A bronze and black marble clock, mechanism no longer working … Two bronze and marble three-branched candelabras … A wicker wastepaper basket containing a crumpled newspaper … A thirty-six-centimetre adjustable spanner, as used by plumbers …
The description of the bed was equally precise. One of the fine linen bedsheets, in excellent condition, was embroidered with a ‘P’ four centimetres tall …
Maigret extended two fingers, visualizing the embroidered initial, then sighed. Still reading, he picked up the telephone.
‘Get me Maître Radel … The lawyer … I don’t know his number …’
A few minutes later Radel was on the line.
‘Hello, Maigret here … I’d like you to ask your clients a couple of questions, which will spare me a trip to Quai de la Gare and you having to meet me there … Hello! Are you there?’
‘Yes. I’m listening.’
Maigret’s tact must have caught the lawyer by surprise.
‘The first question is about an adjustable spanner … A thirty-six-centimetre adjustable spanner … It’s in Léonard Lachaume’s bedroom, which is under seal. I’d like to know what it’s doing there … What? Yes … There may be a very simple reason, and I’d like to know what it is …
‘Next … How many bedsheets are there in the house? … Yes, I’m sorry, it is very humdrum, you’re right … Wait a minute! Ask if all the sheets have the initial “P” on them, and, if they don’t, who used the ones that do … How many sheets are there with that initial and how many are plain, or have a different initial … What? … That’s all, yes … Actually … I expect you’ll plead professional confidentiality on this … How long have you been the Lachaumes’ notary?’
There was a silence on the other end of the line. Maître Radel was hesitating. Maigret had been surprised the day before to find such a young and virtually unknown lawyer in that house; a crafty old hand would have seemed far more likely.
‘What’s that? A week? One last question: can I ask whose lawyer you are exactly? Someone called you or came to see you a week ago …’
He listened, shrugged his shoulders and, when the voice on the other end of the line fell silent, hung up. As he’d expected, Radel had refused to answer his question.
He was reaching for one of his pipes when the telephone rang. It was Angelot, sooner than expected, who had got to the office long before nine.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Did you get my messages?’
‘I did. I’ve read them carefully.’
‘I’d like to see you as soon as possible.’
‘I know. I’m just waiting for a telephone call. It should be in the next few minutes, I hope, and then I’ll come to your office.’
He proceeded to wait, doing nothing except smoke and plant himself by the window. It took six minutes. Radel hadn’t hung around.
‘I asked about the adjustable spanner first … Old Catherine remembers it very well … About two weeks ago, Léonard Lachaume was bothered by a smell of gas in his bedroom … They only use gas in the kitchen these days, but the rooms used to be gas-lit, and the system is still in place. The pipes were just blocked off with key bolts. So Léonard got a spanner from the workshop on the ground floor. He forgot to take it back down, and it’s been in a corner of the bedroom since then …’
‘The sheets?’
‘I haven’t been able to get an exact total because some are at the laundry … They’ve got different initials … The oldest, which are very worn, are monogrammed “NF” and date back to the parents’ marriage … In those days, a woman brought enough sheets to last a lifetime when she got married … They’re coarse Dutch linen, and there are a few pairs left … Then there are some sheets with “ML” on them, which were Léonard’s late wife’s … Twelve pairs, I am told … Including one with a scorch mark where it was burned by an iron … Six pairs of sheets, almost brand-new, cotton, no initials … And finally two dozen finer-quality sheets that came with Paulette Lachaume …’
‘Do they have a “P” on them?’
‘Yes.’
‘I suppose that in theory she’s the only one who uses them.’
‘I didn’t press the point. I was only told that they’re her personal bedsheets.’
‘Thank you.’
‘May I ask …’
‘Nothing, maître … I don’t know anything yet … I’m sorry …’
Without gathering up any files, he opened the door of the inspectors’ office, where Lucas had just appeared.
‘If anyone asks for me, I’ll be at the examining magistrate’s office.’
He had a key to the glass door connecting the Police Judiciaire and the Palais de Justice, which had been kept carefully locked since a prisoner had used it to escape.
As usual, he recognized various characters sitting on the benches, some of whom were flanked by gendarmes. The Monk was one of these, waiting outside a magistrate’s office. He wordlessly showed Maigret the handcuffs he had been made to wear, then shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, ‘That’s what they’re like over here!’
It was another world, it was true, with a dull smell of bureaucracy and red tape.
He knocked at Angelot’s door, found him at his desk, closely shaven and giving off a faint smell of lavender. His secretary at the end of the table was barely older than him.
‘Have a seat, detective chief inspector. I was quite surprised to go all yesterday afternoon and evening without hearing from you. Am I to conclude that you haven’t found out anything, haven’t taken any steps that might be of interest to me?’
The secretary sat there, pencil in hand, as though ready to take notes, but luckily wasn’t doing so.
‘Have you been back to Quai de la Gare?’
‘I haven’t, no.’
‘So you haven’t seen any of the family or staff again?’
‘No.’
