The Two-Penny Bar (16 page)

Maigret now found this obstinate persistence in trying to extract a profit from the case not so much contemptible as pathetic.

‘Five thousand! …' he shouted as he was hauled up the stairs.

Now there were three of them in the cell. Basso was the most downcast of the three. He remained sitting a good while before standing up and facing Maigret.

‘I swear I was willing to pay the 30,000 francs, inspector. What is that to me? But James wouldn't let me.'

Maigret looked from one to the other with an astonishment coloured by a growing sympathy.

‘You knew about this, Basso?'

‘I've known for a long time,' he murmured.

James filled in the details:

‘He was the one who gave me the money those two tykes were extorting from me. So I told him the whole story.'

‘This is crazy. For just 30,000 francs we could have …'

‘No! No,' James sighed. ‘You don't understand. Nor does the inspector.'

He looked round as if he was searching for something.

‘Anyone got a cigarette?'

Basso gave him his cigarette case.

‘I suppose a Pernod's out of the question? No matter. I'll have to get used to it. All the same, it would have made this easier.'

He licked his lips like a drinker suffering withdrawal.

‘Actually, there's not much to say. I was married. Nice peaceful little marriage, a quiet life. I met Mado. And stupidly I thought I'd hit the jackpot. Just like in the novels.
My life for a kiss … Live life like
there's no tomorrow … Leave the world behind …'

The phlegmatic way he said all this made his confession sound dispassionate, not quite human, as if he was performing in a burlesque.

‘When you're at that age it's all very exciting. Secret trysts in rented rooms, glasses of port and petits fours. But that all costs money. I was earning a thousand francs a month. And therein lay the roots of the whole sorry,
sordid mess. I couldn't talk to Mado about money. I couldn't tell her that I couldn't afford the apartment in Passy. It was her husband, quite by chance, who put me on to Ulrich.'

‘Did you borrow a lot?'

‘Less than seven thousand. But that's a lot when you're only on a thousand a month. One evening, when my wife was away visiting her sister in the Vendôme, Ulrich came to see me. He started threatening me. If I didn't pay
at least the interest he would tell my employers, just for starters, then he'd send round the bailiffs. Can you see what a
disaster that would have been? My bosses and my wife finding out at the same time?'

His tone was still calm and ironic.

‘I was an idiot. I only wanted to smash his face in to teach him a lesson. But once he'd got a bloodied nose, he started screaming. I grabbed him round the neck. I felt strangely calm. It's not true that you lose your head at
times like this. Quite the contrary. I don't think I've ever been as lucid in my life. I went to hire a car. I propped up the body to make it look as if I was carrying a friend who'd drunk too much. You know the rest.'

He almost reached out a hand to pick up a non-existent drink.

‘So there it is. After that, you see life differently. Mado and I dragged on for another month or so. My wife got into the habit of having a go at me for my drinking. I had to give money to those two crooks. I told Basso everything. They
say it's good to talk. That's just more fiction. The only thing that could help would be to start your life again from the beginning, right from the cradle.'

It was a droll remark, drolly expressed, and Maigret couldn't help smiling. He noticed Basso was smiling too.

‘Stupid, I know, but it would have been even more stupid to have gone to the police and confessed that I'd killed a man.'

‘So you made a little bolt-hole for yourself,' said Maigret.

‘You have to survive somehow.'

It was a dismal story rather than a tragic one, perhaps
because of James's strange personality. It was a point of honour for him not to lose his cool. He shied away from the slightest hint of emotion.

So much so that he was the calmest person in the room, and seemed puzzled by the long faces of the other two.

‘We men are such fools. Basso got himself into the same tangle – and with Mado again! Not even someone different! And of course it all went wrong. If I could have, I'd have confessed to killing Feinstein. Then we'd have been
quits. But I wasn't even there. He behaved like an idiot right to the end. He ran away. I did what I could to help him.'

In spite of himself, there was a quaver in James's voice, so he stopped talking for a moment, until he was able to carry on in his familiar monotone:

‘He should have told the truth from the start! Even now, he still wanted to hand over the 30,000 francs.'

‘It would have been easier,' Basso grumbled. ‘But now …'

‘Now I'm free of it at last,' James interrupted him. ‘Free of everything. This filthy mess of an existence, the office, the café, my …'

He was about to say ‘my wife', his wife with whom he had not the slightest thing in common. His flat in Rue Championnet, where he sat reading any old thing just to pass the time. Morsang, where he would round up his companions for
another drinking session.

He continued:

‘I will be at peace.'

In prison! Somewhere he wouldn't be waiting for something that wasn't going to happen.

At peace in his little bolt-hole, eating, drinking and sleeping at the prescribed hour, breaking rocks on a chain gang or sewing up mailbags.

‘What do you think, about twenty years?'

Basso was looking at him. He could hardly see him through the tears that welled up in his eyes and flowed down his cheeks.

‘Stop it, James!' he cried out, his hands tensed into fists.

‘Why?'

Maigret wiped his nose and tried mechanically to light his pipe, which was empty.

He felt he had never experienced such dark despair.

Not even dark. It was a dull, grey despair. A despair with no words of lament, no grimaces of pain.

