Maigret's Mistake

by Georges Simenon

  ‘Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘I’ve at least learned, never mind how, that she spent the evening with her sister. Do you know Antoinette?’

  ‘Not personally. The professor has told me about her.’

  ‘He doesn’t like her?’

  ‘It’s she who hates him. He told me once that whenever they happen to meet, he always expects her to spit in his face.’

  ‘Do you know anything else about Madame Gouin?’

  ‘Nothing!’ she said curtly.

  ‘Does she have a lover?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. But it’s none of my business anyway.’

  ‘Is she the kind of woman who’d let her husband take the blame if she herself was guilty?’

  She said nothing.

  Maigret couldn’t help smiling. ‘Admit you wouldn’t be upset if she was the one who killed Lulu and we found out.’

  ‘The one thing I know for sure is that the professor didn’t kill her.’

  ‘Did he mention the murder to you?’

  ‘Not on the Tuesday morning. He didn’t yet know. In the afternoon, he told me casually that the police would probably be phoning to ask to see him.’

  ‘And since then?’

  ‘He hasn’t mentioned it again.’

  ‘Didn’t Louise’s death affect him?’

  ‘If he was upset, he hasn’t shown it. He’s the same as usual.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you have anything else to tell me? Did he ever talk to you about Pierre Eyraud, the musician?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Did it ever occur to you that he might be jealous of him?’

  ‘He’s not the kind of man to be jealous of anybody.’

  ‘I’m grateful to you, my dear, and I’m sorry I delayed your dinner. If you happen to remember anything interesting, don’t hesitate to phone me.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to see my boss?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Is he at home this evening?’

  ‘It’s his only free evening of the week.’

  ‘How will he spend it?’

  ‘Working, as usual. He has the proofs of his book to go through.’

  Maigret put on his overcoat with a sigh.

  ‘You’re a strange girl,’ he murmured as if to himself.

  ‘There’s nothing remarkable about me.’

  ‘Good evening.’

  ‘Good evening, Monsieur Maigret.’

  She walked him out on to the landing and watched him go downstairs. Outside, the black car stood waiting. The driver opened the door.

  He almost gave him the address on Avenue Carnot. Sooner or later he’d have to make up his mind to talk directly to Gouin. Why did he keep putting it off? He seemed to be circling around him without daring to move in closer, as if the professor’s personality overawed him.

  ‘To Quai des Orfèvres!’

  At this hour, Étienne Gouin must be in the middle of dinner with his wife. In passing, Maigret saw that there was no light in the right-hand part of the apartment.

  There was at least one point on which the assistant had been mistaken. Contrary to what she had asserted, Gouin’s conjugal relations were less neutral than she thought. Lucile Decaux claimed that her boss didn’t talk about his personal affairs with his wife. But as it happened, Madame Gouin had given Maigret details she could only have got from her husband.

  Had he also told her that he thought Lulu was pregnant?

  He had the driver stop the car a little further along the avenue, outside the bistro where he had stopped once for a toddy. It was less cold this evening, and he ordered something else, a marc, even though it wasn’t the hour for neat alcohol, simply because it was what he had drunk the previous day. It was a habit they teased him about at Quai des Orfèvres. If he started a case with calvados, for example, it was with calvados that he continued it, so that there were cases accompanied by beer, others by red wine, there had even been some where whisky was the drink of choice.

  He was about to phone the office to ask if there was any news and have himself driven straight home. It was only because there was someone in the phone booth that he changed his mind.

  He didn’t speak on the way.

  ‘Do you still need me?’ the driver asked, once they were in the courtyard of the Police Judiciaire.

  ‘You can take me back to Boulevard Richard-Lenoir in a few minutes. Unless you’ve finished your shift.’

  ‘I don’t finish until eight.’

  He went upstairs and switched the light on in his office, whose second door opened immediately to admit Lucas.

  ‘Inspector Janin called. He’s upset that nobody told him Pierrot had been found.’

  Everyone had forgotten about Janin, who had continued to search the La Chapelle neighbourhood until he had learned from the newspapers that the musician had been questioned by Maigret and released.

  ‘He’s asking if he still needs to keep an eye on him.’

  ‘There’s no point any more. Anything else?’

  Lucas was just opening his mouth when the telephone rang. Maigret picked up the receiver.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret speaking,’ he said with a frown.

  Immediately, Lucas realized it was important.

  ‘This is Étienne Gouin,’ said the voice at the other end.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I understand you’ve just questioned my assistant.’

  Lucile Decaux had phoned her boss to let him know.

  ‘That’s correct,’ Maigret said.

  ‘If you require information about me, it would have struck me as more proper for you to address me directly.’

  Lucas had the impression that Maigret was losing a little of his composure and was making an effort to regain it.

  ‘That’s a matter of judgement,’ he replied quite curtly.

  ‘You know where I live.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’ll come and see you.’

  There was a silence at the other end of the line. Maigret could vaguely hear a woman’s voice. It was probably Madame Gouin saying something to her husband.

  ‘When?’ the professor asked.

