She had a cast in her eye, of course, a heavy, terrible cast, and she knew it. When he looked straight at her, she was discomforted, felt ashamed and explained:
‘When I was seventeen, my mother made me have an operation because my left eye was turning inwards. After the operation, it looked outwards. The surgeon suggested redoing it, free of charge. But I said no.’
Oddly enough, after a couple of minutes, it was hardly noticeable. It was even possible to think she was almost pretty.
‘Poor Albert! If you’d only known him! Such a cheerful, kindly man, always eager to please other people.’
‘He was your cousin, wasn’t he?’
‘A very distant cousin.’
Her accent too had a charm of its own. The overriding impression she gave was that she felt an immense need for kindness. It was not an appeal for kindness to be shown her, but a need to spread kindness all around her.
‘I was nearly thirty. Both my parents were dead. I was on the shelf. They didn’t leave me much, and I had never worked. I came to Paris because I was unhappy living all by myself in our big house. I hardly knew Albert. I had only heard about him. I went to see him.’
Of course she did. And he understood. Albert was alone too. She had probably made a great fuss of him, and he wasn’t used to it.
‘If you knew how much I loved him! Of course I never expected that he would love me too. I knew that could never be. But he made me believe that he did. And I pretended I did believe him, just to please him. We were happy, inspector. I’m sure he was happy. He had no reason not to be, did he? And we’d just celebrated our wedding anniversary. I don’t know what happened that day at the races. He left me in the stand every time he went off to place a bet. Once when he came back he seemed to have something on his mind and from then on he began looking all around him, as if he was watching out for somebody. He insisted that we came home in a taxi and he kept turning round. When we got to our place, he told the driver: “Keep going!”, though why, I don’t know. So on we went as far as Place de la Bastille. There he got out. He said: “Go home by yourself. I’ll be there in an hour or two.” It was because he was being followed. He didn’t come home that night. He phoned to say he’d be back the next morning. The following day he phoned twice …’
‘That was Wednesday?’
‘That’s right. The second time it was to say I wasn’t to stay in and wait for him but to go to the cinema. I didn’t want to, but he insisted. He almost got angry with me. So I went. Have you arrested them?’
‘All except one, and it won’t be long before we get him. He’s on his own now, and I don’t think he’s dangerous, especially since we know who he is and what he looks like.’
Maigret was unaware of how true his words were. At that very moment, a member of the Vice Squad was arresting Serge Madok in a licensed brothel on Boulevard de La Chapelle – actually, an unspeakably filthy hole frequented mainly by Arabs – where he had been holed up since the previous evening and had stubbornly refused to leave.
He offered no resistance. He was more or less dead to the world, being helplessly drunk. He had to be carried out to the police van.
‘What will you do now?’ Maigret asked gently as he filled his pipe.
‘I don’t know. I expect I’ll go back home, to where I came from. I can’t run a restaurant on my own. Now I have nobody.’
She repeated that last word and looked around her as if she were looking for someone to be kind to.
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life.’
‘Ever thought of adopting?’
She looked up, at first in disbelief and then she smiled.
‘Do you think I might … that they’d let me have a … that …?’
The idea was taking root in her mind and in her heart so quickly that Maigret was frightened. It was not exactly that he had spoken without thinking, rather all he had really wanted to do was discover how the land lay. It was just a thought he had had on the way in the taxi, one of those fanciful, bold thoughts which seem like good ideas when we are half asleep or utterly exhausted, but in the cold light of day look quite mad.
‘We’ll discuss it some other time. Because I shall see you again, if you wish … In any case, I have some financial matters to settle with you, because we took the liberty of opening your restaurant …’
‘Do you know of a child who …’
‘Well now, there is one, actually, who in a few weeks or months from now might well have no mother.’
She flushed bright red, but he was left red-faced too: he was kicking himself for being so stupid as to raise the issue.
‘A baby, is it?’ she stammered.
‘Yes, a very small one.’
‘He’ll be helpless, then.’
‘Quite helpless.’
‘And he won’t necessarily be like …’
‘You must excuse me, now. It’s time I was getting back to Paris.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Don’t think about it too much. I’m cross with myself for having spoken to you about it.’
‘No, you did right. Could I see him? Tell me, would they let me?’
‘May I ask you one more question? Albert told me over the phone that you knew me. I don’t remember ever having seen you before.’
‘But I saw you once, a long time ago, when I was just twenty. My mother was still alive and we were on holiday in Dieppe.’
‘The Hôtel Beauséjour!’ he exclaimed.
He had stayed there for a fortnight with Madame Maigret.
