Maigret and the Man on the Bench

by Georges Simenon

  ‘He was stabbed to death, yesterday afternoon, not far from here.’

  ‘I haven’t read the newspaper yet.’

  As it happened, the papers had relayed news of the crime in a few short lines, as if it were a matter of no importance.

  ‘Who on earth would want to kill such a nice man?’

  She herself was a fine woman, small but plucky.

  ‘For more than twenty years he walked past my lodge four times a day and he never failed to have a friendly word. When Monsieur Kaplan closed his business he was so crushed that . . .’

  She had to dry her eyes and blow her nose.

  ‘Is Monsieur Kaplan still alive?’

  ‘I can give you his address if you like. He lives near Porte Maillot, Rue des Acacias. He’s a nice man too, but not in the same way. And old Monsieur Kaplan is probably still alive too.’

  ‘What did he sell?’

  ‘Don’t you know the firm?’

  She was surprised that the whole world didn’t know about Kaplin and Zanin’s. Maigret said to her:

  ‘I’m from the police. I need to know everything there is to know about Monsieur Thouret.’

  ‘We called him Monsieur Louis. Everyone called him Monsieur Louis. Most people didn’t even know his surname. Could you just give me a moment . . .?’

  And as she finished sorting the letters, she muttered to herself:

  ‘Monsieur Louis killed! Who would have thought! Such a nice man . . .’

  Once she had put the envelopes into the pigeon-holes she threw a woollen shawl around her shoulders and half closed the damper on the stove.

  ‘I’ll show you.’

  Standing under the archway, she explained:

  ‘Three years ago the building was scheduled to be demolished to make way for a cinema. The tenants at the time were given notice, and I myself made arrangements to go to live with my daughter in Nièvre. That’s why Monsieur Kaplan closed down the firm. Perhaps also because the business was struggling a bit. Young Monsieur Kaplan, Monsieur Max, as we called him, had very different ideas from his father. This way . . .’

  Beyond the archway there was a courtyard, at the end of which rose up a huge building with a glass roof, which resembled a railway station concourse. On the rough-cast wall a few letters of the words Kaplan and Zanin were still visible.

  ‘The Zanins were long gone by the time I started working here, twenty-six years ago. At that time old Monsieur Kaplan ran the business himself. Children would turn and stare at him in the street because he looked like one of the Three Wise Men.’

  The door wasn’t closed. The lock had been torn off. The whole place was dead now, but a few years earlier it had made up a part of Louis Thouret’s universe. It was difficult to tell exactly what it had been back in those days. It was a huge space with, way above their heads, a glass roof in which half the panes were now missing and the others too grimy to see through. Two galleries, one above the other, ran along the walls, as in a department store, and there were still traces on the wall of the shelving that had been removed.

  ‘Every time that he came to pay me a little visit—’

  ‘Did he come often?’

  ‘Maybe two or three times a month, always with a treat in his pocket . . . As I was saying, every time Monsieur Louis insisted on having a look round, and I could tell that his heart was heavy. I’ve seen as many as twenty girls in here doing the packing, even more at the end. In the run-up to Christmas it wasn’t unusual for them to be working well into the night. Monsieur Kaplan didn’t sell direct to the public but to bargain stores in the provinces as well as hawkers and street pedlars. There was so much merchandise you could hardly move, and Monsieur Louis was the only one who knew where everything was. Lord knows how much stuff they had: false beards, cardboard trumpets, coloured baubles to hang on the Christmas tree, paper streamers, carnival masks, seaside souvenirs.’

  ‘Was Monsieur Louis the foreman?’

  ‘Yes. He wore a grey overall. Over there in that corner on the right was Monsieur Kaplan’s glass-walled office. That’s young Monsieur Kaplan – after his father had his first attack and stopped coming to the shop. He had a secretary, Mademoiselle Léone, and an old book-keeper, who worked in a cubbyhole on the first floor. No one had the slightest inkling what was coming. One fine day, in October or November, I can’t quite remember, but I know it was already cold outside, Monsieur Max Kaplan gathered his staff together to announce that the firm was closing its doors and that he had found a buyer for the stock.

