Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse

by Georges Simenon

  They too could have a maid. It was Madame Maigret who had never wanted one, saying she’d feel useless if she didn’t have her housework to do. She agreed to have a cleaner come only two or three times a week to do the heavy housework, and even then, she sometimes did the job again herself.

  Was the same true of Madame Josselin? Doubtless not exactly. She was meticulous, as the state of the apartment showed, but she probably didn’t feel the need to do everything with her own hands, as Madame Maigret would.

  Why, as he ate, was he comparing the two women, who had nothing whatsoever in common?

  In Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Madame Josselin and her daughter would be eating in privacy, and Maigret imagined that they must be covertly watching one another. Might they be discussing practical details?

  Meanwhile, back at Boulevard Brune, Doctor Fabre, if he’d gone back home, which was likely, was alone with his children. He only had a young maid to look after them and do all the housework. He would bolt down his lunch before returning to his surgery, where the procession of young patients and anxious mothers would continue all afternoon without a break. Had he found someone to stay at Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs with his mother-in-law? Would she agree to having a stranger living with her?

  Maigret caught himself worrying about these things as if they were members of his own family. René Josselin was dead, and it wasn’t just a matter of finding his murderer. Little by little, those who were left behind would have to reorganize their lives.

  He would have liked to pay a visit to Boulevard Brune to get a feel for the surroundings in which Fabre lived with his wife and children. He’d been told that they were in a new building near the Cité Universitaire, and he pictured one of those anonymous apartment blocks he had seen in passing, and which he would readily have called a people hutch. A bare white façade, already grimy. Rows of uniform windows and identical apartments from top to bottom, the bathrooms one above the other, the kitchens too, and walls so thin that every sound could be heard.

  He would have sworn that the atmosphere there wasn’t as orderly as in Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, that life was less regulated, with meals at odd times, and that this was as much to do with Fabre’s character as with his wife’s lackadaisical attitude or perhaps her incompetence.

  She had been a spoiled child. Her mother still came to see her almost every day, looked after the children, took the eldest one out for walks. Did she not also try to put a little order into a life which she must consider too bohemian?

  Did the two women at the table realize that, logically, the only suspect at this point of the investigation was Paul Fabre? He was the last person known to have been alone with Josselin.

  Admittedly he couldn’t have made the telephone call asking him to go to Rue Julie, but at the hospital there were plenty of people who were devoted to him and would do him a favour. And he knew where the revolver was kept.

  And it could be argued that he had a motive. True, he wasn’t interested in money. Had it not been for his father-in-law, he would never have burdened himself with a private practice but would have dedicated all his time to the hospital where he must feel more at home than anywhere else.

  But what about Véronique? Could she be starting to regret marrying a man universally acclaimed as a saint? Did she not wish for a different life? Did not her mood at home suggest her discontent?

  After Josselin’s death, the Fabres would doubtless receive their share of the inheritance.

  Maigret tried to imagine the scene: the two men sitting at the chess board, silent and serious, like all chess players; the doctor, at some point, getting up and going over to the chest where the automatic lay in a drawer …

  He shook his head. It didn’t stack up. He couldn’t picture Fabre walking towards his father-in-law with his finger on the trigger.

  Had an argument, a quarrel turned nasty and ended up with the pair of them blowing a fuse?

  No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t see it. It didn’t fit with the two men’s temperaments.

  Besides, there was the mysterious visitor the concierge had mentioned who’d shouted ‘Aresco’.

  ‘I had a phone call from Francine Pardon,’ said Madame Maigret all of a sudden, perhaps deliberately to take his mind off things.

  He was so far away that, at first, he just stared at her blankly.

  ‘They came back from Italy on Monday. Do you remember how much they were looking forward to going away just the two of them?’

  It was the first time that the Pardons were holidaying on their own for more than twenty years. They had gone by car with the intention of visiting Florence, Rome and Naples, and returning via Venice and Milan, stopping wherever the fancy took them.

  ‘They’ve invited us for dinner next Wednesday, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Had it not become a tradition? The dinner should have been on the first Wednesday of the month but had been postponed because of the holidays.

  ‘Apparently the trip was exhausting. The traffic on the roads was as bad as on the Champs-Élysées and they spent an hour or two every night trying to find a hotel room.’

  ‘How’s their daughter?’

  ‘Well. The baby’s a delight …’

  Madame Pardon too went almost every afternoon to visit her daughter, who had got married the previous year and now had a baby that was a few months old.

  If the Maigrets had had a child, he or she would be married now, and like the other women, Madame Maigret …

  ‘Do you know what they’ve decided?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘To buy a little house by the sea or in the country, so they can spend the holidays with their daughter, their son-in-law and the child …’

  The Josselins had a house in La Baule. They lived there one month a year with their family, perhaps more. René Josselin had retired.

  It suddenly struck Maigret. The packaging manufacturer had been an active man all his life, spending most of his time in Rue du Saint-Gothard and often working late into the evening.

  He only saw his wife at mealtimes and during part of the evening.

  Because a heart attack had given him a sudden scare, he’d handed over his business almost at once.

