Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 6. Whole No. 283, June 1967

Inspector Maigret Thinks by Georges Simenon

The story of two hangings on the Seine, against the interesting background of weirs and locks, barges and tugs, with Chief Inspector Maigret called into the case when all the other investigators had failed — Maigret as surly as the Seine itself, Maigret puffing constantly on his pipe, Maigret perplexed and irritable and grumbling and finally coming round to “thinking bargee” — to thinking the way barge people do...

The lock-keeper at coudray was a thin sad-looking chap, dressed in corduroys, with a drooping mustache and a suspicious eye — a type one often meets among bailiffs.

He made no distinction between Maigret and the fifty people — detectives from Corbeil, officials from the Public Prosecutor’s office, and reporters — to whom, for the last two days, he had been telling his story; and while he did so he kept watching, up and down river, the greenish-blue surface of the Seine.

It was November. It was cold, and a white sky — garishly white — was reflected in the water.

“I had got up at six in the morning to look after my wife,” he said, and Maigret thought to himself how it was always these decent sad-looking men who have sick wives to take care of.

“Even as I was lighting the fire it seemed to me that I heard something. But it was later, while I was upstairs preparing the poultice, that I finally realized that someone was shouting. I went downstairs again. From the lock itself I made out a dark shape against the weir.

“‘What is it?’ I shouted. A hoarse voice replied with ‘Help!’

“‘What are you doing there?’ I asked him.

“He went on shouting, ‘Help! Help!’ So I got out my dinghy to go over. I saw it was the Astrolabe. As it was getting brighter, I was finally able to make out old Claessens on the deck. I’d swear he was still drunk, and knew no more than I did what the barge was doing on the weir. The dog was loose, even though I had asked him to keep it tied up. That’s all... that’s all I know.”

What mattered for him was that a barge should have come and run aground on his weir, at the risk, if the current had been stronger, of smashing it. The fact that the only thing found on board — other than the drunken old stableman and a big sheepdog — was two hanging corpses, a man and a woman — that didn’t concern him at all.

The Astrolabe, afloat again, was still there, about a hundred and fifty meters off, guarded by a policeman who kept himself warm by marching up and down on the tow-path. She was an old motorless barge — an écurie, or stable, as they call the boats that ply mainly on the canals and keep their horses on board. Passing cyclists looked round at this grayish hull that all the newspapers had been full of for the last two days.

As usual when everyone else had failed to uncover anything new, Chief Inspector Maigret was called in. Everyone concerned had been engaged on the inquiry, and the witnesses had already been interrogated fifty times, first by the police, then by the Corbeil detectives, the magistrates, and the reporters.

“You’ll find Emile Gradut did it!” everybody kept telling him.

And Maigret, who had just questioned Gradut for two hours, had come back to the scene of the crime, and stood there, hands in the pockets of his thick overcoat, looking surly, smoking his pipe in little short puffs, staring at the sullen landscape as if he wanted to buy a plot there.

The interest lay not in the Coudray lock where the barge had been stranded, but at the other end of the reach, eight kilometers upstream at the Citanguette lock.

The same setting as down here, in short. The villages of Morsang and Seineport were on the opposite bank some distance away so that one saw only the quiet water fringed with trees and, here and there, the hollow of a disused sandpit.

But at Citanguette there was a bistro. The barges went to any lengths to lie there overnight. A real waterman’s inn where they sold bread, tinned food, sausage, ropes, and oats for the horses.

It was there that Maigret really conducted his investigation, without seeming to, having a drink now and then, sitting by the stove, going for little strolls outside while the owner — a woman so fair she might almost have been an albino — watched him with respect tinged with irony...

This is what was known about the Wednesday evening.

Just as it was beginning to get dark, the Eaglet, a small tug from the upper Seine, had brought her six barges like chicks up to the Citanguette lock. At that time a fine rain was falling. When the boats had been moored, the men as usual had gathered at the bistro for a drink while the lock-keeper was putting away his gear.

The Astrolabe appeared at the bend only half an hour later when darkness had already fallen. Old Arthur Aerts, the skipper, was at the helm, while on the path Claessens walked ahead of his horses, his whip on his shoulder.

