A short, grey-haired man dressed in black, with a knitted woollen scarf around his neck, was still holding in his hand the glass of rum someone had gone to fetch him from the brasserie opposite. He was the cashier of a large household appliances store in Rue de Châteaudun.
He was telling his story for the third or fourth time, trying not to look in the direction of a human form which lay a few metres away, covered in a rough cloth.
Behind the movable barriers, like those which the city uses for processions, the crowd was pressing forward. Excited women were speaking in shrill voices.
‘As I do at the end of every month …’
Maigret had forgotten that it was the 31st.
‘… I’d gone to the bank behind the Opéra to collect the money to pay the staff …’
Maigret had seen the shop as they passed, without suspecting how big it was. The departments were spread over three floors, and there were also two basements. Three hundred people were employed there.
‘I only had six hundred metres to walk. I was holding my case in my left hand.’
‘Wasn’t it attached to your wrist with a chain?’
He wasn’t a professional collector, and no arrangements had been made for him to give the alarm, although he did have an automatic in the right-hand pocket of his overcoat.
He had crossed the street between the yellow lines and headed for Rue Taitbout, surrounded by a crowd so dense that no attack seemed possible. Suddenly, he had noticed that a man was walking very close to him, keeping pace with him. Turning his head, he had seen another man following him.
What ensued happened so fast that the cashier had barely registered it as it unfolded. What he remembered best were the words whispered in his ear:
‘If you value your life, don’t try to be clever!’
Simultaneously, his case was snatched violently from him. One of the men ran to a car that was coming from the opposite direction, hugging the kerb in slow motion. Hearing a shot, the cashier had at first thought that he was the one being shot at. Women screamed in panic. A second shot had been followed by the sound of broken glass.
There had been more shots, some said three, others four or five.
A red-faced man was standing to one side with the local chief inspector. He was in an emotional state, not sure yet if he was going to be called a hero or asked to account for his actions.
He was Officer Margeret, from the first arrondissement. Being off duty that afternoon, he was not in uniform. Why, then, did he have his automatic in his pocket? He would have to explain that eventually.
‘I was looking for my wife, who was shopping. I witnessed the hold-up. When the three men ran to the car—’
‘So there were three of them?’
‘One on each side of the cashier, another behind …’
Officer Margeret had opened fire. One of the gang had fallen to his knees, then slowly lay down on the pavement, surrounded by the legs of the women who were starting to run.
The car had sped off in the direction of Saint-Augustin. The traffic policeman blew his whistle. There was firing from the car, which soon disappeared into the traffic.
For the next two days, Maigret would barely have time to think about his quiet Swiss. Twice when Inspector Fumel phoned him, he was too busy to answer.
They had taken the names and addresses of some fifty witnesses, including the waffle seller whose stand was nearby, an invalid who played the violin and begged in the vicinity, and two of the waiters from the café opposite, as well as the café’s cashier, who claimed to have seen everything, even though the windows were steamed up.
Another man had died, a thirty-five-year-old passer-by, married with children, killed instantaneously without having any idea what was happening.
For the first time since this series of hold-ups had begun, they had a member of the gang, the one whom Officer Margeret, who by some miracle had been on the scene, had shot down.
‘My idea was to shoot him in the legs, to stop him from escaping …’
The bullet had nevertheless hit the man in the back of the neck. He was still in a coma at the Hôpital Beaujon, where he had been taken by ambulance. Lucas, Janvier and Torrence were taking turns at the door of his room, waiting for the moment when he would finally be able to speak: the doctors hadn’t given up hope of saving him.
The next day, as the driver of the police car had predicted, the streets of Paris were covered in ice. It was dark. The cars advanced very slowly. Municipal lorries were spreading sand on the main thoroughfares.
The big corridor of Quai des Orfèvres was full of people silently waiting. Maigret patiently asked each one the same questions, tracing Kabbalistic signs on a map of the area drawn up by the relevant departments.
On the evening of the hold-up, he had gone to Fontenay-les-Roses to visit the home of the gangster who had been shot down, a man named Joseph Raison, a metalworker according to his identity card.
He had found a bright, pretty apartment in a new block, a blonde young wife and two little girls of six and nine busy with their homework.
Joseph Raison, who was forty-two, really was a metalworker and worked in a factory on Quai de Javel. He owned a 2CV and every Sunday took his family to the country.
His wife claimed to know nothing, and Maigret believed her.
‘I don’t see why he would have done something like that, inspector. We were happy. We bought this apartment just two years ago. Joseph was earning a good living. He didn’t drink, almost never went out alone …’
Maigret had taken her to Beaujon, while a neighbour looked after the children. She had been able to see her husband for a few moments. Then, on the orders of the doctors and despite her insistence, she was taken back home.
Now they had to find their way through a tangle of confused and contradictory witness statements. Some had seen too much, others not enough.
‘If I talk, those people will be sure to find me.’
Nevertheless, a fairly plausible description of the two men who had surrounded the cashier emerged, especially of the one who had grabbed the case.