  What would he, Maigret, do if he retired and found himself with his wife all day? It was already decided, because they were planning to live in the country and they had already bought their house.

  But what if he had to stay in Paris?

  Each morning, Josselin went out at a set time, around nine, as if leaving for the office. According to the concierge, he headed for the Luxembourg Gardens, with the regular, cautious step of someone with a heart condition.

  The Josselins didn’t have a dog, and that surprised Maigret. He could picture René Josselin walking his dog on a lead. There wasn’t a cat in the apartment either.

  He bought the newspapers. Did he sit on a bench in the gardens to read them? Did he ever enter into a conversation with one of his neighbours? Was he in the habit of meeting the same person, man or woman?

  Maigret had instructed Lapointe to go to Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs and ask for a photograph of Josselin, and then to question the local traders and the Luxembourg Gardens park keepers on the off chance, to try and piece together the victim’s morning movements.

  Would that yield any results? He preferred not to think about it. The man was dead. He had never seen him alive, and he was becoming obsessed with this family, whose existence he had been unaware of the previous day.

  ‘Will you be coming home for dinner?’

  ‘I think so. I hope so.’

  He went to wait for his bus at the corner of Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. He stayed outside on the bus platform, smoking his pipe and looking about him at the men and women leading their ordinary lives as if the Josselins didn’t exist and as if there wasn’t, in Paris, a man who for some unfathomable reason had killed another.

  Once in his office, he threw himself into tedious paperwork to avoid
having to think about the case, and he must have succeeded because, at around three o’clock, he was surprised, on answering the telephone, to hear Torrence’s excited voice.

  ‘I’m still in the neighbourhood, chief …’

  He almost asked:

  ‘What neighbourhood?’

  ‘I thought it better to phone you than to return to the office because you might decide to come yourself … I’ve discovered something—’

  ‘Are the two women still in their apartment?’

  ‘All three. Madame Manu’s there too.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘We brought in a locksmith and examined all the doors, including the ones that open on to the backstairs. None of them look as if they’ve been forced. We didn’t stop at the fifth floor. We went up to the sixth, where the maids’ rooms are.’

  ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Hold on. Most of them were locked. As we were bending over one of the locks, the next door opened a crack and we were amazed to see a young woman stark naked. She wasn’t embarrassed at all but stared at us curiously. A beautiful girl, by the way, dark-haired, with huge eyes, a very pronounced Spanish or South American type.’

  Maigret waited, and did a doodle of a woman’s torso on his blotting pad.

  ‘I asked her what she was doing there, and she answered in poor French that it was her hour off and that she was the Arescos’ maid.

  ‘ “Why are you trying to open that door?” she asked suspiciously.

  ‘And she added, without sounding alarmed at the thought: “Are you thieves?”

  ‘I told her who we were. She didn’t know that one of the residents had been killed during the night.

  ‘ “The kind, fat gentleman who always smiled at me on the stairs?”

  ‘Then she said:

  ‘ “It’s not their new maid, I hope?”

  ‘I didn’t understand. We must have looked ridiculous and I felt like asking her to put some clothes on.

  ‘ “What new maid?”

  ‘ “They must have a new maid, because I heard a noise in the room last night …” ’

  Maigret abruptly stopped doodling. He was furious not to have thought of it. To be more exact, he had started to think of it the previous night. There had been a moment when an idea had begun forming in his mind and he’d felt he was on the brink of making a discovery, as he had said to Lapointe. Someone, Detective Chief Inspector Saint-Hubert, or the examining magistrate, had spoken to him and afterwards he had completely lost his thread.

  The concierge had stated that a stranger had entered the building shortly after Doctor Fabre had left. He had given the Arescos’ name, whereas the Arescos claimed they hadn’t had any visitors and that no member of the family had gone out.

  Maigret had had the residents questioned, but he’d neglected to go behind the scenes, to the servants’ floor.

  ‘Do you see, chief? … Wait! … There’s more … That lock hadn’t been forced either … So I went down to the third floor, via the backstairs, and I asked Madame Manu if she had the key to the maid’s room … She reached up to a nail in the wall to the right of a shelf, and then stared at the wall and the nail in shock.

  ‘ “Goodness, it’s gone …”

  ‘She told me she’d always seen the key to the sixth floor hanging from that nail.

  ‘ “Was it still there yesterday?” I pressed her.

  ‘ “I couldn’t say for certain, but I’m almost positive … I’ve only ever been up once, with Madame, when I first came, to collect the sheets and blankets and stick paper around the windows to stop the dust getting in …” ’

  It was typical of Torrence who, once he was on the scent, followed it as tenaciously as a bloodhound.

  ‘I went back upstairs, where my locksmith was waiting for me. The young Spanish woman, whose name is Dolores and whose hour off must have been up, had gone back downstairs.

  ‘The lock is a basic, mass-produced model and my companion unlocked it easily.’

  ‘You didn’t ask Madame Josselin’s permission?’

