Sale By Auction

1

Maigret pushed back his plate and his table, got up, grunted and shook himself, and automatically lifted the lid of the stove.

‘Back to work, lads! We’ll go to bed early.’

And the others, sitting round the big inn table, looked at him resignedly. Frédéric Michaux, the landlord, whose beard had grown thick in the last three days, rose first and went towards the bar.

‘What will you…’

‘No!’ cried Maigret, ‘that’s enough. We’ve had enough wine and calvados, and another glass and another…’

They had all reached the point of weariness when one’s eyelids tingle and one’s whole body aches. Julia, Frederic’s wife or nearly so, carried back into the kitchen a dish containing the congealed remains of some red beans. Thérèse, the maid, was wiping her eyes, not because she had been crying but because she had a cold in the head.

‘When do we begin again?’ she asked. ‘When I’ve cleared the table?’

‘It’s eight o’clock. We begin again at eight o’clock.’

‘Then I’ll bring in the tablecloth and the cards…’

It was warm, indeed too warm, in the inn, but outside the wind drove flurries of frozen rain through the night.

‘Sit where you were, Père Nicolas… You, Monsieur Groux, you hadn’t got here yet…’

The landlord interrupted. ‘It was when I heard Groux’s footsteps outside that I told Thérèse to put the cards on the table.’

‘Do I have to pretend to come in again?’ grumbled Groux, a peasant some six foot tall and as broad as a kitchen dresser.

They looked like actors rehearsing a scene for the twentieth time, mindlessly, with limp gestures and blank eyes. Maigret himself, the producer, sometimes could scarcely convince himself that it was all real. The place he was in, for instance! Imagine spending three days in an inn miles from the nearest village, in the middle of the marshes of La Vendée!

Its name was Le Pont du Grau, and there was in fact a bridge, a long wooden bridge over a sort of canal whose muddy waters rose twice a day with the tide. But you could not see the sea. You could only see marshy meadows intersected by ditches, and far off against the horizon the flat roofs of farms, which here they called cabanes.

Why was there an inn by the roadside? To attract duck and plover shooters? There was a red-painted petrol pump, and on the gable-end a big blue advertisement for a brand of chocolate.

On the other side of the bridge was a shack, a regular rabbit hutch, the home of old Nicolas, who fished eels. Three hundred yards farther on, a largish farm with long low buildings: Groux’s property.

Everything had started from there. For years life had gone on just the same at the inn each evening. Old Nicolas would arrive, invariably half drunk, and before sitting down to his chopine he would drink a tot at the bar. Then Groux would come along from his cabane. Thérèse spread a red cloth on the table and brought in the cards and the dice. They had to wait for the exciseman to make the fourth, or, failing him, Julia would make up the party.

Now on January 14, the day before the sale, there had been two extra guests in the inn, peasants who had come from some distance for the auction, one, Borchain, from near Angoulême, the other, Canut, from Saint-Jean-d’Angély.

‘One minute,’ said Maigret as the landlord was starting to shuffle the cards. ‘Borchain went to bed before eight o’clock, as soon as he’d finished eating. Who showed him to his room?’

‘I did,’ replied Frédéric.

‘Had he been drinking?’

‘Not that much. He wanted to know who the gloomy-looking fellow was, and I told him it was Groux, whose property was going to be sold. Then he asked me how Groux had managed to go broke with such good marsh-meadows as he’d got, and I…’

‘That’ll do! ’ growled Groux.

The big fellow was in a black mood. He did not want to admit that he had never taken much care of his land or his cattle, and he blamed heaven for his ruin.

‘All right. At that point, how many people had seen Borchain’s wallet?’

‘Everybody had. He’d taken it out of his pocket while he was eating to show us a picture of his wife… So we could see it was full of notes… Even if we hadn’t seen it we’d have known, since he’d come to buy and knew he’d have to pay cash.’

‘So you, Canut, also had more than a hundred thousand francs on you?’

‘A hundred and fifty thousand… I didn’t want to go higher.’

On his arrival at the place, Maigret, who was then at the head of the crime squad in Nantes, had frowned as he looked Frédéric Michaux up and down. Michaux, who was about forty-five, with a broken nose and a sports pullover, looked most unlike a country inn-keeper.

