The Two-Penny Bar

by Georges Simenon

  ‘It came from behind the bar!’ said Maigret.

  As they drew closer they could hear the tinkle of the mechanical piano and an anguished voice shouting:

  ‘Turn the music off! Turn the music off!’

  There were people running. A couple was still dancing, even after the piano was switched off. The old grandmother was coming out of the house, carrying a bucket in her hand. She stood stock-still, trying to work out what was going on.

  Because of the reeds it was difficult to land. In his haste, Maigret stepped into the water up to his knee. James came after him with his supple stride, mumbling to himself inaudibly.

  They only had to follow the group of people heading behind the lean-to that served as the dance hall. Round the back of the shed they found a man staring wide-eyed at the crowd, stammering over and over:

  ‘It wasn’t me! …’

  It was Basso. He seemed unaware that he was holding a small, pearl-handled revolver in his hand.

  ‘Where’s my wife? …’ he asked the people around him, as if he didn’t recognize them.

  Some people went to look for her. Someone said:

  ‘She stayed at home to prepare dinner …’

  Maigret had to push his way to the front before he saw a figure lying in the long grass, dressed in a grey suit and a straw hat.

  Far from being tragic, the scene had an air of absurdity, with everyone standing around not knowing what to do. They stood there looking in bewildered fashion at Basso, who seemed just as bewildered as they.

  To cap it all, one of the members of the group, who was a doctor, was standing right next to the body but hadn’t made a move. He was looking at the others, as if waiting for instructions.

  There was, however, a small moment of tragedy after all. The body suddenly twitched. The legs seemed to be trying to bend. The shoulders twisted back. A part of Monsieur Feinstein’s face came into view. Then, as if in one last effort, he stiffened, then slowly became immobile.

  The man had just died.

  ‘Check his heart,’ Maigret told the doctor curtly.

  The inspector, who was not unfamiliar with such events, caught every detail of the scene. He saw everything at once, with an almost unreal clarity.

  Someone had fallen to the ground at the back of the crowd, wailing piteously. It was Madame Feinstein, who had been the last to arrive because she had been the last to stop dancing. Some people were bending over her. The landlord of the bar was approaching with the suspicious expression of a distrustful peasant.

  Monsieur Basso was breathing quickly, pumping air into his lungs. He suddenly noticed the revolver in his clenched fist. He appeared stupefied. He looked at each of the persons around him in turn, as if wondering to whom he should give the gun. He repeated:

  ‘It wasn’t me …’

  He was still looking round for his wife, despite what he had been told.

  ‘Dead,’ said the doctor as he stood up.

  ‘A bullet?’

  ‘Here …’

  And he pointed to the wound in the side, then looked round for his own wife, who was dressed in only a swimming-costume.

  ‘Do you have a telephone?’ Maigret asked the landlord.

  ‘No. You have to go to the station … or up to the lock.’

  Marcel Basso was wearing white flannel trousers, and his shirt was partly unbuttoned, showing off the broadness of his chest.

  He rocked slightly on his feet, reached out a hand as if looking for some support, then suddenly slumped down in the grass less than three metres from the corpse and laid his head in his hands.

  The comic note returned. A thin female voice piped up:

  ‘He’s crying! …’

  She thought she was whispering, but everyone heard.

  ‘Do you have a bicycle?’ Maigret asked the landlord.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then cycle up to the lock and alert the police.’

  ‘At Corbeil or at Cesson?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter!’

  Maigret observed Basso, feeling a little troubled. He took the revolver: only one bullet had been fired.

  It was a woman’s revolver, pretty, like a piece of jewellery. The bullets were tiny, nickel-plated. Yet it had only taken one to end the life of the haberdasher.

  There was hardly any blood. A reddish stain on his summer jacket. Otherwise, he was as neat and tidy as usual.

  ‘Mado has taken a turn, back in the house!’ a young man cried out.

  Mado was Madame Feinstein, whom they had laid on the innkeeper’s tall bed. Everyone was watching Maigret. He felt a chill when a voice called out from the riverbank:

  ‘Cooeey! … Where are you?’

  It was Pierrot, Basso’s son, who was getting out of a canoe and was looking for the group.

  ‘Quickly! Don’t let him come round!’

  Marcel Basso was gathering himself together. He uncovered his face and stood up, confused by his recent show of weakness, and once again seemed to look for the person to whom he should be speaking.

  ‘I’m a policeman,’ Maigret told him.

  ‘You know … It wasn’t me …’

  ‘Would you care to follow me?’

  The inspector spoke to the doctor:

  ‘I’m relying on you to make sure no one touches the body. And I would like to ask the rest of you to leave me and Monsieur Basso alone.’

  The whole scene had been dragged out like a slow, badly directed play in the bright glare and oppressive atmosphere of the afternoon.

  Some anglers passed by on the towpath, their catches in baskets slung over their shoulders. Basso walked by Maigret’s side.

  ‘I just can’t believe it …’

  There was no spring in his step. When they turned the corner of the lean-to they saw the river, the villa on the opposite bank and Madame Basso rearranging the wicker chairs that had been left out in the garden.

  ‘Mummy wants the key to the cellar,’ the little boy shouted from his canoe.

  But the man didn’t reply. His expression changed to that of a hunted animal.

  ‘Tell him where the key is.’

  He summoned up his strength and called out:

  ‘Hanging on a hook in the garage!’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘On a hook in the garage!’

  And his words echoed faintly:

  ‘… rage!’

  ‘What happened between you?’ asked Maigret as they went inside the lean-to with the mechanical piano, empty but for the glasses left on the tables.

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Whose revolver is it?’

  ‘It’s not mine! … Mine is still in my car.’

  ‘Did Feinstein attack you?’

  A long silence. Then he sighed.

  ‘I don’t know! I didn’t do anything! … I … I swear I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘You were holding the gun when …’

  ‘I know … I don’t know how that happened …’

  ‘Are you saying someone else pulled the trigger?’

  ‘No … I … You don’t know how awful this is for me …’

  ‘Did Feinstein kill himself?’

  ‘He …’

  He sat down on a bench and put his head in his hands once more. He grabbed an unfinished drink from the table and swallowed it in one go, with a grimace.

  ‘What happens next? Are you going to arrest me?’

  He stared at Maigret, his brow furrowed:

  ‘But how did you happen to be there? You couldn’t have known …’

  He was struggling to make sense of everything, to tie together his tattered thoughts. He grimaced.

  ‘It’s like some sort of trap …’

  The white canoe was on its way back f
rom the far bank.

  ‘Papa! … The key isn’t in the garage! … Mummy wants to know …’

  Mechanically, Basso felt his pockets. There was a tinkle of metal. He took out his keys and placed them on the table. Maigret took them across to the towpath and called out to the boy:

  ‘Here! … Catch!’

  ‘Thank you, monsieur.’

  The canoe moved off again. Madame Basso was laying the table for dinner with the help of the maid. Some of the canoes were heading back towards the Vieux-Garçon. The landlord was cycling back from the lock, where he had made the phone call.

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t you that pulled the trigger?’

  Basso shrugged, gave a sigh and didn’t reply.

  The canoe reached the far bank. They could just make out the child and his mother talking. The maid was sent to fetch something inside the house, and returned almost immediately. Madame Basso took the binoculars from her and trained them on the Two-Penny Bar.

  James was sitting in a corner with the landlord and his family, pouring out large glasses of brandy and stroking the cat that had nestled in his lap.

  4. Meetings in Rue Royale

  It had been a dreary, tiring week, full of boring chores, time-consuming tasks and countless petty frustrations. Paris remained oppressive, and around six every evening heavy thunderstorms would turn the streets into rivers.

  Madame Maigret wrote from her holiday: ‘The weather’s lovely, I’ve never seen such a crop of sloes …’

  Maigret didn’t like being in Paris without his wife. He ate without appetite in whichever restaurant was nearest to hand; he even stayed over in hotels so as not to go back home alone.

  The story had all begun in the sun-filled shop on Boulevard Saint-Michel, where Basso was trying on a top hat. Then came the secret rendezvous in a furnished block in the Avenue Niel. A wedding party in the evening at the Two-Penny Bar. A game of bridge and the unexpected drama …

  When the police had arrived on the scene, Maigret, who was off duty, left them to do their job. They had arrested the coal merchant. The prosecutor’s office had been informed.

  One hour later, Monsieur Basso was sitting between two police sergeants in the little railway station at Seine-Port. The Sunday crowd were all waiting for the train. The sergeant on the right offered him a cigarette.

  The lamps had been lit. Night had virtually fallen. When the train had arrived in the station and everyone was crowding to get on, Basso shook off his captors, bustled his way through the crowd, ran across the rails and made for the woods on the other side.

  The policemen couldn’t believe their eyes. Only a few moments earlier he had been sitting there quite calm and apparently docile between the pair of them.

  Maigret heard about the escape when he got back to Paris. It was an unpleasant night for everyone. The police searched the countryside around Morsang and Seine-Port, set up roadblocks, kept the railway stations under surveillance and questioned passing motorists. The net spread out over nearly the whole département, and weekend ramblers returning home from their walks were astonished to find the gates of Paris manned by police.

  Two policemen stood guard outside the Bassos’ house in Quai d’Austerlitz; two more in front of the block where the Feinsteins had their private apartment in Boulevard des Batignolles.

  On Monday morning Maigret had to go to the Two-Penny Bar with magistrates from the prosecutor’s office and got caught up in endless discussions.

  By Monday evening, nothing! It was almost certain that Basso had slipped through the cordon and taken refuge in Paris or one of the surrounding towns, like Melun, Corbeil or Fontainebleau.

  On Tuesday morning came the forensic report: a bullet fired from a distance of about thirty centimetres. It was impossible to determine whether the shot had been fired by Feinstein himself or by Basso.

