Maigret's Dead Man

by Georges Simenon

  ‘So you have it in restaurants whenever it’s on the menu …’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘And do you find it on menus very often?’

  ‘I don’t know really … Let me see … Sometimes on a Friday.’

  ‘And yesterday was Wednesday. Get me Dr Paul on the phone.’

  The doctor, who was writing up his report, was not surprised by Maigret’s question.

  ‘Could you tell me if there were truffles in the fish pie?’

  ‘Absolutely not … I would have found fragments …’

  ‘Thanks for your help. See, Janvier? There weren’t any truffles in the fish pie! That eliminates expensive restaurants, which usually include them. I want you to go down to the inspectors’ room. You can get Torrence and two or three others to give you a hand. The switchboard won’t like it one bit because you’ll be using all their lines for some time. Call all the restaurants one after the other, starting with those located in the parts of town where you were making inquiries yesterday. Find out if any of them had fish pie on their menu last night … Wait … Try the ones with names having some connection with the south of France first. You’re more likely to have luck with them.’

  Off Janvier went, not feeling either proud of or overjoyed with the job he had just been landed with.

  ‘Have you got a knife, Moers?’

  The morning was wearing on, and Maigret still had not given up on his dead man.

  ‘Slide the point of the blade into the slit in the raincoat … Good … Now don’t move …’

  He lifted the material slightly so that he could see the jacket underneath.

  ‘The holes in the clothes don’t line up … Now try angling the blade differently … A little more to the left … Now to the right … Try higher … And now lower …’

  ‘I get your drift.’

  Some of the forensic experts and technicians who were at work in the enormous lab looked on curiously and exchanged amused glances.

  ‘They still don’t line up. There’s a gap of a good five centimetres between the cut in the jacket and the one in the gaberdine … Bring me a chair … Give me a hand …’

  They sat the manikin down, a manoeuvre that called for careful handling.

  ‘That’s it … When a man is sitting down, leaning against a table, for example, his overcoat may ride up … Try it …’

  But they failed dismally in their efforts to align the two slits, which logically should have been located one exactly above the other.

  ‘That’s it!’ exclaimed Maigret, as if he had just solved an intricate mathematical equation.

  ‘You mean that when he was killed he wasn’t wearing his raincoat?’

  ‘It’s virtually certain.’

  ‘But there’s a slit in the raincoat that looks as if it was made with a knife.’

  ‘It was done afterwards, to make it look right. Now no one wears a raincoat in a house or a restaurant. By going to the trouble of doctoring the gaberdine, someone was trying to make us believe that the stabbing took place in the open air.’

  ‘… whereas the crime was actually carried out indoors,’ said Moers, completing his thought.

  ‘And for the same reason, the same person also took the risk of dumping the body in Place de la Concorde, where the murder was not committed …’

  He knocked his pipe out on his heel, retrieved his tie, looked some more at the manikin, which seemed even more alive now that it was seated. From the back or the side, when its featureless, colourless face was invisible, the effect was striking.

  ‘Have you found any leads?’

  ‘Almost nothing so far. I haven’t finished. But in the arch of the sole I did find small quantities of some very interesting mud. It’s soil impregnated with wine, the sort you might find in the wine cellar of a house in the country where a cask has just been broached.’

  ‘Carry on. Phone me in my office.’

  When he went in to see the commissioner he was greeted with:

  ‘Well, Maigret? And how is your dead man?’

  It was the first time the expression had been used. The head of the Police Judiciaire must have been informed that Maigret had had his claws in the case since two in the morning.

  ‘So they managed to get him after all, eh? I admit that yesterday I was more or less convinced that you were dealing with a practical joker or a lunatic.’

  ‘I didn’t see it that way. I believed what he said from the first time he phoned.’

  Why was that? Maigret could not have put it into words. It certainly wasn’t because the man had asked for his help rather than anyone else’s. As he spoke to the commissioner, he allowed his eyes to stray out across the river to the opposite bank, which was in full sunlight.

  ‘The public prosecutor has decided the examining magistrate for this case is to be Coméliau. They’ll both be dropping in at the Forensic Institute this morning. Do you intend to join them?’

  ‘What would be the point?’

  ‘At least see Coméliau, or call him. He can be touchy.’

  Maigret was quite well aware of this.

  ‘You don’t think it was some gangland score being settled?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll find out, though it doesn’t feel like it to me. The criminal fraternity aren’t in the habit of going to the trouble of hanging their victims out to dry in Place de la Concorde.’

  ‘As you wish. Do whatever you think best. I expect someone will recognize him sooner or later.’

  ‘I’d be surprised.’

  This was another feeling which he would have been hard pressed to explain. In his mind, it made perfect sense. But as soon as he tried to pin it down, even for his own satisfaction, the waters grew muddy.

  But there was no getting away from Place de la Concorde. It followed that someone wanted the body to be found, and found quickly. It would have been easier and less dangerous, for example, to throw it into the Seine, where it might have remained for days if not weeks before it was fished out.

