What was beginning to unsettle Madame Maigret was the way he was now speaking with deep conviction.
‘And when you add the fish pie …’
‘Is a taste for it also particular to the owners of small bars?’
‘No, sir. But Paris is full of little bars which serve food for a small number of customers. You know: no tablecloth, they eat directly off the table. Often it’s the owner’s wife who does the cooking. The menu consists of the dish of the day and nothing else. In such bars, where there are quiet periods, the owner is free for a good part of the afternoon. That’s why this morning I’ve got two inspectors trawling through every part of Paris, starting with the area round the Hôtel de Ville and Bastille. As you know, our man never strayed very far from there. Parisians are fiercely attached to their own neighbourhood because it’s probably only there that they feel really safe.’
‘Are you hoping for a result soon?’
‘I hope there’ll be a positive result sooner or later. Now let me see … Have I told you everything? All I have left to report is the spot of varnish.’
‘What varnish?’
‘On the seat of the trousers. It was Moers – who else? – who spotted it, though it’s visible enough. He reckons it’s fresh varnish. He also says the varnish was applied to some piece of furniture three or four days ago. I’ve sent men out to the mainline stations, starting with Gare de Lyon.’
‘Why Gare de Lyon?’
‘Because it’s a kind of extension of the Bastille district.’
‘And why start in a station?’
Maigret sighed. Oh God! How long it took to explain things! How could an examining magistrate be so deficient in even the most basic sense of the common realities! How can people who have never set foot in a cheap bar, or a PMU café or in the public enclosures of a race-course, how can such people, who don’t know the meaning of the expression Limonade, claim to be capable of understanding the criminal mind?
‘I assume you have my report there?’
‘I’ve read it several times.’
‘When I got the first phone call on Wednesday morning at eleven, the man had had someone tailing him for some time, since the previous evening, at least. He didn’t think of contacting the police immediately. He clearly hoped he’d be able to sort his problem out himself. Yet he was already scared. He knew they wanted to kill him. So he had to avoid places where there weren’t any people. The crowd was his shield. Nor did he dare go home, where they would have followed him and finished him off. Now, even in Paris there are very few places that stay open all night. In addition to the Montmartre nightclubs, there are the railway stations, which are lit and have waiting rooms that are never empty. Well, it so happens that the benches in the third-class waiting room at Gare de Lyon were revarnished on Monday. Moers confirms that the varnish used there is identical to the one on the trousers.’
‘Have the station staff been questioned?’
‘Yes, and they are still being interviewed, sir.’
‘In short, then, you have managed despite the difficulties to get some results.’
‘Despite the difficulties, yes. I also know exactly when our man changed his mind.’
‘Changed his mind about what?’
Madame Maigret was pouring her husband a cup of herbal tea and made signs telling him to drink it while it was hot.
‘First, as I’ve just explained, he hoped to sort out his problem by himself. Then, on Wednesday morning he got the idea of contacting me. He persisted with that idea until about four in the afternoon. What happened then? I don’t know. Perhaps, after sending out his last SOS from the post office in Faubourg Saint-Denis, he decided he wasn’t getting anywhere? Be that as it may, but about an hour later, around five, he walked into a bar in Rue Saint-Antoine.’
‘So a witness has come forward at last?’
‘No, sir. It was Janvier who came up with it after showing the photo in all the bars and questioning waiters. Anyway, he ordered a Suze – and this fact virtually rules out any chance that we’ve got the wrong man – and asked for an envelope. Not writing paper, just an envelope. Then he stuffed it in his pocket, asked at the counter for a token for the phone and hurried into the booth. He made a call. The woman at the till heard the click of the receiver.’
‘And you did not get that call?’
‘No,’ said Maigret with a touch of resentment. ‘It wasn’t meant for us. It was intended for someone else, obviously. As for the yellow car …’
‘Any news of it?’
‘What there is is vague though consistent. Are you familiar with Quai Henri-IV?’
‘Near the Bastille?’
‘That’s right. As you see, everything happens within the same area, so much so that you get the feeling that you’re going round and round in circles. Now, Quai Henri-IV is one of the quietest and least frequented parts of Paris. There’s not a single shop, not one bar, just well-heeled, residential streets. A telegram delivery boy spotted the yellow car at eight exactly. He noticed it because it had broken down outside number 63, where he happened to have a telegram to deliver. Two men had their heads under the raised bonnet.’
‘Was he able to give you a description?’
‘No, it was too dark.’
‘Did he get the number?’
‘No again. It is rare, sir, that it crosses anyone’s mind to make a note of the registration numbers of cars they happen to notice. But what is important is that the car was facing towards Pont d’Austerlitz. Also it was then ten past eight, which is significant given that we know from the autopsy that the murder was committed between eight and ten.’
