Why had the photos of Nine been removed? Why had she disappeared, deserting her home, without even taking the money in the till? True, it amounted to less than a hundred francs. Obviously Albert kept his money somewhere else, and that was what the intruders had taken just as they had taken all his private papers.
The oddest thing was that a thorough search of the whole building had been made without disturbing anything or producing any mess whatsoever. The clothes in the wardrobe had been checked through but had not been removed from their hangers. Photos had been torn from their frames but the frames had been put back on their nails.
Maigret fell asleep and when he heard someone knocking on the shutters downstairs he would have sworn that he had dropped off only a few minutes before.
But it was seven o’clock and light. The sun was shining on the Seine, where the barges were beginning to move and tugs were sounding their hooters.
He took a moment to slip his shoes on without doing up the laces and went down the stairs, hair uncombed, collar unbuttoned and his jacket creased.
It was Chevrier and a rather good-looking woman wearing a blue two-piece suit and a small red hat on her frizzed hair.
‘Here we are, sir.’
Chevrier had been with the Police Judiciaire for only three or four years. He did not look like a goat, as his name suggested, but more like a sheep; the contours of his face and body were soft and round. The woman tugged him by the sleeve. He understood and stammered:
‘Sorry! Detective chief inspector, may I introduce my wife?’
‘No need to worry,’ she said pluckily. ‘I’ve done this before. My mother used to run the inn in our village and sometimes, with just a couple of serving girls to help us, we’d lay on wedding receptions for fifty or more people.’
She walked straight to the percolator and asked her husband: ‘Pass me your matches.’
The gas went ‘pft’, and a few minutes later a smell of coffee spread through the house.
Chevrier had taken good care to wear black trousers and a white shirt. He too was dressed for the part. He took his place behind the counter and moved a few things round.
‘Shall we open?’
‘Yes. It must be time.’
‘Which of us will get the groceries?’ asked the wife.
‘In a while I want you to take a taxi and buy what you need from wherever is closest.’
‘Will fricandeau of veal with sorrel be all right?’
She had brought a white apron with her. She was very cheerful, very vivacious. It was as if they were preparing for a day trip, or playing a game.
‘We can take the shutters down now,’ said Maigret. ‘If customers ask questions, say you are just standing in.’
He went back upstairs, found a razor, shaving soap and a brush. After all, why not? Albert appeared to have been a man of clean habits and fit. So, taking his time, he washed and shaved. When he came downstairs, Chevrier’s wife had already gone shopping. Two men were leaning on the counter, two barge men, drinking coffee with calvados. They didn’t care who owned the bar. They were probably just passing through. They were talking about a lock which had almost had one sluice stove in by a tug the night before.
‘What can I get you, sir?’
Maigret preferred to help himself. It was actually the first time in his life that he had poured himself a glass of rum from the bottle behind the counter of a bar. Suddenly, he laughed.
‘Just thinking about Monsieur Coméliau,’ he explained.
He tried to imagine the examining magistrate walking into the Petit Albert and finding the detective chief inspector standing behind the counter, with one of his officers.
But if anything was to be learned, there was no other way. Wouldn’t the men who had murdered the bar’s owner be surprised to find the place open as usual?
And what about Nine, if she were still alive?
At about nine o’clock, the ancient clairvoyant walked past then walked back again, even pressing her nose to the window before moving off, muttering to herself, carrying a net bag full of shopping in one hand.
Madame Maigret had just phoned to find out how her husband was.
‘Can I bring you anything? Your toothbrush, for example?’
‘No thanks. I’ve asked someone to buy me one.’
‘Monsieur Coméliau phoned.’
‘I hope you didn’t give him this number.’
‘No. I just told him you went out yesterday evening and hadn’t come back yet.’
Chevrier’s wife got out of a taxi, from which she took wooden boxes full of vegetables and provisions wrapped in paper. When Maigret called her ‘madame’, she said:
‘Oh, just call me Irma. You’ll see, it’s what the customers will all call me from the word go. That’s fine with you, Émile, that he can …?’
But hardly any customers came. Three bricklayers who were working on scaffolding in a street nearby came in for their break. They brought bread and sausage with them and ordered two litres of red wine.
‘It’s a good job this place has reopened! Before, it was a ten-minute walk from here before we found somewhere to get a drink!’
They weren’t puzzled to see new faces.
‘The previous owner has retired, then?’
One of them commented:
‘He was a decent sort.’
‘Had you known him long?’
‘Just for the couple of weeks we’ve been working on a site round the corner. We move around a lot, you see.’
But Maigret, whom they saw prowling in the background, made them curious.
‘Who’s that, then? He looks like he lives here.’
Without missing a breath, Chevrier replied:
‘Sh! That’s my father-in-law.’
Various pans were simmering on the kitchen stove. The whole place was coming to life. A vinegary sun flooded in through the front windows of the bar. Chevrier, with his sleeves rolled up and held by elastic, had swept up the sawdust.
The telephone rang.
‘It’s for you, sir. Moers.’
Poor Moers had not slept all night. He hadn’t had much success with the fingerprints. Prints there were, of all kinds, on the bottles and furniture. For the most part they were already old and overlapped each other. The clearest, which he had forwarded to the anthropometrics lab, could not be matched with any set on file.
‘They searched the whole place wearing rubber gloves. Only one thing gave any result at all: the sawdust. Analysis showed up traces of blood.’
‘Human blood?’
‘I’ll know that in an hour. But I’m virtually certain …’
Lucas, who that morning had had his own share of the work to do, arrived about eleven o’clock, looking bright and breezy. Maigret noticed that he had chosen to wear a light-coloured tie.
‘An export-cassis,’ he called to his colleague, Chevrier, with a wink.
Irma had hung a slate by the door on which, under the words ‘Today’s Special’, she had chalked: ‘fricandeau of veal with sorrel’. She could be heard rushing around and on that day she would not have changed places with anyone for anything in the world.
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ Maigret said to Lucas.
They went up to the bedroom and stood by the window, which had been opened because the weather was so mild. The crane was working by the water’s edge, lifting barrels out of the entrails of a barge. Whistles sounded, chains clanked and on the shimmering surface of the water there was the constant bustle of panting, fussing tugs.
&nbs
p; ‘His name is Albert Rochain. I went to the Central Registry. He was issued with a licence four years ago.’
‘Did you manage to get the name of his wife?’
‘No, the licence was in his sole name. I went to the town hall, where they were unable to give me any information. If he had a wife, he was already married when he moved into the area.’
‘You tried the local police?’
‘Nothing there. It appears that there was never any trouble in these premises. The police were never called here.’
Maigret’s eye remained fixed on the photo of his dead man on the chest of drawers, which showed him still smiling.
‘Chevrier will probably find out more later from the customers.’
‘Are you staying here?’
‘We could have lunch downstairs like a pair of casual customers. Any news from Torrence and Janvier?’
‘They’re still out questioning race-goers.’
‘If you can reach them by phone, tell them to concentrate on Vincennes.’
Always the same old refrain: the track at Vincennes was what might be called the ‘local’ race-course. And Albert, like Maigret, was a creature of habit.
‘Aren’t people surprised to see that the café has reopened?’
‘Not particularly. Some of the neighbours have turned up on the pavement for a look. They probably think that Albert has sold up.’
At noon, they were both sitting at a table by the window, and Irma served them herself. A few customers were seated at other tables, notably crane drivers.
‘So Albert finally hit the jackpot, then?’ one of them called out to Chevrier.
‘He’s had to go out of town for a while.’
‘And you’ve replaced him? Did he take Nine with him? Maybe now we’ll get something to eat with a bit less garlic in it, which wouldn’t be a bad thing! Not that there’s anything wrong with garlic, except it gets on the breath …’
The man pinched Irma’s behind as she passed. Chevrier did not react and even bore Lucas’ amused glance in silence.
‘A good sort, right enough! Too bad he was so mad about the races! … But listen, if he had someone to cover for him, how come he closed the café for four days? Especially without letting his customers know? The first day we had to traipse all the way to Charenton bridge to get a bite to eat. No thanks, dearie, I never eat camembert. I have a small cream cheese, just one, every day. And Jules has Roquefort …’
Even so, they were intrigued and spoke in whispers. Irma in particular was a subject of some interest.
‘Chevrier won’t be able to stand this for too long,’ murmured Lucas into Maigret’s ear. ‘He’s only been married for two years. If these morons keep letting their hands stray all over his wife’s backside, they’ll soon feel the weight of his fists on their chins.’
It wasn’t that bad. But as he brought the men their drinks, Chevrier said firmly:
‘That’s my wife.’
‘Congratulations … But not to worry! We’re not particular!’
And they roared with laughter. They weren’t nasty characters but they sensed vaguely that Albert’s stand-in was riled.
‘Albert, now, he made good and sure … There was no danger anyone would steal Nine off him …’
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t you know her?’
‘Never set eyes on her.’
‘You haven’t missed anything, chum. She would have been safe in a roomful of Senegalese. Lovely girl, of course … That’s right, Jules, isn’t it?’
‘How old is she?’
‘I don’t know as how you could put any age on her. What do you reckon, Jules?’
‘I dunno. She’s ageless. Maybe thirty? Or perhaps fifty? It depends which side you look at her from. If it’s the side with the good eye, she’s not too bad. But if it’s the other one …’
‘She has a squint?’
‘And how! The man he asks if she’s got a squint! I tell you, she could look at the toes of your shoes and the top of the Eiffel Tower without moving her head!’
