Maigret and the Man on the Bench

by Georges Simenon

  The rest followed in ragged single file, because of the squalls of rain, and some walked along the pavement, sticking close to the fronts of the houses.

  ‘Do you recognize anyone?’

  No one of the sort they were looking for. In particular, no woman who could have fitted the bill of the woman with the ring. There was a woman with a fox-fur stole, but Maigret had seen her emerge from one of the houses and lock the door behind her. As for the men, he couldn’t picture any of them sitting on a bench on Boulevard Saint-Martin.

  Nevertheless, Maigret and Neveu stayed until the end. Luckily there was no mass, just an absolution, so no one bothered to close the doors of the church, which meant that the stone floor very quickly became wet.

  Twice Maigret caught the eye of Monique, and both times he could sense the fear gripping the young woman’s chest.

  ‘Are we going on to the cemetery?’

  ‘It’s not far. You never know.’

  They had to wade ankle-deep through mud, because the grave was in a new part of the cemetery and the paths had barely been laid out. Every time she spotted Maigret, Madame Thouret assiduously had a good look round to show that she hadn’t forgotten his request. When he went with all the others to offer his condolences, she muttered:

  ‘I haven’t noticed anyone.’

  She had a red nose because of the cold, and the rain had washed away her face powder. The four cousins too had shiny faces.

  They waited outside the gate for a while, then went into the seedy café opposite, where Maigret ordered two hot toddies. They weren’t the only ones there. A few minutes later half the funeral had crammed in and were stamping their feet on the tiled floor to warm them up.

  From the hubbub of conversation Maigret picked up only the following words:

  ‘She doesn’t have a pension.’

  The sisters certainly would, as their husbands worked for the railways. Monsieur Louis had always been the poor relation. Not only did he work in a warehouse, but he had no pension.

  ‘What will they do?’

  ‘The girl is working. They’ll probably take in a lodger.’

  ‘Are you coming, Neveu?’

  It poured all the way back to Paris, where the rain was lashing the pavements. The cars threw up thick whiskers of muddy water.

  ‘Where shall I drop you?’

  ‘There’s no point getting changed as I’ll still have to wear this wet coat. Drop me at the Police Judiciaire and I’ll take a taxi to the Préfecture.’

  The corridors of Quai des Orfèvres were covered in footprints like the floor of the church. There was the same cold, damp atmosphere. A man with handcuffs on his wrists sat on a bench outside the office of the head of the Gambling Squad.

  ‘Anything new, Lucas?’

  ‘Lapointe phoned in. He’s at the Brasserie de la République. He’s found the room.’

  ‘Louis’ room?’

  ‘That’s what he says, though the landlady has been reluctant to help him in his inquiries.’

  ‘Did he want me to ring him?’

  ‘Unless you prefer to go there in person.’

  Maigret chose to do that. He couldn’t stand sitting in his office when he was soaked through.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘A false alarm on the young man. We thought we’d found him in the waiting room of Gare de Montparnasse. It wasn’t him, just someone who looked like him.’

  Maigret got back in the black car and, a few minutes later, was walking into the bar on Place de la République, where Lapointe was sitting next to the stove, nursing a cup of coffee. He ordered a toddy.

  He felt as if some of the chilling rain falling from the sky had got up his nostrils and was sure a head cold would be on the way. Maybe it was because of the tradition that you always catch colds at funerals?

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Just a stone’s throw from here. I found it by sheer luck, because it’s not a hotel and it doesn’t appear on our lists.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s the right place?’

  ‘You’ll meet the landlady yourself. I was walking down Rue d’Angoulême on the way from one boulevard to another when I spotted a sign which said: “Room to rent”. It is a small building, no concierge, just two storeys. I rang the bell and asked to see the room. I took an instant dislike to the landlady. She’s middle-aged, probably was a beautiful redhead in her day, but now her hair is thinning and faded, and she looks flabby under her sky-blue dressing gown.

  ‘“Is it for you?” she asked without opening the door more than a crack. “Are you on your own?”

  ‘I heard a door open on the first floor and saw a face briefly peer over the banister, a pretty girl, also wearing a dressing gown.’

  ‘A brothel?’

  ‘I don’t think so, not exactly. But I wouldn’t bet against the landlady being a former madam.

  ‘“Do you want to rent by the month? Where do you work?”

  ‘Finally she took me up to the second floor. The room looked out on the courtyard and wasn’t badly furnished. A bit too plush for my taste, lots of poor-quality velvet and silk and a doll on the bed. It still had a female smell.

  ‘“Who gave you this address?”

  ‘I almost said that I had just seen the sign. All the time that we were talking, I was bothered by the sight of her sagging breast, which looked like it was going to pop out of her dressing gown at any moment.

  ‘“A friend,” I replied.

  ‘Then, just on the off chance, I added:

  ‘“He told me that he lived here.”

  ‘“Who is he?”

  ‘“Monsieur Louis.”

  ‘Then I found out that she knew him. Her expression changed. Her voice too.

  ‘“Don’t know him!” she said sharply. “Do you usually come home late?”

  ‘She was trying to get rid of me.

