Thomas Godfrey (Ed)

by Murder for Christmas

  The telephone rang as Mme. Maigret was repeating, “I don’t like that woman.”

  It was Lucas calling, with the address of Monsieur Arthur Godefroy, general manager in France for Zenith Watches. He lived in a sumptuous villa at Saint-Cloud, and Lucas had discovered that he was at home. He added:

  “Paul Martin is here, Chief. When they brought him in, he started crying. He thought something had happened to his daughter. But he’s all right now—except for an awful hangover. What do I do with him?”

  “Anyone around who can come up here with him?”

  “Torrence just came on duty. I think he could use a little fresh air. He looks as if he had a hard night, too. Anything more from me, Chief?”

  “Yes. Call Palais-Royal station. About five years ago a man named Lorilleux disappeared without a trace. He sold jewelry and old coins in the Palais-Royal arcades. Get me all the details you can on his disappearance.”

  Maigret smiled as he noted that his wife was sitting opposite him with her knitting. He had never before worked on a case in such domestic surroundings.

  “Do I call you back?” asked Lucas.

  “I don’t expect to move an inch from my chair.”

  A moment later Maigret was talking to Monsieur Godefroy, who had a decided Swiss accent. The Zenith manager thought that something must have happened to Jean Martin for anyone to be making inquiries about him on Christmas Day.

  “Most able... most devoted... I’m bringing him into Paris to be assistant manager next year.... Next week, that is... Why do you ask? Has anything—? Be still, you!” He paused to quiet the juvenile hubbub in the background. “You must excuse me. All my family is with me today and—”

  “Tell me, Monsieur Godefroy, has anyone called your office these last few days to inquire about Monsieur Martin’s current address?”

  “Yesterday morning, as a matter of fact. I was very busy with the holiday rush, but he asked to speak to me personally. I forget what name he gave. He said he had an extremely important message for Jean Martin, so I told him how to get in touch with Martin in Bergerac.”

  “He asked you nothing else?”

  “No. He hung up at once. Is anything wrong?”

  “I hope not. Thank you very much, Monsieur.”

  The screams of children began again in the background and Maigret said goodbye.

  “Were you listening?”

  “I heard what you said. I didn’t hear his answers.”

  “A man called the office yesterday morning to get Martin’s address. The same man undoubtedly called Bergerac that evening to make sure Martin was still there, and therefore would not be at his Boulevard Richard-Lenoir address for Christmas Eve.”

  “The same man who appeared last night as Father Christmas?”

  “More than likely. That seems to clear Paul Martin. He would not have to make two phone calls to find out where his brother was. Madame Martin would have told him.”

  “You’re really getting excited about this case. You’re delighted that it came up, aren’t you? Confess!” And while Maigret was racking his brain for excuses, she added: “It’s quite natural. I’m fascinated, too. How much longer do you think the child will have to keep her leg in a cast?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “I wonder what sort of complications she could have had?”

  Maigret looked at her curiously. Unconsciously she had switched his mind onto a new track.

  “That’s not such a stupid remark you just made.”

  “What did I say?”

  “After all, since she’s been in bed for two months, she should be up and around soon, barring really serious complications.”

  “She’ll probably have to walk on crutches at first.”

  “That’s not the point. In a few days then, or a few weeks at most, she will no longer be confined to her room. She’ll go for a walk with Madame Martin. And the coast will be clear for anyone to enter the apartment without dressing up like Father Christmas.”

  Mme. Maigret’s lips were moving. While listening to her husband and watching his face, she was counting stitches.

  “First of all, the presence of the child forced our man to use trickery. She’s been in bed for two months—two months for him to wait. Without the complications the flooring could have been taken up several weeks ago. Our man must have had urgent reasons for acting at once, without further delay.”

  “Monsieur Martin will return to Paris in a few days?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What do you suppose the man found underneath the floor?”

  “Did he really find anything? If not, his problem is still as pressing as it was last night. So he will take further action.”

  “What action?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look, Maigret, isn’t the child in danger? Do you think she’s safe with that woman?”

  “I could answer that if I knew where Madame Martin went this morning on the pretext of doing her shopping.” He picked up the phone again and called Police Judiciaire.

  “I’m pestering you again, Lucas. I want you to locate a taxi that picked up a passenger this morning between 9 and 10 somewhere near Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. The fare was a woman in her early thirties, blonde, slim but solidly built. She was wearing a gray suit and a beige hat. She carried a brown shopping bag. I want to know her destination. There couldn’t have been so many cabs on the street at that hour.”

  “Is Paul Martin with you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He’ll be there soon. About that other thing, the Lorilleux matter, the Palais-Royal boys are checking their files. You’ll have the data in a few minutes.”

  Jean Martin must be taking his train in Bergerac at this moment. Little Colette was probably taking her nap. Mlle. Doncoeur was doubtless sitting behind her window curtain, wondering what Maigret was up to.

  People were beginning to come out now, families with their children, the children with their new toys. There were certainly queues in front of the cinemas....

