. From very far off in his
half-sleep his ears catch what sounds like the murmuring of voices, but it soon fades
away, and the house becomes as quiet as it is dark.

He falls asleep, or thinks he does. He keeps
seeing the dismal face of Cavre, who had to be the most miserable man on this earth, and
then he dreams that the apple-cheeked maid who waited on them at dinner is bringing him
his breakfast.

The door has half-opened. He is sure he has
heard the door half-open. He sits up, gropes around and finally finds the pear-switch,
which is hanging at the head of his bed. The bulb lights up in its frosted-glass
tulip-shaped shade and he sees in front of him a girl who has put on a brown woollen
coat over her night clothes.

‘Sshh …' she whispers.
‘I need to talk to you. Don't make any noise.'

And then she sits down on a chair, staring
straight ahead like a sleepwalker.

An exhausting, yet heady night. Maigret slept
without sleeping. He dreamed without dreaming, that is to say, he dreamed consciously,
intentionally prolonging dreams that took their cue from real sounds.

The sound of the mare kicking its stall was
real enough, for instance. But what was not, what was the result of his state of mind,
was that Maigret, snug in his bed and sweating profusely, could also see the half-light
of a stable, the animal's hindquarters, a little hay still in the rack and, beyond
that, the rainy yard, feet splashing in black puddles, and finally, from the outside,
the house in which he was staying.

It was a kind of division. Maigret was in
his bed. He was intensely enjoying its warmth, the pleasurable country smell of the
mattress, which became all the more pungent as he soaked it with sweat. But at the same
time he was everywhere in the house. Who knows if at one point in his dream he
wasn't the house itself?

He was aware of the cows stirring through
the night in their barn, and at four in the morning he heard the footsteps of a stable
boy crossing the yard, lifting the latch and, by the light of a storm lantern, perhaps
he actually saw the lad sitting on a stool and squeezing milk into tin pails?

He must have fallen back into a deep sleep
because he
started awake at the din of the lavatory flushing. He even
felt afraid for a moment, the noise was so sudden and violent, but then moments later he
was playing his game again, conjuring up the master of the house leaving the lavatory,
his braces hanging down by his thighs, and padding back to his room. Madame Naud was
sleeping, or pretending to sleep, facing the wall. Étienne Naud had only turned on
the little light above the washstand. He shaved, his fingers numb from the icy water.
His skin was pink, tight, shiny.

Then he sat down in an armchair to put on
his boots. As he was about to leave the room, a murmur came from the blankets. What was
his wife saying to him? He bent down to her, replied in an undertone, then noiselessly
shut the door again and went down the stairs on tiptoe. Whereupon Maigret, who had had
enough of the night's bewitchment, leaped out of bed and turned on his bedside
light.

On the bedside table his watch said five
thirty. He listened intently and had the impression the rain had stopped, or else had
turned into a silent drizzle.

Of course he had eaten well and drunk well
the night before, but he hadn't overdone it. And yet he felt as if he were waking
after a night hitting the bottle. As he fished various things out of his wash bag, he
stared goggle-eyed at his unmade bed, and particularly at the chair next to it.

He was sure it wasn't a dream:
Geneviève Naud had been there. She had walked in without knocking. She had sat in
that chair, holding herself very upright, not touching its back. In the first flush of
his amazement, he had thought she was distraught. But, in fact, he was the more troubled
of the two of them. He had never been in such an awkward position,
lying in bed in his nightshirt, his hair mussed up, a sour taste in his mouth, as a girl
settled down at his bedside to confide in him.

He had muttered something like, ‘If
you'd like to turn round for a moment, I'll get up and put on some clothes
…'

‘There's no need. I'll be
quick. I'm pregnant with Albert Retailleau's child. If my father finds out,
no one will be able to stop me killing myself …'

He could not even look her in the face as he
was lying down. She seemed to wait for a moment to gauge the effect of her words, then
got up and listened intently. As she was leaving the room, she added, ‘Do whatever
you want. It's completely up to you.'

He still found it hard to believe that scene
was real, in which he had played the humiliating role of a prone extra. He wasn't
particularly vain but he was still ashamed to have been caught in bed by a young girl,
puffy and bleary-eyed from sleep. Even more demeaning was her attitude; she had barely
taken any notice of him. She hadn't pleaded, as he might have expected, or thrown
herself at his feet, or burst into tears.

He recalled her regular features, which
looked a little like her father's. He couldn't have said if she was
beautiful but he had an impression of fullness and poise that even her frenzied
declaration hadn't dispelled.

‘I'm pregnant with Albert
Retailleau's child. If my father finds out, no one will be able to stop me killing
myself …'

Maigret finished getting dressed,
mechanically lit his first pipe of the day, opened the door and, unable to find
the light switch, groped his way along the passage. He went
downstairs, and at the bottom couldn't see the faintest glimmer of light but could
hear the sound of a stove being raked. He headed in that direction. A streak of yellow
light filtered under a door in the dining room, and, after knocking quietly, he pushed
it open.

He found himself in the kitchen.
Étienne Naud was sitting at the end of the table, his elbows on the light wood,
eating a bowl of soup while an old cook in a blue apron dislodged a shower of glowing
embers from her kitchen range.