The Baron was furious.
‘He tricked me!’ he spat once they were in the street. ‘Do you think he’s really an assistant district attorney?’
‘Most probably.’
‘Then why did he do that?’
‘Because,’ Maigret said calmly as he got into the taxi, ‘these people, good and bad alike, think we’re children. Not yet out of kindergarten, you know.’
‘Where shall I take you now, Monsieur Maigret?’ asked the driver, who recognized him.
‘Quai des Orfèvres.’
Then he settled back into his corner with a surly shrug.
9.
In which, despite everything, Maigret accepts a glass of whiskey
‘The commissioner’s just arrived, sir.’
‘I’ll go and see him.’
It was nine in the morning, and in the grey light Maigret’s cheeks were dark with stubble, his eyes faintly red-rimmed. For a good half-hour he had been holding his handkerchief in his hand, because he was tired of taking it out of his pocket every minute.
On three separate occasions someone had come to tell him:
‘The woman’s kicking up a hell of a racket.’
‘Let her.’
Then an inspector had announced:
‘I opened the door a crack to give her a cup of coffee, and she threw it in my face. The mattress has been ripped open, and there’s straw everywhere.’
He had shrugged. A call had been made to Lucas on his behalf telling him he didn’t need to stay at the Bon Vivant any longer.
‘Tell him to go to bed!’
But Lucas, who wanted to see it through, had hurried to Quai des Orfèvres with a five o’clock shadow as well.
As for Torrence, he had shut himself away in an office with Tony Cicero. He persisted in asking the American questions which elicited nothing but a contemptuous silence.
‘You’re wasting your time, my friend,’ Maigret had remarked.
‘I know, but I enjoy it. He doesn’t understand a word I’m saying, but I can see it’s worrying him. He’s desperate for a cigarette but he’s too proud to ask for one. He’ll come round. He’s already opened his mouth once and then shut it again without saying anything.’
There was a strange excitement in the air that only Maigret’s few close collaborators on the case could understand. Young Lapointe, for example, who was none the wiser when he got to the office, wondered why Maigret and his men were throwing themselves into their strange tasks this morning with such a will.
They had primed the fifth and sixth arrondissement police stations.
‘A doctor, yes, probably quite young. He lives near Boulevard Saint-Michel, but I don’t think he’ll have a sign outside his door. The local women will know him, because he does abortions occasionally. Question the local chemists. He probably bought a fair amount of medicine last Tuesday. Go round the companies selling surgical instruments too.’
This morning all the local inspectors who knew about the case were going from door to door, from chemist to chemist, without suspecting they were dealing with people who had come from St Louis to settle their scores.
Another inspector from the Police Judiciaire was at the School of Medicine, copying out lists of students who had completed PhDs in recent years. Others were questioning the teachers. The Vice Squad was frantically busy, waking unsuspecting working girls.
‘Ever had an abortion?’
‘Honestly! Who do you take me for?’
‘All right, all right! We’re not trying to cause you problems. There’s a doctor around here who’ll take care of all that. Who is it?’
‘I only know a midwife. Have you asked Sylvie?’
If you included the border police and the gendarmes out on the roads watching for Bill Larner, several hundred people had been mobilized for the Americans’ sake.
Maigret knocked on a door, closed it behind him, shook hands with the commissioner of the Police Judiciaire and sank into a chair. For ten minutes he detailed everything he knew about the case in a monotone.
By the end, the commissioner seemed more embarrassed than him.
‘What do you plan to do? Get your hands on this Mascarelli?’
Maigret was tempted. He had had it with being treated like a child.
‘If I do, I’ll stop the assistant district attorney catching his crime boss.’
‘And if you don’t you won’t be able to charge Charlie and Cicero with attempted murder.’
‘Obviously. Which leaves Lognon. They kidnapped, as they say over there, Lognon and took him to Saint-Germain forest, where they beat him up. They also broke into his home and finally Charlie shot a policeman in Rue Grange-Batelière.’
‘He’ll claim he was attacked or thought there was an ambush, and it does look that way. His lawyer will say that he was walking peaceably down the street when he saw two men about to jump him.’
‘Fine! Let’s suppose that’s how it is. We still have Lognon, and that will get them several years inside, or at the very least several months.’
The commissioner couldn’t help smiling at the stubborn expression on Maigret’s face.
‘The woman’s got nothing to do with Lognon’s business,’ he objected again.
‘I know. We’ll have to let her go. That’s why I’m letting her scream. I can’t do anything against Pozzo either. We’ll catch him out one of these days and shut down his club.’
‘Angry, Maigret?’
It was Maigret’s turn to smile.
‘Admit it, chief, they’re pushing it. If Lognon hadn’t gone above and beyond on that Monday night, everything would have happened right under our noses. They would have told the story later in St Louis. I can hear someone ask: “What about the French police?” “The French police? They didn’t have a clue, the French police . . . What do you expect?”’
It was eleven, and Maigret had just replied to Madame Lognon’s questions – her second call of the day – when an inspector from the sixth arrondissement rang him.