But it was not until late in the afternoon that one of the waiters from the café thought he recognized Fernand from a photograph he was shown.
‘He came into the café ten or fifteen minutes before the hold-up and ordered a café-crème. He was sitting at a table near the door, right up against the window.’
On the second day after the drama, Maigret obtained another testimony about Fernand: someone else claimed to have seen him on 31 January, dressed in a thick, brown coat.
It wasn’t much, but it suggested that Maigret had not been mistaken in thinking that the ex-convict was the leader of the gang.
The injured man in Beaujon had regained consciousness for a few moments, but only to mutter:
‘Monique …’
The name of his younger daughter.
It was another discovery that greatly interested Maigret: the fact that Fernand did not exclusively recruit his men from among the criminal classes.
The prosecutor’s office was phoning him every hour, and he was sending them report after report. He couldn’t leave his office without being surrounded by a swarm of reporters.
At eleven o’clock on the Friday, the corridor was at last empty. Maigret was in conversation with Lucas, who had just come back from Beaujon and was telling him about the operation that a well-known surgeon was about to attempt on the wounded man, when there was a knock at the door. He called out impatiently:
‘Come in!’
It was Fumel, who, clearly feeling he had come at the wrong moment, tried to make himself very small. He must have caught a head cold, because his nose was red and his eyes watery.
‘I can come back …’
‘Come in!’
‘I think I have a lead. Or rather, it’s the hotel agency that found it for me. I know where Cuendet was living in the past five weeks.’
It was a relief, a relaxation almost, for Maigret to
hear about his quiet Swiss.
‘In which neighbourhood?’
‘His old one. He had a room in a little hotel in Rue Neuve-Saint-Pierre.’
‘Behind the Saint-Paul church?’
A narrow old-fashioned street between Rue Saint-Antoine and the riverside. It was rare to see a car passing there, and there were only a few shops.
‘Go on.’
‘Apparently, it’s mainly used by prostitutes. All the same they do rent some rooms by the month. Cuendet lived there without anyone paying him much attention. He only ever went out to eat in a little restaurant called the Petit-Saint-Paul.’
‘What’s opposite the hotel?’
‘An eighteenth-century house with a courtyard and tall windows, which was entirely restored a few years ago.’
‘Who lives in it?’
‘A woman on her own, with her servants, of course. Her name is Madame Wilton.’
‘Did you make inquiries about her?’
‘I started to, but almost nobody in the area knows anything.’
It had been the fashion for some ten years now for rich people to buy up old buildings in the Marais, in Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, for example, and restore them to something like their original state.
It had started with the Ile Saint-Louis, and now former private mansions were in demand wherever they were still available, even in the most populous streets.
‘There’s even a tree in the courtyard. You don’t see many trees in that neighbourhood.’
‘Is the woman a widow?’
‘Divorced. I went to see a journalist I sometimes give tips to when there’s no harm in it. This time he was the one tipping me off. Even though she’s divorced, she still sees her ex-husband quite often, and they even go out together.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Wilton. Stuart Wilton. With his authorization, apparently, she kept his name. Her maiden name, which I found at the local police station, is Florence Lenoir. Her mother was an ironer in Rue de Rennes and her father, who’s been dead a long time, was a policeman. She used to work in the theatre. According to my journalist friend, she danced with a troupe of girls at the Casino de Paris, and Stuart Wilton, who was already married, got a divorce from his first wife to marry her.’
‘How long ago was that?’
Maigret was scribbling on his blotting pad, all the while imagining Honoré Cuendet at the window of the seedy little hotel.
‘Only about ten years ago. The mansion belonged to Wilton. He owns another, where he lives now, in Auteuil, as well as the Château de Besse, near Maisons-Laffitte.’
‘Does he own racehorses?’
‘Not according to my information. He’s a keen racegoer, but doesn’t have a stable.’
‘Is he American?’
‘English. He’s been living in France for a long time.’
‘Where does his fortune come from?’
‘I’m still just repeating to you what I’ve been told. He belongs to a family of big industrialists and inherited a number of patents. That brings in a lot of money without his having to do any work. He travels part of the year, rents a villa in Cap d’Antibes or Cap Ferrat every summer and belongs to a number of clubs. My journalist says he’s very well known, but only within an exclusive set that doesn’t often get talked about in the press.’
Maigret rose with a sigh, went and grabbed his coat from the hook and wrapped a scarf around his neck.
‘Let’s go!’ he said.
And, to Lucas:
‘If anyone asks for me, I’ll be back in an hour.’
Because of the cold and the ice, the streets were almost as deserted as in August, and there wasn’t a single child playing in the narrow Rue Neuve-Saint-Pierre. The half-open door of the Hôtel Lambert had a milky globe above it. In the office, which smelled musty, a man sat reading the newspaper, his back right up against the radiator.
He recognized Inspector Fumel and got to his feet, grunting:
‘Hello, here comes trouble!’
‘There won’t be any trouble for you if you keep quiet. Is Cuendet’s room occupied?’