  ‘No. I didn’t see her. You told me not to disturb her unnecessarily. But we didn’t need her. Well, chief, we’re getting somewhere! Someone spent at least part of the night in the maid’s room. The paper around the window was ripped, the window had been opened. It was still open when we went in. What’s more, you can see that a man’s lain on the mattress and rested his head on the bolster. And lastly, on the floor, there are cigarette ends. I say a man because there’s no lipstick on the butts.

  ‘I’m calling you from a bar called Le Clairon, in Rue Vavin. I thought you’d want to see this—’

  ‘I’m on my way!’

  Maigret was relieved not to have to think about Doctor Fabre any more. Everything had changed, or so it seemed. The concierge had not been mistaken. Someone had come in from the outside. That someone plainly knew not only about the revolver drawer but also about the existence of the maid’s room and where the key hung in the kitchen.

  So, the previous night, while the investigation was stalling on the third floor, the murderer had probably been in the building, lying on a mattress and smoking cigarettes as he waited for daybreak and the coast to be clear.

  Since then, had there been a police officer on duty outside the front door at all times? Maigret didn’t know. That was the job of the neighbourhood superintendent. There had been one when he’d come back from Rue du Saint-Gothard, but it was the concierge’s husband who had requested it after the building had been besieged by reporters and photographers.

  In any case, in the morning, there were bound to be a number of comings and goings, even if they were only deliveries. The concierge had been busy with the post, her baby and the reporters, some of whom had managed to sneak up to the third floor.

  Maigret called Criminal Records.

  ‘Moers? Would you send me one of your men with his fingerprinting kit? There might be some additional clues. Tell him to bring all his equipment … I’ll be waiting for him in my office, yes …’

  Inspector Baron knocked on his door.

  ‘I finally managed to get hold of the general secretary of the Madeleine theatre, chief. Two seats were indeed booked in Madame Josselin’s name. And the two seats were occupied. He doesn’t know by whom, but they were occupied all evening. There was almost a full house, and no one left the auditorium during the performance. Of course, there are the intervals.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Two. The first one only lasts for fifteen minutes and few people leave their seats. The second one’s longer, a good half-hour, because there’s a complicated scenery change.’

  ‘What time does that happen?’

  ‘At ten o’clock. I have the name of the couple who were sitting immediately behind 97 and 99. They’re regulars who always book the same seats, Monsieur and Madame Demaillé, Rue de la Pompe, in Passy. Shall I question them?’

  ‘You better had …’

  He didn’t want to leave anything to chance. The forensic expert from Criminal Records arrived, his equipment slung over his shoulder like a magazine photographer.

  ‘Shall I take a car?’

  Maigret nodded and followed him. They found Torrence propped up on his elbows in front of a beer, still with his locksmith, who seemed to find the whole business very amusing.

  ‘I don’t need you any more,’ said Maigret. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘How will you get in without me? I locked the door. Your inspector told me to—’

  ‘I didn’t want to take any chances,’ muttered Torrence.

  Maigret ordered a beer too, and downed it almost in one.

  ‘It would be best if the three of you waited for me here.’

  He crossed the street, entered the lift, and rang the Josselins’ bell. Madame Manu opened the door as she had that morning, without taking off the chain, recognized him straight away and let him in.

  ‘Which of the ladies do you wish to see?’

  ‘Madame Josselin. Unless
she’s resting.’

  ‘No. The doctor came earlier and insisted she go back to bed but she refused. It’s not her style to stay in bed during the daytime, unless she’s very ill.’

  ‘No one has been here?’

  ‘Only Monsieur Jouane, who stayed just a few minutes. Then your inspector, the fat one, who asked me for the key for upstairs. I swear to you I didn’t touch it. As a matter of fact, I’ve been wondering why that key was left on the nail, seeing as no one used the room any more.’

  ‘No one’s ever used it since you’ve been working for Madame Josselin?’

  ‘What would they have used it for, since there aren’t any other servants?’

  ‘Madame Josselin could have had one of their friends to stay, an acquaintance, even if it was only for a night?’

  ‘If they’d had a friend to stay, I imagine they’d have given them Madame Fabre’s room. I’ll go and tell Madame—’

  ‘What is she doing?’

  ‘I think they’re making the list of people to send the announcement to.’

  The women weren’t in the drawing room. After keeping Maigret waiting for a good while, they appeared together, and he had the strange sense that perhaps they stayed glued to one another because each was suspicious of the other.

  ‘Forgive me for troubling you again, ladies. I presume Madame Manu has informed you?’

  They observed each other before opening their mouths in unison, but it was Madame Josselin who spoke.

  ‘It never occurred to me to put that key away,’ she said, ‘and I’d almost forgotten about it. What does this mean? Who could have taken it? Why?’

  Her gaze was even more fixed, even darker than that morning. Her hands betrayed her jitteriness.

  ‘So as not to bother you,’ explained Maigret, ‘my inspector took it upon himself to open the door of the maid’s room. Please don’t be angry with him. Especially since, in so doing, he has probably given the investigation a new lead.’

  He watched her, alert to her reactions, but she gave no indication of what was going on inside her.

  ‘What do you need to know?’

  ‘How long is it since you last went up to the sixth floor?’