"It may be very clear for you, but I must say…"
"It's unimportant. Oscar has admitted it. I was sure that he wouldn't push the joke further, that he would never make an attempt on his brother's life. Unfortunately, this kind of joke, like many of its kind, led to tragedy, because it gave ideas to someone. A poor soul, the nephew, raised in this lunatic asylum, excited by cocaine, torn, exalted, angry morning and night…"
"I follow you less and less!"
"I will try to be more precise in my report, but that won't be so easy to write. In short, the young man, Henri, informed of the threat which weighed on his uncle, told himself that he could well put it into execution. Note that in that house, any of them would have done so readily. You know the story of the Mandarin[7]? If one had given to whomever, Oscar, Babette, Françoise, Éliane, the possibility, by simply pushing a button, of removing Émile…"
"Henri tried to do it by putting a strong dose of cocaine in the capsule which his uncle took at regular times. He didn't have the courage to wait for his agony. The police picked him up in Paris that same night, half dead with fear, since he'd absorbed a massive quantity of drugs and had fallen into a stupor in a sleazy dive in Montmartre."
"And that's it." Maigret wiped his brow, approached the window and breathed, with full lungs, the air of the morning.
"He's been arrested?"
"In the hospital. His uncle didn't file a complaint, frightened of the idea of the publicity resulting from public debates in the Assizes.
"So that…?"
"Nothing! My wife is furious! Émile threw up onto my trousers, which she'll have to send to the cleaners, and she spent a bad Sunday."
He lit his pipe, grumbling between two puffs which went up towards the sun, "Talk about a sympathetic villain! But those people there…"
And the chief, ironic, retorted, "The Criminal Investigation Department doesn't occupy itself only with killers, Maigret. Don't forget the other heading, that under which you will file your report."
"Which is…?"
"Investigations at the request of the families."[8]
The Chief admittedly was sure not to have heard Maigret's "Damn, then!" for he had already gone out the door.
7
In Chapter 10 of
8