Maigret Hesitates

by Georges Simenon

  This did not seem to bother him unduly.

  ‘Can you think of any reason why someone might have written that letter?’

  He looked at Maigret, first with amazement, then with a slightly disappointed air.

  ‘Any reason? I wasn’t expecting that word, Monsieur Maigret. I understand that you had to ask the question. But why “reason”? I suppose everyone has one, wittingly or unwittingly.’

  ‘Are there a lot of people living in this apartment?’

  ‘Living day and night, not very many. My wife and I, of course.’

  ‘Do you have separate bedrooms?’

  Parendon gave him a very brief glance, as if Maigret had scored a point.

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘I don’t know. I asked the question without thinking.’

  ‘You’re right, we do have separate bedrooms. My wife likes going to bed late and staying in bed in the mornings, whereas I’m an early riser. Feel free, by the way, to have a look around any of the rooms. I should tell you, before you start, that I didn’t choose this place, or have anything to do with the furnishings. When my father-in-law’ — a glance at the Chief Justice’s portrait — ‘retired to the Vendée, there was a kind of family council. There are four sisters, all of them married. We divided the inheritance in advance, so to speak, and my wife received this apartment with all its contents, including the portrait and the busts.’

  He didn’t laugh or smile as he said this. It was more subtle than that.

  ‘One of her sisters will inherit the manor house in the Vendée, in the Forest of Vouvant, and the two others will divide up the securities. The Gassin de Beaulieus have been rich for a long time, so there’ll be enough for everyone … What I’m saying is that this isn’t really my home, but my father-in-law’s, and only the books, the furniture in my bedroom and this office belong to me.’

  ‘Your father is still alive, isn’t he?’

  ‘He lives almost opposite, in Rue de Miromesnil, in an apartment he’s adapted for his old age. He’s been a widower for thirty years. He used to be a surgeon.’

  ‘A famous surgeon.’

  ‘Ah, you know that, too. Then I’m sure you also know that his passion wasn’t Article 64, but women. We used to have an apartment as huge as this, but much more modern, in Rue d’Aguesseau. My brother, who’s a neurologist, lives there now with his wife … That’s it as far as the family goes. I’ve already mentioned my daughter Paulette and her brother Jacques. By the way, if you want to be in her good books, you should know that my daughter likes to be called Bambi and insists on calling her brother Gus. I assume it’ll pass. If it doesn’t, well, it doesn’t really matter … As for the domestic staff, as my wife would say, you’ve seen the butler, Ferdinand. His surname is Fauchois. He comes from the Berry, like my family. He isn’t married. His room is at the far end of the courtyard, above the garages. Lise, the maid, sleeps in the apartment, and a woman named Madame Marchand comes in every day to clean. Oh, and I nearly forgot the cook, Madame Vauquin, whose husband is a pastry cook and who insists on going home at night … Aren’t you taking notes?’

  Maigret merely smiled, then got to his feet and walked over to an ashtray large enough to empty his pipe into it.

  ‘Now for my side, if I can put it that way. You’ve seen Mademoiselle Vague. That’s her real name, and she doesn’t think it’s ridiculous. I’ve always called my secretaries by their surnames. She never talks about her private life, and I’d have to check the files to find out her address. All I know is that she goes home by Métro and doesn’t get upset if I ask her to stay late. She’s about twenty-four or twenty-five, and she’s seldom in a bad mood … To help me in my legal work, I have a very ambitious trainee named René Tortu. His office is at the end of the corridor. Last but not least, there’s the one we call the scribe, a young man of about twenty who recently arrived from Switzerland and who has, I believe, ambitions to be a playwright. He does a bit of everything. A kind of office boy. When I’m entrusted with a case, and it’s almost always a very big case, with millions at stake, even hundreds of millions, I have to work day and night for a week or several weeks. Then we go back to the old routine and I have time to …’

  He blushed and smiled.

