The Late Monsieur Gallet (12 page)

It wasn't Saint-Hilaire who fired those shots, that's for sure, he told himself. Yet all the same …

The road he was following crossed a kind of public garden. On the left, where the ground sloped, a little girl was sitting near three goats tethered to stakes. The road went round a sudden bend, and
just above him, a hundred metres uphill, Maigret saw Éléonore sitting on a bench with a book in her hands. He called to the girl, who looked about twelve.

‘Do you know the lady sitting up there?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Does she often come to sit on that bench and read?'

‘Yes, sir!'

‘Every day?'

‘I think so, sir, but when I'm at school I don't see her.'

‘What time did you arrive here today?'

‘Oh, ages ago, sir. I left home as soon as I'd had something to eat.'

‘And where do you live?'

‘In the house you can see down there.'

It was half a kilometre away, a low-built house with something of the look of a farmhouse about it.

‘Was the lady already there then?'

‘No, sir.'

‘When did she arrive?'

‘I can't say exactly, sir, but it would be about two hours ago.'

‘And she hasn't moved since then?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Not even to go for a little walk along the road?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Does she have a bicycle?'

‘No, sir!'

Maigret took a two-franc coin out of his pocket and
put it into the child's hand. She closed her fingers on the coin without looking at it and stayed there motionless in the middle of the road,
her eyes following him, as he mounted the bicycle again and rode off towards the village.

He stopped outside the post office and drafted a telegram to Paris.

Urgent. Need to know where Henry Gallet was 15 hours Saturday. Maigret, Sancerre.

‘I should let that be for now, old fellow!'

‘You told me yourself it was urgent, inspector. Anyway I hardly feel a thing!'

Good man, Moers! The doctor had given his ear a dressing as complicated and thick as if he had six bullets in his head. The sparkling bright glass of his pince-nez looked strange in the middle of all that white linen.

Maigret had not felt anxious about him until seven in the evening, knowing that his injury was not a severe one – and now he found him just where he had spent the morning, in front of his sheets of glass, his candle and his spirit stove.

‘I haven't found out anything else about Monsieur Jacob. I've just reconstructed a letter signed
Clément
addressed to I don't know whom, and talking about a present intended for a prince in exile. The word
bution
comes in twice, and
loyalism
once.'

‘That's of minor interest now,' said Maigret. For all this was obviously to do with the swindle on which Gallet had embarked. The pink file had provided him with information on that subject, as well as several phone calls to the
owners of chateaux and manor houses in the Berry and
Cher areas. At some time or other, probably three or four years after his marriage, and one or two years after his father-in-law's death, Émile Gallet had decided that it would be a good
idea to make use of the old documents relating to the
Le Soleil
material that he had inherited.

The journal, its text from the pen of Préjean himself, had a very small print run, reserved almost exclusively for the few who subscribed to it, and it kept the hope of seeing a Bourbon back on the throne of France alive in the hearts of a few
country squires.

Maigret had leafed through the
Soleil
material, noticing that half a page was always devoted to subscription lists, sometimes on behalf of an old family that had fallen on hard times, sometimes for the propaganda fund, or again in the
cause of celebrating an anniversary worthily.

That was what had given Gallet the idea of swindling the legitimists. He had their addresses, he even knew from the lists what sum of money could be got from them and how to appeal to each of them individually for contributions.

‘Have you found the same handwriting on the other papers?' Maigret asked.

‘Yes, the same,' said Moers. ‘In fact Professor Locard, who trained me, would tell you more. Calm, careful handwriting, but with signs of agitation and discouragement at the ends of words. A graphologist would say unhesitatingly
that the man who wrote those letters was ill and knew it.'

‘Good heavens, that'll do, Moers! You can take a rest now!'

Maigret was looking at two holes in the canvas blind – the holes made as the bullets passed through it. ‘Would you go and sit back where you were just now?'

He had no difficulty in reconstructing the trajectory of the bullets.

‘The same angle,' he concluded. ‘Firing from the same place on top of the wall … good heavens, what's that noise?'

He raised the blind and saw the gardener raking the ground of the path where the nettles and tall grass grew.

‘What are you doing?' Maigret called.

‘It was my master … he told me to …'

‘Look for the key?'

‘That's right!'

‘And he sent you to look for it here?'

‘He's searching the grounds himself. And the cook and the manservant, they're searching inside the house.'

Maigret abruptly pulled the blind down and alone in the company of Moers again he whistled.

‘Well, well,' he said. ‘Want to bet, old fellow? He'll be the one who finds the key.'

‘What key?'

‘Never mind, it would take too long to explain. What was the time when you lowered the blind?'

‘As soon as I got back here, about one thirty.'

‘And you didn't hear any sounds on the lane outside?'

‘I wasn't listening for any. I was absorbed in my work … it may look silly, but it's a very delicate job.'

‘I know it is, I know! Come to think of it, who could have heard me talking about Monsieur Jacob? The gardener, I think. And Saint-Hilaire, who was out fishing, came home for lunch, changed his clothes and went out for his card game. Are
you sure that the handwriting on all the other charred papers belongs to Monsieur Clément?'

‘Absolutely sure.'

‘Then they're of no interest. The only one that counts is the letter signed by Monsieur Jacob speaking of cash, mentioning Monday and looking very much as if it's threatening the
recipient of the letter with prison if 20,000 francs is not received by that day. The crime was committed on Saturday …'

Sometimes the rake outside hit a stone.