‘Does Albert love her?’
‘Albert is a man who likes the easy life, if you take my meaning. Look, your missus makes a good, I’d even say excellent, stew. But I bet you’re the one who gets up at six and trots off to Les Halles to buy whatever she needs. Maybe you even give her a hand peeling the spuds. But an hour after, it’s not her who’s doing all the washing up while you swan off to the races …
‘But that’s how it works with Nine! Albert lives the life of Riley! Not to mention that she must have had money of her own.’
Why at this point did Lucas take a sideways look at Maigret? Wasn’t it rather as if the inspector’s dead man had just been dragged through the dirt?
The crane driver went on:
‘I dunno how she earned it, but with her looks it couldn’t have been by going on the game …’
Maigret did not flinch. There was even a faint smile playing about his lips. He was not missing one word of what was being said, and those words automatically conjured up images. The picture of Albert was being completed piece by piece, and in the process Maigret appeared to lose none of his affection for the man who was now clearly emerging.
‘What part of the country are you two from, then?’
‘I’m from the Berry,’ answered Irma.
‘Me, I’m from the Cher,’ said Chevrier.
‘So it wasn’t in your home towns that you met Albert. He’s from the north, or rather north-east … Isn’t he from Tourcoing, Jules?’
‘Roubaix.’
‘Same thing.’
Maigret broke into the conversation, which did not seem the least surprising in a bar frequented by regulars.
‘Didn’t he used to work somewhere around Gare du Nord?’
‘Yes, in the Cadran. He was a waiter in the same brasserie for ten or twelve years before setting up on his own here.’
It was no accident that Maigret had asked the question. He knew that when northerners move to Paris, they seem to find it very hard to settle far from their station. They form a colony more or less, centred around Rue de Maubeuge.
‘It couldn’t have been there that he met Nine.’
‘Whether it was there or somewhere else, he certainly hit the jackpot. It wasn’t on account of his winnings, of course. It was on account of never having to worry about money ever again.’
‘Was she from the Midi?’
‘And then some!’
‘You mean Marseilles?’
‘Toulouse! She had an accent you could cut with a knife! Next to her, that announcer on Radio-Toulouse has just got a bit of a twang … Right, let’s have the bill … By the way, landlord, aren’t we forgetting our manners?’
Chevrier frowned, disconcerted. But Maigret understood and it was he who replied:
‘He’s right! When a bar gets a new landlord, it’s drinks on the house!’
There were only seven customers all that lunchtime. One of them was a cellarman from Cess, middle-aged and with a surly manner, who ate by himself in a corner and found fault with everything: with the cooking, which wasn’t the same, with his table, which wasn’t his usual table, with the white wine he was given instead of the red he was used to …
‘This place is going to turn into a dump just like all the others,’ he grumbled as he left. ‘It’s always the same.’
Chevrier was no longer enjoying himself as much as he had that morning. Only Irma seemed to stay cheerful, juggling with the dishes and the piles of plates, and she
attacked the washing-up, humming a tune to herself.
At 1.30, only Maigret and Lucas were still in the bar. There followed the quiet, slow period when they saw a customer only from time to time, a passer-by who happened to be thirsty, or a couple of river men who were passing the time while their boats were being loaded.
Maigret smoked his pipe quietly, paunch very much in evidence, for he had eaten a great deal, perhaps to please Irma. The sun warmed one of his ears, and he wore an expression of utter contentment. Then all of a sudden the sole of one shoe came down heavily on Lucas’ toes.
A man had just walked past on the pavement. He had stared intently into the bar, paused uncertainly, then turned and was now approaching the door.
He was of average height. He was not wearing a hat or a cap. He had red hair, and there were reddish blotches on his face. His eyes were blue and his lips fleshy.
He reached for the lever handle. He entered, still hesitating. There was something loose-limbed about his bearing and an odd reticence in his gestures.
His shoes were worn and had not been polished for several days. His dark suit was shiny, his shirt of dubious cleanliness and his tie badly knotted.
He was like a cat stepping warily into an unfamiliar room, observing everything around it and alert to possible danger. He must have been of less than average intelligence – village idiots often have eyes like his, which expressed only low cunning and mistrust.
Was it that Maigret and Lucas had aroused his curiosity? He was suspicious of them, sidled up to the bar without taking his eyes off them and tapped the metal counter with a coin.
Chevrier emerged from the kitchen, where he was eating his lunch in a corner.
‘What’ll it be?’
The man hesitated again. He appeared to have a bad cold. He growled something incomprehensible then gave up trying to speak and instead pointed at the bottle of cognac on a shelf.
It was straight into Chevrier’s eyes that he now looked. There was something here that he did not understand, something beyond his comprehension.
Maigret's Dead Man Page 8
