"Did she bring you here?" his uncle questioned.
For Émile, definitely, could not remain long without expressing his mood. He swallowed some drops of an unspecified medication, drank from a glass of a little-known brand of mineral water, and nibbled a diet biscuit. "I'm waiting for your answer."
"You'll go on bellyaching anyway!"
The uncle complained, indeed, "Initially, I would like you to show yourself more respectful. Furthermore, I have well the right to worry when I see my nephew, twenty years old, unable to do any kind of work, but playing the gigolo with an actress."
He turned to Maigret. "For this boy is the lover of a kept woman! You see his head! Some days he can't even hold it up, and I just wonder how he will finish."
"Émile!" begged Françoise, who sniffled.
Oscar continued to look at the Chief Inspector with the air of saying, "Did I lie to you? Is my brother half mad or not?"
As for Henri, he retorted, "It's not me who makes me come out here each weekend!"
Maigret, on his side, thought to himself, "You, my young man, if I'm not completely mistaken, are a devotée of cocaine!" And it was from this moment that, contrary to his habit, he started to make notes in the large black note-book which never left him.
These notes, by Sunday at midday, were as follows:
Charming family! They cultivate hatred like others the middle-class virtues. I wonder who among them doesn't hate all the rest, if not someone in particular.
Émile Grosbois is a maniac who plays the domestic tyrant and who has an atrocious fear of dying and losing money. Like all tyrants, he's wary of those around him, spends his time spying on them, suspecting them of the blackest intentions.
Oscar has some vice, or mania. His brother referred to it. But what is it exactly? He must be as miserly as Émile. Émile, as almost always arrives between twins, has some terrible power over him, and Oscar doesn't dare to shake the yoke.
Françoise is afraid of her two brothers. She suffers all the pain of the anger of the house and the faults of her children.
Éliane, rather than face the storms and suffer from all this meanness, leads her life her own way, egotistically. Last night, I heard a noise from her room. I'm persuaded that the young man from the train came to join her. Her uncles must be afraid of her, for if she decides to marry, it's almost certain that she'll claim her share of the fortune.
As for Henri, he's weak, a highly-strung person who will be ruined quickly if he continues to devote himself to drugs. Easy prey for an expert woman who gives him the illusion of the good life."
Hadn't one of them sent Émile Grosbois the threatening note, and wasn't it necessary to believe that this threat would really be put into execution? The day before, in the office of the Chief of the P. J., the two men did not give it much credence, rather smelling in it a rotten trick, or even a strange maneuver by Émile Grosbois himself. But since Maigret had been in the house, he no longer took things so lightly, and what had started as discomfort had darkened to anxiety.
For it was difficult to imagine, within the radiant framework of the border of the Seine, where Sunday had brought whole flotillas of canoes and tight rows of lined-up fishermen, an atmosphere more choking that that of the Grosbois villa. Nothing was clear, clean, or sincere! And if the walls sweated moisture, if the wallpaper fell apart, if the kitchen were dirtier than in the worst greasy spoon, the inhabitants were in harmony with the decor.
On this subject too, Maigret had taken notes, for he foresaw that at a certain time, the least details would have their importance. It was, so to speak, a list of the "brawls":
1. Saturday, tea time, Oscar reproaches Émile for his medication mania and Émile refers to a secret vice of his brother.
2. At dinner, the first match between Émile and Éliane.
3. Émile attacks Henri who responds in kind.
4. In the kitchen, a little afterwards, an argument between Babette and Françoise. It's Babette who raises her voice. What's the subject of this argument? Immediately afterwards, Françoise, in tears, goes up to lie down, hugging the walls.
5. This morning, in the garden, a discussion between Henri and Éliane. Henri seems to suspect that his sister received a young man in her room and he speaks to her vehemently. Éliane responds in the same tone. They both become silent at the approach of their uncle Émile.
6. Less than a quarter of an hour later, in a corridor on the first floor, Émile, furious, goes at Françoise.
7. Almost at the same time, Oscar approaches me furtively and whispers, "I warned you! One day or another, it will be necessary to have him committed. This life is not possible any more."
At least all the family has gotten accustomed to breathing this atmosphere! As for Maigret, he felt as gloomy and depressed as he'd ever been. Was it really possible that people who had fortune and health had so little common sense as to waste their existence in this way? What underlying evil corroded them? And how did one of them avoid suddenly bursting out laughing while exclaiming, "Enough of these stupidities! Let's cease this senseless bickering, spying on each other, hating each other. There's the sun! It's Sunday! Life is beautiful!"
But no! Only Éliane reacted in that manner, in the sense that, without worrying about the others, magnificently impudent in her bathing suit, she went running towards the river where one immediately saw her in a canoe, in the company of her young man.
Henri was lying in the tall grass, close to a ditch, and when Maigret discovered him, he regarded him with vague eyes. The Chief Inspector wanted to sit down nearby, to start a conversation. "Tell me, my friend, it seems that your uncles don't make your life so easy…"
Henri didn't answer at first. He chewed a bit of straw and his dilated pupils showed that he'd just drugged himself.
"It's true that you'll soon be old enough to take your father's place…"
"What business is it of yours?"
"Maybe it's none of my business, but I will point out to you that it was your uncle Émile who begged me to come to this house where, in fact, the stay is not particularly jolly."
"So much the worse for you!"
Maigret knew that these young people tended to be aggressive, always on the offensive, but not necessarily bad. "As you wish," he murmured, while moving away.
There was nothing in the house to pass the time. One did, all things considered, literally nothing.
The two brothers, who were ready, in their gray alpaca suits, since eight o'clock in the morning, would sit down for a moment in an armchair in the garden; then one would wander about the house, undoubtedly in search of someone to rebuke; then they would find each other again and exchange some idle words, during which time Françoise worked in the kitchen with Babette.
They were there on principle, because they had a country house and it had been decided, once and for all, that the whole family would pass their weekends on this property. It didn't matter that everyone was bored! Essentially, it was to be there, around Uncle Émile, who took a malicious pleasure in spying on his small world and discovering the smallest infractions of the rules that he had enacted.
"What can Oscar's vice be?" Maigret wondered for the hundredth time, examining the little man with the rat's head. He doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink. Miserly as he is, as both brothers are, it would astonish me to see him running after girls."
The answer was provided to him before lunch. The Chief Inspector was forced to do as the others, going and coming, sometimes in the garden, sometimes in the house. Around ten o'clock, Babette went up to do the rooms. Maigret, walking the corridor on the first floor, had seen a half-opened door and, through the opening, Oscar, who held the maid in his arms, or rather who… The eyes of the Chief Inspector sparkled. It was unexpected without being so. He should have suspected that, in such a family, one did not have to expect anything sensational.