Maigret and the Headless Corpse

by Georges Simenon

  Instead of which, as his wife had remarked teasingly, he hadn’t opened his mouth throughout the meal and had never for a moment stopped thinking about Madame Calas, Pape or, to a lesser degree, young Antoine.

  It was unusual for him to feel so far from the solution to a problem, or more precisely for a problem to be posed in such an untechnical way.

  There aren’t many different types of crime. They can usually be put into three or four broad categories.

  The crimes of professionals are merely a matter of routine. That a criminal from the Corsican gang should kill a member of the Marseille gang in a bar in Rue de Douai is an almost mathematical problem for the men of the Police Judiciaire and can be solved with the help of an established procedure.

  An attack by one or two young delinquents on a tobacconist or a bank cashier leads to a manhunt that also has its rules.

  With a crime of passion, you know immediately where you’re going.

  Last but not least, with a crime committed for financial gain, one involving an inheritance, a life insurance policy or some more complicated plan to get hold of the victim’s money, you’re on safe ground as soon as you’ve discovered the motive.

  That was how Judge Coméliau saw this case, perhaps because he couldn’t admit that the private lives of people belonging to a world different from his, especially the inhabitants of Quai de Valmy, could be at all complicated.

  If Dieudonné Pape was Madame Calas’ lover, then Dieudonné Pape and Madame Calas had got rid of her husband, both to be free and to get their hands on his money.

  ‘They’ve been lovers for more than ten years,’ Maigret had retorted. ‘Why would they have waited all this time?’

  The judge dismissed the objection with a gesture. Calas might have received a large sum of money from somewhere, or else the lovers had been waiting for the right opportunity, or else Madame Calas and her husband had quarrelled and Madame Calas had decided she’d had enough. Or else …

  ‘What if we discover that apart from his bistro, which isn’t worth much, Calas didn’t have any money?’

  ‘Then there’s still the bistro. Dieudonné had enough of working for Zenith Transport and decided to spend the rest of his days putting his feet up in the warm atmosphere of a little place like that.’

  That was the one objection that had swayed Maigret a little.

  ‘What about Antoine Cristin?’

  It was true: the judge now had two possible culprits to consider rather than one. Cristin was also Madame Calas’ lover, and he was more likely than Pape to have needed money.

  ‘The other two used him. You’ll see, we’ll discover that he was their accomplice.’

  That was what the story had become in moving from Quai de Valmy to an examining magistrate’s office. And until the truth came to light, all three of them were under lock and key.

  What made Maigret even surlier, even angrier with himself, was that he hadn’t tried to resist Coméliau, had given in immediately, out of laziness or fear of complications.

  Ever since the start of his career, he had learned from his elders, then from his own experience, that you should never question a suspect in depth before you’ve built up a clear picture of the case. An interrogation is not about throwing out hypotheses haphazardly, constantly telling someone he’s guilty and hoping that after hammering away at him for a certain number of hours he’ll confess.

  Even the most short-sighted of suspects has a kind of sixth sense and can immediately sense if the police are making random accusations or have something solid to go on.

  Maigret had always preferred to wait. Sometimes, in difficult cases, when he didn’t feel sure of himself, he actually preferred to leave a suspect at large for as long as was necessary, even if that meant taking a bit of a risk.

  It had always worked.

  ‘Contrary to what people might suppose,’ he liked to say, ‘a suspect feels a kind of relief when he’s arrested, because now he knows where he stands. He no longer has to wonder if he’s being followed, if he’s being watched, if he’s under suspicion, if a trap is being set for him. He’s accused, and he defends himself. And now he benefits from the protection of the law. In prison, he becomes an almost sacred person, and everything that’s done to build up a case against him will have to be done according to a number of specific rules.’

  Aline Calas had been a good example of this. Once in the magistrate’s office, she had hardly opened her mouth. Coméliau hadn’t got anything more from her than from one of the stones transported by the Naud brothers.