A drinker's despair without the drunkenness – James never got drunk!

The inspector now understood what it was that brought them together every evening on the terrace of the Taverne Royale.

They would sit there together drinking, chatting aimlessly. And deep down James would hope that his companion would arrest him. He saw the suspicion emerging in Maigret and he nourished this suspicion, watched it grow. He waited.

‘Another Pernod, old chap?'

He loved him like a friend who he hoped would one day deliver him from himself.

Maigret and Basso exchanged unreadable glances. James stubbed out his cigarette on the white table top.

‘I just wish I could have done with it straight away. But there's the trial, all the questions, the tears, the sympathy.'

A police officer opened the door.

‘The examining magistrate is here,' he announced.

Maigret hesitated, not quite knowing how to bring things to an end. He came forward and offered his hand with a sigh.

‘Look, would you put in a good word for me? Just ask him if he can push it through quickly. I'll confess to everything. I just want to get in my bolt-hole as soon as possible.'

Then, as if to lighten the atmosphere, he added a parting remark:

‘I'll tell you who'll be most upset. The waiter at the Taverne Royale. Will you go there and have one for me, inspector?'

Three hours later, Maigret was sitting on a train on his way to Alsace. Along the banks of the Marne he saw lots of bars just like the Two-Penny Bar, with their mechanical pianos in their wooden lean-tos.

He woke up early the next morning as the train pulled in. He saw a green-painted barrier in a little station bedecked with flowers.

Madame Maigret and her sister were anxiously scanning all the train doors.

And everything – the station, the countryside, his in-laws' house, the surrounding hills, even the sky – looked as fresh as if it had been scrubbed clean every morning.

‘I bought you some varnished wood clogs yesterday in Colmar.'

Handsome yellow clogs that Maigret wanted to try on even before he had taken off his dark city clothes.

It was ten p.m. The iron gates of the public garden were locked and Place des Vosges was empty. Glistening tyre tracks on the asphalt, the continuous play of the fountains, leafless trees and the regular shapes of identical rooftops silhouetted against the sky.

There were few lights under the splendid arcades encircling the square. Only three or four shops. Inspector Maigret could see a family eating inside one of them, cluttered with beaded funeral wreaths.

He was trying to read the numbers above the doors, but he had barely passed the wreath shop when a diminutive form stepped out of the shadows.

‘Is it you I just telephoned?'

She must have been watching out for a long time. Despite the November cold, she had not slipped on a coat over her apron. Her nose was red, her eyes anxious.

Less than 400 metres away, on the corner of Rue de Béarn, a uniformed police officer stood guard.

‘Didn't you inform him?' grumbled Maigret.

‘No! Because of Madame de Saint-Marc, who's about to give birth … Oh look! There's the doctor's car, he was asked to come straight away.'

There were three cars drawn up alongside the pavement, headlamps on, red rear lights. The sky, with its drifting clouds against a moonlit backdrop, had an ambiguous paleness. It felt as if the first snows were in the air.

The concierge turned under the archway at the building's entrance, from which hung a twenty-five-candlepower bulb covered in a film of dust.

‘Let me explain. This is the courtyard – you have to cross it to get to all parts of the building, except for the two shops. This is my lodge on the left. Take no notice, I didn't have time to put the children to bed.'

There were two of them, a boy and a girl, in the untidy kitchen. But the concierge didn't go inside. She pointed to a long building, at the far end of the vast and beautifully proportioned courtyard.

‘It's there. You'll see.'

Maigret was intrigued by this curious little woman, whose restless hands betrayed her febrility.

‘There's someone on the phone asking for a detective chief inspector!' he had been told earlier at Quai des Orfèvres.

The voice on the other end was muffled. Several times he had repeated, ‘Please speak up, I can't hear you.'

‘I can't. I'm calling you from the tobacconist's. So—'

And a garbled message followed.

‘You must come to 61, Place des Vosges right away … Yes … I think it's a murder, but don't tell anyone yet!'

And now the concierge was pointing at the tall first-floor windows. Behind the curtains, shadows could be seen coming and going.

‘It's up there.'

‘The murder?'

‘No! Madame de Saint-Marc who's giving birth … Her first … She's not very strong. You understand?'

And the courtyard was even darker than Place des Vosges. It was illuminated by a single lamp on the wall. A staircase could just be made out on the other side of a glazed door, and there was the occasional lighted window.

‘What about the murder?'

‘I'm coming to that! Couchet's workers left at six o'clock—'

‘Wait a moment. What is Couchet?'

‘The building at the far end. A laboratory where they make serums. You must have heard of Doctor Rivière's Serums.'

‘And that lighted window?'

‘Wait. Today's the 30th, so Monsieur Couchet was there. He's in the habit of staying behind on his own after the offices have closed. I saw him through the window, sitting in his armchair. Look—'

A window with frosted-glass panes. A strange shadow, like that of a man slumped forward on his desk.

‘Is that him?'

‘Yes. Around eight o'clock, when I was emptying my rubbish bin, I glanced over in that direction. He was writing. You could clearly see the penholder or pencil in his hand.'