  ‘… to think about our Article 64, Monsieur Maigret. One of these days, you really will have to tell me what you think of it. In the meantime, I’ll give instructions to everyone to let you circulate as you see fit in the apartment and to answer your questions as honestly as possible.’

  Maigret looked at him in some confusion, wondering if he was dealing with a skilful actor or, on the contrary, with a sickly little man who found consolation in a subtle sense of humour.

  ‘I’ll probably come back sometime tomorrow morning, but I shan’t disturb you.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll probably disturb you.’

  They shook hands, and it was almost a child’s hand that Maigret held in his.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to see me, Monsieur Parendon.’

  ‘Thank you for coming, Monsieur Maigret.’

  Parendon trotted after him as far as the lift.

  2.

  He was back outside in the sun, with the smell of the first days of fine weather, a slight whiff of dust already in the air, the ‘guardian angels’ of the Élysée Palace walking about in a nonchalant manner and giving him discreet signs of recognition.

  At the corner of the Rond-Point, an old woman was selling lilacs redolent of suburban gardens, and he had to resist the desire to buy some. What would he have looked like, arriving at headquarters with a cumbersome bunch of flowers?

  He felt light, with a particular kind of lightness. He had just emerged from an unknown world in which he had felt less disoriented than he might have thought. As he walked along the street, rubbing shoulders with the other pedestrians, he saw again the solemn apartment, in which the shade of the great magistrate, who had probably given formal receptions there, still lingered.

  From the first, as if to put him at his ease, Parendon had given him a kind of wink that meant:

  ‘Don’t let yourself be taken in. All this is a stage set. Even maritime law is just for show …’

  And like a toy, he had produced his Article 64, the thing that interested him more than anything else in the world.

  Unless Parendon was crafty? In any case, Maigret felt drawn to that sprightly gnome who couldn’t take his eyes off him, as if he had never seen an inspector from the Police Judiciaire before.

  He took advantage of the fine weather to walk down the Champs-Élysées as far as Place de la Concorde, where he finally took a bus. He couldn’t find one with a platform, and he had to extinguish his pipe and sit inside.

  It was the time for signing the correspondence at the Police Judiciaire, and it took him about twenty minutes to dispense with that. His wife was surprised to see him come home at six o’clock, looking quite cheerful.

  ‘What’s for dinner?’

  ‘I was thinking of making—’

  ‘Don’t make anything. We’re eating out.’

  Anywhere as long as it was out. This wasn’t a day like any other, and he was determined to keep it exceptional right to the end.

  The days were getting longer. They found a restaurant in the Latin Quarter with a terrace surrounded by a glass partition and kept pleasantly warm by a brazier. The speciality was seafood, and Maigret chose a little of almost everything, including sea urchins that had been flown up from the South that same day.

  His wife watched him with a smile.

  ‘You look as if you had a good day.’

  ‘I made the acquaintance of an odd character. An odd kind of apartment, too, with odd people …’

  ‘Is it a murder?’

  ‘I don’t know. It hasn’t been committed yet, but it could happen any day now. And if it does, I’ll find myself in a pretty tricky situation.’

  He seldom talked to her about cases in progress, and she usually learned about them more from the
newspapers and the radio than through her husband. This time, he couldn’t resist the desire to show her the letter.

  ‘Read this.’

  They were on the dessert course. With the grilled mullet, they had drunk a Pouilly fumé, and the smell of it still lingered in the air. Madame Maigret gave him a look of surprise as she handed him back the letter.

  ‘Was it a child?’ she asked.

  ‘There is a young boy in the house. I haven’t seen him yet. But not all children are young. Some are quite mature, some are even old.’

  ‘Do you think it’s for real?’

  ‘Someone wanted me to visit that apartment. Otherwise he wouldn’t have used writing paper that can only be found in two stationery shops in Paris.’