  ‘I have nothing to say,’ she kept saying in a neutral voice, adding when he bombarded her with questions: ‘You have no right to interrogate me without a lawyer present.’

  ‘Then tell me the name of your lawyer.’

  ‘I don’t have one.’

  ‘Here’s a list of members of the Paris Bar. Choose a name.’

  ‘I don’t know them.’

  ‘Choose one at random.’

  ‘I don’t have any money.’

  They were forced to appoint a lawyer, which entailed various formalities and took some time.

  Coméliau had had young Antoine brought in, late in the afternoon. Having withstood Lapointe’s questioning for hours, he wasn’t going to be any more forthcoming with the magistrate.

  ‘I didn’t kill Monsieur Calas. I didn’t go to Quai de Valmy on Saturday afternoon. I didn’t leave a suitcase in the left luggage office at Gare de l’Est. The man’s either lying or mistaken.’

  Meanwhile, his mother was waiting in the corridor of the Police Judiciaire, red-eyed, holding a handkerchief rolled into a ball. Lapointe had spoken to her, and so had Lucas. She insisted on waiting, repeating that she wanted to see Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.

  That often happened with simple people, who assume they won’t get anywhere with subordinates and are determined to talk to the boss.

  Maigret couldn’t have seen her at that moment, because he was just leaving the bistro on Quai de Valmy with Judel and Dieudonné Pape.

  ‘Will you close up and bring the key to headquarters?’ he said to Moers.

  All three had crossed the footbridge to Quai de Jemmapes. Rue des Écluses-Saint-Martin was not far, in a quiet area behind the Hôpital Saint-Louis that had something of a provincial air about it. Pape hadn’t been handcuffed. Maigret had judged that he wasn’t the kind of man who’d try to run away.

  He was calm and dignified, as calm in his way as Madame Calas. He didn’t seem so much defeated as sad, with a hint of what looked like resignation.

  He didn’t talk much. He probably never talked much. He answered questions in as few words as possible and occasionally didn’t answer at all, merely looking at Maigret with his lavender-blue eyes.

  He lived in an old five-storey building with a comfortable, lower-middle-class air to it. As they passed the lodge, the concierge stood up and watched them through the window. They didn’t stop, but climbed to the second floor, where Pape opened the door on the left with his key.

  His apartment consisted of three rooms, a dining room, a bedroom and a kitchen, as well as a kind of junk room that had been turned into a bathroom and in which Maigret was quite surprised to find a bathtub. Although not modern, the furniture was less old-fashioned than in the Calas house, and everything was remarkably clean.

  ‘Do you have a cleaning lady?’ Maigret had asked with surprise.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you do the cleaning yourself?’

  Dieudonné Pape couldn’t help but smile with satisfaction, proud of his home.

  ‘Doesn’t the concierge ever come up and lend you a hand?’

  Beyond the kitchen window hung a well-stocked food safe.

  ‘You also make your own meals?’

  ‘Always.’

  Above the chest of drawers in the dining room hung an enlarged photograph of Madame Calas in a gilded frame, so similar to those found in most households that it gave the apartment a cosy, conjugal feel.
r />   Remembering that he hadn’t found any photographs in the Calas house, Maigret had asked:

  ‘How did you get hold of this?’

  ‘I took it with my camera and had it enlarged on Boulevard Saint-Martin.’

  The camera was in a drawer in the chest. In a corner of the bathroom was a little table covered in glass tubs and flasks filled with products used for developing.

  ‘Do you do a lot of photography?’

  ‘Yes. Especially landscapes.’

  It was true. Searching the furniture, Maigret had found a batch of photographs depicting different parts of Paris, and a smaller number of countryside views. Many showed the canal and the Seine. For most of them, Dieudonné Pape must have had to wait a long time in order to obtain certain quite striking lighting effects.

  ‘Which suit did you wear to visit your sister?’

  ‘The navy-blue.’

  He owned three suits, including the one he was wearing now.

  ‘Take them with you,’ Maigret had said to Judel. ‘The shoes, too.’