  ‘At that time everyone was convinced that the building would be demolished the following year to make way, as I said, for a cinema.’

  Maigret listened patiently and took in the surroundings, trying to picture what the place must have looked like in its heyday.

  ‘The front part of the building is due to be demolished as well. All the tenants have received notice. Some have left already. Others have hung on and were right to do so, as it turns out, as they are still here. The problem is, as the building has been sold, the new owners are refusing to do any repairs. I don’t know how many court cases are still dragging on. The bailiff is here almost every month. I’ve packed my bags twice already.’

  ‘Do you know Madame Thouret?’

  ‘I’ve never seen her. She lived out in the suburbs, in Juvisy . . .’

  ‘She’s still there.’

  ‘You’ve met her? What is she like?’

  Maigret simply grimaced in reply, and she got the hint:

  ‘I thought as much. I could tell he wasn’t happy at home. This was his life. That’s why I always said that it hit him the hardest. Especially as he was at an age when it is difficult to make big changes.’

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘Forty-five or -six.’

  ‘Do you know what he did next?’

  ‘He never spoke to me about it. He must have had a difficult time. He didn’t come back here for quite a while. One time when I was doing my shopping, in a hurry as usual, I spotted him sitting on a bench. It gave me a shock. It was not somewhere you’d expect to see a man like him in the middle of the day, you see. I was going to say something to him. Then I thought that that might embarrass him, so I gave him a wide berth.’

  ‘How long after the closure of the shop was this?’

  It was colder here under the glass roof than out in the courtyard, so she suggested:

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to come to the lodge to warm up? I’m not sure how much later it was. It wasn’t in the spring, because there were no leaves on the trees. Probably towards the end of winter.’

  ‘When was the next time you saw him?’

  ‘A long time afterwards, in midsummer. What struck me the most was that he was wearing goose-poo shoes. Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘No reason. Please go on.’

  ‘That was out of character. I’ve only ever seen him in black shoes. He came into the lodge and placed a small parcel on the table, a white parcel with a red ribbon containing chocolates. He sat down on this chair. I made him a cup of coffee and I dashed out to buy a half-bottle of calvados at the corner of the street while he looked after the lodge.’

  ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘Nothing in particular. He was just happy to be breathing the air of the place again, I could tell.’

  ‘He made no mention of his new life?’

  ‘I asked him if he was happy and he said yes. In any case, he wasn’t working office hours, since this was the middle of the morning, around ten or eleven o’clock. Another time, he came in the afternoon and he was wearing a light-coloured tie. I teased him about it, told him it made him look younger. He wasn’t the sort to take offence. Then we talked about his daughter: I’ve never seen her, but he showed me photos of her from when she was just a few months old. You don’t often see a man so proud to be a father. He talked about her to everyone, carried photos of her in his pockets.’

  They hadn’t found any recent pictures of Monique in his pocket
s, just the photo of her as a baby.

  ‘Is that all you know?’

  ‘What do you expect me to know? I spend my life cooped up from morning to evening. Since Kaplan’s closed down and the hairdresser on the first floor moved out, there has been hardly any life left in the place.’

  ‘Did you talk to him about that?’

  ‘Yes. We talked about everything under the sun: the tenants who were leaving, one after another, the court cases, the architects who would be here from time to time, working on the plans for this famous cinema while the place was slowly falling down around our ears.’

  She wasn’t bitter. Nevertheless, it was clear that she would be the very last to vacate the building.

  ‘How did it happen?’ she asked in turn. ‘Did he suffer?’

  Neither Madame Thouret nor Monique had asked that question.

  ‘The doctor said not; he died instantly.’

  ‘Where did it happen?’

  ‘Not far from here, in a passageway off Boulevard Saint-Martin.’