‘All the people staying at the hotel talked about you and stared when you weren’t looking …’
He felt quite odd in the taxi, which was now taking him back to Paris through country flooded with bright sunshine. New buds were beginning to appear in the hedges.
‘It might be rather pleasant to get away for a holiday,’ he thought, perhaps because of the memories of Dieppe which Nine had just revived.
He knew that he would do nothing of the sort, for this was something which happened to him from time to time. It was like a cold which he could cure by treating it with large amounts of work.
The suburbs … The bridge at Joinville …
‘Go along Quai de Charenton.’
The bar was open. Chevrier looked rather embarrassed.
‘I’m glad you came, sir. They phoned to say it’s all over. My wife is wondering if she has to go and do her shopping.’
‘As she pleases.’
‘But there’s no point now?’
‘None at all.’
‘They also asked me if I’d seen you. It seems they’ve been phoning you at home and everywhere else. Do you want to call HQ?’
Maigret paused. This time he really was exhausted and wanted only one thing: his own bed and the sensual pleasure of sliding into a bottomless, dreamless sleep.
‘I bet I shall sleep for a solid twenty-four hours.’
But, alas, it would not happen! Someone would disturb him before he managed it. They had got into too much of a habit at Quai des Orfèvres – and he had let it happen – of saying at the first sign of trouble: ‘Ring Maigret!’
‘Can I get you anything, sir?’
‘A calvados, since you insist.’
All this had started with calvados. Might as well finish it on the same note.
‘Hello? Who’s that?’
It was Bodin. Maigret had forgotten Bodin. He had probably also forgotten a number of others who would still be standing guard pointlessly at different locati
ons across Paris.
‘I’ve got the letter.’
‘What letter?’
‘The one from the poste restante.’
‘Oh yes! Good.’
Poor Bodin. His great discovery wasn’t making much of an impact.
‘Would you like me to open it and tell you what’s in the envelope?’
‘If you like.’
‘Wait a minute … There … No written message, just a railway ticket.’
‘Right.’
‘You knew?’
‘I had my suspicions. It’s a first-class return from Goderville to Paris.’
‘Correct. We’ve got some stationmasters waiting for you here.’
‘That’s Colombani’s department.’
Maigret sipped his calvados and smiled a faint smile. Another side of the character of Li’l Albert, whom he had not known when he was alive but had in a sense rebuilt piece by piece.
Like a certain breed of race-goers, Albert couldn’t help keeping his eyes down, on the ground, which was littered with losing Mutuel betting slips. Among them a man may sometimes find a winning slip which has been thrown away by mistake.
It wasn’t a winning slip he had found that morning but a train ticket.
If such had not been his habit … If he hadn’t seen the man from whose pocket it had dropped … If the name Goderville had not instantly made him think of the massacres perpetrated by the Picardy gang … If his feelings had not been written on his face …
‘Poor Albert!’ sighed Maigret.
… he would still be alive. On the other hand, a few more old farmers and their wives would have passed from life into death, but not before they had had the soles of their feet scorched by Maria.
‘My wife says she’d rather shut up shop straight away,’ said Chevrier.
‘Close up then.’
After that there were streets, a meter which showed an astronomical figure, Madame Maigret, who seemed to him a trifle less sweet-tempered after that brief time spent with Nine and, as he snuggled down between the sheets, put her foot firmly down:
‘This time, I’m taking the phone off the hook and I’m not opening the door to anyone.’
He heard the beginning of the sentence but never found out how it ended.
1. The Flautist’s Statement
The room was divided in two by a black railing. In the section reserved for the public, there was only one bench, also painted black, against the whitewashed wall plastered with official notices. On the other side were desks, inkstands and pigeonholes bulging with fat black files, so that everything was black and white. Standing on a metal base was a cast-iron stove of the kind now only found in provincial railway stations, with a flue that rose up to the ceiling and then formed an elbow to cross the entire room before disappearing into the wall.
A chubby-faced officer called Lecœur had unbuttoned his uniform and was trying to sleep.
The hands on the black-rimmed clock showed one twenty-five. Every now and then, the single gas lamp would sputter. Every now and then too, the stove, for no apparent reason, would begin to hum.
Outside, the quiet of the night was disturbed occasionally by the sound of firecrackers at growing intervals, the singing of a drunkard or a cab clattering down the sloping street.
Sitting at the desk on the left, the secretary of the Saint-Georges district police station, his lips moving silently like a schoolboy, was poring over a newly published little manual: Guide to Official Reports (Verbal Descriptions) for the Use of Police Officers and Inspectors.
On the flyleaf, handwritten in capital letters in purple ink was the name: J. Maigret.
