Maigret and the Ghost

by Georges Simenon

  ‘Have you been painting for long, madame?’

  Instead of replying directly, she explained:

  ‘It’s hard to live in a house full of artworks, with a husband whose only passion is paintings, without being tempted to wield a brush. Since I can’t compete with the masters I see in front of me from morning till night, I had to content myself with abstract painting. Whatever you do, don’t ask me what my daubs represent …’

  The years spent in England and Paris had not completely eradicated her southern accent, and Maigret was increasingly attentive to the slightest nuances.

  ‘You were born in Nice?’

  ‘You were told that as well?’

  Looking her straight in the eye, it was his turn to send her a signal.

  ‘I’m very fond of the Cathedral of Sainte-Réparate …’

  She didn’t blush but gave an imperceptible sign that she had got the message.

  ‘I see you know the city …’

  With those words he had just evoked the old town of Nice, the poorest neighbourhood with narrow streets where the sun rarely penetrated and washing was strung between the buildings all year round.

  He was almost certain now that that was where she had been born, in one of those decrepit houses into which fifteen or twenty families were crammed and whose staircases and courtyards teemed with hordes of brats.

  It even seemed to him that she was implicitly admitting it by her attitude and that the two of them had just exchanged something akin to a masonic gesture, in front of the husband, who was oblivious to these subtleties.

  Maigret may well have been divisional chief inspector and head of the Police Judiciaire Crime Squad, but he was still of the people.

  She may well be living surrounded by paintings worthy of the Louvre, be dressed by the top couturiers, have appeared at society events in Manchester and London adorned with diamonds, rubies and emeralds, but she had still grown up in the shadow of Sainte-Réparate, and he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she had sold flowers on the café terraces of Place Masséna.

  Now they were both playing their parts, as if beneath the words they spoke were others, which were no business of the Dutch banker’s son.

  ‘Did your husband build this magnificent studio for you?’

  ‘Oh! No … When he built this house, he didn’t know me … He had a very dear woman friend who was a real painter, unlike me, and who still exhibits in art galleries … I wonder why he didn’t marry her … She probably wasn’t young enough? … What do you say, Norris?’

  ‘I don’t remember …’

  ‘You see how polite and tactful he is!’

  ‘I asked you earlier if you had been painting for long.’

  ‘I don’t know … A few months …’

  ‘Do you spend part of your days in this studio?’

  ‘This is a real interrogation,’ she joked. ‘It’s obvious from your question that you aren’t a woman and mistress of a house … If you were to ask me, for example, what I did yesterday at such-and-such a time, I would probably find it hard to reply … I am lazy … and I’m sure that for lazy people, the days go faster than for others, even though others would claim the opposite.

  ‘I get up late … I linger … I chat to my maid … The cook needs my instructions … Lunchtime comes round and I don’t even feel I’ve begun to live …’

  ‘You’re talking a lot, darling …’

  And Maigret:

  ‘What I didn’t know was that it was possible to paint at night …’

  This time, there was no doubt that the Jonkers exchanged a look. The husband answered first.

  ‘Perhaps that applied to the Impressionists because what interested them was the play of sunlight, but I know modern painters who consider that artificial light intensifies the colours by several tones …’

  ‘Is that why you paint at night, madame?’

  ‘I paint when I feel like it.’

  ‘And you feel like it after dinner, remaining at your easel until two o’clock in the morning …’

  She tried to smile.

  ‘Well, you certainly seem to know everything there is to know …’

  He pointed to the black curtain across the bay window overlooking Avenue Junot.

  ‘That curtain, as you can see, does not close completely. I have noticed that in every street, there’s at least one person suffering from insomnia. I was talking to your husband about it earlier. The more cultured read or listen to music. Others gaze out of the window …’

  Jonker now left his wife in charge of operations, as if he were no longer on his own territory. Anxious, he pretended to be only half listening to the conversation and, two or three times, went to stand in front of the panorama of Paris.

  The sky was growing paler and paler, turning an increasingly luminous white, especially in the west, where it was almost possible to see the sun going down.

  ‘Are your paintings in these cupboards?’

  ‘No … Do you want to check? … I don’t mind your being nosy … After all, you’re doing your job.’

  She opened one of the cupboards, which contained a jumble of rolls of drawing paper, tubes of paint, more bottles and tin cans like those on the table.

  In the second cupboard there was nothing but three blank canvases with the label of a shop in Rue Lepic.

  ‘Are you disappointed? Did you hope to find a skeleton?’

  She was alluding to the English saying that every family has a skeleton in the cupboard.

  ‘It takes a long time for a body to become a skeleton,’ he replied with a frown. ‘For the time being, Lognon is still in a hospital bed …’

  ‘Who are you talking about? What a funny name!’

  ‘An inspector …’

  ‘The one who was attacked last night?’

  ‘Are you certain, madame, that you were in your bedroom when the shot was fired, the three shots, to be exact?’

  ‘Monsieur Maigret,’ Jonker broke in, ‘I think that now you’re going too far …’

  ‘In that case, answer me yourself. Madame Jonker spends part of her time painting, especially in the evenings and often late into the night … But I find her in a studio that is almost empty.’

  ‘Is there a French law that makes it obligatory to furnish a studio?’

  ‘One might expect, at the very least, to find a certain number of paintings here, finished or unfinished … What do you do with your works, madame?’

  Did not the signal she sent her husband mean that she was leaving it up to him to reply?

  ‘Mirella has no pretensions of being an artist …’

  He heard her first name for the first time. In the past, she must have been called Mireille.

  ‘She generally destroys her works as soon as they are finished—’

  ‘One moment, Monsieur Jonker … I apologize once again for appearing finicky … I have spent time with painters … If they destroy a painting, how do they do it?’

  ‘They cut it up, burn it or throw it in the dustbin …’

  ‘But before that?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I am surprised, given that you are such a great art lover. Are you saying they throw away the frame as well? … Now there are three frames in that cupboard, all of them new …’

  ‘My wife sometimes gives the paintings she is the least dissatisfied with to friends …’

  ‘Are they the ones that someone comes and collects in the evenings?’

  ‘In the evenings or during the day …’

  ‘If it is a question of your wife’s works, then she is more prolific than she led me to believe.’

  ‘There are others …’

  ‘Do you still need me?’ asked Madame Jonker. ‘Why don’t we go downstairs? I’ll have some tea served.’

  ‘Not right away, madame. Your husband was kind enough to show me around the house, but he hasn’t shown me what is behind that door yet …’

  A solid dark oak door, at the back of
the studio.

  ‘Who knows? We might at last find some of your paintings.’

  There was a tension, electricity in the air. Their voices became more muted, more trenchant.

  ‘I’m afraid not, Monsieur Maigret.’

  ‘Why are you so certain?’

  ‘Because that door hasn’t been opened for months, if not years … It used to be the bedroom of the person my wife mentioned, let us say the room where she would rest between painting bouts …’

  ‘And you preserve it like a sanctuary? After all these years?’

  He attacked deliberately, to make his adversary lose his cool. He felt the moment had come to drive home his advantage, and, this time, exceptionally, the scene was not taking place in his office at Quai des Orfèvres but in an artist’s studio with a panoramic view of Paris.

  Jonker’s fists were clenched, but he still maintained his composure.

  ‘I am convinced, Monsieur Maigret, that if I were to turn up at your home unannounced, if I were to search high and low, if I asked your wife question upon question, I would find many details of your private life strange, if not inexplicable. You see, each one of us has our own way of thinking and behaviour which others find incomprehensible.

  ‘This house is fairly large. I devote myself almost entirely to my paintings … Our social life is very limited, and my wife, as she told you, casually occupies herself by painting … Is it surprising that she does not attach a great deal of importance to what happens to her canvases, whether she burns them, throws them in the dustbin or gives them to friends?’

  ‘What friends?’

  ‘I am obliged to answer your question as I already did in my study. It would not be very gentlemanly of me to be indiscreet and expose others to the unpleasantness we have been caused by shots fired in our street by strangers …’

  ‘To go back to that door …’

  ‘I don’t know how many rooms your apartment has, Monsieur Maigret. This house has thirty-two. Four servants come and go. It has happened that a maid has been fired for dishonesty …

  ‘That a key should get lost under these conditions will not surprise anyone in our circles …’

  ‘And you didn’t have a new one made?’

  ‘It didn’t occur to me.’

  ‘Are you certain that the key is not in the house?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge … If it is, one of these days we will find it in the most unexpected place.’

  ‘May I use this telephone?’

  Because there was a handset on the table. Maigret had noticed that there was one in most rooms, probably for both external and internal communications.

  ‘What do you intend to do?’

  ‘Call a locksmith.’

  ‘I don’t think I would agree to that because it seems to me that you are going beyond your remit …’

  ‘Then I shall call the public prosecutor, who will send me an official search warrant.’

  The husband and wife exchanged glances again. It was Mirella who went over to the cupboard, carrying the stool she had taken from next to the easel. She clambered on to it, swept her hand across the top of the cupboard and, when she withdrew it, she was holding a key.

  ‘You see, Monsieur Jonker, there was one detail that struck me, or rather two connected details. The door to this studio has a lock, but, unusually, this lock is on the outside.

  ‘Earlier, while you were speaking, I noticed that it is the same with this door …’

  ‘You are at liberty to be surprised, Monsieur Maigret, and you have been continually since you entered this house. Your lifestyle and ours are too different for you to be able to understand …’

  ‘I am making an effort, you see …’

  Maigret took the key that Madame Jonker was holding out to him and walked over to the locked door. While the couple stood rooted to the spot in the vast studio like two waxworks, he jiggled the lock.

  ‘How long did you say it is since this door has been opened?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I’ll allow you to keep your distance, madame, and you can imagine why, but I would like your husband to come here …’

  Jonker walked towards the door, trying to keep up appearances.