  And finding dirty washing in a wicker basket, he’d had it added to the rest.

  He had noticed a canary hopping in a cage, but it wasn’t until they were on their way out that he thought about what might happen to it.

  ‘Do you know anyone who’ll agree to have him?’

  ‘I’m sure the concierge will be glad to.’

  Maigret had taken the cage and stopped outside. He didn’t even need to knock.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re taking him away?’ the concierge had exclaimed angrily.

  She wasn’t talking about the canary, but about her tenant. She had recognized Judel, who was local. She might well have recognized Maigret, too. And she had read the newspapers.

  ‘To treat a man like him, the best man in the world, like a common criminal!’

  She was short, dark and slovenly-looking, with a shrill voice. She was so angry, it looked as if she might scratch.

  ‘Could you look after the canary for a while?’

  She had literally torn the cage from his hands.

  ‘Just wait and see what the tenants and neighbours say! And don’t worry, Monsieur Dieudonné, we’ll all visit you in prison.’

  Once past a certain age, working-class women often worship bachelors or widowers like Dieudonné Pape, admiring their well-ordered lives. When the three men walked away, she was still on the pavement, weeping and waving goodbye.

  Maigret had said to Judel:

  ‘Take the clothes and shoes to Moers. He’ll know what to do with them. And I want the house on Quai de Valmy kept under surveillance.’

  He was ordering this surveillance for no specific reason, more to avoid any possible reproach in the future than for anything else. Meekly, Dieudonné Pape waited at the kerb. Then he fell into step with Maigret, and the two of them walked along the quayside in search of a taxi.

  In the cab, he said nothing, and Maigret, for his part, avoided asking any questions. Filling his pipe, he held it out to Pape.

  ‘Do you smoke a pipe?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Cigarettes?’

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  He did ask one question, though, one that seemed to have no connection with Calas’ death.

  ‘Do you drink?’

  ‘No.’

  It was a further anomaly. Maigret found it hard to fit that in with everything else. Madame Calas was an alcoholic and had started drinking years ago, probably even before meeting Pape.

  It’s quite rare for someone who has a craving for drink to stand the presence of a teetotaller.

  Maigret had known couples quite similar to the one formed by Madame Calas and Dieudonné Pape. In every case he could remember, both the man and the woman were big drinkers.

  He had been pondering all this over dinner, unconsciously, while his wife watched him without his realizing it. He had thought of many other things, too.

  Antoine’s mother, for instance, whom he had found waiting in the corridor of the Police Judiciaire and admitted to his office. He had already handed Pape over to Lucas with the words:

  ‘Tell Coméliau he’s here. If he asks to see him, take him there. Otherwise, take him to the cells.’

  Without reacting, Pape had followed Lucas into one of the offices while Maigret walked away with the woman.

  ‘I swear to you, inspector, my son can’t possibly have done that. He wouldn’t harm a fly. He tries to act tough, because that’s the fashion with young men these days. But I know him, I know he’s only a child.’

  ‘I believe you, madame.’

  ‘So if you believe me, why won’t you let me have him back? I promise you I won’t let him go out in the evening any more and I’ll stop him seeing women. When I think that woman is almost the same age as me and has no shame about taking up with a boy who’s young enough to be her son! I’d sensed for a while that there was something going on. When I saw him buying products for his hair, cleaning his teeth twice a day and even putting on scent, I told myself …’

  ‘Is he your only child?’

  ‘Yes. And I take particular care of him because his father died of TB. I’ve done everything for him, inspector. If only I could see him, talk to him! Do you think they’ll let me? They can’t stop a mother from seeing her son, can they?’

  All he could do was send her to see Coméliau. It was a bit cowardly, he knew, but he had no choice. She must have waited on another bench in the corridor upstairs, and Maigret didn’t know if the magistrate had finally agreed to see her.

  Moers had got back to headquarters just before six o’clock and handed over the key to the Calas house, a big old-fashioned key that Maigret now had in his pocket along with the key to Pape’s apartment.