Then the Astrolabe moored at the end of the line, and Claessens had taken his horses aboard. At the time nobody was paying any attention to them.

It was after seven o’clock, and everybody had already finished eating, when Aerts and Claessens entered the bistro and sat down beside the stove. The skipper of the Eaglet was holding forth, and the two had no need to say anything. The flaxen-headed innkeeper, a baby in her arms, served them four or five cheap brandies without paying much attention.

This, Maigret now understood, was the way of things here. They all knew one another, more or less. One entered with a casual greeting. One went and sat down without saying anything. Sometimes a woman came in, but it was to do her shopping for the next day, after which she would say to her husband, busy drinking, “Don’t be too late coming back...”

It had been that way with Aerts’s wife, Emma, who had bought bread, eggs, a rabbit.

And from this moment onward every detail became of the utmost importance, every piece of evidence was tremendously valuable. So Maigret was insistent. “You’re sure that when he left, about ten o’clock, Arthur Aerts was drunk?”

“Blind drunk, as usual,” the patronne answered. “He was a Belgian, after all. A good chap, really, who sat quietly in his corner and drank until he had only just enough strength to get back on board.”

“And Claessens, the stableman?”

“It took more than that to make him drunk. He stayed about another quarter of an hour, then he left, after coming back to look for his whip which he had forgotten.”

So far everything was going well. It was easy to picture the bank of the Seine at night below the lock, the tug at the head, the six lighters behind her, then the Aerts barge; on each boat a stable lantern and falling over it all, a fine steady drizzle.

About half-past nine Emma arrived back on board with her shopping. At ten Aerts got back in his turn, blind drunk as the woman in the bistro had said. And at a quarter past ten the stableman finally made for the Astrolabe.

“I was only waiting for him to go to close up, for the watermen go to bed early, and there was no one else left.”

So much for what was tangible and reliable.

From then on there was not a scrap of exact information. At six in the morning the skipper of the tug was amazed that the Astrolabe was no longer to be seen behind his lighters, and a few moments later he noticed that the mooring lines had been cut.

Just then the Coudray lock-keeper, tending his wife, heard the shouts of the old stableman, and shortly afterward found the barge grounded against his weir.

The dog on the deck was loose. The stableman, who had just been wakened by the impact, knew nothing, and claimed that he had been asleep all night with the horses as usual.

But, aft in the cabin, Aerts had been found hanged, not with a rope but with the dog’s chain. Then, behind a curtain that screened off the washbasin, his wife Emma was found hanged — in her case with a sheet pulled off the bed.

And this was not all: when he was on the point of sailing, the skipper of the tug Eaglet called in vain for his engineer, Emile Gradut, and found he had disappeared.

“It was Gradut who did it.” Everyone was agreed, and that evening the newspapers had headings like:

For all the statements confirmed that old Aerts had a nest egg, and everyone even agreed on the amount — one hundred thousand francs. Why? It was quite a story — or, rather, it was very simple. Aerts, who was sixty and had two grown-up sons, married, had taken Emma as his second wife; and Emma, from Strasbourg, was only forty.

Now, things weren’t going at all well with them. At every lock Emma complained about the meanness of the old man, who barely gave her enough to eat on.

“I don’t even know where he keeps his money,” she used to say. “He wants it to go to his sons if he should die... And I have to kill myself looking after him, steering the boat, to say nothing of...” She would go into cynical detail, to Aerts’s face if need be, while Aerts stubbornly confined himself to shaking his head.

Only after she had gone he would murmur, “She only married me for my hundred thousand francs. But she’ll be diddled.”

Or Emma would say, “As if his sons needed it to live.”

In fact, the elder, Joseph, was skipper of a tug in Antwerp, and Theodore, assisted by his father, had bought a fine motor launch, the Marie-France, which had just been reached on its way to Maastricht in Holland.

“But I’ll find them, his hundred thousand francs...” She would tell you this without thinking, even if she had known you for only five minutes; she would give you the most intimate details about her old husband, and would then conclude cynically, “All the same, he doesn’t imagine it was for love that a young woman like me...”