‘Look here… Haven’t you the feeling we’ve already met somewhere?’

‘No point in wasting your time… You’re quite right, Superintendent… But I’ve gone straight since then.’

Procuring in the Ternes district, assault and battery, illegal betting and slot machines… In short Frédéric Michaux, inn-keeper at Pont du Grau in the remotest corner of La Vendée, was better known to the police as Fred the Boxer.

‘You’ll probably recognize Julia too… You jugged us together, ten years ago… But you’ll see how respectable she’s become.’

It was true. Julia, who had become fat and flabby, sluttish and greasy-haired, shuffling about in slippers between the kitchen and the bar parlour, in no wise resembled the Julia of the Place des Ternes; and the most unexpected thing was that her cooking was quite first-rate.

‘We took Thérèse along with us… She’s an orphan from a home.’

Eighteen years old, tall and slender with a pointed nose, a comical mouth and a cheeky look.

‘Are we to play in earnest?’ queried the exciseman, whose name was Gentil.

‘Play as you did the other night. You, Canut, why didn’t you go to bed?’

‘I was watching the game…’ muttered the peasant.

‘That’s to say he kept after me,’ Thérèse corrected him crossly, ‘trying to make me promise to come up to his room.’

Maigret observed that Fred cast a hostile glance at the other man, while Julia was watching Fred.

Good… they were in their right places… And the other evening, too, it had been raining… Borchain’s room was on the ground floor, at the end of the passage… In that passage there were three other doors: one leading into the kitchen, one on to the stairway down to the cellar, and the third bearing the number 100.

Maigret heaved a sigh and passed a weary hand over his forehead. He had been here three days, and he felt steeped in the smell of the house; its atmosphere clung to his skin till he felt quite sick.

And yet what other course could he pursue? On the 14th, shortly before midnight, while the game of cards was proceeding somewhat half-heartedly, Fred had sniffed repeatedly. He had called Julia, who was in the kitchen.

‘Isn’t there something burning in the oven?’

He had got up and opened the door into the passage.

‘God almighty, there’s an awful smell of burning here!’

Groux had followed him, and Thérèse. It came from the guest’s bedroom. He had knocked at the door, then opened it, since there was no lock.

The mattress was slowly burning, a mattress that gave out an acrid smell of scorched wool grease. On the mattress lay Borchain, in his shirt and underpants, with his skull fractured.

The inn had a telephone. Maigret was roused at one in the morning. At four o’clock he turned up in the pouring rain, red-nosed and frozen-fingered.

Borchain’s wallet had disappeared. The bedroom window was closed. Nobody could have got in from outside, for Michaux had a fierce Alsatian dog.

It was impossible to arrest everyone. But all of them were suspect except Canut, the only one who had not left the inn parlour all evening.

‘Come on, fellows!… I’m here to listen and watch you… Do exactly what you did on the 14th at the same time…’

The sale had been postponed to a future date. All day on the 15th people had been filing past the house, which had been locked up on Maigret’s orders.

Now it was the 16th. Maigret had practically never left the room, except to snatch a few hours’ sleep. Nor had any of the others. They were sick of seeing one another from morning till night, of hearing the same questions asked and of repeating the same gestures.

Julia did the cooking. The outside world was forgotten. It took an effort to realize that there were people living elsewhere, in towns, who were not endlessly repeating:

‘Let’s see… I had just played hearts, which was trumps… Groux put down his hand saying: “I give up… I’ve not got a single card… Just my rotten luck!”

‘Then he got up…’

‘Get up, Groux! ’ ordered Maigret. ‘Do what you did the other day.’

The big man shrugged his shoulders.

‘How many more times are you going to send me to the lavatory?’ he growled. ‘Ask Frédéric… Ask Nicolas… Don’t I go at least twice every evening? What d’you expect me to do with the four or five bottles of wine I drink in a day?’

He spat, then made for the door, walked down the passage and pushed open the door marked 100.

‘Well, have I got to stay there now?’

