Maigret at the Coroner's

by Georges Simenon

  ‘During the night of July 27, at the musician’s place, did you see Ward rush in to the kitchen and hit Bessie?’

  ‘No, sir. He did not hit her. I was behind him when he entered the kitchen. Bessie was drinking, and he snatched the bottle from her hands, almost threw it on the floor, got a grip on himself and set it on the table.’

  ‘Was he furious?’

  ‘He wasn’t happy. He didn’t like her to drink.’

  ‘But wasn’t he the one who’d taken her to the Penguin?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Probably because that’s all there was.’

  ‘Did Sergeant Ward, at that time, start quarrelling with Mullins? I’m still talking about the events in the kitchen.’

  ‘I understand. He didn’t say anything to him. He gave him a hard look, but didn’t say a thing to him.’

  Next! They seemed eager to wind everything up that day and the coroner was calling fewer recesses.

  Tony Lacour, the musician, was puny and unassuming. The shape of his face always made him look as if he’d been crying or were about to do so.

  ‘What do you know about the night of July 27?’

  ‘I spent the evening at the Penguin Bar with them.’

  ‘Weren’t you working?’

  ‘I’m not, for the moment. I wound up my gig at the Puerto Rico Club ten days ago.’

  Just when Maigret was wondering what instrument he played, the attorney, who must have been wondering himself, asked that question. It was the accordion. Maigret would have bet on it.

  ‘When a fight broke out between Ward and Mitchell at the Penguin, did you follow them outside? Do you know what they were fighting about?’

  ‘I know that money was involved.’

  ‘Didn’t Mitchell reproach Ward for having relations with his sister, given that he was a married man?’

  ‘Not in front of me, sir. Later, in my apartment, after the incident with the bottle, Mitchell told him that Bessie was inclined to drink, that it was a bad thing, that she was only seventeen and that in bars she could pass for twenty-three, otherwise they wouldn’t have served her.’

  ‘Was it you who suggested to the group that they go to your place?’

  ‘Bessie admitted to me that she didn’t feel like going home, and right away the others began talking about buying some bottles.’

  ‘Did you give any cigarettes to Sergeant Ward?’

  ‘I don’t believe so.’

  ‘Did you see anyone slip a pack into his pocket?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Was anyone, to your knowledge, smoking marijuana?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘What time was it when they left your place?’

  ‘About two thirty.’

  ‘What did Harold Mitchell and Erna Bolton do?’

  ‘They stayed.’

  ‘Until morning?’

  ‘No. Maybe another hour, hour and a half …’

  ‘Was there talk about Sergeant Ward and Bessie?’

  ‘Only about Bessie. Harold explained that his sister had fallen into the habit of drinking and that it was terrible for her because she had a bad lung. And he said that when she was real young, she’d been in a sanitarium.’

  ‘Did Mitchell and Erna leave in a car?’

  ‘No, sir. They don’t have a car. They left on foot.’

  ‘Wasn’t it around four in the morning?’

  ‘At least that. It was starting to get light.’

  Recess! Maigret again found the brother’s eyes fixed upon him – and there was something just the slightest bit touching in his gaze.

  Harold Mitchell’s initial reaction to him had been an icy distrust, and perhaps he had answered Maigret’s questions less out of hope than from a kind of defiance tinged with contempt.

  He had been watching him the entire session and now seemed to be thinking, ‘Who knows? Maybe he isn’t like the others. He’s a foreigner. He’s trying to understand.’

  Harold’s attitude was hardly friendly yet, of course, but there was no longer that same insurmountable barrier between them.

  ‘You hadn’t told me she was tubercular,’ Maigret murmured as they walked one behind the other towards the exit.

  Harold merely shrugged. Perhaps he was ill as well? No, because in that case he would never have made it into the service. Erna Bolton was waiting for him out in the arcade. She did not take his arm. They did not speak to each other. She simply followed him, humble and docile, and her sagging bottom swayed like the business end of a laying hen.

  With a gleam in his eye, O’Rourke headed with the attorney to the latter’s office, while the five men in prison garb waited for the deputy to conduct them back to their cell.

  Maigret hadn’t listened to the end of the coroner’s instructions. Would the afternoon session be upstairs or down? Over by the Coca-Cola machine, the female juror was eating a sandwich and would doubtless sit knitting on a bench in the plaza while waiting for the inquest to resume.

  ‘Downstairs,’ she replied when he asked her.

  Harry Cole was waiting for him at the wheel of his car. There was someone sitting in the back seat, wearing the inevitable white shirt. He was smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Hello, Julius! Not finished yet? Sit next to me. We’ll go and grab a bite to eat.’

  Only after the car door was closed did he add, by way of introduction, ‘Ernesto Esperanza! He’ll have to eat lunch with us, because I haven’t anyone available to drive him to Phoenix before this evening and I don’t much like handing him over to the county sheriffs. You hungry, Ernesto?’

  ‘You bet, boss!’