‘But I assume you and your men have been busy on the case? Personally I’ve thought about it a great deal and I admit that, despite so little being stolen, I do keep coming back to the burglary hypothesis …’
Maigret kept silent, thinking of his dream, how different it was from reality. Was it really worth explaining himself, trying to make the magistrate understand …
He waited to be asked something specific.
‘What do you think?’ the question came finally.
‘Of it being a burglary?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve had someone dig up some figures for you. Do you know how many burglaries there have been in Paris in the last ten years, of apartments and town-houses, at night, when the occupants were at home?’
The magistrate looked at him, surprised, intrigued.
‘Thirty-two,’ Maigret went on in an indifferent tone of voice. ‘Just over three a year. And over a dozen of these have to be chalked up to a sort of artist, or lunatic, who we arrested three years ago and is still in prison. He was a lad of twenty-five who lived with his sister, had no lovers or friends, and was obsessed with pulling off the most difficult jobs, such as entering the room of a sleeping couple and taking their jewellery without waking them. Naturally, he wasn’t armed.’
‘Why do you say, naturally?’
‘Because professional burglars are never armed. They know the law from experience, and keep the risk to a minimum.’
‘But, almost every week …’
‘Almost every week, you read in the newspaper that an old newsagent or haberdasher or shopkeeper in town or the suburbs has been battered to death … Those aren’t really burglaries, in fact … Those crimes are committed by crude and often stupid young louts … I also asked how many real burglaries have been accompanied or followed by murders in the last ten years … Three. The first was committed with an adaptable spanner, which the burglar had in his pocket … The second with a poker the burglar found on the premises and used when he was caught and threatened … And the third with a firearm, a Lug
er the burglar had brought back from the war …’
He repeated:
‘Only one! … And it’s not a 6.35 automatic … I doubt you’ll find a professional criminal or delinquent anywhere in Paris who uses one of those guns, which respectable folk keep in the drawers of their bedside tables and jealous wives carry around in their handbags …’
‘If I understand you correctly, you don’t accept the burglary hypothesis?’
‘No.’
‘Even, say, by a member, or former member, of staff?’
‘A Belgian bargee, whom my men have been able to track down, saw somebody in the courtyard in the evening, standing on a ladder, breaking the glass on the wall.’
‘In the evening, or after two in the morning?’
‘In the evening, around ten p.m.’
‘In other words, four hours before the murder?’
‘Four hours before the murder.’
‘If that’s right, what do you conclude?’
‘Nothing so far. You asked me to keep you posted.’
‘Have you learned anything else?’
‘Paulette Lachaume has a lover.’
‘Did she tell you? I thought you …’
‘I haven’t seen her. She hasn’t told me anything. It was her sister-in-law who involuntarily put me on the right track.’
‘Which sister-in-law?’
‘Véronique Lachaume.’
‘Where did you find her?’
‘In her apartment in Rue François Premier. She is a barmaid in a fairly unusual cabaret on Rue Marbeuf, the Amazone. Her lover, whom she was planning to marry soon, is having an affair with Paulette …’
‘Did he admit that?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is he like?’
‘One of those characters you run into a lot around the Champs-Élysées … Publicist by trade … Unpaid tabs everywhere … At first he was planning to marry Véronique, who owns her apartment and has some savings … But when he heard about the sister-in-law and her millions, he contrived to meet her and become her lover. He had dinner with her the day before yesterday, then took her to an apartment on the Ile Saint-Louis which an English friend sometimes lends him …’
He was taking a certain mischievous satisfaction in tossing all this information out any old how. The magistrate could sort it out for himself.
‘Have you detained him at Quai des Orfèvres?’
‘I didn’t take him there.’
‘Where does this get us?’
‘I don’t know. If you reject the hypothesis of a burglar or a madman and you believe the bargee’s statement, you have to concede that the crime was committed by someone from the house. Now, Criminal Records found a thirty-six-centimetre spanner in Léonard Lachaume’s bedroom.’
‘The murderer used an automatic …’
‘I know. The spanner weighs around two kilos. According to Catherine, the maid, it had been in Léonard’s room for the past two weeks, after he used it to tighten a bolt sealing the gas pipe …’
‘What other information do you have?’
Maigret’s calm, ironic manner was getting on the magistrate’s nerves. Even the secretary, who was looking down in an embarrassed way, couldn’t help noticing that Maigret had adopted an attitude which, if not hostile or actively aggressive, wasn’t exactly cordial.
‘Information isn’t the word for it. For instance, I’ve just found out how many bedsheets there are in the house …’
‘Bedsheets?’
‘One sheet in Léonard’s room is stained with blood … It has a letter “P” on it and belongs to Paulette.’
‘Is that all?’
‘She left the house on foot in the rain the day before yesterday, at about six o’clock, and went to meet her lover who was waiting for her a little further down the street in a red car opposite a grocer’s. Round about the same time, Léonard Lachaume pulled out in his sister-in-law’s car, a blue Pontiac … The couple went to a discreet restaurant in Palais-Royal, Chez Marcel … Léonard would have returned at nine … An hour later, someone on the property crushed the broken glass on the wall with a heavy object, probably a hammer …
‘After going to the Englishman’s apartment on Quai de Bourbon, Paulette returned by taxi …’
‘Why not in her lover’s car?’