  ‘“In fact,” I went on, still playing the innocent, “maybe my friend is here now. He doesn’t work during the day and he gets up late.”

  ‘“Do you want the room or not?”

  ‘“I’ll take it, but—”

  ‘“You pay rent in advance.”

  ‘I took my wallet from my pocket. As if by accident I found a photo of Monsieur Louis in it.

  ‘“Look! I have a picture of my friend here.”

  ‘She barely glanced at it.

  ‘“I don’t think we’re going to get on, you and I,” she said, heading for the door.

  ‘“But—”

  ‘“If you don’t mind seeing yourself out, my dinner will be burned soon if I don’t attend to it.”

  ‘I was sure that she knew him. When I left I saw a curtain twitching. She seemed to be on the alert.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Maigret.

  Even though it was just a short distance away, they took the car, which pulled up in front of the house. The curtain twitched again. The woman who came to the door wasn’t dressed but was still wearing the same dressing gown: she couldn’t have chosen a colour as unbecoming to her as that blue if she had tried.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Police Judiciaire.’

  ‘What do you want? I thought that that idiot had trouble written all over him,’ she grumbled, casting a sour look at Lapointe.

  ‘I think it would be better to discuss this inside.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not going to stop you coming in. I’ve got nothing to hide.’

  ‘Why did you not admit that Monsieur Louis was your tenant?’

  ‘Because that was no business of his.’

  And she showed them into a small, overheated living room, full of garishly coloured cushions embroidered with cats, hearts, musical notes. As the curtains let in hardly any daylight, she turned on a standard lamp with a huge orange shade.

  ‘What exactly do you want from me?’

  Maigret took the photo of the recently interred Monsieur Louis from his pocket.

  ‘This is him, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. You’d have found
out in the end anyway.’

  ‘How long has he been renting from you?’

  ‘About two years. Maybe a little more.’

  ‘Do you have many?’

  ‘What, tenants? This house is too big for a woman on her own. And people don’t find it easy to find places to rent these days.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Three at present.’

  ‘And one spare room?’

  ‘Yes. The one I showed that boy. I should have known he wasn’t to be trusted.’

  ‘What do you know about Monsieur Louis?’

  ‘He was a quiet man, never caused any trouble. Since he worked nights—’

  ‘Do you know where he worked?’

  ‘I wasn’t nosy enough to ask him. He left in the evening and came home in the morning. He didn’t seem to need much sleep. I often told him that he should try to get more sleep, but it seems that most people who work nights are like that.’

  ‘Did he have many visitors?’

  ‘What are you driving at, exactly?’

  ‘You read the papers . . .’

  There was a morning newspaper lying open on a table.

  ‘I see what you’re saying. But first I need to make sure you’re not going to cause me any problems. I know the police.’

  Maigret was sure that, if he searched through the archives of the Vice Squad, he would find a file on this woman.

  ‘I don’t shout it from the rooftops that I take in boarders and I don’t like to draw attention to them. It’s not a crime. All the same, if this is going to get me into trouble . . .’

  ‘That depends on you.’

  ‘Is that a promise? First of all, what rank are you?’

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.’

  ‘Good! Fine! It’s more serious than I thought. It’s your colleagues in Vice who get on my . . .’

  And she came out with an expression so coarse that it almost made Lapointe blush.

  ‘OK, I know that he was killed. But I don’t know anything more.’

  ‘What name did he give you?’

  ‘Monsieur Louis. That’s all.’

  ‘Was he visited by a woman – dark-haired, middle-aged?’

  ‘An attractive woman, not a day over forty, who took good care of herself.’

  ‘Did she come here often?’

  ‘Three or four times a week.’

  ‘Do you know her name?’

  ‘I called her Madame Antoinette.’

  ‘You seem to have a habit of calling people by their first names.’

  ‘I’m not nosy.’

  ‘Did she stay very long upstairs?’

  ‘As long as it took.’

  ‘The whole afternoon?’

  ‘Sometimes. Other times, just an hour or two.’

  ‘Did she ever come in the morning?’

  ‘No. Maybe once or twice, but not often.’

  ‘Do you know her address?’

  ‘I didn’t ask for it.’

  ‘Are your other tenants all women?’

  ‘Yes. Monsieur Louis is the only man who—’

  ‘Did he ever have relations with any of them?’

  ‘Do you mean sexual relations? If so, then no. It didn’t seem to interest him. If he had wanted to—’

  ‘Did he frequent them?’

  ‘He spoke to them. They’d knock on his door sometimes to ask him for a light or a cigarette or the newspaper.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘They chatted. He’d sometimes play cards with Lucile.’

  ‘Is she upstairs?’

  ‘She’s been away for two days. It happens all the time. She must have found someone. Don’t forget you promised I wouldn’t get into any trouble. Or my tenants.’

  He didn’t point out that he had promised no such thing.

  ‘Did anyone else come to see him?’

  ‘Someone came asking after him two or three times, not very long ago.’

  ‘A young woman?’

  ‘Yes. She didn’t go up. She asked me to let him know that she was waiting.’

  ‘Did she give you her name?’

  ‘Monique. She stayed in the hallway, wouldn’t even come into the living room.’