And she was deceiving him. The evidence was indisputable. Even the skipper of the Eaglet knew all about it.

“I am only telling you what I know... But without a doubt during the fortnight we were lying idle at Alfortville, and while the Astrolabe was loading, Emile Gradut often used to go and see her, even in broad daylight.”

So?

Emile Gradut, who was twenty-three, was a rat, that was clear. Actually, he had been arrested twenty-four hours later, starving in the forest of Rougeau less than five kilometers from Citanguette.

“I haven’t done anything!” he screamed at the policemen as he tried to ward off the blows.

An unhealthy little lecher, repellent, whom Maigret questioned for two hours in his office, and who had repeated obstinately, “I haven’t done anything.”

“Then why did you clear off?”

“That’s my business!”

As for the examining magistrate, who was sure that Gradut had hidden the money in the forest, he had the place combed again, without result.

There was something infinitely dreary about all this, like the river which reflected the same sky from morning to night, like the string of boats that announced their presence with hooters — one blast for each barge under tow — and which were endlessly edging their way in and out of the lock. Then, while the women on the deck, busying themselves with the kids, kept an eye on the barges, the men went up to the bistro, had a quick drink, and came back with heavy tread.

All crystal clear, one of his colleagues had said to Maigret. And yet Maigret, surly as the Seine itself, as a canal in the rain, had come back to his lock and couldn’t tear himself away again.

It’s always the same thing when an affair appears to be clear nobody thinks of going deeper into the details. For everyone it was Gradut who had done it, and he looked so much the type who might that this in itself was taken as evidence.

Notwithstanding, there were now the results of two post-mortems, which produced some strange conclusions. Thus, for Arthur Aerts, Dr Paul said, “Slight contusion under chin... From the degree of rigor mortis and the contents of the stomach can state that death by strangulation took place between ten and ten thirty,”

Now, Aerts had come back on board at ten. According to the albino-blonde patronne, Claessens had followed him a quarter of an hour later, and Claessens had stated that he had gone straight to bed.

Was the light on in the Aerts’s cabin?

“I don’t know.”

Was the dog loose?

The poor old man had thought for a long time, only to end with a helpless gesture. No, he didn’t know... He hadn’t noticed... Could he possibly have foreseen that his doings on that particular evening would become of prime importance after the event? He was half-seas-over. He was sleeping fully dressed on the straw, in the pungent odor of the horses.

“Didn’t hear anything? Anything at all?”

He didn’t know, he couldn’t have known! He was asleep, and when he woke up he found himself in midstream, up against the weir.

There was another piece of evidence, but could it be relied on? It was by Madame Couturier, the wife of the skipper of Eaglet. The chief inspector at Corbeil had questioned her as well as the others before letting the convoy proceed on its way toward the Loing canal. Maigret had the transcript in his pocket.

Question: You heard nothing during the night?

Answer: I wouldn’t like to swear that.

Q: Tell me what you heard.

A: It’s so hazy... At one time I woke up and I looked at the time on the alarm clock. It was a quarter to eleven. It seemed to me that someone was talking near the boat.

Q: You didn’t recognize the voices?

A: No. But I thought it was Gradut having a rendezvous with Emma. I must have gone back to sleep straight away.

Could one rely on this? And even if it were true, what did it prove?

Below the dam, a tug, its six barges, and the Astrolabe had been moored for the night, and...

The report on Aerts was clear: he had died by strangulation between ten and ten thirty. But the story grew complicated with the second of Dr. Paul’s reports, the one that referred to Emma.

The right cheek bore traces of bruising caused either by a blunt instrument or by a violent blow from a fist. As to the time of death — caused by hanging — it must have been about one a.m.

And here was Maigret, sinking deeper and deeper into the slow, heavy way of life of Citanguette, as if it was only there that he could think. A motor launch flying Belgian colors made him think of Aerts’s son, who must by now have arrived in Paris.

The Belgian colors made him think, too, of the gin. For, on the table in the cabin, a gin bottle had been found, more than half empty. The cabin itself had been ransacked from top to bottom: even the mattress had been ripped open, and the stuffing was spread all round.