  A taxi stopped in front of the house. Footsteps sounded in the stairway. Mme. Maigret went to the door. The deep bass voice of Torrence rumbled: “You there, Chief?”

  Torrence came in with an ageless man who hugged the walls and looked humbly at the floor. Maigret went to the sideboard and filled two glasses with plum brandy.

  “To your health,” he said.

  The man looked at Maigret with surprised, anxious eyes. He raised a trembling, hesitant hand.

  “To your health, Monsieur Martin. I’m sorry to make you come all the way up here, but you won’t have far to go now to see your daughter.”

  “Nothing has happened to her?”

  “No, no. When I saw her this morning she was playing with her new doll. You can go, Torrence. Lucas must need you.”

  Mme. Maigret had gone into the bedroom with her knitting. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, counting her stiches.

  “Sit down, Monsieur Martin.”

  The man had touched his lips to the glass and set it down. He looked at it uneasily.

  “You have nothing to worry about. Just tell yourself that I know all about you.”

  “I wanted to visit her this morning,” the man sighed. “I swore I would go to bed early so I could wish her a Merry Christmas.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “It’s always the same. I swear I’ll take just one drink, just enough to pick me up....”

  “You have only one brother, Monsieur Martin?”

  “Yes, Jean. He’s six years younger than I am. He and my wife and my daughter were all I had to love in this world.”

  “You don’t love your sister-in-law?”

  He shivered. He seemed both startled and embarrassed.

  “I have nothing against Loraine.”

  “You entrusted your child to her, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yes, that is to say, when my wife died and I began to slip....”

  “I understand. Is your dau
ghter happy?”

  “I think so, yes. She never complains.”

  “Have you ever tried to get back on your feet?”

  “Every night I promise myself to turn over a new leaf, but next day I start all over again. I even went to see a doctor. I followed his advice for a few days. But when I went back, he was very busy. He said I ought to be in a special sanatorium.”

  He reached for his glass, then hesitated. Maigret picked up his own glass and took a swallow to encourage him.

  “Did you ever meet a man in your sister-in-law’s apartment?”

  “No. I think she’s above reproach on that score.”

  “Do you know where your brother first met her?”

  “In a little restaurant in the Rue Beaujolais where he used to eat when he was in Paris. It was near the shop where Loraine was working.”

  “Did they have a long engagement?”

  “I can’t say. Jean was on the road for two months and when he came back he told me he was getting married.”

  “Were you his best man?”

  “Yes. Loraine has no family in Paris. She’s an orphan. So her landlady acted as her witness. Is there something wrong?”

  “I don’t know yet. A man entered Colette’s room last night dressed as Father Christmas. He gave your girl a doll, and lifted two loose boards from the floor.”

  “Do you think I’m in fit condition to see her?”

  “You can go over in a little while. If you feel like it you can shave here. Do you think your brother would be likely to hide anything under the floor?”

  “Jean? Never!”

  “Even if he wanted to hide something from his wife?”

  “He doesn’t hide things from his wife. You don’t know him. He’s one of those rare humans—a scrupulously honest man. When he comes home from the road, she knows exactly how much money he has left, to the last centime.”

  “Is she jealous?”

  Paul Martin did not reply.

  “I advise you to tell me what you know. Remember that your daughter is involved in this.”

  “I don’t think that Loraine is especially jealous. Not of women, at least. Perhaps about money. At least that’s what my poor wife always said. She didn’t like Loraine.”

  “Why not?”

  “She used to say that Loraine’s lips were too thin, that she was too polite, too cold, always on the defensive. My wife always thought that Loraine set her cap for Jean because he had a good job with a future and owned his own furniture.”

  “Loraine had no money of her own?”

  “She never speaks of her family. I understand her father died when she was very young and her mother did housework somewhere in the Glacière quarter. My poor wife used to say, ‘Loraine knows what she wants.’”

  “Do you think she was Lorilleux’s mistress?”

  Paul Martin did not reply. Maigret poured him another finger of plum brandy. Martin gave him a grateful look, but he did not touch the glass. Perhaps he was thinking that his daughter might notice his breath when he crossed the street later on.

  “I’ll get you a cup of coffee in a moment.... Your wife must have had her own ideas on the subject.”

  “How did you know? Please note that my wife never spoke disparagingly of people. But with Loraine it was almost pathological. Whenever we were to meet my sister-in-law, I used to beg my wife not to show her antipathy. It’s funny that you should bring all that up now, at this time in my life. Do you think I did wrong in letting her take Colette? I sometimes think so. But what else could I have done?”

  “You didn’t answer my question about Loraine’s former employer.”

  “Oh, yes. My wife always said it was very convenient for Loraine to have married a man who was away from home so much.”

  “You know where she lived before her marriage?”

  “In a street just off Boulevard Sébastopol, on the right as you walk from the Rue de Tivoli toward the Boulevard. I remember we picked her up there the day of the wedding.”

  “Rue Crenelle?”

  “That’s it. The fourth or fifth house on the left side of the street is a quiet rooming house, quite respectable. People who work in the neighborhood live there. I remember there were several little actresses from the Châtelet.”

  “Would you like to shave, Monsieur Martin?”