‘As long as is necessary, yes… The rest of you, what did you do while he was gone?’

The exciseman was laughing nervously at Groux’s anger, and there was something hysterical about his laughter. He was the least tough of them all, and was obviously on edge.

‘I told Gentil and Nicolas that it was going to mean trouble,’ Fred admitted.

‘What was going to mean trouble?’

‘Groux and his farm… He had always believed the sale would not take place, that he’d be able to borrow some money. When they came to stick up the poster he threatened the bailiff with his gun… At his age, when you’ve always owned your own land, it’s not easy to begin again as somebody else’s farm-hand…’

Groux had returned and was staring at them fiercely.

‘So what?’ he shouted. ‘Have you finished or not? Was it me that killed the man and set fire to the mattress? Why not say so at once and stick me in jail… The way things are now…’

‘Where were you, Julia?… I don’t think you’re in the right place…’

‘I was peeling vegetables in the kitchen… We were expecting a crowd for lunch because of the sale… I’d ordered two legs of mutton, and we’ve only finished one of them…’

‘Thérèse?’

‘I’d gone up into my room.’

‘When was that?’

‘Soon after Monsieur Groux came back.’

‘Well, let’s go up there together… The rest of you carry on… You started playing again?’

‘Not right away… Groux didn’t want to… We talked… I went to fetch a packet of cigarettes from the bar…’

‘Come along, Thérèse.’

The room where Borchain had died was strategically placed. The staircase was only three steps away. So Thérèse could have…

The girl’s room was a narrow one, with an iron bedstead and a chair on which clothes were lying.

‘What did you come up here for?’

‘To write…’

‘To write what?’

‘That we shouldn’t have a moment alone together next day…’

She was looking him in the eyes, defiantly.

‘You know very well what I’m talking about… I’ve understood from your questions and the way you looked at me… The old woman suspects… She’s always after us… I begged Fred to take me away, and we’d decided to make a bolt for it in the spring.’

‘Why in the spring?’

‘I don’t know… Fred fixed the date… We were going to Panama, where he once lived, and we were going to set up a bistro there together…’

‘How long did you stay in your room?’

‘Not long… I heard the old woman coming upstairs… She asked me what I was doing… I said nothing… She hates me and I hate her… I could swear she guessed what we were planning…’

Thérèse returned Maigret’s gaze without flinching. She was one of those girls who know what they want and are determined to get it.

‘You don’t think that Julia would rather see Fred in prison than have him go off with you?’

‘That’s quite likely!’

‘What was she going to her bedroom for?’

‘To take off her girdle… She needs a rubber girdle to hold what’s left of her together…’

Thérèse had the pointed teeth and the unconscious cruelty of some small animal. As she spoke of the woman whom she had replaced in Fred’s affection her lips curled.

‘In the evening, specially when she’s had too much to eat… and it’s disgusting the way she stuffs herself!… she feels uncomfortable in her girdle and she goes upstairs to take it off.’

‘How long did she stay upstairs?’

‘About ten minutes… When she came down again I helped her do the vegetables. The others were still playing cards.’

‘Was the door open between the kitchen and the parlour?’

‘It’s always open…’

Maigret looked at her again, then walked heavily down the creaking stairs. In the courtyard the dog could be heard tugging at its chain.

A heap of coal was lying just behind the door of the cellar, and it was from this that the murder weapon had been taken: a heavy coal hammer.

There were no fingerprints. The murderer must have wrapped a rag round the handle. Elsewhere in the house, including on the handle of the bedroom door, there were a great many blurred prints, those of all the people who had been present on the evening of the 14th.

As for the wallet, they had all set to work looking for it in the most unlikely places, with the thoroughness of men used to that sort of search, and the previous day they had had the cesspool professionally emptied.

Poor Borchain had come from his distant home to buy Groux’s farm. He had been only a tenant farmer, and he wanted to become a landowner. He was married, with three daughters. He had dined at one of the tables. He had chatted with Canut, who was also a potential purchaser, and had shown him the photograph of his wife.

He had eaten and drunk rather too copiously, and had staggered sleepily to bed. Probably he had slipped the wallet under his pillow.