‘Hello, Detective Chief Inspector Maigret? The doctor’s called Louis Duvivier and he lives at 17A, Rue Monsieur-le-Prince.’
‘Is he at home now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there anyone with him?’
‘The concierge thinks that a sick man’s been staying in his apartment for several days. She was surprised by that because usually he only has women patients. It’s true that there’s a woman staying there as well.’
‘How long?’
‘Since yesterday.’
‘No one else?’
‘An American visits almost daily.’
Maigret hung up and a quarter of an hour later he was slowly climbing the stairs in the doctor’s building. It was an old apartment block without a lift, and the man’s apartment was on the sixth floor. A rope hung to the left of the door. When he pulled it he heard footsteps inside. Then the door opened a crack, and he glimpsed a face. Pushing the door open with his foot, he grunted:
‘What are you doing here?’
He wanted to burst out laughing. The guy standing there, pistol in hand, was none other than a fellow called Dédé-de-Marseille, who threw his weight around in the clubs in Rue de Douai. Dédé didn’t know what to say and just looked wide-eyed at Maigret as he tried to hide his gun.
‘I’m not doing anything wrong, I promise.’
‘Hello, Monsieur Maigret!’
The tall blond-haired American in shirt-sleeves came out of an attic room with a sloping ceiling and a skylight like an artist’s studio.
His face was a little puffy, his eyes blurry like the Baron’s, but the expression on his face was gleeful. He held out a hand.
‘I thought I might have said too much and that you’d end up finding out the address. Are you furious with me?’
A young woman came out of the kitchen, where she was making something on a portable stove.
‘Can I introduce you?’
‘I’d rather you and I went downstairs.’
<
br /> He had glimpsed a bed with someone in it, a man with brown hair who was trying to hide.
‘I understand. Wait a minute.’
He soon reappeared with a jacket and a hat.
‘What shall I do?’ Dédé asked him, although he was also addressing Maigret.
‘Whatever you like,’ answered Maigret. ‘The guys are behind bars.’
On the stairs, Maigret and his companion didn’t say anything. Outside, they began to walk towards Boulevard Saint-Michel.
‘Is it true what you just said?’
‘About Cicero, yes. Charlie’s in hospital.’
‘Did your inspector give you my message?’
‘How soon can you take the plane with your charge?’
‘Three or four days. It’ll depend on the doctor. Are you going to make life hard for him?’
‘Tell me, Monsieur Harry . . . Harry what?’
‘Pills.’
‘That’s it. Like the singer! That’s what Baron told me. Suppose I go to your country and carry on the way you’ve carried on here?’
‘Point taken.’
‘You haven’t answered.’
‘You’d be asking for trouble, big trouble.’
‘Where did you get to know Dédé?’
‘After the Liberation, when I spent most of my nights in the clubs of Montmartre.’
‘Did you hire him to guard the wounded man?’
‘I couldn’t stay in the apartment round the clock. Nor could the doctor.’
‘What are you going to do with the woman?’
‘She hasn’t got any money to go back. I’m buying her a ticket. She’s taking a boat the day after tomorrow.’
They were in front of a bar. Harry Pills stopped and muttered tentatively:
‘You don’t think we could have a drink, do you? I mean, would you allow me to . . .’
It was funny seeing this tall athletic lad blushing like that fool Lognon.
‘They may not have any whiskey,’ objected Maigret.
‘They do. I know for a fact.’
He ordered, then raised his glass, holding it out in front of him for a moment. Maigret gave him a surly look, like a man who still holds a grudge, and said in an ambiguous tone:
‘To Gay Paris, as you call it.’
‘Still angry?’
Perhaps because he wanted to show that he was not as angry as all that, or because Pills was a likeable fellow, Maigret had a second drink. And as he could not leave without standing a round, a third followed.
‘Listen, Maigret, my friend . . . .’
‘No, Harry, I’m the one doing the talking . . .’
Around midday Pills said:
‘You see, Jules . . .’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Madame Maigret. ‘You seem . . .’
‘I’ve just got a cold. I’m off to bed with a hot toddy and two aspirins.’
‘Aren’t you having anything to eat?’
He crossed the dining room without answering, went into his bedroom and began to undress. If it weren’t for his wife, he probably would have gone to sleep in his socks.
Still, he had shown them . . . Absolutely!
1.
In which Maigret arrives late for lunch and a guest fails to turn up for dinner
When, in later years, Maigret looked back on this particular investigation, it would always strike him as something a little out of the ordinary, associated in his mind with the kind of illness that does not declare itself clearly but begins with vague twinges, feelings of unease, symptoms too mild to take seriously.
The first sign had been neither a complaint to the Police Judiciaire, nor an emergency appeal for help or anonymous tipoff, but instead, to go back to the very beginning, an innocuous phone call from Madame Maigret.
The black marble clock on the office mantelpiece was showing twenty to twelve; he could clearly recall the angle of the hands on its face. The window was wide open, since it was a June day, and under the warm sunshine Paris was already smelling of summer.