‘Do you think your health will allow you to get out and about again soon?’
The tone of the examining magistrate had softened slightly, but he was in no mood to make concessions.
‘I don’t know.’
‘In what direction are you now pursuing your inquiries?’
‘No particular direction. I’m waiting. That’s all I can do, wouldn’t you agree? We’ve come to a standstill. We’ve done, or rather my men have done, all we could. All we can do now is wait.’
‘Wait for what?’
‘Anything. Whatever turns up. Maybe a witness? A new fact?’
‘Do you think that will happen?’
‘We have to hope so.’
‘Well, thank you for all this. I shall forward a report of our conversation to the public prosecutor.’
‘Please convey my best wishes to him.’
‘I hope your health picks up.’
‘Thank you.’
As he replaced the receiver, he looked as grave as an owl. Out of the corner of his eye, he observed Madame Maigret, who had taken up her knitting again and, he sensed, was feeling vaguely concerned.
‘Don’t you think you went a little too far?’
‘Too far in what direction?’
‘Admit it: you were having him on.’
‘Not at all.’
‘But you kept making fun of him.’
‘Do you think so?’
He seemed genuinely surprised. Indeed, the truth was that, for all his banter, he had been deadly serious. Everything he had said was true, including the doubts he had about his state of health. This happened to him from time to time, out of the blue, when an investigation was not moving forwards the way he would like: he would take to his bed or stay in his room. He would then be pampered, and everyone would walk by on tiptoe. This way he escaped from the bustle and hubbub of the Police Judiciaire, from the questions fir
ed at him from left and right, the countless daily irritations. But now colleagues came to visit him or phoned him up. Everyone was patient with him. They kept asking him how he was. And in exchange for a few cups of herbal tea, which he drank with sulky bad grace, he managed to extract a few grogs from the ever solicitous Madame Maigret.
It was true that he had various things in common with his dead man. Fundamentally – the thought suddenly crossed his mind – it was not so much the business of moving house that alarmed him but the fact that he would moving to fresh pastures, the prospect of not seeing the words ‘Lhoste & Pépin’ when he woke and of not following the same route every morning, normally on foot. The dead man and he were both solidly rooted in their settings. It was a thought that pleased him. He emptied his pipe and filled another.
‘Do you really think he’s the proprietor of a bar?’
‘I may have exaggerated slightly by being so definite, but I said it and would like it to be true. It all holds together, don’t you see?’
‘What holds together?’
‘Everything I told him. At the start, I didn’t think I’d tell him as much as I did. I was thinking out loud. But then I felt that it was all coming together. So I carried on.’
‘And what if he was a cobbler or a tailor?’
‘Dr Paul would have told me. Moers too.’
‘How would they have known?’
‘Dr Paul would have known by studying the hands, the calluses and any tell-tale signs; Moers by analysing the particles found in his clothes.’
‘And what if it turns out that he was anything but a man who ran a bar?’
‘It would be just too bad. Pass me my book.’
That was another of his habits when he was not feeling well: to lose himself in a novel by Alexandre Dumas père. He owned a set of his complete works in an old, cheap edition with yellowing pages and romantic engravings. The mere smell of those volumes brought back memories of all the times when he had been briefly laid up.
There was the muted purr of the stove as it drew and the click of knitting needles. Whenever he looked up he saw the brass pendulum swinging in its dark oak case.
‘You should take some more aspirins.’
‘As you wish.’
‘Why do you think he phoned someone else?’
Loyal Madame Maigret! She would so much have liked to help him. Usually, she consciously refrained from asking questions about his work, even about the time he would be home and when he wanted his meals. But when he was ill and she saw him working, she could not help worrying. Basically, deep down, she probably thought he was not taking it seriously.
On the other hand, when he was at the Police Judiciaire, he probably behaved differently and acted and spoke like a real detective chief inspector.
This discussion he had just had with Coméliau – especially because of who he was – had been torture for her, and it was obvious that even as she counted her stitches she was still thinking about it.
‘Listen, Maigret …’
He looked up reluctantly, for he was deep in his book.
‘There’s something I don’t understand. You said when you were talking about Gare de Lyon that he didn’t dare go home because the man would have followed him.’
‘Yes, I probably said that.’
‘Yesterday, you told me he’d changed his jacket.’
‘True. What about it?’
‘And you’ve just told Monsieur Coméliau about the fish pie, implying that he’d eaten it in his own restaurant. So he did go back. Therefore he wasn’t afraid of being followed home.’
Had Maigret really had this thought already? Or on the contrary, was he improvising when he replied?
‘There’s no contradiction.’
‘Oh.’
‘The station episode was Tuesday evening. It was before he had contacted me. He was still hoping he’d be able to escape from the man who was following him.’