  ‘Here’s your chance, then. It’s the last restaurant meal you’re likely to have for the next ten or fifteen years.

  ‘I finally nabbed him,’ he said simply, this time to Maigret. ‘And it wasn’t easy. He tried to get me with a forty-two. Open the glove box, you’ll find his toy.’

  The revolver was there, a big automatic, smelling of gunpowder. Maigret instinctively checked the magazine, where two cartridges were missing.

  ‘He almost had me. Isn’t that right, Ernesto?’

  ‘Right, boss.’

  ‘If I hadn’t ducked down in time and tripped him up, I’d have been a goner. For six months now, I’ve been trying to catch him, and he’s been doing his level best to get rid of me. How’s it going, Ernesto? Your ribs still hurting you?’

  ‘Not too much …’

  To the others having lunch at the cafeteria, where they ate mutton chops and apple pie, they were simply three ordinary customers. Only on the next day did the Mexican’s photograph appear in the newspapers under a big headline announcing that a major drug trafficker was under lock and key.

  ‘What’s happening with your five little Air Force fellows?’ asked Cole, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. ‘Have you found the bad guy who put little Bessie on the tracks?’

  Maigret didn’t bother to frown. He was in a good mood that morning.

  6. The Parade of Pals

  Things were getting cosy. In the morning and especially after lunch, which some ate in the patio or the nearby plaza, people welcomed familiar faces, exchanged small gestures of greeting. Everyone knew where the seasoned spectators would sit, and even the five airmen did not seem to find the public’s presence intrusive.

  This intimacy was even more apparent downstairs, where the jurors sat on one of the public benches, next to curious onlookers, and where chairs were brought in when needed. The coroner would
invariably look up at the big, noisy ceiling fan and frown. The water cooler and its paper cups were near Maigret, which meant that, sooner or later, everyone went by him.

  Ever since he had casually patted the black woman’s baby, she had saved his place for him and given him huge smiles.

  As for Ezekiel, he always waited until the inquest had begun before springing his cigar or cigarette routine on a newcomer. He was a pretend bully with a childlike mischievous streak.

  He would suddenly draw himself up, moustache quivering, arm outstretched, and cry, without any consideration for the ongoing interrogation, ‘Hey, you!’

  The entire courtroom would erupt in laughter. People turned around to see who had been caught.

  ‘Put out your cigarette!’

  Then, satisfied, he’d wink at his audience. He had enjoyed even greater success after spotting the attorney himself, who, returning after a recess, had forgotten he was still smoking.

  ‘Hey, counsellor!’

  Maigret could not believe that they would be winding up the inquest that very day, that in a few hours the five men and one woman of the jury would be ready to decide whether, yes or no, Bessie’s death had been an accident.

  If they decided yes, then the investigation would in effect be closed once and for all. If, on the contrary, they decided that her death was due to the criminal actions of one or more persons, Mike O’Rourke and his men would have plenty of time to work before the matter went to actual trial.

  It was amusing: during lunch, Maigret had made a small discovery that made him smile and really pleased him, because in a way it let him get back a little at Harry Cole. The FBI man had behaved a little strangely, preening like a peacock, as if there had been a pretty woman with them, and Maigret had swiftly understood that the reason was Ernesto, the drug trafficker. Deep down, Cole felt instinctive consideration, almost admiration, for him, of the kind everyone in the States showed for anyone who succeeds, whether as a millionaire, a cinema star or a famous murderer. The Mexican had smuggled in $20,000 worth of drugs in a single haul, not to mention all his previous drug runs. Across the border, in mountains accessible only by plane, he had his own marijuana plantations.

  Basically, the reason why the five Air Force men did not excite more interest was that, even if one of them did kill Bessie, he was not a criminal on a grand scale.

  If he had held off the police, wielded a submachine gun, forced the mobilization of every officer and the use of tear gas to effect his capture, or if he had held up ten banks, or massacred several important ranchers’ families, would there not have been a crowd outside the courtroom and on out to the middle of the street?

  Did that not explain a lot of things? The goal was to win at the game, no matter what that game was.

  A hard man, Mitchell was bound to be respected in his own small circle, whereas Van Fleet, with his choirboy face and wavy hair, was nobody. And the proof? His nickname was not Red, or Curly, but Pinky!

  It was a deputy sheriff who now took the stand, Phil Atwater, the man who had arrived first on the scene and whom the inspector for the Southern Pacific had met there when he arrived.

  He was not wearing his badge on his shirt. He looked ordinary, middle-aged, with the glum look of people with bad digestions and who always have someone sick at home.

  ‘I happened to be in the sheriff’s office shortly before five a.m., when the call came through. I took one of the cars and seven minutes later arrived at the scene of the accident.’

  Maigret winced at that last word, and what followed would prove that he was not mistaken. Atwater, despite being a policeman, was the type who disdain the humdrum factuality of real life.

