Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse

by Georges Simenon

  ‘Monsieur Josselin, of course, in the middle … He’s a bit fatter in the photo than the man who came in the other day, but that’s definitely him …’

  ‘What about the others? … The people on his right and on his left?’

  Émile shook his head.

  ‘No. I’ve never seen them … He’s the only one I recognize.’

  ‘What will you have?’ Maigret asked Lapointe.

  ‘Anything.’

  He looked at the reddish dregs in the doctor’s glass.

  ‘Is that port? … The same for me, waiter.’

  ‘And for you, inspector?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you … I think we’ll have a bite to eat here.’

  He didn’t feel like going home to Boulevard Richard-Lenoir for lunch. A little later they moved into the restaurant section.

  ‘She won’t say anything,’ complained Maigret, who’d ordered a choucroute. ‘Even if I summon her to Quai des Orfèvres and question her for hours she’ll keep her mouth shut.’

  He resented Madame Josselin and at the same time he pitied her. She had just lost her husband in tragic circumstances, her entire life had been turned upside-down, and overnight she had become a woman on her own in an apartment that was too big, but that didn’t stop the police from questioning her relentlessly.

  What secret was she determined to keep at all costs? Although everyone’s entitled to privacy, when a tragedy occurs, society demands an explanation.

  ‘What do you plan to do, chief?’

  ‘I don’t know … Find that man, of course … He’s not a thief … If he was the person who went and murdered Josselin the other night, he must have, or believe he has, compelling reasons.

  ‘The concierge knows nothing … In the six years she’s been there, she’s never noticed any suspicious-looking visitors … This possibly goes back further in the past …

  ‘I can’t remember where she said that the previous concierge – who’s her aunt – went to live out her old age … I’d like you to ask her, then find that woman and question her.’

  ‘Supposing she lives in the country, in the middle of nowhere?’

  ‘It might be worth going there or asking the local police to speak to her … Unless in the meantime someone decides to talk.’

  Lapointe left too, stepping out into the drizzle, the framed photograph under his arm, while Maigret took a taxi to Boulevard Brune. The Fabres’ apartment building was just as he had imagined: a huge, flat, dreary edifice which, although only a few years old, already appeared shabby.

  ‘Doctor Fabre? Fourth floor on the right … You’ll see a copper name plate on the door … If you’re here for Madame Fabre, she’s just gone out.’

  To her mother’s, probably, to finish sending out the announcements.

  He stood rigidly in the narrow lift, pressed an electric buzzer and the little maid who opened the door automatically looked to his side, glancing up and down as if she expected him to have a child with him.

  ‘Who do you want to see?’

  ‘Doctor Fabre.’

  ‘He’s holding his surgery.’

  ‘Be so good as to give him my card. I won’t detain him for long.’

  ‘Come this way …’

  She opened the door of a waiting room where there were half a dozen mothers with children of various ages, and all eyes fixed on him.

  He sat down, almost intimidated. There were building blocks on the floor and picture books on a table. A woman was rocking her baby, who was almost purple from screaming, keeping her eyes glued to the consulting-room door. Maigret knew they were all wondering:

  ‘Is he going to be asked in before us?’

  And because of his presence, they stopped talking. The wait lasted nearly ten minutes and when the doctor finally opened the door to his consulting room, he turned to Maigret.

  He wore thick glasses which emphasized the tiredness in his eyes.

  ‘Come in … I’m sorry I can’t give you much time … Is it not my wife you have come to see? … She’s at her mother’s.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Have a seat.’

  There was a set of baby scales, a glass-fronted cabinet full of nickel-plated instruments, and a sort of padded table covered with a sheet and an oilcloth. There was a jumble of papers on the desk, and books were piled on the mantelpiece and on the floor in one corner.

  ‘How can I help?’

  ‘Forgive me for disturbing you in the middle of your surgery, but I didn’t know where I could find you alone.’

  Fabre frowned.

  ‘Why alone?’ he asked.

  ‘To be honest, I don’t know. I find myself in a disagreeable situation and I thought you might be able to help me … You regularly visit your parents-in-law’s home, so you must know their friends …’

  ‘They had very few.’

  ‘Have you ever met a man in his forties, dark hair, a fairly good-looking fellow?’

  ‘Who is he?’

  He too seemed to be on the defensive.

  ‘I don’t know. I have reason to believe that your father-in-law and your mother-in-law both knew a man answering to this general description.’

  The doctor stared vacantly through his lenses at a point in space. Maigret gave him time to think, and eventually grew impatient.

  ‘Well?’

  As if surfacing from a dream, Fabre asked him:

  ‘What? What do you want to know?’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘I don’t see who you mean. Generally, when I went to their home, it was in the evening to keep my father-in-law company while the women went to the theatre.’

  ‘But all the same, you know their friends …’

  ‘Some of them … Not necessarily all …’

  ‘I thought they seldom entertained.’

  ‘Very seldom, that’s true …’

  It was exasperating. He looked everywhere except in Maigret’s direction and he seemed to be finding the conversation a painful ordeal.