‘Because she was afraid of being noticed at night.’
‘Did she tell you that?’
‘Her lover did. In the corridor she said hello to Léonard, who was in a dressing gown …’
Maigret’s features froze; for a moment he seemed elsewhere.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’ll have to check …’
None of this remotely resembled his dream, in which he had treated the invisible examining magistrate to such a brilliant demonstration of his methods. They weren’t at Quai de la Gare either. The atmosphere of the house was missing, its contents, its past and present, everything visible and invisible there.
He was still consciously putting on a performance, though. It had always been open warfare with poor Coméliau, who had been his personal enemy for so long, the old, unacknowledged, constantly simmering struggle between the public prosecutor’s office and Quai des Orfèvres.
Other magistrates preferred to give him a free rein and wait patiently until he brought them a complete file, preferably with a signed confession.
Now, confronted with Angelot, he was showing off in spite of himself, playing the part of Maigret, as it were, or at least certain people’s version of him.
He wasn’t proud of it, but he couldn’t help himself. Two generations were meeting and he wasn’t averse to showing this beginner …
‘The conclusion being …?’
‘I haven’t drawn a conclusion yet.’
‘If it’s someone from the family, as you seem to contend …’
‘From the family or the house.’
‘So you include the hunchbacked old maid among the suspects, do you?’
‘I’m not ruling anyone out. I’m not going to quote more statistics. But three months ago, a man killed his neighbour, also with a 6.35 automatic, because the neighbour wouldn’t stop playing his radio at full volume.’
‘I don’t see the connection.’
‘At first sight it’s a stupid, inexplicable crime. However, the murderer was a severely disabled ex-serviceman who’d been trepanned twice and spent his days in pain in an armchair. He lived off his pension. The neighbour was a foreign-born tailor who had problems after the Liberation and had got out of them …’
‘I still don’t see …’
‘My point is this … What at first sight seems a ridiculous motive – a little more or less music – becomes, if you think about it, a burning question for the disabled ex-serviceman. In other words, given the circumstances the crime is explicable, almost inevitable.’
‘I don’t see anything equivalent at Quai de la Gare.’
‘But there must be, at least in the mind of the person who killed Léonard Lachaume. Apart from fairly rare pathological cases, people only kill for specific, urgent reasons.’
‘Have you found that reason in the case we are dealing with?’
‘I’ve found several …’
But Maigret had suddenly had enough of the role he had been sucked into playing.
‘I’m sorry …’ he muttered.
He meant it sincerely.
‘For what?’
‘For everything. It doesn’t matter. Something occurred to me just now while I was talking to you. If you don’t mind me making a telephone call, we may be able to get a clearer picture of what’s going on.’
The magistrate pushed the telephone towards him.
‘Get me Criminal Records, will you? Hello … Yes … Hello … Who’s speaking? … Is that you, Moers? Maigret here … I got the report … Yes … That’s not what I want to talk to you about, it’s the inventory … I assume it’s exhaustive, is it? What? … I know … I don�
�t doubt it was drawn up with great care … I just want to make sure that there isn’t a chance something was left out … Whoever typed it up could have skipped a line … Do you have the original list to hand? Fetch it … OK … Now, see if there isn’t a mention of a dressing gown … I went over the list fairly quickly in my office, and I might have missed it … A dressing gown, yes … A man’s, that’s it … I’ll stay on the line …’
He heard Moers reading through the list in a low voice.
‘No. No mention of a dressing gown. Besides, I was there and I didn’t see one …’
‘Thanks, my friend.’
He and the magistrate looked at one another in silence. Finally Maigret muttered, as though unsure of himself:
‘Calling someone in for questioning might get us somewhere at this point …’
‘Calling who in?’
‘That’s what I’m wondering.’
This wasn’t just because he was looking for what he sometimes called the point of least resistance. Today there was a personal aspect as well.
He was certain Angelot would insist the questioning took place in his office.
Maybe he’d even want to do it himself?
This made Maigret think twice about summoning old Lachaume, who already resembled one of the portraits of family ancestors hanging in the ground-floor office. He would have to be parted from his wife, who could hardly be made to travel. He wasn’t even sure that old Lachaume still had all his wits about him. His eyes seemed to look inwards and Maigret suspected he lived entirely in the past.
Catherine would be aggressive, because she was fiercely partisan and wouldn’t back down. She would deny the glaringly obvious, sneer at any semblance of logic. He’d have to look at her hunchbacked silhouette, hear her painfully shrill voice.
He didn’t know Jean-Paul, hadn’t been able to get a glimpse of him, because they had been in such a hurry to spirit him away to boarding school.
The little boy might inadvertently provide some valuable information, but Maigret could imagine the examining magistrate’s repugnance at the prospect of bothering a child whose father had died two nights previously.
Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses Page 11
