On the ground floor, the only light was in the entrance hall. The stairs were lit as far up as the second floor. On the left, two lights were still on in the drawing room, but not the big chandelier.
On the right, a chambermaid in black and white, a lace cap on her head, was tidying the boudoir.
‘The kitchen and the dining room must look out on the back. Watching them, you wonder what these people do all day long. I counted at least three servants running around, obviously busy, though I couldn’t see what they were busy with. Apart from the dressmaker or linen maid, there were no other visitors. The woman came in a taxi and left on foot, without her box. A delivery boy on a tricycle brought some packages. The valet took them, but didn’t let him into the house. Do you want me to stay?’
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Just starting to get hungry, but I can wait.’
‘Go.’
‘Shouldn’t I wait until I’m relieved?’
Maigret shrugged. What was the point?
He locked the door and slipped the key in his pocket. Downstairs, he said to the owner’s wife:
‘Don’t let number 33 before I tell you. Nobody is to go in there, do you understand?’
In the street, he saw Olga in the distance, coming along on the arm of a man. He was pleased for her.
6.
He didn’t know, as he sat down to dinner, that in a little while a telephone call would tear him away from the slightly syrupy calm of his apartment, nor that dozens of people who, at that moment, were making plans for the evening, would be spending a night different from the one they had anticipated, nor, last but not least, that until morning, all the windows at Quai des Orfèvres would remain lit up, as they were on nights of high excitement.
It was a pleasant dinner all the same, full of intimacy and a subtle understanding between his wife and himself. He had told her about the andouillette he had eaten for lunch in the bistro in Saint-Antoine. They had often eaten together in that type of restaurant, a type that had once been more common. Characteristic of Paris, they had been found on almost every street and were known to be frequented especially by drivers.
When it came down to it, the reason you ate well in that kind of place was that the owners all came from the provinces – the Auvergne, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy – and had kept, not only their own local traditions, but their contacts, getting hams, cold meats, sometimes even country bread, from their own regions.
He thought of Cuendet and his mother, who had brought to Rue Mouffetard the drawling accent of the Vaud, as well as a kind of calm, a stillness in which there was a touch of laziness.
‘Any news of the old woman?’
Madame Maigret had been following his thoughts in his eyes.
‘You’re forgetting that officially my main concern at the moment is these hold-ups. They’re more serious, because they’re a threat to banks, insurance companies and big businesses. The gangsters have modernized faster than we have.’
It was a passing fit of depression. Or more precisely, of nostalgia; his wife knew that, and she knew, too, that it never lasted very long.
At such moments, anyway, he was less afraid of retirement, which was just two years away. The world was changing, Paris was changing, everything was changing, men and methods. Retirement might seem frightening, but if he didn’t retire, wouldn’t he end up adrift in a world he no longer understood?
Nevertheless, he ate heartily and slowly.
‘She’s a strange character! There’d been nothing to suggest what happened to him, and yet when I expressed concern for her future, his mother just said: “I’m sure he won’t leave me without anything.” ’
If that was true, how had Cuendet arranged things, what kind of scheme had he worked out in that big ruddy head of his?
It was at that moment, as Maigret was beginning his dessert, that the telephone rang.
‘Shall I answer it?’
He was already standing, his napkin in his hand. He was being called from the office. It was Janvier.
‘This may be important, chief. Inspector Nicolas has just called. They’ve been able to trace the call made by René Lussac from the café at Porte de Versailles. It’s a number in the Corbeil area, a villa on the banks of the Seine, which belongs to someone you know, Rosalie Bourdon.’
‘The lovely Rosalie?’
‘Yes. I called the Flying Squad at Corbeil. The woman’s at home.’
Someone else who had spent many hours in Maigret’s office. She was pushing fifty now, but was still an attractive woman, well built, with a florid complexion and an obscenely picturesque way of expressing herself.
She had started very young, walking the streets around Place des Ternes. By the age of twenty-five, she was running a brothel frequented by the most distinguished men in Paris.
Later, in Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, she had run a nightclub of a specialized kind called Le Cravache – The Whip.
Her last lover, the love of her life, was a man named Pierre Sabatini, from the Corsican gang, sentenced to twenty years’ hard labour for killing two members of the Marseille gang in a bar in Rue de Douai.
Sabatini was still in Saint-Martin-de-Ré, and had several years of his sentence to go. Rosalie’s attitude at the trial had moved everyone, and when sentence had been pronounced, she had moved heaven and earth to obtain authorization to marry her lover.
It had been in all the newspapers. She had claimed she was pregnant. Some had assumed that she had got herself pregnant by the first man who came along just in order to secure this marriage.
In fact, when the ministry had refused, her pregnancy was forgotten about. Rosalie had disappeared from the scene, withdrawing to her villa near Corbeil, from where she regularly sent Sabatini letters and parcels. Every month she travelled to Ile de Ré to visit him, and she was closely watched, for fear she was planning her lover’s escape.
As it happened, Sabatini had shared a cell in Saint-Martin with Fernand.