  ‘My wife used to see a lot more of her parents than I did … My mother-in-law came here almost daily … when I was either in my consulting room or at the hospital.’

  ‘Did you know that Monsieur Josselin used to bet on the horses?’

  ‘No. I thought he rarely went out in the afternoons.’

  ‘He played at the local PMU.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘His wife didn’t know either, apparently. So, he didn’t tell her everything.’

  ‘Why would he have told me about it? I was only his son-in-law.’

  ‘Madame Josselin, meanwhile, kept certain things secret from her husband.’

  He did not protest. He seemed to be saying to himself, like at the dentist’s: A few more minutes and it’ll be over …

  ‘One afternoon this week, Tuesday or Wednesday, she met a man in a brasserie on Boulevard de Montparnasse—’

  ‘That’s none of my business, is it?’

  ‘You’re not surprised?’

  ‘I assume she had her reasons for meeting him.’

  ‘Monsieur Josselin had met the same man in the same brasserie that morning, and seemed to know him well … That doesn’t mean anything to you?’

  The doctor took some time before shaking his head, looking perturbed.

  ‘Now listen to me, Monsieur Fabre. I understand that you are in a delicate situation. Like any man who gets married, from that moment on you became part of a family that you didn’t know before.

  ‘That family inevitably has its little secrets. It is highly unlikely that you wouldn’t have discovered some of them. It is of no importance so long as no crime is committed. But your father-in-law has been murdered and you were very nearly the main suspect.’

  He did not object, did not react at all. There could have been a glass partition between them which prevented words from being heard.

  ‘This isn’t a financially motivated crime. It was no burglar caught red-handed who killed Monsieur Josselin. He knew the ap
artment as well as you did, the household’s routines, the place of each object. He knew that your wife and her mother were at the theatre that evening and that you would probably be spending the evening with your father-in-law.

  ‘He knew where you live, and it is most likely he who telephoned here so that the maid would call you, and who sent you to Rue Julie … Do you agree?’

  ‘It sounds plausible …’

  ‘You said yourself that the Josselins entertained seldom and had no close friends so to speak.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Could you swear to me that you have no idea who this man could be?’

  The doctor’s ears had turned red and his face looked more exhausted than ever.

  ‘I’m sorry, inspector, but there are children waiting.’

  ‘You refuse to speak?’

  ‘If I had any specific information to give you …’

  ‘You mean you have suspicions, but they aren’t precise enough?’

  ‘Take it as you wish … May I remind you that my mother-in-law has just suffered a terrible shock and that she’s a very highly-strung person, even if she doesn’t show her emotions.’

  He stood up and went over to the door that opened into the passage.

  ‘Don’t hold it against me …’

  He did not proffer his hand but simply nodded goodbye. The little maid appeared as if by magic and showed Maigret out of the apartment.

  He was furious, not only with the young paediatrician but with himself, because he had the feeling that he’d gone about things the wrong way. Fabre was probably the only member of the family who could have talked, but Maigret had got nothing out of him.

  No! There was one thing: Fabre hadn’t registered any surprise when Maigret had mentioned his mother-in-law’s meeting with the stranger in the brasserie. It hadn’t shocked him. Nor had it surprised him to learn that Josselin had met the same man, in secret, in the gloom of the same brasserie.

  He envied Lucas, who had already finished with his Polish killer and was probably quietly writing his report.

  Maigret walked on the pavement, watching out for a taxi, but they all had their flags down. The drizzle had turned into proper rain and once more the streets were full of glistening umbrellas.

  ‘If the man met René Josselin and his wife one after the other …’

  He tried to reason, but he lacked the foundations. Had the stranger also contacted the daughter, Madame Fabre? And why not Fabre himself?

  And why was the entire family protecting him?

  ‘Hey! … Taxi! …’

  At last he found one that was free, and hurriedly got in.

  ‘Keep driving …’

  He didn’t know where he was going yet. His initial instinct had been to ask to be taken to Quai des Orfèvres, to get back to his office and shut himself in so he could grumble to his heart’s content. Had Lapointe perhaps discovered something new? He had the feeling, without being certain, that the former concierge had moved away from Paris and was somewhere in Charente or central France.

  The driver went slowly, turning around from time to time with an inquiring look.

  ‘What shall I do at the traffic lights?’

  ‘Turn left.’

  ‘As you wish …’

  And suddenly Maigret leaned forward.

  ‘Drop me in Rue Dareau.’

  ‘Whereabouts in Rue Dareau? It’s a long street.’

  ‘On the corner of Rue du Saint-Gothard.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Maigret was exhausting all the possibilities, one after the other. He had to take his notebook out of his pocket to remind himself of Madame Josselin’s maiden name: de Lancieux … and he remembered that the father had been a retired colonel.

  ‘Excuse me, madame … How long have you been the concierge in this building?’

  ‘Eighteen years, my good sir, which dates me a bit.’

  ‘Did you ever know a former colonel and his daughter who lived around here and whose name was de Lancieux?’