  ‘By the jeweller’s?’

  ‘Yes. Someone must have followed him when it was getting dark and stuck a knife in his back.’

  The previous evening and again this morning, Maigret had phoned the police forensic laboratory from his apartment. The knife was an ordinary one, of a common make, found in most hardware shops. It was new, and they hadn’t found any fingerprints on it.

  ‘Poor Monsieur Louis. He loved life so much!’

  ‘Was he a cheerful person?’

  ‘He wasn’t a sad person. I don’t know how to put this. He was friendly towards everyone. He was always kind and considerate. And he was modest too.’

  ‘Was he interested in women?’

  ‘Not at all! Though he didn’t lack the opportunity, working here. Apart from Monsieur Max and the old book-keeper, he was the only man in the firm, and the women who worked here as packers weren’t known for their virtue.’

  ‘Did he drink?’

  ‘A glass of wine, like everyone. The occasional liqueur with his coffee.’

  ‘Where did he have lunch?’

  ‘He didn’t leave the warehouse at midday; he brought his lunch with him, wrapped in an oilcloth. I can still see it now. He ate standing up at the corner of the table, then came out into the courtyard to smoke his pipe before going back to work. Only very occasionally would he go out, telling me he was meeting his daughter for lunch. That was in the later years, when she was a young woman and working in an office in Rue de Rivoli.

  ‘“Why don’t you bring her here, Monsieur Louis? I’d love to see her.”

  ‘“One of these days,” he promised.

  ‘But he never did. I don’t know why.’

  ‘Have you lost touch with Mademoiselle Léone?’

  ‘No, I have her address too. She lives with her mother. She doesn’t work in an office any more, she’s opened a shop in Rue de Clignancourt, in Montmartre. She may be able to tell you more than I can. He also went to see her. One time, when I was talking about her, he told me that she sold baby clothes and articles. That’s funny.’

  ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘That she should be selling things for babies.’

  People started popping in to collect their mail and they gave Maigret a suspicious glance, no doubt assuming that he was there to evict them.

  ‘Thank you. I will be back again, no doubt.’

  ‘You have no idea who did it?’

  ‘None at all,’ he admitted frankly.

  ‘Did they steal his wallet?’

  ‘No. Nor his watch.’

  ‘Then they must have mistaken him for someone else.’

  Rue de Clignancourt was right on the other side of town. He went into a small bar and made for the telephone booth.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Janvier, chief.’

  ‘Anything new?’

  ‘The men are out, following the orders you left.’

  He was referring to five inspectors who had each been assigned a different district and were visiting all the hardware shops. As for Santoni, Maigret had instructed him to find out more about Monique Thouret, just on the off chance. He would now be in Rue de Rivoli, hanging round the offices of Geber and Bachelier’s debt-collection agency.

  If Madame Thouret had had a telephone out in Juvisy, he would have called her to ask whether her husband had continued to take his lunch with him every day, wrapped in a black oilcloth.

  ‘Could you send the car round?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Rue de Bondy. I’ll be outside the Renaissance.’

  He almost gave Janvier, who was free that day, the task of questioning the shopkeepers on Boulevard Saint-Martin. Inspector Neveu was on the case now, but in this type of work, with its element of chance, you could never have too many people helping out. But he decided against it, largely because he wanted to check out the area again himself.

  ‘Any other orders?’

  ‘Give the newspapers a photo. Make sure that they go on treating it as a minor story.’

  ‘Got it. I’m sending the car now.’

  Since the concierge had mentioned calvados, and because it was really quite cold, he ordered a glass. Then, his hands in his pockets, he crossed the boulevard and went to have a quick look at the alleyway where Monsieur Louis had been killed.

  The announcement of the crime had been so inconspicuous that there were no curious passers-by stopping to see if there were any traces of blood still on the paving stones.