  ‘In an hour, an hour and a half. I haven’t had dinner yet.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting.’

  He hung up.

  ‘The professor?’ Lucas asked.

  Maigret nodded.

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘He wants to be questioned. Are you free?’

  ‘To go over there with you?’

  ‘Yes. But we’ll have a bite to eat before that.’

  They did so on Place Dauphine, at the table where the inspector had lunched and dined so many times that it was called Maigret’s table.

  He didn’t say a word throughout the meal.

  8.

  Maigret had questioned thousands, tens of thousands of people in the course of his career, some occupying important positions, others who were more famous for their wealth and others still who were considered the most intelligent of international criminals.

  Yet he attached an importance to this interrogation he had attached to no previous interrogation, and it wasn’t Gouin’s social position that overawed him, or his worldwide fame.

  He was well aware that Lucas, since the beginning of the case, had been wondering why he didn’t just go and ask the professor a few specific questions. Even now, good old Lucas was disconcerted by his chief’s mood.

  The truth was something Maigret couldn’t admit to him, or to anybody, not even to his wife. Frankly, he didn’t dare formulate it clearly to himself in his own mind.

  What he knew of Gouin, what he had learned about him, impressed him, it was true. But for a reason that nobody would have been likely to guess.

  Like the professor, Maigret had been born in a village in the centre of France and, like him, he had had to fend for himself at an early age.

  Maigret had even started studying medicine. If he had been able to continue, he probably wouldn’t have become a s
urgeon, lacking the necessary manual dexterity, but he nevertheless had the impression that there were a number of things that he and Lulu’s lover had in common.

  It was pride on his part, and that was why he preferred not to think about it. They both, it seemed to him, had an almost equal knowledge of men and life.

  Not the same knowledge, and above all not the same reactions. They were rather like opposites, but equal opposites.

  What he knew about Gouin he had learned from the words and attitudes of five different women. Otherwise, all he had seen of him was his shadowy figure on the pavement of Avenue Carnot and a photograph above a fireplace, and the most revealing incident was no doubt the brief account that Janvier had given him on the telephone of the professor’s appearance in Louise Filon’s apartment.

  He was going to find out if he had been wrong. He had prepared himself as much as possible and the reason he was taking Lucas was not because he needed his help, but to give a more official character to the interview – perhaps, when it came down to it, to remind himself that he was going to Avenue Carnot in his capacity as a detective chief inspector of the Police Judiciaire and not as a man interested in another man.

  He had drunk wine with his meal. Then, when the waiter had come and asked him if he would like any spirits, he had ordered an old marc from Burgundy, so that by the time he got into the car he felt warm inside.

  Avenue Carnot was quiet and deserted, with soft lights behind the windows of the apartments. As he passed the lodge, he had the feeling the concierge watched him walk by with an air of reproach.

  The two men took the lift. Around them, the building was silent, withdrawn into itself and its secrets.

  It was 8.40 when Maigret pulled the polished brass handle, which activated an electric bell. Footsteps were heard inside, and a fairly young and rather pretty chambermaid, wearing a smart apron over her black uniform, opened the door and said:

  ‘If you’d like to take your coats off …’

  He had wondered if Gouin would receive them in the drawing room, in the family part of the apartment, so to speak. He didn’t have the answer immediately. The maid hung the clothes in a wardrobe, left the visitors in the hall and disappeared.

  She did not return, but before long Gouin appeared and came towards them. He seemed taller and thinner here. Barely looking at them, he murmured:

  ‘If you’d like to come this way …’

  He walked in front of them down a corridor that led to the library. The walls were almost entirely covered in bound books. The lighting was soft, and logs burned in a fireplace much larger than the one in Lucile Decaux’s apartment.

  ‘Please sit down.’

  He pointed to some armchairs and chose one for himself. None of this mattered. Neither had yet looked at each other. Lucas, who felt superfluous, was all the more ill at ease because the armchair was too deep for his short legs, and he was sitting closest to the fire.

  ‘I was expecting you to come alone.’

  Maigret introduced his colleague. ‘I brought Sergeant Lucas, who’ll take notes.’

  It was at that moment that their eyes met for the first time, and Maigret saw something like a reproach in the professor’s gaze. Was there also – although he couldn’t be sure – a degree of disappointment? It was hard to say because, on the surface, Gouin was fairly ordinary. There are theatre actors, especially singing basses, who have tall bony bodies like that, faces with strongly drawn features, bags under their eyes.

  The pupils were small and clear, without any particular gleam, and yet there was an uncommon weight in his gaze.

  Maigret would have sworn, as this gaze came to rest on him, that Gouin was as curious about him as he was about the professor.

  Did he, too, find Maigret more commonplace than the image of him he had built up?

  Lucas had taken a notebook and a pencil from his pocket to disguise his unease.

  It was impossible to know yet what tone the interview would assume, and Maigret was careful to be silent and wait.

  ‘Don’t you think, Monsieur Maigret, that it would have been more logical to address me directly rather than go and bother that poor girl?’