  ‘Never heard of them …’

  Two, three apartment buildings. The first concierge, even though middle-aged, was too young. The second didn’t remember and the third wasn’t more than thirty years old.

  ‘You don’t know what number?’

  ‘No. I only know that it was near Rue du Saint-Gothard.’

  ‘You could ask opposite … The concierge is at least seventy … Speak up, because she’s a bit hard of hearing.’

  He almost shouted. She shook her head.

  ‘I don’t remember a colonel, no, but my memory’s gone … Since my husband was run over by a lorry, I haven’t been the same …’

  He was leaving to try elsewhere. She called him back.

  ‘Why don’t you ask Mademoiselle Jeanne?’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘She’s lived here for at least forty years … She doesn’t come down because of her legs … It’s on the sixth floor, at the end of the corridor … The door’s never locked … Knock and go in … You’ll find her in her armchair by the window.’

  And he did find her, a wizened little old woman, but her cheeks were still rosy and she had a childlike smile.

  ‘Lancieux? … A colonel? … Yes, of course I remember them … They used to live on the second floor, on the left … They had an old servant who was very grumpy and fell out with all the shopkeepers. In the end she had to do her shopping in another neighbourhood.’

  ‘The colonel had a daughter, didn’t he?’

  ‘A dark-haired girl, who wasn’t in good health. Nor was her brother, poor thing. They had to send him to the mountains because he was consumptive.’

  ‘Are you certain she had a brother?’

  ‘As sure as I can see you. And I can see you very clearly, despite my age. Why won’t you sit down?’

  ‘You don’t know what became of him?’

  ‘Who? The colonel? He put a bullet through his brain, and the whole place was topsy-turvy. It was the first time something like that had happened around here … He was ill too, cancer apparently … But even so, I don’t approve of him killing himself.’

  ‘What about his son?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What became of him?’

  ‘I don’t know … The last time I saw him was at the funeral.’

  ‘Was he younger than his sister?’

  ‘About ten years.’

  ‘You’ve never heard any news of him?’

  ‘You know, in buildings like this, people come and go … If I were to count all the families who have lived in their apartment since … Is it the young man you’re interested in?’

  ‘He’s no longer a young man …’

  ‘If he’s cured, he definitely isn’t … He’s probably married with children too.’

  She added, her eyes twinkling mischievously:

  ‘Me, I never married and that’s probably why I’ll live to be a hundred … You don’t believe me? … Come back and see me in fifteen years … I promise you I’ll still be in this armchair … What do you do for a living?’

  Maigret thought it unwise to risk giving her a shock by saying he was from the police so he merely replied, as he looked for his hat:

  ‘Research.’

  ‘Well, no one can say that you don’t dig deep into the past … I doubt there’s anyone left in the street who remembers the Lancieux … It’s for an inheritance, isn’t it? The heir’s lucky that you came across me … You can tell him … He might be generous enough to send me some sweets.’

  Half an hour later, Maigret was sitting in the office of examining magistrate Gossard. He looked relaxed and a little gloomy as he told his story in a calm, monotonous voice.

  The magistrate listened solemnly and, when Maigret had finished, there was a fairly long silence during which they could hear the water gurgling in one of the gutters of the Palais de Justice.

  ‘What do you intend to do?’

  ‘To summon them all this evening to Quai des Orfèvres. It w
ill be easier and above all less painful than at Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll talk?’

  ‘One of the three is bound to talk eventually.’

  ‘Do as you see fit.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes … Go easy on her all the same … Don’t forget that her husband—’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten, believe me. That’s why I’d rather see them in my office …’

  A quarter of Parisians were still on holiday by the sea or in the country. Others had started hunting while others still were on the roads, looking for a quiet spot for the weekend.

  Meanwhile Maigret walked slowly down the long, empty corridors, on his way down to his office.

  7.

  It was 5.55 p.m. Again, because it was Saturday, most of the offices were empty and there was no activity in the vast corridor where, at the very end, a lone man sat brooding outside the door to an office, wondering whether he’d been forgotten. The commissioner had just left, after going in to shake Maigret’s hand.

  ‘Are you going to give it a try this evening?’

  ‘The sooner the better. Tomorrow, family may be arriving from the country, because those people probably have a lot of close and distant relatives. Monday’s the funeral so in all decency I can’t choose that day …’

  For the past hour, Maigret had been occasionally pacing up and down his office, his hands behind his back, smoking one pipe after another, preparing what he hoped would be the showdown. He didn’t like the word ‘staging’. He called this ‘prepping’ as in a restaurant kitchen, and he was always anxious not to forget the slightest detail.

  At five thirty, having issued all his instructions, he went down to the Brasserie Dauphine for a large beer. It was still raining. The air was grey. He ended up drinking two beers in quick succession, as if he were expecting it to be a long while before he’d have the chance for another one.

  Back in his office, all he needed to do was wait. Eventually there was a knock at the door and it was Torrence who arrived first, looking eager and self-important, his face animated, as it always was when he was entrusted with a sensitive mission. He carefully shut the door behind him, and made it sound as if he’d pulled off a huge feat when he announced: