Maigret and the Headless Corpse

by Georges Simenon

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you ever see them again?’

  ‘No.’

  Lapointe, who had finished giving instructions to Lucas, came out of the booth mopping his brow.

  ‘What do I owe you?’ Maigret asked.

  She asked her first question:

  ‘Are you going?’

  It was his turn to answer with a monosyllable:

  ‘Yes.’

  4. The Young Man on the Roof

  Maigret had been hesitant to take his pipe from his pocket – something that happened in very few places – and when he had done so, he had assumed the innocent air of someone who automatically keeps his hands busy as he speaks.

  Immediately after the briefing in the commissioner’s office, which hadn’t taken long, and after a conversation with the commissioner by the open window, he had passed through the little door that led from the Police Judiciaire to the prosecutor’s office. It was the time of day when almost all the benches were occupied in the corridor where the examining magistrates had their offices, because two black Marias had just arrived in the courtyard. Among the prisoners waiting, handcuffed, between two guards, more than three-quarters were known to Maigret, and a few greeted him as he passed, without any apparent rancour.

  Judge Coméliau had telephoned his office two or three times the previous day. He was a thin, wiry man, with a small brown moustache that was probably dyed and the bearing of a cavalry officer. His first words had been:

  ‘Tell me exactly how far you’ve got.’

  Meekly, Maigret had granted his wish, telling him about Victor’s successive discoveries at the bottom of the Canal Saint-Martin and about the head they hadn’t yet found. At this point, he had been interrupted.

  ‘I assume the diver is continuing his search today?’

  ‘I didn’t think it was necessary.’

  ‘But surely if the trunk and the limbs have been found in the canal, the head can’t be far away.’

  That was what made relations with him so difficult. He wasn’t the only examining magistrate like that, but he was unquestionably the most aggressive. In a sense, he wasn’t stupid. A lawyer who had once studied with him claimed that Coméliau had been one of the brightest of his generation.

  It had to be assumed that his mind was incapable of grasping certain realities. He came from a very particular, upper-middle-class background with rigid principles and even more sacrosanct taboos, and he couldn’t help judging everything according to these principles and these taboos.

  Patiently, Maigret explained:

  ‘First of all, sir, Victor knows the canal as well as you know your office and I know mine. He went over the bottom metre by metre, more than two hundred times. He’s a conscientious young man. If he says the head isn’t there …’

  ‘My plumber also knows his job and is also thought of as conscientious. Nevertheless, whenever I send for him, he always starts by telling me it’s impossible that anything could be defective in the pipes.’

  ‘In the case of a dismembered corpse, it’s unusual for the head to be found in the same place as the body.’

  Coméliau was making an effort to understand, looking at Maigret with his sharp little eyes.

  ‘There’s a reason for that,’ Maigret went on. ‘While it’s hard to identify severed limbs, especially if they’ve been in the water for a while, a head is easily recognizable. As it’s less bulky than a trunk, it’s logical for someone who wants to get rid of it to go to the bother of taking it further away.’

  ‘Let’s assume you’re right.’

  Without appearing to, Maigret had his tobacco pouch in his left hand and was only waiting for a moment’s inattention on Coméliau’s part to fill his pipe.

  He told the magistrate about Madame Calas and described the bar on Quai de Valmy.

  ‘What led you to her?’

  ‘Chance, I admit. I had to make a phone call. In another bar, the telephone was within earshot of everybody, without a booth.’

  ‘Go on.’

  He mentioned Calas’ departure, the train to Poitiers, Madame Calas’ relations with Antoine Cristin, the delivery boy, and the crescent of scars on Calas’ body.

  ‘You say this woman claims not to know whether or not her husband had these scars? Do you think she’s telling the truth?’

  This was beyond Coméliau’s understanding, and it angered him.

  ‘To be honest, Maigret, what I don’t understand is why you haven’t brought this woman and this boy into your office and subjected them to one of those interrogations you’re usually so good at. I assume you don’t believe a word of her story?’

  ‘That’s not necessarily the case.’

  ‘Claiming she doesn’t know where her husband went and when he’ll be back …’

  How could someone like Coméliau, who was still living in the Left Bank apartment opposite the Luxembourg where he was born, get an idea of the mentality of Monsieur and Madame Calas?

  The trick had worked, though: a match had flared briefly, and Maigret’s pipe was lit. Coméliau, who hated tobacco, would glare at him, as he always did whenever anyone was presumptuous enough to smoke in his office, but Maigret was quite determined to maintain his air of innocence.

  ‘It’s possible,’ he granted, ‘that everything she told me is false. It’s also possible it’s true. We’ve fished parts of a headless corpse out of the canal. It could be any man between forty-five and fifty-five. So far, there’s nothing to identify him. How many men that age have disappeared in the past few days and how many have gone away on a trip without saying exactly where they’re going? Should I summon Madame Calas to my office and treat her as a suspect just because she’s in the habit of drinking surreptitiously, or because she’s having an affair with a young delivery boy who runs away when the police approach him? What would we look like if tomorrow, or in a few hours’ time, we discover a head somewhere and it turns out not to be Calas’?’

  ‘Are you keeping an eye on the building?’

  ‘Judel from the tenth arrondissement has put a man on guard duty on the quayside. Last night after dinner, I had another walk around the area.’

  ‘Did you discover anything new?’

  ‘Nothing specific. I questioned a number of prostitutes I came across in the street. The neighbourhood has a completely different atmosphere at night from the way it is in broad daylight. I particularly wanted to know if anyone noticed any suspicious comings and goings around the Calas bistro on Friday evening, or if anyone heard anything.’

  ‘And did they?’

  ‘No, nothing much. But one of the girls did tell me something I haven’t yet been able to check. According to her, the Calas woman has another lover, a middle-aged man with red hair who apparently lives or works locally. Admittedly, the girl who told me this is filled with resentment. She claims Madame Calas is hurting all of them. “If at least she got paid for it,” she told me, “we wouldn’t mind. But with her, it doesn’t cost a thing. When men want it, they know where to go. They just have to wait until Calas has his back turned. I haven’t been to see for myself, of course, but I’m told she never says no.” ’

  Coméliau sighed painfully on hearing of all this moral turpitude.

  ‘Do as you see fit, Maigret. As far as I’m concerned, it all seems quite clear. And these aren’t people who need to be treated with kid gloves.’

  ‘I’ll see her again in a while. I’ll also see her daughter. Last but not least, I hope to get some information about the identity of the body from the nurses who were present five years ago at Calas’ operation.’

  Regarding that, there was a curious detail. The previous evening, as he was prowling around the neighbourhood, Maigret had popped into the bistro, where Madame Calas was sitting on a chair, half asleep, while four men were playing cards. He had asked in which hospital her husband had had his appendix removed.

  As far as they knew, Calas was a tough character, a man you wouldn’t imagine to be afraid of pain, anxious about h
is health, obsessed with a fear of dying. He’d only had to undergo a routine operation that was neither serious nor risky.

  But instead of going into hospital, he had spent a fairly large sum of money in order to be operated on in a private clinic in Villejuif. Not only was it a private clinic, but it was run by nuns who served as the nurses.

  Lapointe was probably there right now and would soon be phoning in his report.

  ‘Don’t pussyfoot around, Maigret!’ Coméliau said as the inspector got to the door.

  It wasn’t a question of pussyfooting. Nor was it pity, but that was impossible to explain to someone like Coméliau. From one minute to the next, Maigret had found himself plunged into a world so different from the everyday world that he was having to grope his way. Did the little bistro on Quai de Valmy and its denizens have anything to do with the body thrown into the Canal Saint-Martin? It was possible, just as it was possible the whole thing was a series of coincidences.

  He went back to his office. He was starting to assume the glum, surly air that almost always came to him at a certain stage in an investigation. The previous day, he had been making discoveries and storing them away without wondering where they would lead. Now, he was confronted with pieces of the truth and had no idea how to tie them together.

  Madame Calas was no longer merely a picturesque character – he had encountered quite a few of those in the course of his career – but a genuine human problem.

  To Coméliau, she was a shameless drunk who slept with just anybody.

  To him, she was something else, he didn’t yet know what exactly, and, as long as he didn’t know, as long as he didn’t ‘feel’ the truth, he would remain prey to a vague sense of unease.

  Lucas was in his office, putting mail down on the blotting pad.

  ‘Anything new?’

  ‘I didn’t know you were around, chief.’

  ‘I was with Coméliau.’

  ‘If I’d known, I would have put the call through to you. There is something new, yes. Judel’s in a real state.’

  Maigret thought of Madame Calas and wondered what had happened to her, but it turned out not to be about her.

  ‘It’s about the young man – Antoine, if I got the name correctly.’

  ‘Yes, Antoine. Has he run away again?’

  ‘That’s right. Apparently, you asked yesterday for an inspector to tail him. The young man went straight home to Faubourg Saint-Martin, almost on the corner of Rue Louis-Blanc. The inspector Judel had assigned to the job questioned the concierge. The boy lives with his mother, who’s a cleaning lady, on the seventh floor of the building. They have two attic rooms. There’s no lift. I’m telling you all this just as Judel told it to me. Apparently, the building is one of those awful tenements where fifty or sixty families are packed in and the kids have to play on the stairs.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘That’s pretty much it. According to the concierge, the young man’s mother is a brave, deserving woman. Her husband died in a sanatorium. She’s had TB as well and claims she’s cured, but the concierge doubts it. Getting back to the inspector, he phoned Judel to ask for instructions. Judel didn’t want to take any risks and ordered him to keep an eye on the building. He stayed outside until about midnight, after which he went in with the last tenants and spent the night on the stairs.

  ‘This morning, just before eight, the concierge pointed out to him a thin woman who was walking past the lodge and told him it was Antoine’s mother. The inspector had no reason to stop her or follow her. It was only half an hour later, when he had nothing better to do, that he was curious enough to go up to the seventh floor.

  ‘It struck him as odd that the boy hadn’t also come downstairs to go to work. He stuck his ear to the door, didn’t hear anything and knocked. Eventually, noticing that the lock was a very simple one, he tried his skeleton key.

  ‘He saw a bed in the first room, which is also the kitchen, the mother’s bed, and in the next room, another bed, unmade. But there was nobody there, and the skylight was open.

  ‘Judel’s annoyed that he didn’t think of that and didn’t give orders accordingly. It’s obvious that in the course of the night the boy got out through the skylight and walked over the roofs looking for another open skylight. He probably got out through a building in Rue Louis-Blanc.’

  ‘Are they sure he isn’t still in the building?’

  ‘They’re questioning the tenants right now.’

  Maigret could imagine Judge Coméliau’s ironic smile on hearing this news.

  ‘Has Lapointe called me?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Has anybody shown up at the Forensic Institute to identify the body?’

  ‘Just the usual customers.’

  There were about a dozen of them, especially women of a certain age, who rush to identify every unidentified body that is found.

  ‘Has Dr Paul phoned?’

  ‘I’ve just put his report on your desk.’

  ‘If Lapointe calls, tell him to come back here and wait for me. I’m not going far.’

  He headed on foot for the Ile Saint-Louis, walked around the outside of Notre-Dame, crossed the iron footbridge and soon found himself in the narrow, populous Rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile. It was the time of day when the housewives were doing their shopping, and it wasn’t easy to make your way through them and the little barrows. Maigret found the grocery above which, according to Madame Calas, her daughter, whose name was Lucette, had a room. He walked down the side alley next to the shop until he came to a yard with uneven cobbles and a lime tree in the middle, giving it the air of a provincial school playground or the courtyard of a presbytery.

  ‘Are you looking for someone?’ a woman’s voice cried through a ground-floor window.

  ‘Mademoiselle Calas.’

  ‘Third floor on the left, but she isn’t at home.’

  ‘Do you know when she’ll be back?’

  ‘She doesn’t usually come back for lunch. We don’t often see her before half past six. If it’s urgent, you’ll find her at the hospital.’

  The Hôtel-Dieu, where Lucette Calas worked, wasn’t far. All the same, it was a complicated business getting to Professor Lavaud’s department because it was the busiest time of the day, and men and women in white uniforms, male nurses pushing stretchers and patients with uncertain steps kept up a steady flow in the corridors, going through doors that led God alone knew where.

  ‘Mademoiselle Calas, please?’

  They barely looked at him.

  ‘Don’t know her. Is she a patient?’

  Or else they would point him to the end of a corridor:

  ‘Through there.’

  He was sent in three or four different directions until all at once, as if reaching a safe haven, he came to a quiet corridor where a young woman was sitting at a small table.

  ‘Mademoiselle Calas?’

  ‘Is it personal? How did you get in?’

  He must have wandered into an area that wasn’t accessible to ordinary mortals. He gave his name and even showed his badge, feeling that here his prestige counted for little.

  ‘I’ll go and see if she can be disturbed. I think she might be in the operating theatre.’

  He was left alone for a good ten minutes and didn’t dare smoke. When the young woman returned, she was followed by a fairly tall nurse with a calm, serene face.

  ‘Is it you who wants to speak to me?’

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, Police Judiciaire.’

  Because of the bright, clean atmosphere of the hospital, the white uniform, the nurse’s cap, the contrast was all the more striking with the bistro on Quai de Valmy.

  Lucette Calas seemed untroubled, but looked at him in surprise, like someone who doesn’t understand.

  ‘It is me you want to see?’

  ‘If your parents live on Quai de Valmy, yes.’

  It was very brief, but Maigret was certain he saw something like a harder gleam in her eyes.

  ‘
Yes. But I—’

  ‘I just want to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘The professor’s going to need me very soon. He’s doing his rounds right now and—’

  ‘It’ll only take a few minutes.’

  She resigned herself, looked around and spotted a half-open door.

  ‘We can go in here.’

  There were two chairs, an adjustable bed and instruments that must have been surgical but which Maigret didn’t know.

  ‘When was the last time you went to visit your parents?’

  He noticed a shudder at the word ‘parents’ and thought he knew the reason.

  ‘I go as seldom as possible.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Have you seen them?’

  ‘I’ve seen your mother.’

  She said nothing, as if it was self-explanatory.

  ‘Do you resent them?’

  ‘I can hardly resent them, unless it’s for giving birth to me.’

  ‘Did you go there last Friday?’

  ‘I wasn’t even in Paris. It was my day off, and I was in the country with friends.’

  ‘So you don’t know why your father’s away?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell me why you’re asking me these questions? You come here and talk to me about people who are officially my parents but with whom I’ve long felt a stranger. Why? Has something happened to them?’

  She lit a cigarette and as she did so said:

  ‘You can smoke here. At least at this time of day.’

  But he didn’t take advantage of the offer to get out his pipe.

  ‘Would it surprise you if something had happened to one of them?’

  She looked straight at him.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘What do you think might have happened, for example?’

  ‘Calas might have beaten my mother so badly that she’s really hurt.’

  She hadn’t said ‘my father’, but ‘Calas’.

  ‘Does he often beat her?’

  ‘I don’t know about now. In the old days, it was almost daily.’

  ‘Didn’t your mother protest?’

  ‘She’d bow her head and let him do it. Maybe she likes it, I don’t know.’

  ‘What else might have happened?’