Three times already that night the young police secretary had got up to go over and poke the stove, and for the rest of his life he would feel nostalgic for that particular stove. It was identical, or almost, to the one he would find one day at Quai des Orfèvres and later on, when central heating was installed at the headquarters of the Police Judiciaire, Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, head of the Crime Squad, would manage to keep that stove in his office.
This was 15 April 1913. In those days, the Police Judiciaire was still called the Sûreté. That morning, a foreign head of state had arrived at Longchamp station amid great pomp, and the President had been there to welcome him. The official carriages, flanked by the Republican Guard in full dress uniform, had marched down Avenue du Bois and along the Champs-Élysées lined with flags and people.
There had been a gala performance at the Opéra, fireworks and parades, and only now was the noise of the boisterous crowds beginning to die down.
The police were overwhelmed. Despite all the precautions taken, the preventive arrests, the deals made with certain reputedly dangerous individuals, there had been fears of an anarchist bomb up until the last minute.
Maigret and Lecœur were alone, at one thirty in the morning, at the Saint-Georges district police station in the quiet Rue La-Rochefoucauld.
They both looked up on hearing hurried footsteps outside. The door opened. A breathless young man stood glancing about him, dazzled by the gas light.
‘The chief inspector?’ he panted.
‘I’m his secretary,’ said Maigret without getting up.
He didn’t yet know that this was the start of his first case.
The man was fair-haired and slight, with blue eyes and a pink complexion. He wore a beige coat over his black suit and was holding a bowler hat, while his other hand kept gingerly touching his swollen nose.
‘Were you attacked by some ruffian?’
‘No. I was trying to go to the assistance of a woman who was shouting for help.’
‘In the street?’
‘No, in a big house in Rue Chaptal. I think you’d better come right away. They threw me out.’
‘Who?’
‘A sort of butler or concierge.’
‘Don’t you think you’d better begin at the beginning? What were you doing in Rue Chaptal?’
‘I was on my way home from work. My name is Justin Minard. I am second flautist at the Concerts Lamoureux, but at night I play at the Brasserie Clichy, Boulevard de Clichy. I live in Rue d’Enghien, just opposite the Petit Parisien. As usual, I walked down Rue Ballu, then Rue Chaptal.’
Ever the conscientious secretary, Maigret took notes.
‘About halfway down the street, which is nearly always empty, I noticed a parked motor-car, a De Dion-Bouton, with its engine running. At the wheel there was a man wearing a grey goatskin jacket, his face almost entirely hidden behind enormous goggles. As I drew level with him, a second-floor window opened.’
‘Did you take note of the house number?’
‘17A. It’s a private mansion with a carriage entrance. There were no lights in any other windows. Only the second from the left, the one that opened. I looked up and saw the shape of a woman trying to lean out, and she shouted: “Help!”’
‘What did you do?’
‘Wait. Someone in the room must have dragged her away from the window. At the same time, a shot rang out. I turned round to look at the car I’d just passed, and it sped off.’
‘Are you certain it wasn’t the sound of the engine backfiring that you heard?’
‘Absolutely positive. I went up to the door and rang the bell.’
‘Were you alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Armed?’
‘No.’
‘What did you intend to do?’
‘Well …’
The flautist was so thrown by the question that he was stumped for
a reply. Had it not been for his blond moustache and a few wisps on his chin, he would have looked barely more than sixteen.
‘Didn’t the neighbours hear anything?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘Did they open up the door to you?’
‘Not right away. I rang at least three times. Then I started kicking the door. Eventually I heard footsteps, then a chain being removed and a bolt pulled back. There was no light in the porch, but there’s a gas lamp just outside the house.’
One forty-seven. From time to time the flautist glanced anxiously at the clock.
‘A tall fellow in a butler’s black suit asked what I wanted.’
‘Was he fully dressed?’
‘Of course.’
‘With his trousers and tie?’
‘Yes.’
‘And yet there were no lights on in the house?’
‘Except in the second-floor bedroom.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I don’t know. I tried to get inside.’
‘Why?’
‘To go and see for myself. He barred my path. I told him about the woman who’d shouted from the window.’
‘Did he seem flustered?’
‘He glared at me and pushed me away with all his weight.’
‘Then what?’
‘He muttered that I’d been imagining things, that I was drunk and things like that. Then there was a voice in the darkness. It sounded as if it was coming from the first-floor landing.’
‘What did the voice say?’
‘“Hurry up, Louis!”’
‘Then what?’
‘He gave me a violent shove and when I resisted, he punched me in the face. I ended up sprawled on the ground in front of the closed door.’
‘Was the second-floor light still on?’
‘No.’
‘Did the car come back?’
‘No. Hadn’t we better go there right away?’
‘We? Are you planning to come with me?’
Maigret's Dead Man Page 19