‘What about the next day? Do you think he wasn’t being followed any more?’
‘Maybe yes. It’s more than likely. But I also said that he changed his mind, around five o’clock. Don’t forget he phoned somebody and asked for an envelope.’
‘That’s true.’
Although she was not convinced, she thought it wise to answer with a sigh:
‘You’re probably right.’
Then there was silence. From time to time a page turned, and the sock in Madame Maigret’s lap grew longer in tiny increments.
She opened her mouth, then closed it. Without looking up, he said:
‘Out with it!’
‘It’s nothing. … It surely doesn’t mean anything … Only I was just thinking that he got it wrong since he was killed in the end …’
‘Where did he go wrong?’
‘About going home. I’m sorry. Read your book …’
But he didn’t read, at least not very attentively, because it was he who looked up first.
‘You’re forgetting the car that broke down,’ he said.
And he felt that a new avenue had suddenly opened up for his thoughts, that a curtain had been whisked aside and that beyond it he would glimpse the truth.
‘What we need to know is how long exactly it was before the yellow car was repaired.’
He had ceased speaking for her benefit. She knew it and made sure she didn’t interrupt him again.
‘A car breakdown is an unpredictable event. It is an accident, something which by definition upsets the most carefully made schemes. It follows that events turned out to be different from what had been planned.’
He gave his wife a shrewd look: it was she who had set him on the right path.
‘Suppose he died because the car had broken down?’
Without further ado he slammed the book shut and left it on his knees. Then he reached for the phone and dialled the number of the Police Judiciaire.
‘Give me Lucas. If he’s not in his office, he’ll be in mine … Is that you, Lucas? … What? … There’s been a development? … Wait a moment …’
He wanted to say his piece first: he was afraid he would be told what he had worked out for himself.
‘I want you to send a man out to Quai Henri-IV, Ériau or Dubonnet, if they’re available. I want him to question all the concierges, all the tenants not only of number 63 and the immediately neighbouring houses but also in all the houses and apartments. The street isn’t very long. Some of the locals must have noticed the yellow car, and I’d like to know, as accurately as possible, exactly when it broke down and what time it drove away again. Wait! That’s not all! The men in the car might have wanted a spare part. There must be garages in the area. I want them questioned too. That’s all for the moment … over to you!’
‘One moment, sir, I have to go next door …’
That meant that Lucas was not alone and that he did not want to speak in front of the person who was with him.
‘Hello? … Right … I didn’t want her to hear what I was saying. It’s further information about the car. An old lady turned up half an hour ago, and I’m interviewing her in your office. Unfortunately, she seems a bit crazy to me …’
It was unavoidable. However little publicity is given to a police investigation, the Police Judiciaire sooner or later attracts all the crazy people, male and female, in Paris.
‘She lives on Quai de Charenton, a little further along than the warehouses at Bercy.’
It reminded Maigret of a case he had investigated a few years before in a strange little house located in that
part of the city. In his mind’s eye, he saw Quai de Bercy, with the warehouse gates on the left, the tall trees and the stone parapet of the Seine on the right. Further on, after a bridge whose name he had forgotten, the road widened. One side was lined with one- or two-storied houses which put him in mind more of the suburbs than of the inner city proper. There were always many barges moored just there, and he pictured the docks piled high with barrels as far as the eye could see.
‘What does this old woman do for a living?’
‘That’s the hitch. She’s a fortune-teller and clairvoyant …’
‘Oh dear.’
‘That was my first reaction too. She talks the hind leg off a donkey and she has this very unnerving way of looking at you straight in the eye. At first, she stated categorically that she never reads newspapers and tried to make me believe that there was no point because she only had to go into a trance to be up to date with everything that goes on.’
‘You pressed her?’
‘Yes. In the end she admitted that she might just have glanced at a paper which one of her customers had left behind.’
‘So?’
‘She’d read a description of the yellow car. She claims she saw it on Wednesday evening less than a hundred metres from her front door.’
‘What time was that?’
‘About nine.’
‘Did she see who was in it?’
‘She saw two men going into a building.’
‘And is she able to say which building?’
‘It’s a small bar on the corner of the Quai and a street that runs off it. It’s called the Petit Albert.’
Maigret bit hard on the pipe between his teeth and avoided looking at Madame Maigret, for he was reluctant to let her see the tiny flame dancing in his eyes.
‘Is that all?’
‘That’s more or less everything interesting that she told me. But that didn’t stop her yakking on and on for half an hour at an alarming rate. Would it be better if you talked to her?’
‘Yes!’
‘Would you like me to bring her round to your place?’
‘Just a moment. Do we know how long the car remained outside the Petit Albert?’
Maigret's Dead Man Page 6
