He seemed somehow relieved. His honour as a pure Czech from Prague had not been at stake since they were dealing with a mere Slovakian peasant.
Maigret had taken his memo-pad from his pocket.
‘Ask her where she was on the night of 12 and 13 October last.’
This time, the question struck home, her expression darkened, and her eyes turned more insistently on the inspector. But no sound came from her lips.
‘And now the same question for the night of 8 and 9 December.’
She became agitated. Her chest heaved visibly, and she made an involuntary movement towards the cot, as if she wanted to take hold of her baby and protect him.
She was a magnificent woman. Only the nurse could not see that she belonged to a different order from the rest of them and thus was able to treat her just like any other woman, as a patient who had just had a baby.
‘Will you soon be done asking her all these asinine questions?’
‘If that’s what you think, I’ll ask her another question which might make you change your mind, mademoiselle … or is it madame?’
‘It’s mademoiselle, if you don’t mind.’
‘I thought as much.’
He turned to the interpreter.
‘Would you translate, please. During the night of 8 and 9 December, at a farm in Picardy, at Saint-Gilles-les-Vaudreuves, an entire family was brutally slaughtered with an axe. On the night of 12 and 13 October, two old men, both farmers, were killed in the same way at their farm at Saint-Aubin, also in Picardy. During the night of 21 and 22 November, two elderly men and their simple-minded farm hand had already been attacked, also with an axe …’
‘I assume you are going to claim that she did it?’
‘One moment, mademoiselle. Would you kindly allow the interpreter …’
The Czech translated with evident distaste, as though merely speaking of these massacres dirtied his hands. On hearing the first words, the woman half sat up in the bed, exposing one breast, which she did not attempt to hide.
‘Until 8 December, nothing was known about the murderers because they left no survivors behind. Are you following, mademoiselle?’
‘I believe the doctor authorized a visit of just a few minutes only …’
‘Don’t worry. She’s tough. Just look at her.’
She was still beautiful poised next to her son like a she-wolf, like a lioness, as beautiful as she must have been leading her men.
‘Translate word for word, please. On 8 December, there was an oversight. A little girl, nine years old, in bare feet, wearing her nightdress, managed to slip out of bed before they got round to her and hid in a corner where no one thought of searching. She saw everything and heard everything. She saw a young woman with dark hair, a magnificent, wild woman holding the flame of a candle to her mother’s feet while one of the men split her grandfather’s skull and another poured a drink for his companions. The farmer’s wife screamed, begged, writhed in agony while this …’
He nodded towards the woman who had just had a baby.
‘… this woman smiled, ratcheted up the torture by stubbing out a lighted cigarette on her breasts.’
‘Really!’ protested the nurse.
‘Translate!’
While this was going on, he observed Maria, who never took her eyes off him, withdrew into herself, eyes blazing.
‘Ask her if she has anything to say for herself.’
All they got was a disdainful smile.
‘The little girl who escaped the carnage is now an orphan. She is being looked after by a family in Amiens. This morning, she was shown a photograph of this woman which was telegraphed by belinogram. She formally identified her. She had not been told anything in advance. The photo was simply placed in front of her, and her reaction was so violent that she suffered a nervous collapse. Since you’re Czech, monsieur, please translate.’
‘She’s Slovak,’ he repeated.
At this point, the baby started to cry, and the nurse, after looking at her watch, lifted him out of his cot. While she changed him, the mother did not take her eyes off her.
‘I must point out, Detective Chief Inspector, that your time is up.’
‘Was time up too for the poor people I’ve been talking about?’
‘The baby must be put to the breast.’
‘Please see to it.’
It was the very first time that Maigret had conducted such an interview while a new-born baby fastened its lips to the white breast of a murderess.
‘Still not answering, is she? I imagine she won’t say anything either when you ask her about Madame Rival, who was murdered like the others on her farm on 19 January. She’s the latest to date. Her daughter, aged forty, also died. I’m assuming Maria was there. As usual, recent burn marks were found on her body. Translate.’
All around him he was aware of a feeling of deep unease, of muted hostility, but he did not care. He was exhausted. If he had been able to sit in a chair for just five minutes, he would have gone to sleep.
‘Now ask her about her confederates, her men, about Victor Poliensky, a kind of village idiot as strong as a gorilla, Serge Madok, who has a thick neck and greasy skin, about Carl and the kid they call Pietr.’
She picked up on the names as Maigret pronounced them and with each mention she flinched.
‘Did she also go to bed with the kid?’
‘Do you want me to translate?’
‘Please. I don’t think you could say anything that would bring a blush to her cheek.’
Backed into a corner, she still managed to raise a smile when she heard the name of the adolescent.