Janvier continued:
‘I asked Corbeil to keep an eye on the villa. It’s being surrounded right now.’
‘What about Nicolas?’
‘He asked me to tell you he’s on his way to Porte de Versailles. Judging by what he saw yesterday, his impression is that Lussac and his two friends meet there every evening. He wants to get to the café before they do. That way he’s less likely to attract their attention.’
‘Is Lucas still in the office?’
‘He’s just come in.’
‘Tell him to keep a certain number of men available tonight. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.’
He phoned the prosecutor’s office but was only put through to the deputy on duty.
‘I’d like to speak to Prosecutor Dupont d’Hastier.’
‘He isn’t here.’
‘I know. But I need to speak to him urgently. It’s about the latest hold-ups, probably about Fernand, too.’
‘I’ll try and get in touch with him. Are you at the office?’
‘No, I’m at home.’
He gave his number and, from that point on, things moved rapidly. He had barely finished his dessert when the telephone rang again. It was the prosecutor.
‘I hear you’ve arrested Fernand?’
‘Not yet, sir, but we may have a chance to arrest him tonight.’
In a few sentences, he brought him up to date.
‘Can you meet me in my office in a quarter of an hour? I’m dining with friends, but I’m leaving right now. Have you been in touch with Corbeil?’
Madame Maigret was making him some very black coffee and taking out the bottle of raspberry liqueur from the sideboard.
‘Make sure you don’t catch cold. Do you think you’ll be going to Corbeil?’
‘I’d be surprised if they gave me the chance.’
He wasn’t mistaken. At the Palais de Justice, in one of the vast offices of the prosecutor’s office, he found, not only Prosecutor Dupont d’Hastier, in a dinner jacket, but Judge Legail
le, the examining magistrate in charge of the case, as well as one of his old friends from the other place, the Sûreté, Detective Chief Inspector Buffet.
Buffet was taller, broader and heavier than Maigret, with a ruddy complexion and eyes that always looked sleepy, and yet he was one of the most formidable police officers around.
‘Sit down, Maigret, and tell us how things stand.’
Before leaving Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, he had had another telephone conversation with Janvier.
‘I’m waiting for news any moment. But what I can tell you is that there’s been a man in Rosalie Bourdon’s villa in Corbeil for some days now.’
‘Have our officers seen him?’ asked Buffet, who had a very small voice for such a large body, almost a girl’s voice.
‘Not yet. They’ve talked to some of the neighbours, and the description they give matches Fernand’s.’
‘Have they surrounded the villa?’
‘At a distance, in order not to raise the alarm.’
‘Are there several ways out?’
‘Of course. But there are other developments. As I told the prosecutor on the phone earlier, Lussac is a friend of Joseph Raison, the gangster who was killed in Rue La Fayette, and was living in the same building as him in Fontenay-les-Roses. Lussac and at least two friends frequent a café at Porte de Versailles, the Café des Amis. They were playing cards last night, and at nine thirty Lussac went to the phone booth and called Corbeil.
‘That seems to be the way the three men stay in touch with their boss. I’m waiting for a phone call any moment now. If they meet at the same place this evening, which we’ll soon know, then we have a decision to make.’
In the old days, he would have made it himself, and this war council in the offices of the prosecutor’s office would not have taken place. It would even have been unthinkable, unless they were dealing with something political.
‘According to a witness, when the hold-up happened, Fernand was in a brasserie just opposite the spot where the cashier was assaulted and where his assailants, minus one, jumped in a car with a case containing millions of francs. Given the unexpected thing that happened, it’s unlikely that Fernand has been able to meet up with them. If he’s the one who’s hiding out with the lovely Rosalie, he must have gone to ground there that same evening, and every evening since then he’s been in touch with the Café des Amis to give his instructions.’
Buffet was listening, although he seemed asleep. Maigret knew that his colleague from the Sûreté thought the same way he did, envisaged the same possibilities, the same dangers. It was not for the sake of the gentlemen in the prosecutor’s office that he was supplying so many details.
‘Sooner or later, one of the men will be given the task of taking all or part of the loot to Fernand. Obviously, if that happens, we’ll have conclusive proof. But we may have to wait several days, and in the meantime, it’s possible that Fernand might look for another retreat. Even with the villa surrounded, he’s quite capable of slipping through our fingers.
‘On the other hand, if the three men meet at the Café des Amis this evening, as they did yesterday, we have the possibility of arresting them simultaneously with getting our hands on Fernand in Corbeil.’
The telephone rang. The clerk of the court passed the receiver to Maigret.
‘It’s for you.’
It was Janvier, who had become a kind of go-between.
‘They’re there, chief. What have you decided?’
‘I’ll let you know in a few minutes. Send one of our men to Fontenay-les-Roses with a social worker. Ask him to phone you once he’s there.’
‘Got it.’
Maigret hung up.
‘What have you decided, gentlemen?’
‘Not to take any risks,’ the prosecutor said. ‘We’ll get evidence in the end, won’t we?’