‘Not yet. He paid a month in advance. I could have let it on 31 January, but as his things are still there, I thought it best to wait.’
‘When did he go missing?’
‘I don’t know. Wait while I count. Unless I’m mistaken, it must have been last Saturday … Saturday or Friday … We could ask the chambermaid.’
‘Did he tell you he was going to be away?’
‘He didn’t say anything at all. Mind you, he never said anything.’
‘The evening he went missing, did he go out late?’
‘It was my wife who saw him. At night, guests who come in with a woman don’t like to be let in by a man. It embarrasses them. So …’
‘Did she tell you about it?’
‘Of course she did. Anyway, you’ll be able to question her later. She’ll be down soon.’
The air was stagnant and overheated, and there was a dubious, all-pervasive smell, with something like a hint of disinfectant that recalled the Métro.
‘From what she told me, he didn’t go out to dinner that night.’
‘Was that unusual?’
‘It did happen sometimes. He’d buy himself something to eat. You’d see him go upstairs with little packages and newspapers. He’d say good evening, and we wouldn’t hear anything more of him until the next day.’
‘That evening, did he go out again?’
‘He must have gone out, because he wasn’t in the following morning. But, as far as seeing him goes, my wife didn’t see him. She’d taken a couple up to a room at the end of the first-floor corridor. She went to look for towels, and it was then that she heard someone going down the stairs.’
‘What time was that?’
‘After midnight. She did intend to look and see who it was, but by the time she’d closed the linen cupboard and walked along the corridor, the man was already downstairs.’
‘When did you find out he was no longer in his room?’
‘The next day. Probably around ten or eleven, when the maid knocked at the door to do the cleaning. She went in and noticed that the bed hadn’t been slept in.’
‘Did you report the disappearance to the police?’
‘Why? He was a free agent, wasn’t he? He’d paid his rent. I always make them pay in advance. Sometimes people leave just like that, without saying a word.’
‘Leaving their things behind?’
‘He didn’t exactly leave much!’
‘Take us to his room.’
The owner shuffled across the floor in his slippers, left the office behind the two police officers, turned the key in the lock and put it in his pocket. He wasn’t very old but he walked with difficulty and, on the stairs, they heard him breathing heavily.
‘It’s on the third floor,’ he sighed.
There was a pile of sheets on the first-floor landing and several doors giving on to the corridor were open; somewhere, a maid was bustling about.
‘It’s me, Rose! I’m going up with some gentlemen.’
The smell became more sickly-sweet as they advanced. The third-floor corridor, unlike those downstairs, was uncarpeted. Someone was playing the harmonica in his room.
‘It’s here.’
They saw the number 33, clumsily painted on the door. The room already smelled musty.
‘I’ve left everything as it was.’
‘Why?’
‘I thought he’d be back. He looked like a good man. I wonder what he was doing here, especially as he was well dressed and didn’t seem to be short of money.’
‘How do you know he had money?’
‘Both times he paid, I saw large notes in his wallet.’
‘Did he ever have any visitors?’
‘Not to my knowledge, or my wife’s. One of us is always in the office.’
‘Not right now.’
‘Of course, we do sometimes have to leave it for a few minutes, b
ut we keep our ears open, and you noticed I told the maid.’
‘Did he ever get any mail?’
‘Never.’
‘Who has the room next to his?’
There was only one, because number 33 was at the end of the corridor.
‘Olga. A prostitute.’
The man knew that it was pointless to lie, that the police were perfectly well aware of what went on in his hotel.
‘Is she in?’
‘At this hour, she must be asleep.’
‘You can leave us to it now.’
He walked away sullenly, dragging his feet. Maigret closed the door behind them. He began by opening a cheap wardrobe in varnished fir wood, with a lock that didn’t work.
He didn’t discover much: a pair of highly polished black shoes, a pair of almost new carpet slippers and a grey suit on a hanger. There was also a dark felt hat of a common brand.
In a drawer, there were shirts – six white shirts and one light blue – pants, handkerchiefs and woollen socks. In the next drawer, two pairs of pyjamas and three books: Impressions of a Journey to Italy, Medicine for Everyone (published in 1899) and an adventure novel.
The bed was of iron, the round table was covered in a dark-green velvet cloth, and the only armchair was half caved-in. The curtains, which hung from a rod, wouldn’t close, but there were also net curtains that filtered the light.
Standing at the window, Maigret looked out at the house opposite, starting with the courtyard first of all, in which stood a large black car of an English make, the front steps, the double glass doors.
The stone of the façade had been cleaned up and had turned a very soft light grey. There were intricate mouldings around the windows.
A room on the ground floor was lit, revealing a carpet with a complicated pattern, a Louis XV armchair and the corner of a pedestal table.
The first-floor windows were very high, while those on the second floor were dormer windows.
When it came down to it, the mansion, which was broader than it was high, probably didn’t have as many rooms as might have been thought at first sight.
Two of the first-floor windows were open, and a valet in a striped waistcoat was moving a vacuum cleaner about a room which looked like a drawing room.
Maigret and the Lazy Burglar Page 6