‘Ask if he really is her brother.’
Curiously enough there were moments when an expression of genuine tenderness flickered in the woman’s eyes and not only when she held the face of her baby close to her breast.
‘And now, Monsieur …’
‘My name is Franz Lehel.’
‘I couldn’t care less. I would be grateful if you would translate what I am about to say very accurately, word by word. It is possible that the life of your compatriot could depend on it. Tell her first that her life depends on the attitude she chooses to adopt.’
‘Must I really?’
And the nurse murmured:
‘It’s a disgrace!’
But Maria did not turn a hair. She just turned a little paler but still managed a smile.
‘There is another man. We don’t know who he is but he’s their leader.’
‘Shall I translate?’
‘Please do.’
This time what they got from the woman was a sarcastic grin.
‘She won’t talk, I know. I was expecting it when I got here. She isn’t the kind of woman who is easily intimidated. Still, there is one detail I would like to clear up, because people’s lives are at stake.’
‘Shall I translate?’
‘Why did I ask you to come here?’
‘To translate. I’m sorry.’
He spoke very stiffly, like a schoolboy reciting a lesson learned by rote.
‘From 12 October to 21 November is about six weeks. From 21 November to 8 December is a little more than a fortnight. It’s another six weeks to 19 January. Don’t you get it? Those are the periods, more or less, that it took for the gang to spend the money they stole. It is now the end of February … I can’t promise anything. When the case comes to trial, others will decide what her fate will be. Translate.’
‘Would you repeat the dates?’
Maigret repea
ted them and waited.
‘Add now that if, by answering my final questions, she prevents further massacres taking place, due account will be taken of the fact.’
She did not react, but the scowl on her face turned to an expression of contempt.
‘I’m not asking her to tell me where her friends are now. I’m not even asking her to tell me the name of their leader. I want to know if their funds are running low and if they’re planning a job for the next few days.’
The only effect was to light up Maria’s eyes.
‘Very well. She won’t answer. I think I’ve got the message. All that remains now is to find out if Victor Poliensky was the killer.’
She listened closely to the interpreter, then waited. Maigret was getting tired of having to keep going through the man from the embassy.
‘It’s likely that not more than one of them is handy with an axe. If that wasn’t Victor’s role, I don’t see why the gang would have bothered to drag a halfwit around with them. It was he ultimately who led us to Maria’s arrest, and he will lead us to the rest of them.’
The interpreter was speaking again. For the moment, Maria seemed to be winning the battle. They knew nothing. She was the only one who knew everything. She was in bed, physically weakened, with an infant hanging on her breast, but she had stayed silent and would maintain her silence.
An involuntary glance out of the window provided the clue to what she was really thinking. When they had left her behind in Rue du Roi-de-Sicile – and it was probably she who had insisted they abandon her – they must have made certain promises.
She knew the men around her. She trusted them. As long as they remained at large, she ran no risks. They would come for her. Sooner or later, they would get her out of this place, or at a later stage even out of the infirmary inside the Santé prison.
She was superb. Her nostrils flared. An inscrutable smile lingered on her full lips. She was not made of the same stuff as these people around her nor even her men. They had chosen once and for all to live on the margins. They were wild beasts, and the bleating of sheep touched off no spark of compassion in them.
Where, in what lower depths, in what world of poverty had their group been formed? They had all been hungry. It was very evident that once they had pulled a job, all they thought about was eating, eating all day, eating and drinking, sleeping, making love then eating again, oblivious both to their run-down surroundings in Rue du Roi-de-Sicile and to their threadbare clothes, which were little better than rags.
They did not kill for money. To them, money was merely something that enabled them to eat and drink without a care, in their little corner, indifferent to the rest of humankind.
She was not even interested in her appearance. The dresses found in her room were cheap frocks like the ones she had worn in her village back home. She did not use face-powder or lipstick. She did not own expensive underwear. Given the way they were and behaved, they would in earlier times or other climes have lived exactly the same lives, naked, in forest or jungle.
‘Tell her that I’ll be back and that I ask her to reflect. She has a child now …’
He lowered his voice involuntarily as he said these last words.
‘We’ll leave you to it for now,’ he said to the nurse. ‘I shall send you a second inspector shortly. I’ll phone Dr Boucard. It is Dr Boucard who is looking after her, isn’t it?’
‘He’s the head of department.’
‘If she can be moved, she will be probably transferred to the Santé either this evening or tomorrow morning.’
Despite everything he had revealed to her about her patient, she still regarded him with resentment.
‘Goodbye, mademoiselle. Come, monsieur.’
In the corridor outside he had a few words with Lucas, who knew nothing of recent developments.