All this, of course, in a search for the savings. Those who had been first on the scene were saying, “It’s all very simple. Emile Gradut killed Aerts and Emma. Then he got drunk and hunted for the money, and now he’s got it hidden in the forest.”

But there was one difficulty: Dr. Paul’s post-mortem on Emma revealed that she had drunk all the gin.

Well, so what? Then it was Emma who drank the gin, and not Gradut.

Perfectly clear, was the answer. Gradut, having killed Aerts, got his wife drunk so as to have the upper hand more easily — for you remember she was a strong woman.

If you believed that story, Gradut and his mistress had both stayed aboard from ten or half-past, when Arthur Aerts died, until midnight or one in the morning, when Emma died...

It was possible, of course... anything was possible. But Maigret wanted — it was hard to put into words — he wanted to come round to “thinking bargee” — that’s to say, to thinking as the barge folk did.

He had been quite as hard as the others on Gradut. For two hours he had kept grilling him. To begin with he had used the same old velvet-glove line, as they call it at Headquarters. “Now, listen to me, my boy, you’re mixed up in this, that’s obvious. But, frankly, I don’t believe you killed them both.”

“I didn’t do anything!”

“All right, you didn’t kill them. But own up, you pushed the old man round a bit. It was his own fault, after all — he disturbed you, so in self-defense you—”

“I didn’t do anything!”

“As for Emma, of course you wouldn’t have touched her, seeing she was your mistress.”

“You’re wasting your time — I didn’t do anything!”

Then Maigret got tougher, even threatening. “Ah, so that’s the way it is. Well, we’ll see once you’re on the boat with the corpses.”

But Gradut had not flinched at the prospect of a reconstruction of the crime. “Whenever you like. I didn’t do anything.”

“Wait till they find the money you’ve got stowed away.”

At that Emile Gradut had smiled, and it was such a pitying, superior smile...

That evening there were only two boats lying at Citanguette, a motor launch and an écurie. Below, at the weir, a policeman stood sentry on the deck of the Astrolabe; he was very surprised when Maigret climbed aboard, saying, “I haven’t time to go back to Paris. I’ll sleep here.”

You could hear the soft lapping of the water against the hull; then the policeman, who was afraid of falling asleep, started marching up and down the deck. He, poor man, soon began to wonder if Maigret had gone mad, for he was making as much noise down there all by himself as if the horses had been let loose in the hold.

“Tell me, young man...” It was Maigret emerging from the hatchway. “You couldn’t find me a pickax?”

Find a pickax, at ten at night, in a place like this! However, the policeman woke the lock-keeper with the mournful look. And the lock-keeper had a pickax that he used in his garden.

“What’s that Inspector of yours going to do with it?”

“I haven’t the faintest...”

As for Maigret, he went back to the cabin with his pickax and for the next hour the policeman heard muffled blows.

“Look, young man...”

It was Maigret again, sweating and puffing, who stuck his head through the hatch. “Go and make a phone call for me. I want the examining magistrate to come over first thing tomorrow morning, and he is to have Emile Gradut brought along...”

Never had the lock-keeper looked so lugubrious as when he piloted the magistrate toward the barge, while Gradut followed between two policemen. “No, I swear to you, I don’t know anything...”

There was Maigret, fast asleep on Aerts’s bed. He didn’t even make any excuse; he gave the impression of not noticing the magistrate’s amazement at the state of the cabin. The floor had, in fact, been torn up. Under this floor there was a layer of cement, but this had been shattered by great blows from a pickax; it was complete chaos.

“Come in, sir. I went to bed very late, and I haven’t yet had time to tidy myself up.” Maigret lit his pipe. Somewhere he had found some bottles of beer, and he poured himself a glass.

“Come in, Gradut. And now...”

“Yes,” the magistrate said, “and now...?”

“It’s very simple,” Maigret said, sucking at his pipe. “I’m going to explain what happened the other night. You see, there’s one thing that struck me from the start: old Aerts was hanged with a chain, and his wife was hanged with a sheet.”

