Georges Simenon - Maigret Goes Home

Maigret Goes Home

laffaire saint-fiacre
translated by robert baldick
the 13th episode in the maigret saga
1931

Georges Simenon

MKM XHTML edition 1.0

contents

Penguin Books Ltd

LAffaire Saint-Fiacre first published in France 1931

Published by A. Fayard et Cie 1959

Maigret and the Countess published in England in the volume

Maigret Keeps A Rendezvous by Routledge Kegan Paul Ltd 1940

This translation first published in Penguin Books 1967

Reprinted 1970,1972

Copyright Librairie Arthmes Fayard, 1959

English translation copyright 1967 by Robert Baldick.

All rights reserved.

Maigret Goes Home

1
The Little Girl with the Squint

There was a timid scratching at the door, the sound of an object being put on the floor, a furtive voice:

Its half past five! The first bell for All Souls Day Mass has just been rung Maigret raised himself on his elbows, making the mattress creak, and while he was looking in astonishment at the skylight cut in the sloping roof, the voice went on:

Are you taking Communion? By now Chief-Inspector Maigret was out of bed, standing barefoot on the icy floor. He walked toward the door, which was closed with a piece of string wound around a couple of nails. There was the sound of footsteps; hurrying away. When he looked out into the hallway, he was just in time to catch sight of the figure of a woman in a bed jacket and a white petticoat.

He picked up the jug of hot water Marie Tatin had brought him, closed his door, and looked for a piece of mirror in front of which he could shave.

The candle had only a few minutes of life left. Outside the skylight, it was still night, a cold night in early winter. A few dead leaves were clinging to the branches of the poplars in the marketplace.

Maigret could stand up only in the middle of the attic, because of the double slope of the roof. He was cold. A thin draft, the source of which he had been unable to trace, chilled the back of his neck.

It was precisely this quality of coldness that disturbed him, by plunging him into an atmosphere he thought he had forgotten.

The first bell for Mass The bell ringing out over the sleeping village When he was a boy, Maigret did not usually get up so early. He would wait for the second bell, because in those days he did not need to shave. Did he so much as wash his face?

Nobody brought him any hot water. Sometimes the water was frozen in the jug. Soon afterward his shoes would be clattering along the frozen road.

Now, while he was getting dressed, he could hear Marie Tatin coming and going in the main room of the inn, rattling the grate of the stove, moving crockery about, and turning the handle of the coffee mill.

He put on his jacket, his overcoat. Before going out, he removed from his wallet a piece of paper with an official slip pinned to it bearing the words:

Municipal Police Of Moulins

Communicated for information and possible action to the Police Judiciaire in Paris:

Then a sheet of lined paper with laborious handwriting:

This is to tell you that a crime will be committed in the church at Saint-Fiacre during the first Mass on All Souls Day.

The sheet of paper had lain around for several days in the offices of the Quai des Orfvres.

Maigret had noticed it by accident, and had asked in surprise:

Is that the Saint-Fiacre near Matignon?

Probably, since it was sent to us by Moulins.

And Maigret had put the piece of paper in his pocket. Saint-Fiacre, Matignon, Moulins: words more familiar to him than almost any others.

He had been born in Saint-Fiacre, where his father had been the estate manager of the chteau for many years. The last time he had gone there had, in fact, been after the death of his father, who had been buried in the little graveyard behind the church.

a crime will be committed during the first Mass

Maigret had arrived the day before. He had taken a room at the only inn in the village: Marie Tatins. She had not recognized him, but he had known her because of her eyes.

The little girl with the squint, as they used to call her. A puny little girl who had become an even skinnier old maid, squinting more and more, and endlessly bustling about the bar, the kitchen, and the yard, where she kept rabbits and hens.

The chief-inspector went downstairs. The ground-floor rooms were lit by oil lamps. A table was laid in one corner. There was coarse gray bread, a smell of coffee with chicory, and boiling milk.

Youre wrong not to take Communion on a day like today. Especially seeing that youre taking the trouble to go to the first Mass Heavens! Thats the second bell ringing already!

The voice of the bell was faint. Footsteps could be heard on the road. Marie Tatin fled into her kitchen to put on her black dress, her cotton gloves, and her little hat, which her bun prevented from staying on straight.

Ill leave you to finish your breakfast Youll lock the door, wont you?

No, wait! Im ready.

She was embarrassed to be walking with a man. A man who came from Paris! She trotted along, a small bent figure, in the cold morning air. Some dead leaves were fluttering about on the ground. The crisp sound they made showed that there had been a frost during the night.

There were other shadowy figures converging on the dimly shining doorway of the church. The bell was still ringing. There were lights in the windows of some low-built houses: people dressing in a hurry for the first Mass.

Maigret rediscovered other impressions from his childhood: the cold, the eyes smarting, the tips of the fingers frozen, a lingering taste of coffee in the mouth. Then, on going into the church, a wave of warm air, of soft light, the smell of the tapers and the incense.

Excuse me, will you? Ive got my own prayer stool, she said.

And Maigret recognized the black chair with the red velvet armrest of old Madame Tatin, the mother of the little girl with the squint

The rope, which the bell ringer had just let go of, was still quivering at the far end of the church. The sacristan was lighting the last tapers. How many were there in that ghostly gathering of half-asleep people?

Fifteen at the most. There were only three men: the sacristan, the bell ringer, and Maigret.

a crime will be committed

At Moulins, the police had treated the matter as a bad joke and had not worried about it. In Paris, they had been surprised to see the chief-inspector set off.

Maigret heard some noises behind the door to the right of the altar, and he could guess second by second what was happening: the sacristy, the choirboy arriving late, the priest putting on his chasuble without a word, joining his hands together, and walking toward the nave, followed by the boy, stumbling along in his cassock

The boy was red-haired. He shook his bell. The murmur of the liturgical prayers began.

during the first Mass

Maigret had looked at all the shadowy figures one by one. Five old women, three of whom had a prayer stool reserved for her own use. A farmers fat wife. Some younger farm women and one child

The sound of a car outside; the creak of the door; some light footsteps: then a lady in mourning walked the whole length of the church.

In the chancel was a row of stalls reserved for people from the chteau, hard stalls in old, polished wood. And it was there that the woman took her seat, noiselessly, followed by the farm womens eyes.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine

Maigret could perhaps still have recited the responses to the priest. He smiled at the thought that in the past he had preferred the Requiem Masses to the others, because the prayers were shorter. He could remember Masses that had been celebrated in sixteen minutes.