In the inn parlour, four men were playing belote, as they did every evening, and drinking white wine: Fred, Groux, old Nicolas — who turned purple when he’d had a skinful of liquor — and Gentil the exciseman, who would have done better to carry out his round.

Behind them, astride a chair, Canut was watching the game and intermittently glancing at Thérèse, in the hope that this night away from home might end in some adventure.

In the kitchen, two women, Julia and the girl from the orphanage, were busy over a basin of vegetables.

One of these people, at a given moment, had gone into the passage on some pretext, and had first opened the cellar door to pick up the coal hammer and then the door of Borchain’s room.

Nothing had been heard. The murderer’s absence could not have been a long one, since it had aroused no surprise. And yet he must have had time to put the wallet away in a safe place.

For since the mattress had been set on fire the alarm would quickly be given. The police would be sent for and everyone would be searched.

‘To think that you don’t even have any decent beer!’ Maigret complained as he went back into the bar parlour. He longed for a glass of cool, foaming draught beer instead of this filthy bottled stuff!

‘What about this game?’

Fred looked at the time on the clock in its sky-blue china frame (a bargain offer). He was used to the police. He was as tired as the rest, but rather less edgy.

‘Twenty to ten… not quite… We were still talking… Was it you, Nicolas, who asked for another bottle of wine?’

‘Maybe…’

‘I shouted to Thérèse: “Go and draw some wine…” Then I got up and went down to the cellar myself.’

‘What for?’

He shrugged. ‘Well, it can’t be helped now, she may as well hear it. When all this is over, life won’t start up again just as it was… I’d heard Thérèse go up into her room… I guessed she’d written me a note… It would have been put into the keyhole of the cellar door… You hear, Julia? I can’t help it, old girl!… You’ve given me enough rows to make up for our occasional bits of fun…’

Canut reddened. Nicolas sniggered to himself behind his ginger whiskers. Monsieur Gentil averted his eyes, for he, too, had made advances to Thérèse.

‘Was there a note there?’

‘Yes… I read it down there while the wine was running into the bottle. Thérèse simply said that we should probably not get a moment alone together next day…’

Strangely enough, Fred’s voice betrayed genuine passion and indeed an unexpectedly emotional note. In the kitchen, Thérèse suddenly rose, and she came up to the card-players’ table.

‘Aren’t you through yet?’ she asked with quivering lips. ‘Why don’t you get it over with and have us all arrested. Then we’d see… But this roundabout way of doing things, as though…as though…’

She burst into tears, and went to lean against the wall with her head buried in her hands.

‘So you stayed several minutes in the cellar,’ went on Maigret quite imperturbably.

‘Three or four minutes, yes…’

‘What did you do with the note?’

‘I burnt it in the candle-flame.’

‘Are you afraid of Julia?’

This remark aroused Fred’s indignation.

‘You don’t understand, do you? And you arrested us both ten years ago!… Don’t you understand that, when one’s been through certain things together… Well, have it your own way!… Don’t get upset, Julia old girl…’

And a calm voice came from the kitchen:

‘I’m not upset.’

As for the motive, that essential factor according to all textbooks on criminology — why, everybody here had a motive! Groux more than the rest, since he was broke and expected to be turned out of his home next day, without even his furniture or belongings, everything sold, with no alternative left him but to work as a farm hand!

He knew the place, the way to the cellar, the coal heap and the hammer…

And Nicolas? An old soak, granted. He lived in squalor. But he had a daughter at Niort ; she was in service, and all that she earned went to pay for the fostering of her child. Might he not…

Not to mention that, as Fred had said earlier, it was Nicolas who came every week to chop wood and break up coal for them.

And about ten o’clock Nicolas had made his way towards the lavatory, staggering drunkenly. Gentil had commented:

‘Let’s hope he doesn’t open the wrong door!’

Chance plays strange tricks! Why had Gentil said that, while mechanically fingering his cards? And could not the thought of the crime have occurred to Gentil himself when, a few minutes later, he had gone the same way as old Nicolas?

He was an exciseman, to be sure, but everyone knew that he didn’t take his job seriously, that he spent most of his time in cafés and that one could always make a deal with him.