  ‘Did Judel let you have the clothes, the shoes and the linen?’

  ‘Yes. I have them in the lab. I assume I should be looking for bloodstains?’

  ‘That in particular. Tomorrow morning, I may send you to his apartment.’

  ‘I’ll come back here and work this evening after I’ve had a bite to eat. I assume it’s urgent?’

  It was always urgent. The more time you take on a case, the less fresh the leads, and the more time people have had to prepare their defence.

  ‘Will you come up this evening?’

  ‘I don’t know. When you leave, drop a note on my desk.’

  Now he stood up from the dining table and filled his pipe, like a man who doesn’t know what to do with himself, then looked uncertainly at his armchair.

  ‘How about giving your mind a rest just for one evening?’ Madame Maigret ventured. ‘Stop thinking about your case. Read something, or if you like let’s go to the cinema, and tomorrow morning you’ll wake up with a clear head.’

  He gave her a sardonic look.

  ‘You want to go to the cinema?’

  ‘There’s quite a good film playing at the Moderne.’

  She served him his coffee, and, if he’d had a coin to hand, he would have been tempted to toss it to decide what to do with his evening.

  Madame Maigret took care not to hurry him, to let him sip at his coffee. He strode up and down the dining room, stopping every now and again to stare at the carpet.

  ‘No!’ he at last said, resolutely.

  ‘Are you going out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Before putting on his coat, he poured himself a little glass of sloe gin.

  ‘Will you be back late?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s unlikely.’

  Perhaps because he didn’t have the impression that what he was going to do was important enough, he didn’t take a taxi, nor did he call Quai des Orfèvres and ask for one of the police cars. He walked to the Métro, took a train and got out at Château-Landon.

  The neighbourhood had put on its unsettling night-time face, with shadowy figures hugging the buildings, women motionless at the kerb and murky lighting in the bars that made them look like fish tanks.

  A man standing not far from the
Calas’ door rushed forwards when Maigret stopped and shone a torch in his face.

  ‘Oh, sorry, inspector! I didn’t recognize you in the dark.’

  It was one of Judel’s officers.

  ‘Anything to report?’

  ‘No. Or rather, yes. I don’t know if it’s of any importance. About an hour ago, a taxi came along the quayside and started slowing down about fifty metres away. It kept going, slowing even more as it got to the house, but didn’t stop.’

  ‘Did you see who was inside?’

  ‘A woman. When the cab passed the streetlamp, I saw that she was young. She had a grey coat on, no hat. Then the taxi sped up again and turned left into Rue Louis-Blanc.’

  Was it Lucette, Madame Calas’ daughter, who had come to check that her mother hadn’t been released? She knew from the newspapers that she had been taken to Quai des Orfèvres, but so far the press hadn’t said anything more.

  ‘Do you think she saw you?’

  ‘It’s quite likely. Judel didn’t say anything about having to hide. Most of the time, I walk up and down to keep warm.’

  There was another possibility. Had Lucette Calas intended to go inside the house if it wasn’t being watched? To get what, if that was the case?

  He shrugged, took the key from his pocket and turned it in the lock. He couldn’t immediately find the light switch, not having had occasion to use it before. A single light came on, and he had to go to the bar, where there was another switch, in order to turn on the light at the far end.

  Moers and his men had tidied everything before they left, so that there was nothing changed in the bistro, except that the stove had finally gone out and the place felt colder. As he was walking towards the kitchen, Maigret jumped, because something had just moved noiselessly near him. It took him a few seconds to realize that it was the cat he had earlier left with the butcher’s wife.

  The animal now rubbed against his leg, and Maigret bent down to stroke it.

  ‘How did you get in here?’ he muttered.

  It bothered him. The door that led from the kitchen to the yard was locked. The window was also closed. He went upstairs, switched on the light on the first floor and found a half-open window. Now he understood. There was a shed in the yard of the neighbouring house, a shed with a zinc roof, and it was from there that the cat had jumped, a distance of more than two metres.