‘It wasn't Éléonore or Saint-Hilaire who fired the shots, it was …'

‘Well, who'd have believed it!' said the gardener's voice outside.

Maigret smiled with pride and went to raise the blind. ‘I'll take that!' he said, holding out his hand.

‘If I'd expected to find it here …'

‘I said I'll take that.'

It was the key, an enormous key, the kind you would never find anywhere except an antique dealer's. Like the lock, it was rusty and had some scratches on it.

‘All you have to do is tell your master that you handed it over to me. Off you go!'

‘But I …'

‘Off you go!'

And Maigret pulled the blind down and threw the key on the table.

‘You might say that, apart from your ear, we've had a wonderful day. Don't you agree, Moers? Monsieur Jacob! The key! Those two shots and all the rest of it. Well …'

‘Telegram for you!' announced Monsieur Tardivon.

‘What was I saying, old fellow?' the inspector finished, after glancing at the telegram. ‘We're going backwards, not forwards. Listen to this:

At three p.m. Henry Gallet was with his mother at Saint-Fargeau. Still there at six p.m.

‘So?'

‘So nothing! There's only Monsieur Jacob left who could have fired on you, and so far Monsieur Jacob has been as hard to pin down as a soap bubble.'

‘Wait a moment, Aurore! There's no point in showing yourself in such a state!'

And a muffled voice replied, ‘I can't help it, Françoise. That visit reminds me of the other one a week ago. And the journey … oh, you don't understand.'

‘What I don't understand is how you can mourn for a man like that, a man who dishonoured you, who lied to you all his life. The only good thing he ever did was to take out life insurance …'

‘Oh, do be quiet!'

‘And there's more! He made you live what was almost a life of poverty, swearing that he earned only 2,000 francs a month. The insurance proves that he was making at least twice that and hiding it from you. Who knows if he wasn't
earning even more? If you ask me that man was leading a double life, with a mistress and maybe children somewhere else …'

‘Oh, please don't, Françoise!'

Maigret was alone in the small sitting room of the house in Saint-Fargeau. The maid had shown him in, forgetting to close the door. The two women's voices came to him from the dining room, where the door, opening on to the same corridor,
was also only half closed. The furniture and other items were back in their old places, and the inspector couldn't look at the large oak table without
remembering that a few days earlier, covered with a black sheet, it had had a coffin and
candles on it.

The atmosphere was dismal, the weather oppressive. There had been a storm during the night, but you could feel that there was more rain to come.

‘Why should I keep quiet? Do you think it's none of my business? I'm your sister. Jacques is about to be offered an important political post. Suppose the local people find out that his brother-in-law was a crook?'

‘Why did you come, then? You've gone twenty years without …'

‘Without seeing you, because I didn't want to see him! I didn't hide my opinion when you wanted to get married, and nor did Jacques! When your name is Aurore Préjean, when you have a brother-in-law who's managing director
of one of the largest tanneries in the Vosges area and another who's going to be principal private secretary to a government minister, you don't marry a man like Émile Gallet. I mean, the name alone tells you … A commercial traveller! I wonder how our father ever gave
his consent to it! Or rather, between ourselves, I can guess just what happened. In his last days Father thought of only one thing: how to bring out his journal at all costs – and Gallet had a little money. So it was decided to involve him in
Le Soleil
! Don't you dare to say
that's not true! But as for you, sister, you had the same education as me, you even look like Mama, and you chose a man who was nothing. Don't look at me like that! I only want you to understand that you've lost no one to shed tears about! Were you happy with him? Frankly,
were you?'

‘I don't know … I don't know any more.'

‘Admit that you had more ambition than that!'

‘I always hoped he would try something else. I encouraged him to …'

‘Might as well try encouraging a pebble! And you resigned yourself to it! You didn't even know that you wouldn't be left in poverty on the day he died! Because but for that insurance …'

‘He did think of that,' said Madame Gallet slowly.

‘That's all we need! To hear you talk, I'll end up thinking you loved him!'

‘Hush – the inspector might hear us. I must go in and see him.'

‘What's he like? I'll come with you. That will be best, considering the state you're in. And please, Aurore, don't look so miserable. The inspector might think you were his accomplice, that you're sad, that
you're afraid …'

 • • • 

Maigret just had time to take a step back. The two women came through the communicating door, looking not quite as he had imagined them from the conversation he had just overheard.

Madame Gallet was almost as distant in her manner as at the time of their first interview. As for her sister, who was two or three years younger, with peroxide hair and a heavily made-up face, she made Maigret feel that she had twice Madame
Gallet's amount of nerve and pretension.

‘Have you found out anything more, inspector?' asked the widow wearily. ‘Please sit down. Let me introduce you to my sister, who arrived yesterday from Épinal.'

‘Where her husband is a tanner, I think?'

‘He owns a number of tanneries, actually,' Françoise corrected him drily.

‘Madame was not at the funeral, am I right? And now,
three days ago the newspapers reported that you, Madame Gallet, are to receive a life insurance payment of 300,000 francs.'

He spoke slowly, looking right and left with apparent awkwardness. He had come to Saint-Fargeau for no precise reason, to sniff out the atmosphere and refresh his memory of the dead man. None the less, he would not have been sorry to meet Henry
Gallet again.