‘Look here, Superintendent…’ began Fred.

‘Sorry… It’s five past ten… Where had we got to the other night?’

Then Thérèse, sniffling, came to sit down behind her employer, with her shoulder rubbing against his back.

‘Is that where you were?’

‘Yes…I’d done the vegetables… I picked up the jersey I’m knitting, but I didn’t work at it.’

Julia was still in the kitchen, but remained unseen.

‘What were you going to say, Fred?’

‘One thing has struck me… It seems to me there’s one detail that proves it wasn’t one of the household that killed the fellow… Because… Suppose… No, that’s not what I meant to say… If I were to kill someone in my own house d’you think I’d go and set fire to the place?…Whatever for?…To attract attention?…’

Maigret had just filled himself a fresh pipe and was slowly lighting it.

‘I’ll have a small calvados after all, Thérèse… Now, Fred, why wouldn’t you have set the place on fire?’

‘Why, because…’ He was speechless.

‘If it hadn’t been for the fire, nobody would have worried about the fellow… The others would have gone home and…’

Maigret was smiling, his lips twisted in an odd grin round the stem of his pipe.

‘Pity you’re proving exactly the opposite of what you intended to prove, Fred… That fire starting is the only significant piece of evidence, and it struck me as soon as I got here… Suppose you had killed the old fellow, as you said… Everybody knew he was in your house…so you couldn’t hope to get rid of the body…Next morning you’d have had to open the bedroom door and give the alarm… By the way, what time had he asked to be woken?’

‘At six o’clock… He wanted to visit the farm and the land before the sale…’

‘So then if the body had been discovered at six o’clock there would have been nobody in the house but you, Julia and Thérèse, for I don’t count Monsieur Canut, whom nobody could have suspected… Nobody would have imagined that the crime might have been committed during the game of cards…’

Fred was following the Superintendent’s argument closely, and it seemed to Maigret that he had turned paler. He was even mechanically tearing up a card and letting the pieces drop on to the floor.

‘Careful, if you want to play presently you’ll have to do without the ace of spades… I was saying, then… Ah, yes… How could the murder be discovered before the departure of Groux, Nicolas and Monsieur Gentil, so that they might also be suspect? There was no pretext for going into the bedroom… Yes! There was one… fire…’

This time Fred sprang up, his fists clenched, a fierce glint in his eye, and he shouted:

‘God Almighty!’

Nobody spoke. They had all received a sudden shock. Hitherto, through sheer weariness, they had scarcely believed in the existence of the criminal. They had ceased to realize that he was there in the house, that they were speaking to him, eating at the same table, playing cards maybe and clinking glasses with him.

Fred was striding up and down the inn parlour while Maigret sat huddled, peering through half-closed eyes. Was he on the verge of success? For the past three days he had kept them all in suspense, minute by minute, making them repeat the same movements and words ten times over, in the hope, of course, that some forgotten detail might suddenly emerge, but above all with the aim of wearing down their resistance, of driving the murderer to breaking-point.

He spoke in a quiet voice, the syllables interspersed with little puffs as he drew on his pipe.

‘The crucial question is this: who had available a hiding-place secure enough for the wallet not to be discovered?’

Everyone had been searched. The first night they had all been stripped naked. The heap of coal near the cellar door had been turned over. The walls had been sounded and so had the barrels. Nevertheless a fat wallet containing over a hundred thousand-franc notes…

‘Don’t be so restless, Fred. You’re making me sea-sick.’

‘But for God’s sake, don’t you understand that…’

‘That what?’

‘That I didn’t kill him! That I’m not crazy enough for that! That I’ve a bad enough record without…’

‘It was next spring, wasn’t it, that you were planning to leave for South America with Thérèse and to set up a bistro there?’

Fred turned to glance at the kitchen door, then asked through clenched teeth:

‘So what?’

‘With what money?’

He glared back at Maigret.

‘So that’s what you were getting at? You’re on the wrong track, Superintendent. I shall have plenty of money on 15 May. It was a thrifty notion that occurred to me while I was making a nice living organizing boxing matches. I took out an insurance policy for a hundred thousand francs to be drawn when I’m fifty. And I’m going to be fifty on 15 May… Why yes, Thérèse, I’m a bit longer in the tooth than I usually admit…’

‘Did Julia know about this insurance?’

‘That’s no concern of women’s!’

‘So then, Julia, you didn’t know that Fred was going to draw a hundred thousand francs?’

‘I did know.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Fred with a start.

‘And I knew he wanted to go off with that bit of trash.’

‘And you’d have let them go?’

Julia stood motionless, her eyes fixed on her lover, and a strange quietness about her.

‘You haven’t answered me!’ Maigret insisted.

She looked at him in her turn. Her lips moved. Perhaps she was about to say something important. But she just shrugged her shoulders.

‘Can one tell what a man’ll do?’

Fred was not listening. He seemed to be thinking about something else. He was frowning reflectively, and Maigret had the impression that their thoughts were running along the same lines.

‘Look, Fred!’

‘What?’

It was as though he had been roused from a dream.

‘About that insurance policy… that policy that Julia saw without your knowing…I’d like to have a glance at it myself…’

What a devious route truth was taking to come to light! Maigret had believed he had thought of everything. Thérèse, in her room, had spoken of going away, and that meant money… Fred had admitted the existence of his insurance policy…

But… it was so obvious, so simple that one couldn’t help laughing; they had searched the house ten times over and yet had found no insurance policy, no identity papers, no military registration!

‘All right, Superintendent,’ sighed Fred resignedly. ‘You’ll be able to check up on my savings at the same time…’

He went towards the kitchen.

‘You can come in… When one lives in a hole like this… Not to mention that I’ve got a few bits of paper that some of my old pals wouldn’t be sorry to get from me…’

Thérèse followed them, astonished. Groux’s heavy step was heard, and Canut had risen too.

‘Don’t imagine it’s anything very clever… It just so happens that I was a tinsmith in my younger days…’

To the right of the stove there was a huge refuse-bin of galvanized iron. Fred overturned it in the middle of the room and prised open a double bottom. He took the first look. Slowly, he frowned; slowly, his jaw dropped, and he raised his head…

A heavy, well-worn wallet, grey with age, fastened by a piece of red rubber cut from a tyre, lay there among various papers.

‘Well, Julia?’ asked Maigret quietly.

Then he had the impression that something of the old Julia came to life again, visible through the heavy features of the woman she had become. She looked at them all. Her upper lip curled contemptuously. There was a hint of a suppressed sob; but it did not break forth. It was a dull, toneless voice that replied:

‘So what? I’m finished…’

The most surprising thing was that it was Thérèse who suddenly burst into tears, like a dog howling, while the woman who had killed asked:

‘I suppose you’re going to take me away at once, since you’ve got a car? Can I get my things together?’

He let her pack her bag. He was depressed – a reaction after so much nervous tension.

How long had Julia known about Fred’s hiding-place? Had she guessed, on discovering that insurance policy – which he had never mentioned to her – that as soon as he could draw his money he would go away with Thérèse?

An opportunity had occurred: an even greater sum of money than Fred was to get! And it was she who would bring it him, in a few days or weeks, when the case had been shelved!

‘Do you see, Fred… I knew all about it… You wanted to run off with her, didn’t you?… You thought I was no use any more… Now have a look in your hiding-place… It was I, the old girl as you called me, who…’

Maigret kept an eye on her, just in case, while she moved to and fro in the bedroom where the photograph of Fred as a boxer hung above the big mahogany bed.

‘I’ve got to put my girdle on…’ she said. ‘You’d better not look… It’s not a very pretty sight.’

It was only in the car that she collapsed, while Maigret stared at the raindrops on the windows. What were the others doing now, in the inn parlour? And to whom would Groux’s cabane be knocked down when the auctioneer’s candle went out for the third time?

[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

[collected in Maigret’s Christmas: Nine Stories]

[for a complete bibliography of all 103 episodes of The Maigret Saga, check out Steve Trussel’s amazing fan site at http://www.trussel.com/f_maig.htm ]

[April 06, 2007—v1 html proofed and formatted]