  The victim was not a rich man or a famous person but a nonentity, a man of no importance.

  So why, if they wanted the police to get interested in him, rearrange his face after he was dead and empty his pockets of everything which might have been used to identify him?

  Still, they hadn’t removed the label on the jacket. But that was obviously because they knew that he was wearing ready-made clothes which had been sold by the thousand.

  ‘You look worried, Maigret.’

  But all he could do was repeat:

  ‘It doesn’t hang together …’

  Too many details which did not fit. One detail in particular bothered him; it quite upset him, in fact.

  At what time had the last phone call been made? As things stood, the last sign of life the man had given was the note handed in at the post office in Faubourg Saint-Denis.

  That had happened in the clear light of day. Ever since eleven that morning, the nameless man had not missed any opportunity for making contact with Maigret.

  Even in the note, he had been appealing directly to him, and more insistently than ever. He had even asked him to alert officers on duty so that any one of them would have been aware of the situation and been ready to come to his aid in the street at the first sign he gave.

  But the fact was that he had been killed between eight and ten in the evening.

  What had he been doing between four and eight o’clock? There had been no sign of him, no trace. Just silence, a silence which had struck Maigret the previous evening, even though he ha
d kept his concerns to himself. It had reminded him of a real-life underwater disaster which, as it unfolded, had been followed all over the world minute by minute on the radio. At certain times, listeners had heard the signal sent out by the men entombed in the submarine stranded on the ocean bed and could imagine the rescue vessels circling on the surface. The intervals between signals grew longer. Then suddenly, after many hours: nothing.

  But Maigret’s unnamed dead man had no valid reason for keeping quiet. He could not have been kidnapped in full daylight in a busy Paris street. And he had not been killed before eight o’clock.

  Everything seemed to suggest that he had gone home, because he had changed his jacket.

  He had eaten either at home or in a restaurant. And he had been left alone to eat his dinner because he had had enough time to consume soup, fish pie and an apple. Everything up to and including the apple suggested peace and calm.

  So why had he not spoken for two hours?

  He had not hesitated to pester Maigret several times and urge him to put the whole police force on high alert.

  Then suddenly, after four o’clock, it was as if he had changed his mind, as though he had wanted to leave the police out of the reckoning altogether.

  It nettled Maigret. That’s not the right word perhaps, but it felt a little as if his dead man had been unfaithful to him.

  ‘Got anything, Janvier?’

  The inspectors’ room was blue with tobacco smoke. Four glassy-eyed men were glued to phones.

  ‘Fish pie’s not on the menu, sir!’ joked Janvier with a sigh, ‘and yet we’ve covered the primary area. I’m now doing the Faubourg Montmartre, and Torrence has got as far as Place Clichy …’

  Maigret also got on the phone in his office, but he was calling a small cheap hotel in Rue Lepic.

  ‘Yes, by taxi … At once …’

  Someone had left photos of the dead man on his desk taken during the night. There were also copies of the morning papers, reports and a note from the examining magistrate, Coméliau.

  ‘Is that you, Madame Maigret? … Not too bad … I don’t know yet if I’ll be home for lunch … No, I haven’t had time to get a shave … I’ll try and get to a barber’s … Yes, I’ve eaten …’

  He duly went out to find a barber’s, but not before telling old Joseph, the office clerk, to ask a visitor who would be coming to see him to wait. He did not have far to go, just across the bridge. He walked into the first gentleman’s hairdresser’s he came to on Boulevard Saint-Michel and stared grimly at the large, dark-ringed eyes which looked back at him from the mirror.

  He knew that when he left he would not be able to resist the temptation of going for a drink in the Caves du Beaujolais. First, because he was genuinely fond of the atmosphere in that type of small bar which is generally very quiet and the landlord will pass the time of day with you. He also liked Beaujolais, especially when it is served, as it was there, in those small stoneware mugs. But there was another reason: he was following in the steps of his dead man.

  ‘Reading the paper this morning, inspector, it gave me quite a shock. I didn’t see much of him, you know. But when I think about it, he seemed decent enough. I can see him now, waving his arms about as he came in. He was on edge, that’s for sure, but he looked a straightforward sort. Know what? I bet he’d have been good fun in other circumstances. You’ll laugh, but the more I think about it, the more I think he was a joker. He reminded me of somebody. I been trying to remember who for hours.’

  ‘Somebody that looked like him?’

  ‘Yes … No … It’s more complicated … He reminds me of something, and I can’t for the life of me remember what … Has he been identified yet?’

  That too was strange, though not altogether unusual at this stage. The morning editions had been out for some time. Of course, the face was disfigured but not to the point of being unrecognizable to anyone who was close to him, a wife or mother, for example.

  The man had lived somewhere, even if it was only a hotel. He hadn’t been home all night.