  He stood for a while in front of one of the windows of the jeweller’s; he could see five or six sales staff inside. They didn’t sell high-quality jewellery. Most of the items on display had a label next to them saying ‘special offer’. The window was full of merchandise: wedding rings, fake diamonds, some real ones too perhaps, alarm-clocks, watches and rather tasteless pendulum clocks.

  A little old man was watching Maigret from the inside, no doubt taking him for a potential customer; he came to the door, a smile on his lips, with the intention of inviting him in. The inspector merely walked away. A few moments later, he was climbing into the police car.

  ‘Rue de Clignancourt.’

  It was a less noisy area, but still predominantly lower-class. Mademoiselle Léone’s shop, called ‘Le Bébé Rose’, was so tucked away between a horse-meat butcher and a restaurant frequented by cab-drivers that only those in the know would be aware it was there.

  He almost had a shock when he went in, because the woman who came out from the back of the shop, where there was an old lady sitting in an armchair with a cat on her knees, didn’t correspond to the image he had formed in his head of Kaplan’s secretary. In what way? He wasn’t sure. She was probably wearing felt slippers, because her footsteps made no sound, a bit like a nun. And also like a nun, she seemed to walk without moving her body.

  She gave a vague smile, a smile that was not confined to her lips but was spread across her face, which was soft and unassuming.

  Wasn’t it strange that she was called Léone? Stranger still that she had a large, round nose of the kind that you see on sleepy old lions in the zoo.

  ‘What can I do for you, sir?’

  She was dressed in black. Her face and hands were washed-out, limp. A large stove in the back room was emitting comforting waves of warmth, and all over the counter and the shelves there were delicate baby clothes, socks decorated with blue or pink ribbons, bonnets and christening robes.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret of the Police Judiciaire.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘One of your former colleagues, Louis Thouret, was killed yesterday.’

  Of all of them, she had the strongest reaction to the news, even though she didn’t cry, didn’t look for a handkerchief, didn’t pinch her lips. Rather, the sudden shock froze her to the spot; you would have sworn her heart stopped beating for a moment. And he saw her already pale lips become as white as the baby clothes all around.

  ‘Forgive me for an
nouncing that so bluntly . . .’

  She shook her head to tell him it didn’t matter. The old lady in the other room had stirred slightly.

  ‘In order to find his killer I need to gather as much information as I can about him . . .’

  She nodded but still didn’t say a word.

  ‘I believe you knew him well . . .’

  And it was as if her face lit up for an instant.

  ‘How did it happen?’ she asked finally, with a catch in her voice.

  She must already have been ugly as a little girl and always known it. She looked towards the back room and murmured:

  ‘Would you like to take a seat?’

  ‘I think your mother . . .’

  ‘We can speak in front of Mother. She is completely deaf. She likes to have some company.’

  He didn’t dare admit that he was afraid of suffocating in this airless room, where the two women spent their life in a state of near-immobility.

  Léone was ageless. She was probably in her fifties, possibly late fifties. Her mother seemed to be at least eighty and she looked at the inspector with bright, bird-like eyes. It wasn’t from her that Léone had inherited her large nose but from her father, a photograph of whom hung on the wall.

  ‘I’ve just been to see the concierge in Rue de Bondy.’

  ‘It must have come as a shock to her.’

  ‘Yes. She was very fond of him.’

  ‘Everyone was fond of him.’

  Her face coloured a little as she said this.

  ‘He was such a nice man,’ she added hastily.

  ‘You saw him again often, is that right?’

  ‘He came to see me a few times. I wouldn’t exactly say “often”. He was very busy, and I live a long way out.’

  ‘Do you know what he has been doing in the last couple of years?’

  ‘I never asked him. He seemed to be doing well. I suppose he was running his own business, as he didn’t seem to keep office hours.’

  ‘Did he ever talk to you about people he was associated with?’

  ‘We mainly talked about Rue de Bondy, Kaplan’s, Monsieur Max, inventories. It used to be a major operation every year – we had over a thousand different items in our catalogue.’

  She hesitated.