  ‘If he’s planning to commit a murder—’

  ‘He doesn’t say he’s going to commit a murder. He says there’s going to be one, but he doesn’t seem too sure who the murderer will be.’

  For once, she didn’t take him seriously.

  ‘You’ll see, it’s a hoax.’

  He paid the bill. It was so mild that they walked home, making a detour via Ile Saint-Louis.

  He found lilacs in Rue Saint-Antoine, so there ended up being some in the apartment that night after all.

  The following morning, the sun was as bright and the air as transparent, but already people weren’t paying as much attention to it. He again gathered Lucas, Janvier and Lapointe for the little briefing and immediately looked for the letter in the pile of mail.

  He wasn’t sure he would find it because the ad in Le Monde hadn’t appeared until mid-afternoon on the previous day and it had only just been published in Le Figaro.

  ‘Here it is!’ he said, waving it.

  The same envelope, the same carefully traced block capitals, the same writing paper with the letterhead cut off.

  He was no longer addressed as ‘Detective Chief Inspector’, and the tone had changed.

  You were wrong, Monsieur Maigret, to come before you received my second letter. It has got them all stirred up, and that may well bring things forward. The murder may be committed any time now, and it will be partly your fault.

  I thought you were more patient, more cautious. Do you really imagine you can discover the secrets of a household in one afternoon?

  You are more credulous and perhaps more vain than I had thought. I cannot help you any longer. All I advise is that you continue your inquiries without giving credence to what anybody tells you.

  I wish you all the best. In spite of everything, I still admire you.

  The three men could all see how embarrassed he was and how reluctant to show them the letter. They were even more embarrassed than he was at the casual way in which the anonymous writer treated their chief.

  ‘Couldn’t it be a child playing games?’

  ‘That’s what my wife said last night.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t agree.’

  No, he didn’t think this was a hoax. And yet there was nothing tragic about the atmosphere of the apartment on Avenue Marigny. Everything there was bright and neat. The butler had welcomed him with calm dignity. The secretary with the funny name was lively and friendly. As for Parendon, in spite of his strange physique, he had been quite a cheerful host.

  The idea of a hoax hadn’t occurred to Parendon either. He hadn’t objected to this intrusion into his private life. He had spoken a lot, about different subjects, especially about Article 64, but, deep down, had there been a kind of latent anxiety?

  Maigret didn’t mention it during the daily briefing. He knew that his colleagues would shrug their shoulders at the sight of him involving himself in such a bizarre affair.

  ‘Anything new in your department, Maigret?’

  ‘Janvier’s about to arrest the man who murdered the postmistress. We’re almost certain it’s him, but we thought it was best to wait and find out if he had an accomplice. The young woman who lives with him is pregnant …’

  All humdrum, everyday stuff. An hour later, he left the everyday behind on entering the building on Avenue Marigny, where the uniformed concierge waved to him through the glass door of the lodge.

  The butler, Ferdinand, asked as he took his hat:

  ‘Would you like me to tell monsieur you’re here?’

  ‘No. Take me to the secretary’s office.’

  Mademoiselle Vague! That was it! He remembered her name. She occupied a small room lined with green-painted filing cabinets and was typing on an electric typewriter of the latest model.

  ‘Is it me you want to see?’ she asked, quite unflustered.

  She stood up, looked around her and pointed to a chair near the window that looked out on the courtyard.

  ‘Unfortunately, I don’t have an armchair for you. If you’d rather, we could go to the library or the drawing room.’

  ‘I’d rather stay here.’

  From somewhere, a vacuum cleaner could be heard. Another typewriter was clattering in one of the offices. A man’s voice, not Parendon’s, was talking on the phone:

  ‘Yes, of course … I understand perfectly well, my dear friend, but the law is the law, even if it sometimes goes against common sense … Of course I talked to him about it … No, he doesn’t want to see you today or tomorrow, and besides, there’d be no point.’

  ‘Monsieur Tortu?’ Maigret asked.