‘Is that you?’
His wife had of course recognized his voice. But she always asked if it was him on the other end, not out of distrust but because she had always been awkward on the phone. In Boulevard Richard-Lenoir too, the windows would be wide open, and by now Madame Maigret would have finished most of her household tasks. It was unusual for her to telephone.
‘Yes, it’s me.’
‘I wanted to ask if you would be home for lunch.’
It was even more unusual for her to call with such a question. He frowned, not from irritation but in surprise.
‘Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. Or rather, there’s someone here to see you.’
He could sense she was feeling embarrassed, almost at fault.
‘Who?’
‘Nobody you know. It’s nothing. Just that if you won’t be home for lunch, I’ll tell him not to wait.’
‘A man, then?’
‘A young man.’
She had no doubt taken the visitor into the front parlour, which they hardly ever used. The telephone was in the dining room, where they usually sat and where they received guests they knew well. It was where Maigret kept his pipes and had his armchair, and Madame Maigret her sewing machine. From the awkward way she was talking, he understood that she had not dared close the door between the two rooms.
‘Who is he?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘What does he want?’
‘I don’t know that either. He says it’s personal.’
He didn’t attach much importance to the call. If he was asking questions, it was only because of his wife’s hesitation, and also because it seemed to him that she had already taken the visitor under her wing.
‘I should be leaving the office at about twelve,’ he said in the end.
There was only one more person to see, a woman who had already come three or four times to complain about threatening letters from her neighbour. He pressed the buzzer for the office boy.
‘Show her in.’
He lit a pipe and leaned back in his chair, with an air of resignation.
‘So, madame, you have received another letter?’
‘Two, inspector. I’ve brought them along. In one of them, you’ll see, she admits she was the person who poisoned my cat, and she says that if I don’t move out I’ll be next.’
The hands moved slowly round the clock face. He had to pretend to be taking this matter seriously. It lasted a little under a quarter of an hour. Then, just as he was getting up to fetch his hat from the cupboard, there was a knock at the door.
‘Are you busy?’
‘Hello! What are you doing in Paris?’
Lourtie, one of his former inspectors, had recently transferred to the Flying Squad in Nice.
‘Just passing through. I thought I might drop in, sniff the air of headquarters and shake hands with you. Do we have time for a pastis in the Brasserie Dauphine?’
‘Yes, but it’ll have to be a quick one.’
He liked Lourtie, a tall lanky fellow with the voice of a church cantor. In the brasserie, where they stood at the counter, there were already several other inspectors. They chatted about this and that. A pastis was exactly what was needed on a day like today. They had one, then another, then a third.
‘I’ve got to go, I’m expected back home.’
‘I’ll walk along with you, shall I?’
The two men had crossed the Pont Neuf together, then walked to Rue de Rivoli, where it took Maigret a good five minutes to find a taxi. It was ten to one by the time he had finally climbed the three floors to the apartment on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir and, as usual, the door opened before he had a chance to take the key out of his pocket.
He had immediately noticed that his wife was looking preoccupied. Speaking in a low voice, since the doors were open, he asked her:
‘Is he still here?’
‘No, he’s gone.’
‘And you don’t know
what he wanted?’
‘He didn’t say.’
Had it not been for Madame Maigret’s anxious expression, he would have shrugged his shoulders and muttered:
‘Good riddance!’
But instead of going back into the kitchen and serving the lunch, she followed him into the dining room, looking like someone who has a confession to make.
‘Did you go into the parlour this morning?’ she asked him eventually.
‘Me? No. Why?’
Why indeed would he have gone in there before setting off for the office, since he detested the room?
‘I thought not.’
‘So, what’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. I’m trying to remember. I looked in the drawer.’
‘Which drawer?’
‘The one you keep your American revolver in.’
It was only now that he began to suspect the truth. He had spent several weeks in the United States, as a guest of the FBI, and the question of firearms had come up a great deal while he was there. When he left, the Americans had presented him with an automatic of which they were very proud, a Smith & Wesson .45 special, with a short barrel and a very sensitive trigger. It was engraved with his name:
To J.-J. Maigret from his FBI friends.
He had never used it. But the day before, it just so happened that he had taken it out of the drawer to show someone, a friend whom he had invited round for a drink after dinner. And he had taken the visitor into the parlour.
‘Why does it say J.-J. Maigret?’ the guest had asked.
He too had asked that question when he had been given the gun, during a reception in his honour. The Americans, who usually have two first names, had found out his own. Only the first two, fortunately: Jules-Joseph. In fact, he had a third name: Anthelme.
‘Do you mean my revolver isn’t there now?’
‘I’ll explain.’
Before letting her speak, he went into the front room, which still smelled of cigarette smoke, and glanced at the mantelpiece, where he remembered having placed the gun the night before. It wasn’t there. But he was sure he hadn’t put it away.
‘What’s all this about?’
‘Sit down first, and let me serve the food, or the roast will be overdone. Please don’t be angry.’
Maigret, Lognon and the Gangsters Page 14