  “I’m ashamed. Still, since my daughter is just across the street....”

  “Come with me.”

  Maigret took him through the kitchen so he wouldn’t have to meet Mme. Maigret in the bedroom. He set out the necessary toilet articles, not forgetting a clothes brush.

  When he returned to the dining room, Mme. Maigret poked her head through the door and whispered: “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s shaving.”

  Once more Maigret reached for the telephone. He was certainly giving poor Lucas a busy Christmas Day.

  “Are you indispensable at the office?”

  “Not if Torrence sits in for me. I’ve got the information you wanted.”

  “In just a moment. I want you to jump over to Rue Pernelle. There’s a rooming house a few doors down from the Boulevard Sébastopol. If the proprietor wasn’t there five years ago, try to dig up someone who lived then. I want everything you can find out on a certain Loraine....”

  “Loraine who?”

  “Just a minute, I didn’t think of that.”

  Through the bathroom door he asked Martin for the maiden name of his sister-in-law. A few seconds later he was on the phone again.

  “Loraine Boitel,” he told Lucas. “The landlady of this rooming house was witness at her marriage to Jean Martin. Loraine Boitel was working for Lorilleux at the time. Try to find out if she was more than a secretary to him, and if he ever came to see her. And work fast. This may be urgent. What have you got on Lorilleux?”

  “He was quite a fellow. At home in the Rue Mazarine he was a good respectable family man. In his Palais-Royal shop he not only sold old coins and souvenirs of Paris, but he had a fine collection of pornographic books and obscene pictures.”

  “Not unusual for the Palais-Royal.”

  “I don’t know what else went on there. There was a big divan covered with red silk rep in the back room, but the investigation was never pushed. Seems there were a lot of important names among his customers.”

  “What about Loraine Boitel?”

  “The report barely mentions her, except that she waited all morning for Lorilleux the day he disappeared. I was on the phone about this when Langlois of the Financial Squad came into my office. The name Lorilleux rang a bell in the back of his mind and he went to check his files. Nothing definite on him, but he’d been making frequent trips to Switzerland and back, and there was a lot of gold smuggling going on at that time. Lorilleux was stopped and searched at the frontier several times, but they never found anything on him.”

  “Lucas, old man, hurry over to Rue Pernelle. I’m more than ever convinced that this is urgent.”

  Paul Martin appeared in the doorway, his pale cheeks close-shaven.

  “I don’t know how to thank you. I’m very much embarrassed.”

  “You’ll visit your daughter now, won’t you? I don’t know how long you usually stay, but today I don’t want you to leave until I come for you.”

  “I can’t very well stay all night, can I?”

  “Stay all night if necessary. Manage the best you can.”

  “Is the little girl in danger?”

  “I don’t know, but your place today is with your daughter.”

  Paul Martin drank his black coffee avidly, and started for the stairway. The door had just closed after him when Mme. Maigret rushed into the dining room.

  “You can’t let him go to see his daughter empty-handed on Christmas Day!”

  “But—” Maigret was about to say that there just didn’t happen to be a doll around the house, when his wife thrust a small shiny object into his hands. It was a gold thimble which had been in her sewing basket for yea
rs but which she never used.

  “Give him that. Little girls always like thimbles. Hurry!”

  He shouted from the landing: “Monsieur Martin! Just a minute, Monsieur Martin!”

  He closed the man’s fingers over the thimble. “Don’t tell a soul where you got this.”

  Before re-entering the dining room he stood for a moment on the threshold, grumbling. Then he sighed: “I hope you’ve finished making me play Father Christmas.”

  “I’ll bet she likes the thimble as well as a doll. It’s something grownups use, you know.”

  They watched the man cross the boulevard. Before going into the house he turned to look up at Maigret’s windows, as if seeking encouragement.

  “Do you think he’ll ever be cured?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “If anything happens to that woman, to Madame Martin....”

  “Well?”

  “Nothing. I was thinking of the little girl. I wonder what would become of her.”

  Ten minutes passed. Maigret had opened his newspaper and lighted his pipe. His wife had settled down again with her knitting. She was counting stitches when he exhaled a cloud of smoke and murmured: “You haven’t even seen her.”

  Maigret was looking for an old envelope, on the back of which he had jotted down a few notes summing up the day‘s events. He found it in a drawer into which Mme. Maigret always stuffed any papers she found lying around the house.

  This was the only investigation, he mused, which he had ever conducted practically in its entirety from his favorite armchair. It was also unusual in that no dramatic stroke of luck had come to his aid. True, luck had been on his side, in that he had been able to muster all his facts by the simplest and most direct means. How many times had he deployed scores of detectives on an all-night search for some minor detail. This might have happened, for instance, if Monsieur Arthur Godefroy of Zenith had gone home to Zurich for Christmas, or if he had been out of reach of a telephone. Or if Monsieur Godefroy had been unaware of the telephone inquiry regarding the whereabouts of Jean Martin.

  When Lucas arrived shortly after 4 o’clock, his nose red and his face pinched with the cold, he too could report the same kind of undramatic luck.