  He was speaking naturally, in a monotonous voice, as if he were saying banal things.

  ‘Do you mean Mademoiselle Decaux? She didn’t seem to me the least bit embarrassed. I assume she phoned you as soon as I left her to bring you up to date?’

  ‘She repeated to me your questions and her answers. She imagined it was important. Women have a constant need to be convinced of their own importance.’

  ‘Lucile Decaux is your closest colleague, isn’t she?’

  ‘She’s my assistant.’

  ‘Isn’t she also your secretary?’

  ‘Yes, she is. In fact, as I’m sure she told you, she follows me everywhere I go. It gives her the impression she plays a vital role in my life.’

  ‘Is she in love with you?’

  ‘As she would be of any employer, provided he was famous.’

  ‘She struck me as devoted, to the point, for example, that she’d make a false statement, if necessary, in order to get you out of trouble.’

  ‘She’d do so without any hesitation. My wife has also been in contact with you.’

  ‘Did she tell you?’

  ‘Just like Lucile, she reported your conversation in the minutest detail.’

  He was speaking about his wife in the same detached tone he had assumed to talk about his assistant. There was no warmth in his voice. He was observing facts, relating them, without granting them any sentimental value.

  The little people who approached him must have been delighted with his simplicity, and indeed there was no affectation about him, he was not in the least concerned about the effect he produced on others.

  It is rare to encounter people who do not play a role, even when they are alone. Most men feel the need to watch themselves living, to listen to themselves speaking.

  Not Gouin. He was himself, fully himself, and he did not bother to hide his feelings.

  When he had spoken about Lucile Decaux, his words and attitude seemed to say:

  ‘What she takes for devotion is only a kind of vanity, the need to think herself exceptional. Any of my female students would do exactly the same. She makes her life interesting and no doubt imagines that I owe her a debt of gratitude.’

  The only reason he didn’t say this was because he judged Maigret capable of understanding. He was talking to him as an equal.

  ‘I haven’t yet told you why I phoned you this evening and asked you to come. Mind you, I was keen to meet you anyway.’

  He was a man, and he was sincere. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Maigret since they had been face to face, and he was making no attempt to conceal it; he was examining him like a human specimen he wanted to get to know.

  ‘My wife and I were having dinner when I received a telephone call. It was from someone you already know, a certain Madame Brault, who did the cleaning for Louise.’

  He didn’t say Lulu, but Louise. He spoke about her as simply as he spoke about the others, knowing perfectly well that it was superfluous to provide explanations.

  ‘Madame Brault has got it into her head that she has something in her possession she can use to blackmail me. She didn’t beat about the bush, although I didn’t understand what she was talking about at first. She said, “I have the gun, Monsieur Gouin.” My first thought was to wonder what gun she meant.’

  ‘Will you allow me a question?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Have you ever met Madame Brault?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Louise told me about her. She knew her before she moved in here. Apparently she’s a strange character, who’s been in prison several times. As she only worked in the apartment in the mornings and I’ve hardly ever had occasion to go there at that time, I don’t recall ever having seen her. I suppose I might have passed her on the stairs.’

  ‘You can go on.’

  ‘Anyway,
she told me that when she went into the living room on Tuesday morning, she found the gun on the table and—’

  ‘Did she say specifically “on the table”?’

  ‘Yes. She added that she hid it in a potted plant out on the landing. Your men must have searched inside the apartment without thinking of looking outside.’

  ‘That was shrewd of her.’

  ‘Anyway, she now apparently has that gun and would be willing to give it back to me for a large sum of money.’

  ‘Give it back to you?’

  ‘It’s my gun.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She described it to me, including the serial number.’

  ‘Have you had this weapon a long time?’

  ‘Eight or nine years. I’d gone to Belgium to perform an operation. I travelled more in those days than I do now. I’ve even sometimes been called as far afield as the United States and India. My wife had often told me she was afraid of being alone in the apartment for several days, sometimes several weeks. In the hotel where I was staying in Liège, some locally manufactured weapons were on display in a case. I got the idea of buying a little automatic. I should add that I didn’t declare it to customs.’

  Maigret smiled.

  ‘What room was it in?’

  ‘In a drawer in my office. That was where I last saw it, a few months ago. I’ve never used it. I’d completely forgotten about it when I got that phone call.’

  ‘What did you tell Madame Brault?’

  ‘That I’d give her an answer.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Probably this evening. That was when I called you.’

  ‘Would you go over there, Lucas? Do you have the address?’

  ‘Yes, chief.’

  Lucas looked delighted to escape the heavy atmosphere of the room, because, although the two men were talking quietly and in an apparently matter-of-fact way, there was an underlying tension in the air.

  ‘Will you be able to find your coat? Would you like me to ring for the maid?’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  Once the door was closed, they fell silent for a moment.

  It was Maigret who broke the silence.

  ‘Does your wife know?’

  ‘About Madame Brault’s attempt at blackmail?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She heard what I was answering on the phone, because I took the call in the dining room. I filled her in on the rest.’