‘They’ll hire the best lawyers, they’ll refuse to talk, and they’ve probably already fabricated excellent alibis.’
‘On the other hand, if we don’t arrest them this evening, we may never have a chance to arrest them again.’
‘I’ll take care of Corbeil,’ Buffet announced.
Maigret couldn’t object to that. It was outside his jurisdiction and was a matter for the Sûreté.
‘Do you think they’ll open fire?’ the examining magistrate asked.
‘If they have the opportunity, it’s pretty much certain they will, but we’ll try not to give them the chance.’
A few minutes later, Maigret and Buffet passed from one world to another, simply by walking through the door separating the Palais de Justice from the headquarters of the Police Judiciaire.
Here, the excitement of one of their important days was already tangible.
‘Before we move in on the villa, I think we should wait to see if there’s a phone call at nine thirty.’
‘I agree. But I’d prefer to be there in advance, in order to get everything ready. I’ll call you to find out how things stand.’
In the dark, cold courtyard, there was already a radio car with its engine being warmed up and a van full of police officers. The chief inspector for the sixteenth arrondissement was somewhere near the Café des Amis, with all his available men.
In the café, shopkeepers were calmly talking about their business and playing cards, not suspecting a thing. Nobody noticed Inspector Nicolas, who was sitting reading his newspaper.
He had just phoned and said laconically:
‘We’re on.’
That meant that the three men were there, as they had been the day before, René Lussac sometimes glancing at his watch, presumably in order not to miss his nine-thirty call to Corbeil.
There, men waited in the darkness, surrounded by patches of ice, watching the villa, where two windows on the ground floor were lighted.
The central switchboard was also on the alert. At 9.35, the announcement came:
‘He’s just asked for Corbeil.’
And an inspector on the wire-tap recorded the conversation.
‘How are things?’ Lussac asked.
It wasn’t a man who replied, but Rosalie.
‘Fine, nothing new.’
‘Jules is impatient.’
‘Why?’
‘He wants to go travelling.’
‘Stay on the line.’
She must have been conferring with someone. Then she came back to the phone.
‘He says we have to keep waiting.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we have to!’
‘People are starting to get suspicious here.’
‘Hold on.’
Another silence, then:
‘There’ll be news tomorrow.’
Buffet called from Corbeil.
‘Well?’
‘It’s done. Lussac made his call. It was the woman who replied, but there was someone next to her. Apparently, a man named Jules, who’s a member of the gang, is starting to get impatient.’
‘Shall we go?’
‘At ten fifteen.’
The two actions had to be simultaneous in order to avoid the possibility that one of the men might miraculously escape the net on Avenue de Versailles and warn Corbeil.
‘Ten fifteen.’
Maigret gave his last instructions to Janvier.
‘When Fontenay-les-Roses calls, have Madame Lussac arrested, whether or not there’s a warrant. Have her brought here, and leave the social worker to take care of the child.’
‘What about Madame Raison?’
‘Not her. Not yet.’
Maigret took his place in the radio car. The van had already left. At Porte de Versailles, a few passers-by were startled by the unusual activity in the area, men hugging the houses and talking in low voices, others vanishing into dark corners as if by magic.
Maigret contacted the chief inspector from the sixteenth arrondissement, and the two of them finalized the details of the operation.
Once again there were two courses of action to choose from. They coul
d wait for the three card players, who could be seen through the windows of the café, to come out and head for their respective cars.
That seemed like the simpler solution. And yet it was the more dangerous of the two, because once they were outside, the men would have freedom of movement and perhaps time to open fire. In the heat of a shoot-out, wasn’t there the possibility that one of them might jump in his car and get away?
‘Is there another exit?’
‘There’s a door leading out to the yard, but the walls are high and the only way out is through the corridor of the building.’
It took no more than a quarter of an hour for the men to get into position, and the attention of the customers in the Café des Amis was not aroused.
Men who could pass for tenants entered the building. Some of them took up positions in the yard.
Three others, pretending to be drunken merrymakers, opened the door of the café and sat down at the table next to the card players.
Maigret looked at his watch, like a general waiting for zero hour. At 10.40, he opened the door to the café, alone. He had his knitted scarf around his neck and his right hand in the pocket of his overcoat.
He only had two metres to walk. The gangsters didn’t even have time to stand up. Standing close to them, he said in a low voice:
‘Don’t move. You’re surrounded. Keep your hands on the table.’
Inspector Nicolas had approached.
‘Handcuff them. You others, too.’
With an abrupt movement, one of the men managed to knock over the table. There was a noise of broken glass, but two inspectors already had him by the wrists.
‘Outside.’
Maigret turned to the customers.
‘Don’t worry, ladies and gentlemen. A simple police operation.’
Fifteen minutes later, the three men were taken out of the van and each was led into an office at Quai des Orfèvres.
Corbeil was on the line, Buffet’s thin voice.
‘Maigret? It’s done.’
Maigret and the Lazy Burglar Page 9