  ‘The ambulance drove up at about the same time as I did. Only the train crewmen were at the edge of the highway, along with a car that had pulled over a few minutes earlier. I posted one of the men I’d brought with me there, to keep any eventual onlookers from approaching the tracks. Right away, I found marks left by a car that had parked in that spot. I circled them with chalk, and on the sandy shoulder, with small sticks stuck in the ground.’

  The fellow was the very model of a conscientious public servant and seemed to defy the whole world to find any fault with him.

  ‘Did you not deal with the body?’

  ‘Of course! I got busy with that as well. I even collected several pieces of flesh and part of an arm with a complete hand.’

  He spoke in a condescending tone, as if the matter were strictly routine. Then he fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small folded paper.

  ‘Here are a few hairs. We have not had time to analyse them, but a first impression suggests that they’re Bessie’s.’

  ‘Where did you find them?’

  ‘Approximately where the impact took place. The body was dragged or rolled about twenty-five yards.’

  ‘Did you find any footprints?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I stuck bits of wood there to protect them.’

  ‘Tell us what sorts of prints you found.’

  ‘Women’s footprints. I compared them with one of Bessie’s shoes, and they matched.’

  ‘There were no men’s footprints near hers?’

  ‘No, sir. In any case, not between the highway and the railway tracks.’

  ‘And yet, later, when you followed the company inspector, Mr Hansen, he claims to have seen a man’s footprints.’

  ‘Probably mine.’

  The deputy did not like to be contradicted and did not seem particularly fond of the Southern Pacific inspector.

  ‘Will you show us, on the blackboard, the approximate track of the footprints?’

  He looked at the previous drawing and, grabbing the rag, erased it. Then he made a fresh sketch of the tracks and highway, making a cross where the body had been found and another where it had been hit by the train.

  But he mistakenly put ‘north’ where ‘south’ should have been, and his wobbly drawing did not agree with Hansen’s. According to Atwater, Bessie hadn’t made nearly as many little detours and had stopped only once to change direction.

  What did the jury make of these contradictions? They listened, watched attentively, clearly eager to understand and carry out their duty conscientiously.

  ‘That’s all you found on this side, meaning to the north of where Bessie died? Did you also look for footprints to the south, in other words, in the direction of Nogales?’

  Atwater looked silently at his map and, as north and south were reversed, took some time to understand the question.

  ‘No, sir,’ he said at last. ‘I did not think it necessary to look around towards Nogales.’

  Free to go, he must have had work waiting at his office, because he left the courtroom immediately, very dignified and self-confident.

  ‘Gerald Conley.’

  He was another deputy sheriff, the one with so many cartridges in his belt and such a handsome revolver with a carved horn grip. He was chubby with a florid complexion, probably a popular fellow around Tucson and not a little proud of that.

  ‘At what time did you arrive on the scene?’

  ‘I was at home and wasn’t contacted until ten past five. I arrived shortly after five thirty, without taking the time to have a cup of coffee.’

  ‘Who was there already?’

  ‘Phil Atwater was with the railway company inspector. Another deputy sheriff was maintaining order, because a few cars had stopped there. I saw the trail marked by pieces of wood and followed it from beginning to end.’

  ‘In certain places, were the woman’s footprints over the man’s?’

 
; ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘About how far from the highway was that?’

  ‘Some fifteen yards away. The footprints in that spot clearly show that two people stopped there for some time, as if there had been some discussion.’

  ‘After that, do the sets of footprints separate?’

  ‘My impression is that the woman continued on alone. She was walking in zigzags. The man’s footprints that turn up farther on are not the same as the first set.’

  Maigret was starting to suffer again. Once more, he wanted to stand and speak up to ask specific questions.

  That the five airmen should contradict themselves was only natural. They were like five schoolboys who had got themselves into a tight spot and who try, each on his own, to get out of it.

  Besides, they had begun drinking at seven thirty that evening and were all drunk, except for Wo Lee.

  But the police?

  It seemed as if the deputies were settling personal scores, yet that didn’t bother O’Rourke at all. Still sitting next to the attorney, still leaning over to make comments now and then, he was smiling beatifically.

  ‘What did you do next?’

  ‘I went south.’

  Conley was clearly happy to land this direct hit at the colleague who had just left.

  ‘Someone had urinated near the railway tracks.’

  Maigret wanted to ask: ‘A man or a woman?’

  For after all, trivial though it may seem, a standing man and a squatting woman do not leave the same traces when they urinate, especially not in sandy soil.

  The whole point turned on that, and no one seemed to have noticed.

  No one had asked the doctor whether Bessie had made love that evening, either. No one had examined the underwear of the five airmen, or asked about anything beyond the colour of the shirts they were wearing …

  Given the footprints leaving the car, Ward became the prime suspect, on condition that these footprints were superimposed in at least one place. And on condition that, as in the testimony of the Southern Pacific inspector, these footprints continued on to the railway tracks. Atwater’s deposition made Ward’s guilt almost impossible – unless the crime had taken place during the second car trip.