The nurse who had escorted them up from the ground floor stood waiting for them a little further along. Outside a door were five or six vases full of fresh-cut flowers.
‘Whose are these?’ he asked.
The nurse was young and blonde, and plump in her uniform.
‘They’re nobody’s now. The lady who was in the room has just this minute gone home. She left the flowers. She had lots of friends.’
He spoke quietly to her. She said yes. She looked surprised. But the Czech would have been even more surprised had he guessed what Maigret had just done.
He had just said, in a slightly awkward voice:
‘Would you put some of them in room twenty-one?’
Because the room was bare and cold, because after all there was a woman in it and a new-born child.
It was eleven thirty. In the long, dimly lit corridor lined with the offices of the examining magistrates, a few men, handcuffed and tieless, flanked by guards, were still sitting on backless benches waiting for their turn. There were women too, witnesses who were growing impatient. Monsieur Coméliau, looking grimmer and more care-worn than ever, had been obliged to ask a colleague to lend him additional chairs and had packed his clerk off to lunch. At Maigret’s behest, the commissioner of the Police Judiciaire was present. He was sitting in an armchair while the seat generally reserved for suspects who were being interviewed was occupied by Detective Chief Inspector Colombani of the Sûreté.
In theory, the Police Judiciaire has responsibility for only Central and Greater Paris. But for the last five months, in conjunction with other flying squads, Colombani had been leading an investigation into the case of the ‘Picardy Killers’, as the newspapers had called them after the first crime had been reported.
Early that morning, he had had a meeting with Maigret and had given him everything he had on the case.
Early too, just before nine o’clock, one of the inspectors assigned to Rue du Roi-de-Sicile had knocked on Maigret’s door.
‘He’s here,’ he had said.
The man in question was the owner of the Hôtel du Lion d’Or. He had thought things over during the night, or rather the last part of the night. Gaunt, ill-shaven, his clothes creased, he had approached the inspector as he paced up and down in the street outside.
‘I want to go to Quai des Orfèvres,’ he had said.
‘Go ahead.’
‘I’m scared.’
‘I’ll walk with you.’
But hadn’t Victor been mown down in the middle of a street crowded with people?
‘I’d rather we went by taxi. I’ll pay.’
When he walked into the office, Maigret had his file open on the desk in front of him. The man had three convictions to his name.
‘Have you got those dates?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it, yes. We’ll have to see how it goes. The minute you promise me police protection …’
He stank of cowardice and sickness. He made you think of some contagious disease. Yet this was the man who had been arrested on two separate occasions and charged with indecent assault.
‘The first time they went out I didn’t pay much attention, but the second time I took notice.’
‘The second time? You mean 21 November?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I’ve been thinking about it too and reading the papers.’
‘I had half a thought it was them, but I didn’t show I suspected anything.’
‘But they guessed anyway, didn’t they?’
‘I don’t know. They gave me a thousand-franc note.’
‘Yesterday you said it was five hundred.’
‘I made a mistake. It was the next ti
me, when they got back, that Carl threatened me …’
‘Did they used to go off in a car?’
‘I don’t know. Either way, they always left my place on foot.’
‘Did the visits from the other man, the one whose name you don’t know, occur just a few days before?’
‘Now that I think about it, I believe they did.’
‘Did he sleep with Maria too?’
‘No.’
‘Now I want you, in your own time, to come clean about something. Think back to your first two convictions.’
‘I was just young …’
‘That makes it even more disgusting. I know you: Maria must have given you ideas …’
‘I never touched her!’
‘I bet you didn’t! You were too scared of the others.’
‘And of her too.’
‘Good! Now at least you’re being honest. Except that going up and opening their door from time to time wasn’t enough, was it?’
‘I made a hole in the wall. It’s true. I fixed it so that the room next door was occupied as little as possible.’
‘Who slept with her?’
‘They all did.’
‘Including the kid?’
‘Especially the kid.’
‘Yesterday you told me that he was probably her brother.’
‘Because he looks like her. He was the most in love with her. I saw him crying several times. When he was with her, he used to beg her …’
‘To do what?’
‘I don’t know. They never spoke French. When one of the others was in her room, he would sometimes come down and go out and get drunk all by himself in a small bar in Rue des Rosiers.’
‘Did they argue amongst themselves?’
‘The men didn’t like each other.’
‘And you really don’t know whose was the shirt with blood on it that you saw being rinsed through in the wash-basin?’
‘I’m not sure. I saw Victor wearing it. But they sometimes wore each other’s clothes.’
‘In your opinion, of all of them who lived in your hotel, which one was the leader?’
Maigret's Dead Man Page 13