  She nodded. Yes, it was the trainee they could hear speaking like this in the next room, and Mademoiselle Vague went and closed the door, cutting the sound off as if turning the dial of a radio.

  The window was still half open and a chauffeur in blue overalls was hosing down a Rolls-Royce.

  ‘Does that one belong to Monsieur Parendon?’

  ‘No, the tenants on the second floor. They’re from Peru.’

  ‘Does Monsieur Parendon have a chauffeur?’

  ‘He has to. His sight isn’t good enough to allow him to drive.’

  ‘Which car?’

  ‘The Cadillac. Madame uses it more than he does, although she also has a little English car … Is the noise bothering you? Would you rather I closed the window?’

  No. The jet of water was all part of the atmosphere, along with the spring weather and the kind of building he was now in.

  ‘Do you know why I’m here?’

  ‘All I know is that we’re all at your disposal and that we have to answer your questions, even if we find them too personal.’

  Once again, he took the first letter from his pocket. He had better have it photocopied when he got back to Quai des Orfèvres, or it would end up no more than a piece of scrap paper.

  As she read it, he examined her face. Her round horn-rimmed glasses didn’t detract from her looks. She wasn’t beautiful in the usual sense of the word, but she was pleasant. Her mouth was particularly striking, the lips full, the corners turned up in a smile.

  ‘And …?’ she said, giving him back the letter.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘What does Monsieur Parendon think?’

  ‘The same as you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That he was no more surprised by it than you seem to be.’

  She made an effort to smile, but it was clear that the blow had struck home.

  ‘Should I have reacted differently?’

  ‘When it’s announced that a murder is going to be committed in a household …’

  ‘It can happen in any household, can’t it? Before a man becomes a criminal, I assume he behaves like any other man, is like any other man, otherwise …’

  ‘Otherwise we’d arrest all future murderers in advance. You’re right.’

  The strangest thing was that she had thought of this, because few people, in the course of his long career, had expressed this idea, simple as it was, to Maigret.

  ‘I had the ad put in. This morning I received a second letter.’

  He handed it to her, and she read it with the same attention, but this time with an added touch of an
xiety.

  ‘I’m starting to understand,’ she murmured.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why you’re worried and why you’re taking personal charge of the investigation.’

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

  ‘Go ahead. I’m allowed to smoke here, too, which isn’t the case in most offices.’

  She lit a cigarette simply, without any of the flourishes that so many women affect. She smoked to relax. She sat back a little in her swivel chair. The office wasn’t like a normal commercial office. Although the table for the typewriter was made of metal, there was a very beautiful Louis XIII table right beside it.

  ‘Is Monsieur Parendon’s son the kind of boy who plays practical jokes?’

  ‘Gus? Quite the opposite. He’s intelligent, but reserved. At school, he’s always top of the class, even though he never studies.’

  ‘What are his interests?’

  ‘Music and electronics. He’s installed a sophisticated hi-fi system in his room and he subscribes to all kinds of science magazines. Look, here’s one that arrived in the post this morning. Tomorrow’s Electronics. It’s up to me to take them to his room.’

  ‘Does he go out a lot?’

  ‘I’m not here in the evenings, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘Does he have friends?’

  ‘Sometimes a classmate of his comes to listen to records or help him with experiments.’

  ‘How well does he get on with his father?’

  She seemed surprised by the question. She thought about it, then smiled apologetically.

  ‘I don’t know how to answer that. I’ve been working for Monsieur Parendon for five years. This is only my second position in Paris.’

  ‘What was the first?’

  ‘I worked in a commercial firm in Rue Réaumur. I was unhappy because the work didn’t interest me.’

  ‘Who brought you here?’

  ‘It was René — I mean Monsieur Tortu — who told me about this job.’

  ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘We used to have dinner in the same restaurant in Rue Caulaincourt.’

  ‘Do you live in Montmartre?’