  ‘Did he come down?’

  ‘The first time he spoke to her in a whisper for a few minutes, then she left. The other times he went out with her.’

  ‘Did he tell you who she was?’

  ‘He only asked if I thought she was pretty.’

  ‘What did you reply?’

  ‘That she was nice in the way girls her age are these days, but in a few years she’d look like a horse.’

  ‘What other visitors did he have?’

  ‘Don’t you want to sit down?’

  ‘No thank you. No point in making your cushions wet.’

  ‘I keep the house as clean as I can. Wait a minute, someone else came – a young man, didn’t give me his name. When I told Monsieur Louis that he was waiting downstairs he seemed a bit agitated. He asked me to show him up. The young man stayed about ten minutes.’

  ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘It was in the middle of August. I remember how hot it was, and all the flies.’

  ‘Did he ever come back?’

  ‘They came in together once, as if they had just bumped into each other in the street. They went upstairs again. The young man left straight away.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘It seems like quite a lot to me. Now I suppose you’ll be asking me to let you go upstairs.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Second floor, the room opposite the one that I showed to your underling, the one that looks out on to the street. We call it the green room.’

  She sighed and carried on sighing as she hauled herself up to the second floor.

  ‘Don’t forget what you promised . . .’

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘By the way, if you try to do the dirty on me, I’ll tell the court that everything you said was a pack of lies.’

  ‘Do you have the key?’

  Through an open door on the floor below he had seen a young woman watching them, completely naked, with a bath towel in her hand.

  ‘I have a master key.’

  And she called down the stairwell:

  ‘It’s OK, Yvette, it’s not Vice.’

  5. The Policeman’s Widow

  The furniture in the room must have been bought in a local auction house. Made of ‘solid’ walnut, it was about fifty or sixty years out of date and included a huge mirror-fronted wardrobe.

  What struck Maigret the most as he walked in was a birdcage on a round table covered with an Indian-print cloth in which a canary immediately started to hop around. The place reminded him of Monsieur Saimbron’s rooms on Quai de la Mégisserie, and he would have bet good money that Louis Thouret had bought the bird to give to the old book-keeper on one of his visits.

  ‘I suppose this is his?’

  ‘He got it maybe a year or so ago. He was swindled, because the bird doesn’t sing. It’s a female, but they passed it off as a male.’

  ‘Who did the housework for him?’

  ‘I let out furnished rooms and provide linen, but I don’t offer cleaning. I did try it once, but I had too many problems with the maids. And as my tenants are mainly women . . .’

  ‘Did Monsieur Louis clean his own room?’

  ‘He made the bed, cleaned the bathroom, dusted. As a special arrangement with him I would come up once a week and give the place a good once-over.’

  She remained standing in the doorway, which bothered Maigret somewhat. For him, this was no ordinary room. It was the place that Monsieur Louis had chosen as his refuge. In other words, the items in the room were not the little necessities of everyday life, as you would normally find, but spoke of his personal, almost secret, tastes.

  In the mirror-fronted wardrobe there wasn’t a single suit, but there were three pairs of yellow shoes lovingly stacked on shoe-trees. Also on the sideboard,
there was a pearl-grey hat, which had hardly been worn; he must have bought it on a whim one day, another act of rebellion against the oppressive atmosphere at Juvisy.

  ‘Did he go to the races?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He never talked to me about it.’

  ‘Did he often talk to you?’

  ‘In passing. He would drop by the living room for a chat.’

  ‘Was he a happy person?’

  ‘He seemed quite content with life.’

  By way of further rebellion against his wife’s tastes he had acquired a floral-print dressing gown and some red kid-leather slippers.

  The room was tidy, everything in its place, not a speck of dust on the furniture. In a cupboard Maigret found an opened bottle of port and two stemmed wine glasses. A raincoat hung on a hook.

  He hadn’t thought about that. When it rained in the middle of the day but not in the evening, Monsieur Louis couldn’t go home to Juvisy in wet clothes.

  He must have spent hours reading. There was a long row of books on the chest of drawers: cheap editions of swashbuckler novels and just two or three detective stories: he can’t have been too enamoured of the latter, as he hadn’t bought any more.

  His armchair was beside the window. Next to it, on a side-table, there was a photograph in a mahogany frame showing a dark-haired woman in her forties, dressed in black. She matched the description given by the jewellery shop assistant. She seemed quite tall, had the same sturdy build as Madame Thouret and the same unyielding flesh. She was what some people might describe as a fine figure of a woman.

  ‘Is she the one who came to see him more or less regularly?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He found other photos in a drawer, the sort you get from automatic photo booths. There were some of Monsieur Louis himself among them too, his face a little blurred, and in one he was wearing the pearl-grey hat.

  Apart from two pairs of socks and a few ties, there were no other personal possessions in the room: no shirts or underwear, no papers either, or old letters or any of the various bits of junk with which drawers gradually become stuffed.

  Maigret, remembering how, as a child, he had wanted to hide things from his parents, pulled a chair over to the wardrobe and had a look on top of it. As in most houses, there was a thick layer of dust on top, but there was a distinct rectangular patch where an object such as an envelope or a book must have lain.