  ‘You will notice first of all that this floor is clean, without a trace of dust, and if you touch it, you will see that in places the wood is still damp, as if it had recently been thoroughly scrubbed … Who cleaned this room, this morning or last night?’

  He heard Mirella’s voice behind him reply:

  ‘It certainly wasn’t me … You can ask the maids … Unless Carl was given instructions by my husband …’

  The room was not large. Like the bay window in the studio, the window afforded a panoramic view of Paris, and the old floral curtains were paint-stained. In places, it even looked as if someone had wiped their hands on them after painting with their fingers.

  In a corner was an iron bedstead with a mattress but no sheets or blankets.

  The most striking thing was what can only be described as graffiti. On the grubby white walls were obscene drawings of the kind found on the walls of some urinals. The difference was that instead of being drawn in pencil, they had been done with paint – green, blue, yellow and purple.

  ‘I won’t ask you, Monsieur Jonker, if you attribute these drawings to your former friend … But there’s one that makes this hypothesis indeed impossible …’

  It was, in a few thick brush-strokes, a portrait of Mirella, more animated than many of the paintings in the drawing room.

  ‘Do you expect an explanation?’

  ‘I think that would be normal. Our lifestyles, as you said, may be very different. It is possible that I find your behaviour a little hard to understand. All the same, I am convinced that even your friends, people from your world, would be very surprised to discover these … er! … these … shall we call them frescos beneath your roof.’

  Not only were there very detailed depictions of the parts of the human body that are usually concealed, but there were scenes of unbridled eroticism. In contrast, close to the bed, vertical strokes reminded Maigret of the ones that prisoners drew to keep track of time.

  ‘Was the person living here counting the days with such impatience?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You were not unaware of the existence of these graffiti?’

  ‘I glanced around this room a long time ago …’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Several months, I told you … I was shocked by what I saw and after double-locking the door, I threw the key on top of the cupboard …’

  ‘In front of your wife?’

  ‘I don’t remember …’

  ‘Do you know what is on the walls of this room, madame?’

  She nodded.

  ‘How did you feel when you saw your portrait?’

  ‘I don’t call that a portrait but a vague sketch, like any painter can hastily draw …’

  ‘I’m waiting for you two to agree on what to tell me.’

  There was a silence, and Maigret took his pipe from his pocket without being invited to do so.

  ‘I wonder,’ muttered Jonker, ‘whether it might not be better for me to call my lawyer. I am not familiar enough with French law to know whether you have the right to question us like this.’

  ‘If, instead of giving me a plausible reply straight away, you call your lawyer, tell him to come to Quai des Orfèvres because, in that case, I’m taking you there this instant.’

  ‘Without a warrant?’

  ‘With or without a warrant. If necessary, the warrant will be here in half an hour.’

  Maigret went over to the telephone.

  ‘Wait!’

  ‘Who occupied that room?’

  ‘It is ancient history … Do you not want to go downstairs and continue this conversation over a drink? I wouldn’t mind smoking a cigar and I don’t have any on me.’

  ‘On condition that Madame Jonker accompanies us.’
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br />   She walked ahead, with a weary step, as if resigned. Then came Maigret, with Jonker close behind.

  ‘Here?’ asked Mirella when they reached the drawing room.

  ‘I prefer my study.’

  ‘What can I offer you, Monsieur Maigret?’

  ‘Nothing for the time being.’

  She saw the glass he had drunk from earlier, which was still on the desk with her husband’s. Did Maigret’s refusal not indicate that the situation had changed?

  It was darker in the room, and Jonker switched on the lamps, poured himself some Curaçao and shot his wife a questioning look.

  ‘No. I’d rather have a whisky.’

  He was the first to sit down, replicating almost exactly the pose he’d adopted an hour earlier. His wife remained standing, holding her glass.

  ‘Two or three years ago—’ began the art lover, cutting off the end of his cigar.

  Maigret broke in:

  ‘Have you noticed that you are never precise? Since I’ve been here, you have not once given a date or a name, other than names of long-dead painters … You speak of a few weeks, a few months, a few years, early or late evening …’

  ‘Maybe because I do not concern myself with time? Remember I don’t have to keep office hours and, until today, I have never had to give an account of myself to anyone.’

  He was becoming aggressive again, his exaggerated disdain ringing false. Maigret caught, on his wife’s face, an expression of anxiety, of disapproval.

  ‘You, my dear,’ he thought, ‘you know from experience that there’s no point playing that little game with the police …’

  Was it in Nice, in her youth, that she’d had dealings with the law, or was it in England, or elsewhere?

  ‘You are free to believe me or not, Monsieur Maigret … I repeat that two or three years ago, I was told about a talented young painter who was living in such dire straits that he sometimes slept in the street and rummaged through the dustbins for food.’

  ‘You say you were told about this young man. Was it by a friend or by an art dealer?’

  Jonker made as if brushing away a fly.

  ‘What does it matter! I don’t remember. The fact was I was ashamed to have this studio that served no purpose—’

  ‘So your wife didn’t paint at the time?’