“I don’t see—”

“You will. Look through all the police records and I swear you won’t find one case — not one single one — of a man who hanged himself using a wire or a chain. It’s strange, perhaps, but it’s true. Suicides tend to be soft, more or less, and the idea of the links biting into their necks and pinching the skin...”

“So Arthur Aerts was murdered?”

“That’s my conclusion, yes. Especially as the bruise on his chin seems to prove that the chain — which was thrown over his head from behind while he was drunk — first struck his face—”

“I don’t see—”

“Wait! Next you should note that his wife, for her part, was found hanged with a twisted sheet from the bed. Not even a rope, though on board a boat there are plenty of them. No — a sheet from the bed, which is about the nicest way of hanging oneself, if I may put it like that.”

“Which means what?”

“That she hanged herself. Obviously she did, because to give herself courage she had to swallow half a liter of gin — she who never drank at all. Remember the doctor’s report.”

“I remember.”

“So, one murder and one suicide; the murder committed at about a quarter past ten, the suicide at midnight or one o’clock in the morning. From then on everything begins to get simple.”

The magistrate was looking at him with some distrust, Emile Gradut with ironic curiosity.

“For a long time now,” Maigret continued, “Emma, who didn’t get what she wanted by her marriage to old Aerts, and who was in love with Emile Gradut, had been haunted by one idea: to get hold of the old man’s savings and go off with her lover.

“Suddenly she has the chance. Aerts comes home in a very drunken state. Gradut is only a few steps away, aboard the tug. She has seen, on going to make her purchases at the bistro, that her husband is already well on the way to being drunk. So she unchains the dog and waits with the chain all ready to slip round the old man’s neck.”

“But—” the magistrate objected.

“All in good time. Let me finish. Now Aerts is dead... Emma, drunk with triumph, runs to get Gradut, and here don’t forget that the tug skipper’s wife hears voices at a quarter to eleven. Is that right, Gradut?”

“That’s right!”

“The two of them come back on board to look for the savings, search everywhere, even in the mattress, and don’t find the hundred thousand francs. Is that right, Gradut?”

“That’s right!”

“Time passes, and Gradut grows impatient. I bet he even starts wondering if he hasn’t been hoaxed, wondering if the hundred thousand francs really exists. Emma swears it does. But what’s the use of that, if it isn’t discovered? They start searching again. Gradut has had enough. He knows he will be accused — he wants to be off. Emma wants to go with him.”

“Excuse me, but—” the magistrate murmured.

“Later! As I was saying, she wants to be off with him, and, as he has no wish to be encumbered with a woman who hasn’t even any money, he gets out of it by punching her on the jaw. Then, once he’s on shore, he cuts the mooring ropes of the barge. Is that right, Gradut?”

This time Gradut was slow to reply.

“That’s almost all there is,” Maigret concluded. “If they had discovered the money, they would have gone off together, or they would have tried to make the old man’s death look like suicide. As they didn’t find it, Gradut, scared out of his wits, roams around the countryside trying to hide.

“As for Emma, she comes to find the boat drifting on the current, and the corpse swinging beside her. No hope left. Not even a chance of getting away... Claessens would have to be wakened to pole the boat along... Everything’s gone wrong. And she, in turn, decides to kill herself. Only she hasn’t enough courage, so she takes a drink, chooses a soft sheet from the bed...”

“Is that right, Gradut?” the magistrate asked, watching the wretch.

“Since the Inspector says so...”

“But wait a moment...” the magistrate retorted. “What is there to prove that he didn’t find the savings, and that, just to keep the money...?”

At that Maigret merely stretched out a foot and pushed away some pieces of cement, revealing a neat hiding place containing Belgian and French gold coins. “Now you understand?”

“Almost,” the magistrate murmured, without conviction.

And Maigret, refilling his pipe, grumbled, “One ought to have known in the first place that the bottoms of old barges are repaired with cement... Nobody told me that.”

Then, with a sudden change of tone, “The best of it is that I’ve counted it, and it does in fact amount to one hundred thousand francs... Queer kind of couple, don’t you think?”