  Logically, in the last few hours, someone must have either recognized his photo or reported his disappearance.

  But Maigret was not counting on anything. He recrossed the bridge with a pleasant, slightly harsh aftertaste of Beaujolais in his mouth. He climbed the shabby staircase, where eyes watched him with apprehensive respect.

  He glanced through the windows of the waiting room. His man was there, on his feet, perfectly at home, smoking a cigarette.

  ‘This way …’

  He showed him into his office, motioned him to a chair and took off his hat and coat without ceasing to observe his visitor out of the corner of his eye. From where he was, his visitor had a clear view of the photos of the dead man.

  ‘Well, Fred?’

  ‘I’m all yours, inspector. I wasn’t expecting you to phone. I don’t see how …’

  He was thin, very pale, and smartly dressed in a vaguely effeminate way. From time to time, a tautening of the nostrils identified a drug addict.

  ‘You don’t know him?’

  ‘I knew what this is about when I got here, the minute I saw the photos … Looks like someone’s beat him up!’

  ‘You never saw him before?’

  It was clear that Fred was trying his level best to do what was expected of him as a police informer. He looked closely at the photos and even took them to the window so that he could see them in full light.

  ‘No … And yet …’

  While Maigret waited, he refilled the stove.

  ‘It’s no go! I’d swear I never saw him before. But he puts me in mind of something. I can’t put my finger on it … But at any rate he’s not part of any mob. Even if he was a new recruit I’d have come across him already.’

  ‘What does he remind you of?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m trying to remember … Do you know what line of work he was in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor what part of Paris he lived in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s not from out of town either, you can tell straight off.’

  ‘I agree.’

  Maigret had had ample opportunity to hear for himself that the man had a marked Parisian accent, the lower-class accent heard everywhere, on the Métro, in the bars on the outskirts and also in the stands of the Vélodrome d’Hiver.

  Actually … He had the beginnings of an idea … He would test it later …

  ‘I don’t suppose you know a woman named Nine either?’

  ‘Wait a sec … There’s a Nine in Marseilles, plays second fiddle to the madam of a brothel in Rue Saint-Ferréol.’

  ‘It’s not her, I know that one … She’s at least fifty years old …’

  Fred stared at the photo of the man who was probably about thirty and muttered:

  ‘It doesn’t always follow, you know!’

  ‘Take one of these photos. Try to remember. Show it round …’

  ‘You can count on me. I hope I’ll have a lead for you within a couple of days. Not about your stiff, but about a big-time drugs dealer. For now I only know him as Monsieur Jean. I’ve never seen him. All I know is that he’s behind a big gang of small-fry dealers. I get my stuff from them regularly. It costs me. When you’ve got some cash to spare …’

  Next door, Janvier was still on the trail of fish pie.

  ‘You’re right, sir. Everyone I talk to says they only make Provençal fish pie on Fridays, and even then, not that often. During Holy Week, sometimes on a Wednesday, but Easter is still a long way off.’

 
‘Leave that to Torrence. Is there anything on at the Vél’ d’Hiv’ this afternoon?’

  ‘Wait a minute, I’ll look in the paper.’

  There were motor-paced races.

  ‘Take a photo along with you. Talk to the ticket offices, orange sellers and peanut vendors. Tour all the bars in the area. Then hang about in the cafés around Porte Dauphine.’

  ‘You think he was a sporting type?’

  Maigret had no idea. He had a feeling too, just like the others, like the landlord of the Caves du Beaujolais, like the informer Fred, but it was unfocused, blurred.

  He could not picture his dead man working in an office or as a shop assistant. Fred had been definite that he was not part of the criminal underworld.

  On the other hand, he was completely at home in small working-class bars.

  He had a wife called Nine. And Maigret had met her. In what capacity? Would the man have made a point of mentioning it if the inspector had encountered her as someone he had investigated?

  ‘Come here, Dubonnet. I want you to go down to Vice. Ask to see the list of girls who’ve been registered over the last few years. Note down the addresses of all the ones named Nine. Then go and see them. Is that clear?’

  Dubonnet was a young officer, fresh out of college, a little stiff, always very well turned out, exquisitely courteous to all and sundry. It was perhaps Maigret’s sense of irony which had made him choose him for the job.

  He sent another inspector to make inquiries in all the small bars around Châtelet, Place des Vosges and Bastille.

  Meanwhile, Coméliau, the examining magistrate, who was leading the investigation from his office, waited impatiently for Maigret. He did not understand why he had not already contacted him.

  ‘What about the yellow Citroëns?’

  ‘Ériau is looking after it.’

  All that was routine. But even if it served no purpose, it had to be done. On all the roads in France, policemen and uniformed officers were pulling over all drivers of yellow Citroëns.

  Someone also had to be sent to the shop on Boulevard Sébastopol where the dead man’s jacket had been bought, and also to another establishment on Boulevard Saint-Martin where the raincoat had been sold.