  Madame Feinstein identified the weapon as belonging to her. She was unaware that her husband had been carrying it in his pocket. Normally the revolver was kept – loaded – in the young woman’s bedroom.

  She was questioned at her flat in Boulevard des Batignolles. Unremarkable décor, few luxuries, very plain. And none too clean either – one maid to do everything.

  And Madame Feinstein wept! She wept and wept! It was more or less her only response, apart from the odd ‘If only I’d known!’

  She had been Basso’s mistress for a few months. She loved him!

  ‘Had you had other lovers before him?’

  ‘Monsieur!’

  Of course she’d had other lovers. Feinstein couldn’t have kept a live wire like her satisfied.

  ‘How long have you been married?’

  ‘Eight years.’

  ‘Did your husband know about your affair?’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘Didn’t he suspect a little?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Do you think he would have been capable of threatening Basso with the gun if he had found out something?’

  ‘I don’t know … He was a strange man, very closed in on himself.’

  Obviously theirs was not a marriage based on great intimacy. Feinstein occupied with running his business, Mado left to her shopping and her secret liaisons.

  And Maigret glumly pursued his investigation, proceeding by the book, questioning the concierge, the suppliers and the manager at Feinstein’s shop in Boulevard des Capucines.

  The case was depressing in its banality, though there was something about it that didn’t feel quite right.

  Feinstein had started off with a small haberdasher’s on Avenue de Clichy. Then, one year after he got married, he took over a larger concern on the Boulevards, with the help of a bank loan.

  From then on it was the age-old story of a small business overstretching itself: unpaid bills, bounced cheques, loans and beating the wolf from the door at the end of the month.

  Nothing shady, nothing improper, but nothing solid either.

  At home too they owed money to all the local tradesmen.

  In the dead man’s office behind his shop Maigret spent a good two hours going through his books. He found nothing unusual around the time of the crime Jean Lenoir had talked about the day before his execution.

  No large receipts, no out-of-the-ordinary expenses.

  Absolutely nothing, a complete blank. The investigation was grinding to a halt.

  The most annoying part of it was questioning Madame Basso at Morsang. The inspector was surprised by her attitude. Although clearly sad, she was hardly in despair. She showed a dignity of which Maigret would not have thought her capable.

  ‘My husband must have had a good reason to run away.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s guilty?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But he still ran away … Have you heard any word from him at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How much money did he have on him?’

  ‘Not more than ten francs!’

  The coal merchant’s affairs were the exact opposite of the haberdasher’s. The business never made less than 500,000 francs, even in a bad year. The offices and the yard were well organized. There were three barges moored at the quayside. Marcel Basso had inherited the business from his father and had expanded it.

  Nor did the weather do much for Maigret’s mood. Like all large people he suffered from the heat, and Paris wilted under the hot sun every day until three in the afternoon.

  That’s when the sky clouded over, the air crackled with electricity and the wind began to gust, suddenly raising swirling plumes of dust from the streets.

  By late afternoon it broke: rumbles of thunder, then a deluge of rain pounding the asphalt, seeping through the awnings of the café terraces, forcing people to seek shelter in doorways.

  It was on Wednesday that Maigret, caught in a sudden
shower, sought shelter in the Taverne Royale. A man stood up and offered him his hand. It was James, who had been sitting alone at a table, nursing a Pernod.

  The inspector hadn’t seen him before in his weekday clothes. He looked more like a bank clerk now than when he was all dressed up at Morsang, but he still somehow had the air of a circus performer.

  ‘Care for a drink?’

  Maigret was exhausted. There would be a couple of hours of rain to sit out. Then he would have to go back to the Quai des Orfèvres to catch up with any news.

  ‘A Pernod?’

  Normally he only drank beer. But he didn’t raise any protest. He drank mechanically. James wasn’t a bad companion, and he had one salient quality: he didn’t talk much!

  He sat there in his cane armchair with his legs crossed, smoking cigarettes and watching the people scuttling past in the rain.

  When a paper boy came by, he bought an evening paper, flicked through it vaguely, then handed it to Maigret, indicating a paragraph with his finger.

  Marcel Basso, the murderer of the haberdasher from Boulevard des Capucines, is still at large, despite an extensive search by the police.

  ‘What’s your opinion?’ Maigret asked.

  James shrugged his shoulders, made a gesture of indifference.

  ‘Do you think he’s gone abroad?’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll have gone far … He’s probably lying low in Paris.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think … he must have had a reason for running away … Waiter, two more Pernods!’

  Maigret had three glasses and slipped gently into a state he wasn’t familiar with. He wasn’t drunk, but he wasn’t totally clear in the head either.

  He felt agreeably mellow, sitting there on the terrace. He was able to think about the case in a more relaxed manner, almost with a degree of pleasure.

  James talked about this and that, without any hint of urgency. At eight o’clock on the dot he stood up and announced:

  ‘Time to go! My wife will be expecting me …’

  Maigret was a little annoyed with himself for the time he’d wasted and for allowing himself to drink too much. He had dinner, then went back to his office. Neither the local police nor the Paris force had anything to report.